A is for ATTRACTION

So they say beauty is the eye of the beholder and yet the subject of attraction can have many components. We are led to believe that we are automatically pre-disposed to find certain qualities attractive in another person, be it physical or biological, but over the years I have discovered that attraction can be fleeting, physical attraction most of all.

Attraction and Infatuation

Recently I had my first experience of infatuation with a new lover. I was smitten, my feelings uncontrollable, highly energised to the point that I could not sleep well. I had trouble eating and concentrating, my focus was zoomed in on this new man. I had no clue that I was infatuated because it was totally new to me and I was also going through some big shifts in my energy and my heart chakra was opening because of this infatuation.

It lasted around 2-3 weeks and during this time I allowed this infatuation to make me ignore any ‘negative’ qualities in the other person and it felt like a drug to me. Infatuation may be what the poets call the first stages of love, but this infatuation period does not last. When it ends you either see the ‘other’ for who they really are and part company as the rose coloured spectacles are removed, or you allow your feelings to deepen and your attraction to take on a clearer quality.

I felt in a state of a shock when the infatuation ended. I began to see the ‘other’ as not as ‘perfect’ as I had led myself to believe, and even though I know everyone is perfect, flaws and all, I started to doubt that my feelings were ever real, but then something shifted.

Instead of walking away I began to focus on the positive qualities in this new man. I began to ask myself what is the gift in this experience, will he add to my life or take something away? And even though during the infatuation stage many of my friends told me he may not be good for me something in me told me otherwise. I was laughing more, feeling like a child again and I needed this feeling in my life.

Attraction can deepen when we look beyond the pre-programmed, often brainwashed thoughts about others we have been led to believe we are attracted to.

I was always attracted to tall, dark-haired men with brown eyes. Men who are very outdoorsy, wear combat trousers, often wear green, may look a bit rough around the edges and while I am still attracted to these types of men I have discovered over the years that love and attraction does not come in tidy little packages pre-wrapped to meet our desires and wants. Often life brings us people we can unwrap slowly, to discover their inner depths, to experience a sense of new attraction where we are drawn to the sensuality of their whole selves.

Yes, we all have flaws or what we may see as imperfections, but the question is, when we feel attracted to someone, are we able to embrace those flaws and see the bigger picture taking place?

Attraction Hormones

Something I discovered several years ago was that my own womanly menstrual cycle changes my feelings of attraction towards men. During my period I am attracted to different men than during the rest of my cycle. When I ovulate I am attracted to different physical attributes in men. I have this strong feeling that my hormones have me attracted to more fertile men during ovulation and perhaps less so during my period. I often find that if I am attracted to someone during my period I am totally unattracted to them during the rest of my cycle. I also find I am attracted to certain colours during my period and totally put off by those colours during the rest of my cycle, so much so that I never go shopping for clothes during my period because I always buy colours that do not suit my skin tone and end up only ever wearing them during my period.

So attraction shifts and changes a lot for so many reasons.

Soul Attraction

I am a big believer that everything happens for a reason and that no-one crosses our path who is not meant to be there. I also believe that before we enter the human body as a soul we make arrangements with people in non-physical that we will meet up with, be it become family or become friends or lovers. So often those deeper loves, those deeper attractions come from our choices made in non-physical. Often we have known our lover before, we may have had other lifetimes together, sometimes lovers, sometimes parents, children and changing roles during each lifetime. Those loves we may have a deeper growing love for could well be people we have known a long time and have agreed to meet at the perfect time in our lives to receive the gifts in relating with them. This could be a reason why when we meet someone we would not normally be attracted to, when our mind’s conditioned, pre-programmed attraction is generally towards another type of person, we are attracted to their essence, their soul and we recognise that this experience has great gifts because we have already agreed on a soul level to have this meeting with the ‘other’.

We often meet significant ‘others’ for a reason, a season or a lifetime. As we allow our journey to unfold from the place of ‘now’ we will discover why as we walk alongside them.

Superficial Attraction

Living as part of this often media-influenced society it is very easy to allow the programs put in place to control our physical attraction. From air-brushed images of models and women in magazines and on TV, to porn movies that are watched so regularly often by young men that literally brainwash them into being attracted to certain physical attributes in a woman, superficial attraction is just that – superficial.

Superficial does not last. We all age and lose our physical attributes over time, those we may have felt were part of our inherent beauty, so any relationship based on a superficial attraction will not last and more importantly will not have any depth.

When I was younger I had superficial attraction towards boyfriends and partners. I also had such low self-worth that I often settled for men I was only mildly attracted to, but I was so superficial that I would spend a lot of the relationship finding fault with how they looked. Even though those relationships were not meant to last and were meant to only be short experiences, looking back I can see with more knowledge that focusing on the positive qualities in a person draws those qualities out of them, and my negative focus possibly ruined any opportunity for going deeper with them.

At the moment I am processing and coming to terms with my own body changing and learning to adapt to my changing skin and body. I am not a master at this yet. Loving myself is a journey and the body is one aspect of this journey. But I know that as I learn to accept my physical self and see beyond the physical also, seeing the attractive qualities in myself  shining through from my soul’s light, that attraction is a much larger experience than I ever thought possible.