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Continuing a series of articles about attraction…

A lot of people recognize that they are attracted to the same type and wonder why. Attraction is a system shaped by familiarity, attachment and the nervous system. It isn’t one single decision. What “feels right”, isn’t always good for us and especially if “right” feels familiar. If you grew up in an emotionally unpredictable environment, your system will be tuned into shifts in moods, tone and attention. This process makes inconsistent people compelling because your body goes into a recognizable state: monitor, manage and try to earn safety. 

Familiarity lowers threat according to your system and the process of “mere exposure” states that we prefer what we are exposed to frequently. This might be useful in healthy relationships but it becomes a problem when familiar means emotional distance, criticism or intermittent affection. We end up attracting people who recreate the emotional climate we know how to survive. 

Then there is the concept of attachment. Anxious attachment often produces attraction that feels urgent, an intense pull towards closeness and a tendency to see calm as danger. Avoidant attachment often produces attraction that feels controlled, warmth at arms length, followed by withdrawal when things become intimate or intense.  Those two styles together produce the classic “push-pull” relationship, intense, destabilizing, toxic and often mistaken for love and passion. 

We often feel that “spark of chemistry” when we meet someone new and it’s squarely to do with our brain’s reward system. When that someone is warm, then distant, then warm again, our brains learn to chase the next dopamine hit of reassurance. That’s known as intermittent reinforcement and it’s the main mechanism behind trauma bonding. It means the relationship is down to conditioning, not love. 

So what helps? We don’t need to kill attraction. We need to retrain our selection processes. Healthy attraction grows best when we prioritize steadiness over stimulation. When we pace intimacy and allow consistent behaviour to earn more access to us. When we observe our new partner’s ability to repair after conflict, respect boundaries and accept accountability. 

The aim isn’t to become cold or detached. It’s to become discerning. Attraction can start the conversation but what happens next is far greater than that.

Journalling questions:

1. Who am I most drawn to and what do they have in common?
2. When attraction hits, what do I feel in my body: calm, urgency, tension, hunger?
3. What did “love” feel like in my early home, steady, distant, conditional, unpredictable?
4. Where do I confuse intensity with compatibility?
5. What boundaries do I tend to abandon when I’m attracted?
6. What would “steady” look like in the first month of dating?
7. What behaviours would I need to see to trust someone over time?