I recently got a Facebook message from a former student of mine named May, a message which opened:
Is it possible to have feelings for someone and not be physically attracted to them? Aren’t they supposed to go hand in hand?
May gave me her permission to write a response here, though I did give her a more personal one as well.
I’ve gotten this question from others before — and not just from young people. I dealt with that issue in this February 2008 post on the indispensability of passion. Writing contra the infamous Lori Gottlieb, I said
Yes, passion may fade over time. But trust me on this one: there is a world of difference between being in a marriage in which the passion has cooled and one in which there was never any “heat” to begin with. Expecting sexual heat to endure (without any increase in effort) for years is unrealistic; settling for a marriage where there isn’t even any memory of fire and passion is, I think, too great a compromise.
That was true for marriage. But what of May, still in high school, contemplating what it is that she should do about a budding relationship with a classmate?
Depending on our stance, we tend to either oversell or dismiss young women’s sexuality. It is certainly far from true that adolescent girls aren’t interested in sex, just as it is far from true that adolescent boys are interested in nothing but. But even as we resist the traditional straitjacket narratives about teenagers and desire, we do need to acknowledge that we raise our sons and daughters to experience desire differently. And we need to acknowledge something else, something that forms part of a gentle warning to May: young women often overestimate their capacity to make things work.
Anyone who works with teenagers knows that grandiosity and low self-esteem often go hand in hand. I wrote about that in a post called I have so much love to give: young women and self-flattery.
Teenage girls are renowned for their vicious self-criticism. Time and again, I’ve heard young women criticize their own appearance, their academic shortcomings, their bad habits. But those same young women will often hasten to say, if they are or have been in a relationship, “You know, I’m a pretty awesome girlfriend.” Or if they haven’t yet been in one: “I am an incredibly loving person, and I would give so much to the right guy.”
There’s a corollary to that. Some young women overestimate their capacity not only to love with great intensity, they overestimate the malleability of their own emotions. I’ve often written that to some extent, sexual identity is fluid — for both sexes. But that fluidity has its limits, and that’s something that on occasion, the young fail to understand. May hasn’t said this, but I’ve heard things like this from many of her peers: “I really like Leroy. I think I could fall in love with Leroy. I’m not physically attracted to Leroy, but he’s perfect in every other way. And you know, I think if I work at finding things about him that are desirable, I can make myself want him. And if I can’t, I think I can learn to live without that passion. I can make anything work.”
“I can make anything work” is tinged with defiance and hope. It’s the defiance of the conventional wisdom of parents and peers, which tells a young woman in this instance that there are limits to her capacity to change a man (and to change herself); it’s the hope that by her own sheer tenacity — and what she imagines is her inexhaustible well of love — she can manufacture passion itself.
Certainly, there are some young men who believe this (and some older folks of both sexes). But this insistence on persevering in the face of the romantically impossible tends to manifest more often in teenage girls; they, after all, are the ones who have been the primary consumers of the “love conquers all” discourse since they were in diapers. Older folks (like my third wife, whom I wrote about in one of the posts linked above) usually know better. They know that a fire that has died down may still have some embers which can be rekindled — but that where there was no flame to begin with, the prospect of future heat is invariably hopeless. Younger people haven’t learned that yet.
Of course, for some people, desire does build slowly. Making a snap judgment about whether or not physical desire is possible is always unwise. May may find that if she spends time with this guy that her feelings for him will change — we can be surprised by longing, something all of us know. But she must also be realistic about her own needs. She has known physical attraction for others; she is not without desire at all. And if she imagines that she can forego that attraction indefinitely, that she can live on kindness and emotional compatibility alone, she will sell herself short. And if she does what others like her have done, and imagine that by will and effort she can create desire inside herself, she will surely reap nothing but bitter disappointment.
There is much that we can make work. But there is also that that is a precondition to making things work. And when it comes to enduring romantic relationships, mutual physical attraction is one of those indispensable preconditions.
Another question to ask: *have you ever been attracted sexually to anyone at all?* If not, you might be asexual! In which case romance is still possible, but trickier, as I understand it.
Yes, a very good question — which was why I put in the note about Holly’s assurance that in the past, she had felt physical attraction to others.
This post doesn’t specify how well she knows the person in question or what typically attracts her to someone, which seem very relevant to me.
