Emotional attraction over physical attraction
Did it ever happen to you to be emotionally attracted to a guy or a girl, when there`s little physical attraction or when it`s totally inexistent? It happened to me several times, so I decided to write this down and share some thoughts with you, hopefully that I`m not the only one who thinks that physical attraction is just as important as the emotional attraction in a relationship, when you`re trying to build something with a person. I kept on hearing that it`s the soul that matters, but personally, I believe things are a bit different. I`m not saying that there aren`t people who can fall in love with somebody even if there`s no physical attraction, I`m just saying that I`m not that type who does that as long as there`s no chemistry between me and him.
As I said in one of my previous articles, I really don`t believe in the "appearance doesn`t matter, it`s only the shallow people who think it does" crap. Appearance does matter for all of us, but it`s up to each of us to settle down a "level of importance" for it. For me, appearance doesn`t come first, but it does play an important role, along with intelligence, originality and ability to love. And many other things that are less important than the ones I`ve already mentioned.
Talking about relationships, I don`t think that for me the emotional attraction can ever overcome physical attraction. For instance, I could fall for a guy that`s a total gentleman, who`s funny and caring and all the stuff, but that`s it. I can have the utmost respect for that guy and appreciate him, maybe even love him in a friendly way, but I could never have a relationship with him as long as there`s no physical attraction involved (let`s say he`s just not your type of guy - he`s too short, too tall or whatever, I hate the word "ugly" because there`s always something beautiful about all of us, whether we`re talking about pillowy lips, Husky-like eyes which are more than adorable, etc).
For me, chemistry is represented by both physical attraction and emotional attraction.
I`m one of those who believe that love must come natural, in all its forms, and as shallow as it may sound, appearance does somehow influence love, because let`s think clearly - can you be intimate with somebody that you don`t like, physically speaking? Closing your eyes and imagining that it`s Prince Charming you`re being intimate with is just not going to work. This is what I think.
What about you, could emotional attraction ever overcome the physical attraction? If yes, why?
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- Why do some men prefer transgender women instead of biological women?
- Prince Charming VS. ... Rapunzel?
Persona non grata: Young, dedicated to writing articles and willing to make a change, whether we`re talking about how the people see us, the ones who are part of LGBT, or about writing some thoughts, opinions and other sort of material that hopefully others will find useful.
But, if you're only emotionally attracted to someone and you end up in a relationship with them ... aren't you obligated to be honest and tell them that there's no physical attraction there? That doesn't seem realistic to me, I just cannot imagine someone doing that to a significant other, lol.
Emotional attraction cannot be separated from physical attraction. What appears to be "emotional" in a relationship that lacks physical involvement is in fact only a mental affinity. When you like someone's company, but find it repulsive or inappropriate to become physically intimate with them, it is not a matter of emotional closeness but of a mental intertwining.
I find it impossible to be emotionally close to someone and not enjoy his/her physical proximity. It is often said that friendship is love without lovemaking. Friends make love in a myriad of ways, but not physically. And why is that? Some people say that friendship is a kind of brotherhood and that sexual involvement will surely ruin any friendship. This is viewed as almost a form of incest.
But friends are not brothers, and brothers are not united by friendship but rather by a physical bond. Friendship unites two people who come together in spite of being complete strangers to each other. The love of friends is not the same as the love between brothers, and this is so precisely because friends do not share the burden of a physical and biological connection.
It is true that sex is not the basis of friendship, as is the case with romantic relationships. But the love of a friend that excludes sex is certainly devoid of any true sense of communion. Lack of physical attraction between friends is proof of each one's failure to commit entirely to the other. Ultimately, it is the lack of the possibility of sex (rather than the lack of sex itself) that may destroy a great friendship by leading it to the terrible place where the two become "just friends".
Surely enough, there is a very good reason for which sex is feared in any friendship, because it's the most accurate test of a friendship's authenticity. And indeed, most friendships would not survive it. Sex is the main threat endangering the emotional closeness of friendship, by aligning all emotions to the physical level. So close and tight is the bond between one's body and emotions that it is virtually impossible to distinguish one from the other.
Therefore, good friends would usually refrain from becoming physically intimate, because such an involvement may in fact reveal that what had been perceived as an emotional link between them was nothing more than a mental connection. And, indeed, many friendships are merely circumstantial, bringing together two people who think similarly and have a common interest. Such connections are not longlasting, as they are consummed as soon as the interests of the two "friends" begin to diverge.
A true friendship, in which each one cares for the other and suffers along with him, sharing in common each other's joy and pain, is quite rare. Instead of a community of interests (which may even be conflicting), true friends commune solely on the realm of emotions. It is the realm of emotions that gives a friendship its true measure. Two very different people, with very different interests, are brought together by virtue of the way in which they secretly resonate with (and respond to) what is entirely foreign to them.
It is precisely this emotional closeness that is brought up during a physical (sexual) type of union. Physicality forces emotion to resurge and resurface. When a friendship cannot stand up to the test of sexuality, the nature of that friendship is probably not an emotional one. Even though physical attraction is not necessarily founded on emotional compatibility (as sexual intercourse is possible as a result of a purely mental stimulation), emotional attraction can only suffer when it is deprived of its physical release.
The fact that people may like each other is not proof of an emotional kind of closeness. Liking someone's company, as is the case of admiration, respect or shared interests, is merely a statement about a person's disposition towards another. Liking a person can never go as far as becoming intimately invested into the life of that person. The difference between liking and loving someone rests upon the physical distance maintained.
The fact that two people come together is not necessarily caused by an underlying "attraction" between them. Sometimes people simply look in another for something they miss. People like what they most desire (which is to say, what they think they need), while love is entirely and exclusively the playground of true needs. Is is not by the same "gravity" force that people who like and people who love each other come together.
Liking is a sort of orbiting around a center of interest, at the precise distance of a particular interest (and it is this constant distance that allows for the profitability of that interest to be sustained). On the other hand, love is something completely different, because lovers when lovers seem to "gravitate" around one another (and seem to be each other's satellite) they are in fact two replicas - the two faces of sameness. Their distance is virtual, because they are mutually linked indestructibly.
This is why that which is loved is not "liked"; and it can never be liked, as you can never "like" your shadow just because it is properly yours, yet unknown to you. A person can only "own" his shadow by loving it and becoming intimately one with it. However, even though love can never be degraded to mere liking, someone whom we like may eventually come to be loved, once the reason of this liking becomes apparent as our own shadow. It is not very common that we fall in love with someone whom we just used to like but it can happen, provided that some kind of "unliking" occurs first. In order to develop feelings and experience emotion towards someone who only attracted you mentally, it is necessary to disassociate first from that mental connection, which is a source of constant separation.
This doesn't mean,of course, that we can fall in love with just about anyone of our liking; it only means that we sometimes mistake those whom we truly love for people we merely like.