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Attraction
1 min read · 297 words
Attraction is several systems converging on one person and lobbying hard for approach. It's real, chemical and not under voluntary control — and it's data rather than a recommendation.
Is this you?
Check whatever lands. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The machinery has identified a target and is lobbying for approach.
Attraction is the convergence of multiple systems firing simultaneously toward one object: the reward circuit (this is desirable), the mating hardware (this organism matches the template), the social system (proximity to this person would improve standing), and sometimes the attachment wiring (this one feels like safety). The systems converge and produce a signal that is difficult to ignore — attention narrows, awareness heightens, the body orients. The pull is real, chemical, and not under voluntary control.
The signal is data. It is not a recommendation.
The system’s selection criteria for attraction are a blend of the inherited and the installed. Some of the template is genetic — symmetry, health markers, indicators that the other organism’s hardware is functional. Some is environmental — conditioned by the earliest significant relationships, by cultural exposure, by the specific pattern the attachment system learned to seek. The result is a target profile that the one at the controls did not consciously assemble and often cannot consciously explain. “My type” is the system’s compiled template, running its match protocol.
What attraction does not report: compatibility. The signal says approach. It does not say this will work. The hardware that produces the pull is not the hardware that assesses whether two operating systems can function well in proximity over time. Attraction and compatibility are separate assessments, produced by separate circuits, and the strength of the first tells you nothing about the viability of the second.
The one in the chair can enjoy the signal — it is one of the more vivid things the machinery produces — while holding the distinction between the system lobbying for approach and the actual assessment of what approach would produce.
Several systems at once, and none of them vetted the choice
What produces it is convergence: the reward circuit saying this is desirable, the mating hardware saying this matches the template, the social system calculating that proximity would improve standing, and sometimes the attachment wiring saying this one feels like safety. They fire together and produce a signal that's genuinely hard to ignore — attention narrows, awareness sharpens, the body orients.
None of those systems assessed whether this person is good for you. They're running pattern-matches against templates compiled from your history, your conditioning and what you've been exposed to.
Which is why the signal is data rather than a recommendation. It reports that several systems have converged. It says nothing about compatibility, character, or whether the relationship would work — and it fires just as strongly for someone who'd be a disaster.
The attachment component is worth separating out, because it's the one that most reliably misleads. This one feels like safety frequently means this one matches the pattern I'm used to, and familiarity gets experienced as rightness. That's how people end up repeatedly drawn to the same unsuitable configuration and calling it chemistry.
Separate the pull from the assessment
The signal isn't going to stop. The question is whether anything else gets consulted.
Real questions
Why am I attracted to people who are bad for me?
Usually the attachment component. This one feels like safety frequently means this matches the pattern I'm used to, and familiarity gets experienced as rightness — so a configuration that was difficult early can feel like home later. None of the systems producing attraction assessed whether the person is good for you; they're matching templates compiled from your history.
Can you control who you're attracted to?
Not the signal — it's chemical and fires below the level where you get a vote. What's available is what happens next: whether anything else gets consulted, and what you do about it. Trying to stop being attracted to someone is reliably unsuccessful; deciding not to pursue it while the pull continues is both possible and considerably more realistic.
Is strong attraction a good sign?
It's a sign several systems converged, which says very little about compatibility. Intensity early frequently coexists with almost no actual evidence about the person, and the pull fills that gap with assumption. It's worth noticing that the relationships people describe as having the strongest start are not reliably the ones that work.
Why does attraction fade?
Because the early signal is partly novelty and partly projection, and both reduce as the person becomes known and predictable. That's expected rather than a failure — what replaces it has to be built rather than felt. The misreading that causes most damage is treating the fade as evidence something is wrong, which ends a great many relationships that were working.
Why do I keep going for the same type?
Because the templates were compiled early and they're doing the matching. That's why the pattern persists across very different people — the variable isn't them, it's what your system recognises. Which is good news in one respect: a pattern that travels with you is one you have some access to, unlike other people's behaviour.
What should I do when I'm attracted to someone unavailable?
Treat the signal as information and the behaviour as a separate decision. The pull will continue regardless of what you decide, so waiting for it to stop before acting responsibly means waiting indefinitely. Practically: reduce proximity and contact, because the signal is fed by exposure, and the willpower approach without that is attempting to out-resist something being continuously supplied.