Attraction
Or, why Mandy Patinkin is my dad now
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Attraction. Sometimes it happens instantaneously, as to the character Emile de Becque in the musical South Pacific. In the bridge of “Some Enchanted Evening,” he sings, “Who can explain it, who can tell you why? / Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.”
This post is me trying to be a fool, because people want reasons. But let’s start by making sure we all know that if we are wise, we won’t try to know why. We will simply listen to the wisdom of our own bodies, which will tell us when to move toward, when to be still, or when to turn away.
So, attraction. To begin with, it happens in your embodied mind, not in your intellect. I say “embodied mind,” because of course your brain is involved, when it perceives an “attractive” person, it activates all kinds of physiological symptoms of increased alertness and social engagement—increased heart rate and respiration rate, a shift in your attention away from anything that isn’t the person, sometimes an irrepressible smile, heat in your face.
Why this person?
Well, here’s the metaphor I use: You know how the word “Namaste” is sometimes translated as something like “the infinite or divine in me recognizes the infinite or divine in you”? Well, that instant feeling of attraction is like your body saying, “The dysfunctional family and cultural of origin in me recognizes the dysfunctional family and cultural origin in you.” Or the functional family, of course.
Other ways to describe it: You spent your entire childhood surrounded by adult caregivers who, for better or worse, showed you what love looks like and what love feels like. They shaped and honed the bell of your heart to resonate at a certain wavelength. When you meet a person you’re instantly attracted to, it’s because they ring your bell. And if you look back at the relationships among the adult caregivers who surrounded you when you were, say, 4 or 6 years old and think you’d love to have relationships like those, congratulations! You’ll probably be attracted mostly to people who will replicate those relationships. And if you look back at the relationships that surrounded you when you were little and think, “Oof yikes,” I have good news! Yes, early in your experiences of attraction, you’ll be attracted to people who resonate with the “yikes” style of relationship you learned when you were small, but you absolutely can retune your bell. How? Well, therapy, basically. But also books! I particularly recommend How to Be an Adult by David Ricchio, since it emphasizes the ways we can help ourselves grow as individuals, rather than trying to describe a whole new template of what a relationship “should” look like.
One more metaphor to describe what’s happening with instant attraction: Your early life drew a picture in your mind of what love and lovers look like. It was drawn mostly by unspoken messages you received from your adult caregivers. By the time you got to adolescence, your brain was ready to start recognizing people who match that portrait.
For all its faults, South Pacific has a lot of wisdom. In the second act, Emile asks one of the American Marines, essentially, “Y U so racist tho?” and the Marine replies with the self-loathing screed, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” (Go watch a video of Mandy Patinkin singing this in 1986, and while you’re there, listen to him singing “Younger Than Springtime.” Find yourself someone who looks at you the way Mandy Patinkin looks at his microphone in the midst of this love song. Find yourself someone who’s as good at managing distance as Mandy Patinkin is at managing the distance between him and the mic. Also, he and his wife have a YouTube channel that I highly recommend as a joyful way to witness attraction after 15, 695 days.)
We are indeed carefully taught from birth which people are attractive and which are not—and not just in terms of racialized or ethnic features, but also in terms of body shape and size, dis/ability, markers of social status, and gender expression. (Notice I said gender expression, not gender identity, which is a whole other thing. Gender expression is how a person displays their gender, in clothes, makeup, posture, voice, etc.) Fortunately, the biases we learn early in life are not innate; they can be shifted simply by spending more time looking at people who vary from the culturally constructed “ideal.” That’s how I think of what happened to the Marine in South Pacific who falls in love with a Pacific Islander… but can’t bring himself to marry her and take her home to his Main Line white family.
Not all attraction is instantaneous–and all attraction is equal, my friends. Sometimes you are instantly attracted to someone, but as you get to know them, that instantaneous feeling fades as they reveal themselves to be not a good fit for you. And sometimes you don’t experience instant attraction, but you fall into attraction gradually, as your body learns more and more about this person. That second kind of attraction is just as good as instant attraction, and might even be a better predictor of long-term relationship success.
So those are the “reasons” for attraction. A person instantaneously matches the template in your embodied mind about what love looks and feels like—a template created in the early years of your life, as you witnessed and experienced the relationships among your adult caregivers. And yes, 100%, you can change the template or drawing or bell resonance.
But it doesn’t matter why, ultimately. What matters is that you recognize your patterns of attraction, embrace the parts that lead to happy and healthy relationships and gradually reshape the parts of the pattern that predict unhappiness and dysfunction.
In conclusion, attraction is complex. Also Mandy Patinkin is my dad—not really, but he could be if he wanted to.
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