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Should I Try to be Attracted?

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Should I Try to be Attracted? Empty Should I Try to be Attracted?

Post by Dannyboy Thu Jun 02, 2016 5:26 pm

So, this post is going to make me sound really shallow and selfish, and I might be. So, about a week ago this girl hit me up on OKC, I looked at her profile and she looked gorgeous and was into the same things that I was, so I responded. After a few days of texting back and forth we friended each other Facebook and, well, I saw the rest of her photos. In her OKC profile, she had only taken photos of her face which hid the fact that she's overweight. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem, I've been attracted in overweight people before, but, well, I do not really find her attractive based on her facebook photos.

So, here's my predicament: she's a really nice friendly person who shares a lot of my interests and I'm getting the feeling that she really likes me (she's always talking about how exciting it would be to actually meet me), but I don't find her attractive. Should I just go along and try to make this work, try to find her attractive? I mean, I'm no prize myself (understatement of the year), can I really reject someone for not being attractive to me? Are people that I find attractive simply not in my league, are my standards just way too high and I need to lower them? And if I do reject her, how do I do it? Usually when I reject someone I just stop contacting them, but I feel like things have gone way too far for me to do that without seriously hurting her feelings.

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Post by Enail Thu Jun 02, 2016 6:03 pm

I don't think you should try to make it work if you're not attracted to her. Unless you're someone who usually starts off not attracted to people and then develops attraction over time, it seems pretty unlikely that you can make yourself be genuinely attracted to someone. And dating generally presumes attraction, so yes, absolutely you can and should reject someone for not being attractive to you!  And I think pretending to be attracted to someone because you think you should is a cruel thing to do, to them and to yourself.

I don't know whether or not your standards are "high" in the sense that the people you tend to be attracted to are the ones the majority consider attractive, but "I am attracted to this person" is absolutely not too high a standard to look for. If your standards, whether based on conventional attractiveness or your own unique scale, are making it hard for you to find anyone you're attracted to who is interested in you, it might be worth considering whether there's any way to broaden them, but from what you post here, it seems like you do find attractive some people who express an interest in you, so it doesn't strike me as a problem for you. Do you feel like it's a problem for you?

But if you do want to increase your options, I don't think you should ever try to force it, but people's attraction can be based somewhat on what they're used to. So exposing yourself to a wider variety of people who are slightly outside of your current range of attraction (spending time in spaces that have different people or looking at pictures of women outside of your typical type and being open to seeing their beauty) might over time just naturally expand the range of people you're attracted to. Or it might not, attraction's a weird beast. Shrug

As for letting her down, I'd suggest telling her you've had a nice time talking with her but you're just not feeling it. There's no reason to go into detail about why.
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Post by Dannyboy Thu Jun 02, 2016 6:25 pm

Enail wrote:I don't think you should try to make it work if you're not attracted to her. Unless you're someone who usually starts off not attracted to people and then develops attraction over time, it seems pretty unlikely that you can make yourself be genuinely attracted to someone. And dating generally presumes attraction, so yes, absolutely you can and should reject someone for not being attractive to you!  And I think pretending to be attracted to someone because you think you should is a cruel thing to do, to them and to yourself.

I don't know whether or not your standards are "high" in the sense that the people you tend to be attracted to are the ones the majority consider attractive, but "I am attracted to this person" is absolutely not too high a standard to look for. If your standards, whether based on conventional attractiveness or your own unique scale, are making it hard for you to find anyone you're attracted to who is interested in you, it might be worth considering whether there's any way to broaden them, but from what you post here, it seems like you do find attractive some people who express an interest in you, so it doesn't strike me as a problem for you. Do you feel like it's a problem for you?

But if you do want to increase your options, I don't think you should ever try to force it, but people's attraction can be based somewhat on what they're used to. So exposing yourself to a wider variety of people who are slightly outside of your current range of attraction (spending time in spaces that have different people or looking at pictures of women outside of your typical type and being open to seeing their beauty) might over time just naturally expand the range of people you're attracted to. Or it might not, attraction's a weird beast. Shrug

As for letting her down, I'd suggest telling her you've had a nice time talking with her but you're just not feeling it. There's no reason to go into detail about why.

You're probably right, we'd both end up resenting each other eventually. Thank you for the advice,I'm going to try my best to let her down easily, I'd hate to break her heart Sad .

As for whether my standards are high, I don't know. I have gone on dates with women I've found to be attractive, but it usually end with either them rejecting me or me rejecting them because, well they do hard drugs, they're really bitter, or they have mental issues that I don't think I'm mature enough socially to work with. I suppose this kind of thing is endemic to online dating, though, and I can't even imagine trying to pick up girls at bars or bookstores so this is unfortunately what I have to work with.

Thank you for your advice, Enail, I can always trust you (and the other mods here) to simplify problems. Smile

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Post by BiSian Thu Jun 02, 2016 10:41 pm

I agree with enail though I'm going to add that you try meeting this person IRL.
Pictures don't do the whole story.
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