One-sided Attraction: How to Stop Chasing People Who Ignore Us

Laws of Attraction (Not Reciprocal): How to Stop Chasing People Who Ignore Us

I was on vacation in New York with a friend of mine – let’s call her Emily – and… yes, she was giving what’s called great. We’d only been there a few days, and he had made an appointment to meet a handsome stranger at a wine bar. A few nights later, he went to the house of a girl he met at a club (not the same one!) in New York.

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A few days pass, and one evening, Emily and I are sitting in the kitchen. She tells me the juicy details of another New York date, pointing to a chihuahua named Cookie when she and her sweetheart entered the apartment and the lovely park they went for a walk the next morning (he doesn’t even come out). Description of turtles bathing in a pond. At one point he pauses sensing my jealousy.

“And that boy?” She asked me.

I had downloaded the online dating app Hinge and talked to a few people, especially “the guy”. At the beginning of the week, he invited us to a party at his house, but we decided that dedicating a Friday night to a stranger was a waste of time to risk. After that, he was almost always busy.

“It’s a little rude,” I say, laughing.

She takes my phone and reads the message. When I told him I couldn’t go on Thursday because of Emily’s birthday, he took the money without asking any questions.

“You deserve to date someone who really wants to date you,” says Emily. And, as she says this, I realize how easy it is for me to slip into the same pattern I’ve been trying to break out of for some time now: the tendency to be attracted to people who are mean to me. are not attracted., or the habit of always looking for the most difficult option and convincing yourself that it is the right one.

Emily goes to a comedy night, but I’m feeling down, so I make myself a huge salad because I can’t remember the last time I ate vegetables, then I go to bed. I think I choose men because they are bad people, when in reality it is I who choose bad people. I had other options: a guy a few years older than me who wanted to take me out to dinner and another who laughed when I commented on a picture of him saying he looked like Robert Pattinson in that meme. Where he is standing in the kitchen with the air of stupid. I sent them both a few messages, then ignored them.

Being aware of our mental patterns makes us more likely to question our actions. When you find out that you’re pining for someone simply because your brain has decided that their distaste for you makes their attention more valuable, all of a sudden your attraction to them starts to fade. irresistible. And that’s just one way to make the object of your desires… less desirable.

Amiya Srinivasan has an essay from 2021, The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, which impressed me in a certain way. According to the author, our desires are not something we are born with, but are shaped by the society we live in. We are told to aspire to certain genders, body types, races… Instead of passively accepting these impositions, we must question them and stop this system. We should look at our own and others’ bodies, and allow ourselves to appreciate them, to admire them, to desire them, even when society says we shouldn’t.

Srinivasan cites an email he received in response to one of his essays. The author, a gay man with a “plus-size” husband, insisted that he deeply loved his heavier partner and enjoyed a satisfying sex life with her. However, he noted that he had to “work intentionally and consciously to make it sexy”. And he added that «if, indisputably, we are not the ones who choose what excites us and what does not, we nevertheless have the faculty, on the one hand, to overcome what may hinder erotic stimulation. For and on the other hand, learn to sensualize what happens before our eyes during sex.

Srinivasan refers to politics, I to psychology, but, in any case, the idea that desire is something that can be acted upon makes sense in this context. “We have to ask ourselves,” he explains, “what do we want, why do we want it, and what do we want.”

While on vacation in New York, I began to examine what it means to create attraction in different places, to recognize responsiveness and communication as adult behavior, a sign that we know what we want and want it. how to get. I’m trying to see my willingness to reveal my vulnerabilities as a display of courage. I strive to love myself the way my friends love me, knowing that even the tube of eyeliner falling out of my purse and the silly things I say inspire their affection.

I come home from New York and I sleep so long that when I wake up I feel like it’s sticky. I still watch some episodes of that stupid Viking series with which I developed a kind of obsession. I rub a skin roller over my face in an attempt to get rid of the puffiness, because I’m on my way to Cardiff to see Beyoncé.

I declare to my roommates that “I want to be liked,” although I’m still not sure whether that’s true. I want to feel the presence of someone who is as solid as a rock next to me and rest my head on their shoulder.

When I was on the train to Wales, I saw a guy I knew liked a picture of me, and it was enough to make me feel butterflies in my stomach. I immediately take it as a sign. I’m falling into the trap of one-sided attraction. However, I also know that, basically, it doesn’t make any sense, so I ask my friend Moya for some pointers on how to pull it off. She gives me the following advice:

1. “Imagine that he feels the same feelings for you that you feel for those people who are indifferent to you, but to whom you occasionally give ‘likes’.”
2. “Tell yourself that she is happy without you.”

They say, these are the paths of acceptance. What he really feels is not important, because: a) we do not know; b) It doesn’t count anyway. If there is something to fantasize about, it is how to get out of this vicious circle.

This is what I have to do: let go of all the stories I tell myself, like one day this guy will run after me, like in a romantic comedy, to keep me from catching an airplane. I have to remind myself that these are only men, often good ones, but still men who are not made for me; Nice and harmless people to have a pleasant chat with, rather than wasting time with someone in front of them in the vain hope of making them jealous.

Before I go to sleep at night, I replace my habitual fantasies with something far removed from my experience. I guess I’m a female character on that Viking show I love, until I start lusting after a blonde warrior. only, instead of running after me, he set out to go and plunder the coast of East Anglia. OK, let’s forget about the Vikings too. In a way, it’s like I’m taking off my rose-tinted glasses. But maybe that’s a good thing. This could mean that the dreams will soon begin to take shape in the real world outside my head. Maybe next time, I’ll be on that penthouse terrace among the thousand twinkling lights of New York.

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This article was originally published on British Vogue.