Behind the Scenes of How Love & Attraction Work

Love and Eros are vital emotions felt by all humans. These feelings have such power that can make us both the happiest human on earth and the saddest.

There is a definite way that attraction and love work in our minds, and although it may vary depending on the way we grew up, the overall system works alike for all of us.

So, let’s dive into the hidden principles of attraction and the ways we can use this knowledge to find the appropriate partner for us and not get stuck in unfortunate relationships.

The 3 Physical Attraction Principles

Starting, as the basis of our attraction to someone is how we interpret their physical appearance in our minds.

When we meet someone, we subconsciously decide rapidly whether they are to our liking or not.

To accomplish this, there are 3 major ways by which our minds are bound to assess if someone attracts us or not in an erotic way.

1. Genes

Women and men choose one another to form families from the dawn of time. To make them successful, there were certain characteristics each was looking for in their corresponding partner.

In Allan & Barbara Pease’s “The Definitive Book of Body Language”, they talked about how for women it’s usual to choose a partner that can protect them since they are the ones that take the harder tasks in raising a child.

So, in the old times, a strong and confident partner was usually a reassuring sign that they will be capable to provide the necessary things for a family to work out.

As for the men, the partners that appealed to them were often ones that were infusing them with feelings of protection. This traced back to their days with their caring mother, and so their mind looked for this trait to develop a loving family.

All these were inscribed in our genes, hence making it truthful in today’s relationships as well. Women usually tend to search for a confident and assured partner, and men generally get attracted by a partner they feel they can protect.

This of course is but one of the 3 things that affect our attraction towards someone and by no means does it shackle us in our search for the appropriate partner.

All 3 of them are vital to note and concur when we meet someone and start learning things from them.

2. Parents & attraction

The second aspect that defines whether we get attracted to someone is dependent on the way we were raised by our parents.

While our parents try to raise us, we absorb their values and way of speaking, standing, or expressions they make (i.e body language and facial expressions).

In case we have a positive relationship with the parent of the opposite gender, we tend to look both for their physical and psychological traits in our future partner as well. As for the psychological aspect, we will cover it in the following part.

So, if someone has similar facial expressions, tone of voice, body postures, and even the same height and size as our parent of the opposite gender has, we might get attracted to them.

This only applies if we are positively connected with our parents, else this might work oppositely.

3. Mirroring

The last aspect to be mindful of is how mirroring affects our attraction to another person.

The term mirroring describes the familiarity we are feeling toward another human when they have similar physical characteristics to us. This applies of course to the psychological ones too.

As for the physical ones though, we tend to get attracted to people that have a similar shape in the face, ear, nose, and eye, as well as similar mannerisms and smile with us.

Our mind gets this information as soon as we meet someone and it judges on a subconscious level whether the other person is identical to us.

If it concludes that we face a person that is resembling ourselves, we are prone to take a liking to that person, and depending on how many similar aspects we have to them, we might be attracted a lot or not to them.

So, for you to be more approachable and likable to a person you are interested in, you can try mirroring their positive gestures and expressions (such as smiling, body postures, and even tonality) and this, in turn, will usually make you seem more interesting to the other person.

Love Map

This section focuses on the psychological aspects of attraction as we delve deeper into its way of operation. These are details of utmost importance as long-term love and attraction highly depend on this standalone principle.

We all grow up with a different set of experiences, people we associate ourselves with, and most importantly parents.

Our parents nurture us from the beginning of our lives and because of that, we memorize every action, way of speaking and wording, and expression they make to mirror them in our lives (especially at the beginning, since we don’t have any other information to go by in the world).

Therefore, their set of values derived from their experiences and growth are instilled into our subconscious very early on in our lives.

From there on, we face different situations in life that challenge us in certain ways to assist us in questioning our current beliefs and values and forming new ones.

All these values and beliefs we develop from our parents and our past experiences are shaping our personalities.

Every single characteristic our personality has that we are glad to have and sure about are things we tend to look for in other people subconsciously for them to be acquainted positively with us.

More specifically, every trait that is connected with seeing the other person erotically constitutes our love map. For example, having a certain type of humor or loving the same type of activities-hobbies.

The love map though isn’t developed purely from the values our parents impose on us nor from the various experiences in our lives. It is also heavily impacted by our past lovers and the experiences we had with them.

This even comes down to their physical traits; we tend to look at people more erotically if they seem to resemble our former lovers both in appearance and in personality. Of course, if the former relationship was negative rather than positive, this will have opposite effects on our attraction to someone.

Consequently, to connect the previous part with this one, every person that mirrors our love map’s aspects is seen by us as more attractive since we feel more familiar with them.

So by analyzing ourselves in retrospect to our past experiences, lovers, and the way our parents raised us, we can understand what do we look for in a potential partner to form a loving relationship with the appropriate person and avoid unsuitable ones.

One word that frees us all from the weight and pain in life: That word is love.

- Sophocles

Conclusion

They say love works in mysterious ways and it’s usually true to the people that understand both themselves and others less.

Sure, love and attraction have some seemingly hidden principles and ways of operation, but if we all strive to understand how our and other people’s minds work, we will enjoy the benefits of engaging in better relationships with them.

Remember that every person has a specific love map to assist them in choosing the correct partner for them and as soon as we understand ours and theirs, we can use this information to find a healthy and loving relationship.

Kind Note: The aforementioned information is to be used only with good intentions in mind. The reasoning behind understanding the psychology of love is under no circumstances for taking advantage of people. Use everything you see and learn wisely and with good intentions always.

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This article was originally published on Medium at Harrys Stratigakis