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She’s Just Not into You That Way
The mystery of sexual attraction and why it matters
Physical and emotional attraction isn’t earned, it’s there, or it isn’t. Faulting someone for not being attracted to you is like blaming someone for being short or bald….unfair and foolish.
Yet there’s something peculiar about the way our brains convince us we can play with fire and not get burned.
No matter how many times you tell yourself you can “just be friends” with someone with whom you are attracted, the truth is it’s usually pure torture and we know it.
Yet it’s not that categorical. Sometimes we feel enormous attraction to someone initially, then it ebbs, it flows, it expands and contracts, sometimes it’s powerfully alive, other times it’s dormant but still flickers.
Hypothesis
Attraction, in all its forms and glory, is like its own living organism. We feel something for someone…it grows…we perseverate and obsess…we overindulge and become desensitized and disillusioned…bored…then push them away…and oftentimes…only through the passage of time, do we know whether the initial attraction lived, died, or transitioned into something else.