Personally, physical appearance plays a secondary and malleable role in my attraction to someone. For me, a certain type of intellectual compatibility and conversational spark is extremely sexy, as are a number of other qualities that might not be apparent in an acquaintance-type relationship. But, as you say, there is a big difference between giving attraction reasonable time to develop and assuming that it either a) doesn’t matter or b) will necessarily develop with any nice person you enjoy spending time with.
There’s no reason Holly can’t have a relationship with the person she’s referring to - it doesn’t have to be a romantic relationship!
A story by way of example:
Before I started dating my fiance, I was in a sort-of relationship with C, who was perfect in every way - mutual friends had predicted we’d marry each other, we shared interests and perspectives and could spend hours - days - talking. But after every time I’d see him, I’d come home to my roommates and say, “but I’m just not attracted to him!”
And then I met Mr. V. And he was SO. HOT. I didn’t know him as well as I knew C, so I was wary of turning more of my attention towards Mr. V - what if Mr. V had no personality, just attractiveness? I could be perfectly happy with C, if i just tried…
But… things worked out with Mr. V. (We’re getting married in three months). And if the OMG SO HOT feeling fades after time, I will still be perfectly happy with him. But to know I might never have had that to begin with? How disappointing!
And, really, things worked out with C too - we’re close friends who share interests and perspectives and could spend hours - days - talking. I think people to who are perfect in every way except being sexually attractive often make excellent friends!
Boy, Hugo — I wish someone had told me this when I was a young woman. My parents (Evangelical Christians) had explicitly taught me that passion and sexual desire for someone was not to be trusted — and, of course, they’re right, but only to a point — and I made a huge mistake in marrying a man for whom I didn’t feel desire, because in all other respects he was “perfect” for me. I did, exactly as you say, imagine that I could live without that indefinitely. I was very young.
As I grew older, I began to see how wrong I had been and the fallout from that realization has been intense. Young women do experience sexual desire, but the cultural messages we receive about that desire can be so confounding that it can take many years for some of us to be able to own what it is that we want without shame or apology.
Living together can be hard, especially when children and their attendant stressors arrive, and I’m now convinced that sexual passion — or, at least, its memory during fallow times — can smooth the way. It’s extremely difficult to weather the rough stuff with someone who doesn’t inspire you in that way.
To clarify — I agree with Lucy that intellectual compatibility and conversational spark are very sexy, and I’m certainly not rigid when it comes to physical characteristics of men I find attractive. But I’m a very visual woman, and some men’s appearance leaves me cold while other men just make me want to look at them, and my ex-husband was among the former number. As a youngster, however, I had heard so many times that “women aren’t visual” and “men’s appearance doesn’t really matter to women” that I believed that uncritically. Living with someone who never, ever inspired me to think, “Damn, you sexy thing” was soul-crushing. Keep up the good work.
To clarify my remarks: I would like to make clear that I in no way ascribe my quirks of attraction to every woman, nor do I think that there is any moral value to being a more or less visual person. I hate all of the “women aren’t visual” and “women only want love and connection” garbage that gets spouted. We are people and we are all different.
“My parents (Evangelical Christians) had explicitly taught me that passion and sexual desire for someone was not to be trusted — and, of course, they’re right, but only to a point…”
Exactly right - my parents didn’t teach me this but my church and school did, along with the whole “women aren’t visual like men are” thing… which never sat right with me because, um, I’m pretty visual.
Where does this stuff come from?
I am a woman, and while I”m visual, and I think that looks do matter a lot more than men would like to think, I also think that, overall, in the course of evolution, men are more visually turned on, while women are more mentally turned on. Isn’t that the reason why foreplay is more important to us then men? But I”m also turned on by personality, if I find a man attractive via his personality, the heat may follow..and if not, then I won’t find him that attractive for long.
For all the Patsy Cline fans:
He takes me to the places you and I used to go,
He tells me over and over that he loves me so,
He gives me all the love that I never got from you.
He loves me too, his love is true–
Why can’t he be you?
He never fails to call and tell me I’m on his mind,
And I’m lucky to have such a guy; I hear it all the time,
And he does all the things that you would never do.
He loves me, too, his love is true–
Why can’t he be you?
He’s not the one who dominates my mind and soul,
And I should love him so, ’cause he loves me, I know,
But his kisses leave me cold.
He sends me flowers, calls on the hour, just to prove his love,
And my friends say when he’s around, I’m all he speaks of,
And he does all the things that you would never do.
He loves me too, his love is true–
Why can’t he be you?
I’m a 30+, European, liberal background. I see the “I can make anything work” line-of-thought used in the exact opposite situation. What I see around me, as well as in me, is girls and women blindly going after the guys that they feel instantly attracted to. The problem is that majority of the guys that seem to light that instant spark are perhaps not the best guys to target if you’re looking for a relationship. To me it seems that the guys for whom I have the instant SO HOT reaction seem to get the same response from other women too - and many of them don’t even want to fight the temptation that surrounds them. Still, a lot of us ladies seem to try to cling on to these guys thinking the exact same thought “(My) love conquers all, I can make anything work”.
As a teen, I was living in a fairytale world where “the one” had to exist for everyone. It was quite difficult for me to admit that women are the ones who are extremely picky, and that we are a lot of times attracted to jerks, and that the “perfect guys” in this world have a really hard time trying to get the attention and love they deserve because of that’s how (a lot of) women (incl. me) work.
But, I’ve also learned that desire can (should?) be built slowly, and that at least I have and have had my best relationships (2) with guys that didn’t light that instant spark. Still, I dated both of them for months, because they were great guys, I felt at ease with them and hoped it would turn out good. In both cases I eventually did fall hopelessly in love, and the spark also appeared. The first relationship lasted for 8 years. The second spark is a few years old too already and very much alive today.
This post resounds perfectly with my experience. I too was involved in a series of totally passionless relationships in my teens. I would intellectually go after nice and attractive — but not to me in that way — boys just because I assumed it was what I ought to do. Some of them were just as hesitant as me physically, while others were so ravenous that it made me feel dirty and defective: dirty because I was playing along with something I didn’t want and defective because I didn’t want it.
That kind of emphasis on making things work and how, as a teenager, I needed to prove to myself (the world?) that I was not worthless because I could have a boyfriend, was so incredibly damaging. My self-esteem was in the pits, and I thought that if I just tried harder, wore more makeup, ate less, simpered more, put out more, that I’d have that spark that I’m supposed to have.
Of course, it never happened. In my 20s, after a nervous breakdown that almost took me out of college for a semester, I admitted to myself that I was gay. I still catch myself trying to make relationships “work” even if there isn’t that initial oomph, but at least now I have a fighting chance of finding someone that gives me shivers and makes my toes curl.
My first “blyfriend” in high school was such a realstionship - He was into me but I was not into him. I went out with him because he was nice. It was an awful charade to keep up. In my old blog I wrote this about the incident:
“Later that year I entered into a “relationship” borne mostly out of pity for a guy named Jorge (technically my 2nd boyfriend) who had a well-publicized crush on me for a year. I wasn’t interested in him in the slightest, but was so touched by the poem he wrote me that I decided to go out with him (well, accept his jacket and pin - OH, SO 50s. We were doing “Bye, Bye Birdie” or at least songs from it, and there was a song about “Going Steady for Good” in which we were introduced to the ritual of “getting pinned” - as opposed to getting nailed or banged ;) - as a sign that you are dating someone exclusively). I remember I wrote in my diary, “Aside from his lack of sex appeal there is no reason why I should not date him.” In retrospect, his lack of sex appeal was all the reason I needed to not date him, but at 15, I didn’t realize that. All I saw was that he was nice and devoted to me and I felt guilty for not returning his feelings for me. I rationalized that I’d “grow to love him” as they tell women about to enter into arranged marriages. I never did grow to love him and I think he eventually found out, after which I think he was irritated/resentful that I was not real with him.
Perhaps the problem with young women in relationships is that they are led to believe that they cannot be real with men, or the world at large for that matter. They are led to believe that they must be what other people want them to be and say what they think other people want them to say and do what they think other people want them to do. Maturity for women begins with the realization that they can be what they want and that this is OK.”
BUt what must be even worse is realizing that you were being settled for. I now know of engagements that have been broken and marriages of less than a year ending in dovorce because one of tehparties was trying to force themselves to be attracted to someone they are not in order to fulfill external expectations.
Then again, Misst’s point is well taken that often times women are attracted to the wrong men and end up getting used and abused by the hot sexy guys that everyone is chasing. Then they finally get sick of this and marry a nice guy who loves them but isn’t as “hot”. I have wondered if these women are as attracted to these guys as they were to the bad boys they dated before or were they compromising on attraction in exchange for better treatment.
I think Hugo has addressed this in the past, but there is also the phenomenon of women being told that its better for the man to be more in love with them than they are in him so that they retain power in the relationship. Therefore, a lot of women might get into relatinships with men they aren’t really so attracted to and think it’s the way things are supposed to be and that it’s in their best interests so as to avoid being dogged out. This does both men and women a disservice, as women end up not having the joyous emotional experiences that they could be having and the men are not being loved as much as they could be loved. Then they will all tell you that relatinships suck and are not worth the effprt.
Oh, I meant “boyfriend” in the first line
while women are more mentally turned on. Isn’t that the reason why foreplay is more important to us then men?
Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all, unless I guess if what you mean by “foreplay” is “conversation and logic problems” (which I am not knocking.) But what most people mean by it is something rather less mental and more physical.
In what way is extended non-penetrative physical stimulation more “mental” than “visual?” Or, for that matter, the other way around? I mean, I don’t understand how you get to placing foreplay on that artificial visual-mental spectrum in the first place — physical stimulation is another thing entirely, a third thing. If you want to mess around with someone, and if you want it to last a long time, and if you ascribe that physical desire to being a woman, what’s that got to do with whether you got to feeling that way through staring at him or through talking to him?
Think about it, if women were purely creatures of mind and emotion, we wouldn’t need any foreplay — we’d just think ourselves into arousal.
Ohhhhh dear. This sounds frighteningly like what I’ve found myself thinking recently. Being 18 and never having had a boyfriend, (or even a prospect of one, really) I think my low self-esteem was preparing me to “settle”.
But forewarned is forearmed, to be terribly cliche, so hopefully I’ll be able to keep this in mind if I start falling into that mental trap ;-)
Fortunately, though I do have “types” I’m more attracted to, I’m pretty flexible about what I find attractive. And I’m VERY physically expressive with my affection, so I wasn’t planning on short-changing myself as far as being with someone I wouldn’t WANT to get physical with.
Sooooo, I guess we’ll see what happens?
1) Wishful thinking. If women are supposed be looked at and never look, then it makes perfect sense that women take enormous pains with their appearance to please men.
2) Studies have found that when you show mass-market pornographic movies (targeted to a heterosexual male audience) to men and women, men are more likely than women to find them arousing, therefore men are “more visual”, QED!
There’s what looks like a nice 2008 review article summarising what studies have found on gender differences in arousal with respect to visual stimuli.
“Sex Differences in Response to Visual Sexual Stimuli: A Review ” - H. A. Krupp and K. Wallen. Archives of Sexual Behavior 37(2) p.206-218 (2008)
Online at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2739403/
If my wife pulls her shirt over her head, I am ready for sex. (”Boobies!”)
It takes a bit more than getting naked on my part for her to be.
That’s what we mean when we say men are more visual. Is this universal? No. Is it pretty general? Seems to be.
I don’t know about your wife, Robert, but I find that I’m aroused by the sight of my lovers disrobing, even if I’m not “ready for sex” at that moment. I assume that you’re defining sex as penile-vaginal intercourse, which is half of the problem. If you define sex as an event centered around the penis, then of course men are going to have little trouble meeting the criteria for “having sex” compared to women. The default definition of sex involves the beginning of erection, the insertion of a penis, and then ejaculation. A woman’s role is completely centered around the penis: “ready for sex” thus becomes — for a woman — being aroused and lubricated enough that penile-vaginal intercourse is attractive and not painful.
This, frankly, is pretty absurd and arbitrary. “Ready for sex” could simply be defined as the beginning stages of arousal in which sexual touching is welcome and freely sought. Instead, we define it around the state of the male genitalia and a very specific kind of sex, which makes women read as alternatively defective, passive, and/or frigid in our culture.
Of course, I’ll also give you a hint: I’ve had lots of sex in the past year or so. None of which ever involved “sex” as it is usually defined: penile-vaginal intercourse. Thus, was I never “ready for sex”? Of course not.
Any serious examination of men’s linkage between the visual and the sexual would have something interesting to report about what happens to men’s sex lives and sexual imaginations when they lose their eyesight after puberty. Braggy one-liners about how fast you get it up are not, of course, serious anything.
Personally, I’ve never slept with anybody who was slower to respond in the dark or with his eyes closed or (ahem) blindfolded, although it’s a big world and my experience is necessarily limited. Poor bastards didn’t know they were visual creatures, I guess.
Not bragging; noting. I take no pride in an ability in which any barbarian is my equal, and any jackass immeasurably my superior. (Name the source of that quote for excellent bonus points, redeemable for valuable prizes.)
Put an EEG on that guy in the dark, and his visual cortex is going to be running at a mile a minute. Visualization is part of vision. And, just because someone is visual, that doesn’t turn off their other senses.