This week in class was interesting, we focused a lot on defining what is ‘attractive’ and how it differs from culture and person. We also had a long and involved lesson on co-habitation and the impact it has on marriage and relationships however in this blog I will not be talking about that but focusing more on the attraction aspect.

                So the best place to start is the most basic aspect, “what is attraction”?

                Well quite frankly that is really hard to describe because we all think about it in a different way. There are definitely somethings that we all look for in a potential spouse, things like physical attractiveness (one of my mission companions put it best, he said something along the lines of “you don’t want to wake up, roll over one day and look at your wife and think eehhhhhhh!!!!), we tend to look at a persons values, if they feel the same way you do about things like money, religion, kids etc…, we also look at their personality and try to figure out if we are “compatible”. So those are a few things that we as humans tend to look for in a potential spouse, but the way we defined those in class was by calling them ‘filters’ that we put people through. It is different for every person too usually based on how they were raised and the things and people they grew up around. For instance when I was looking for a wife I wanted to marry and be around women who were strong personalities but not ‘in your face’ annoying about it, but that was because my mother and my older sister were ‘very strong’ in their personalities. After all I didn’t want to marry someone who needed me to baby sit her or take care of everything in the house and out of it. We all have things like that that we have or did look for and so those kinds of filters  help us choose people we want to date or even hang out with.

                We talked about hoe people who have similarities tend to get married, but lets face it if you were to marry someone who was another you than one of you would be totally irrelevant.  We took a poll of the class and everyone agreed that they would rather be married to someone who balanced them out by being different than them. It was interesting to hear the kinds of things that women wanted in a man and the guys wanted in women. Generally the women wanted a sensitive guy who was in touch with his emotions, and the men wanted a woman who was willing to stand side by side with him.

                So then the discussion shifted around until we were talking about ‘how’ we become attracted to one another and our teacher talked about how instead of it being one great big earth shattering moment it is usually a process. Yes you can be immediately attracted to someone and yes it can be earth shaking, but it doesn’t just stop there it tends to grow or shrink from that initial moment. There are 3 things that are needed in order to have attractiveness grow or shrink.

                The first is “Time”, he made the argument that it takes a minimum of 3 months to know someone well enough that you are really attracted to them and not just the idea of them. Or in other words that is the time that it takes to have put people through all or at least the majority of the filters that you put people through.

                The second thing you need is to talk, you need to be willing to tell the other things about yourself frankly and honestly (because a relationship built on lies is almost always destined to fail) and so by talking about yourself and the other talking about themselves it allows you to learn about each other and frankly to start to grow closer together. I am not saying you should throw all your dirty laundry at their feet and hope for the best but as you slowly reveal the things about yourself that make you unique, when it comes to your likes and dislikes; also talking about your past and what makes you the way you are it shows trust that is being built up in the sharing and receiving of every part of the person you are wanting to grow around and with.

                The third thing you need to have is togetherness, you need to be willing to do a variety of things together to share experiences and build memories together. But there is another aspect of it as well and that is that you will see the person in situations and learn things about them that you would not be able to learn any other way. Someone in class said the best way to tell how some is under pressure you take them camping for the weekend, so you can see how they are after a few days of hard work (hiking), no luxuries, and frankly uncomfortable situations all around. If they do well under that kind of pressure than perhaps they would do well when/if you are married and have kids and don’t get sleep because of kids and you have to work hard and be in uncomfortable positions because of moves or jobs etc…

                It is not a full proof thing but the principle is valled and can be applied to a lot of things but I digress that I don’t have enough time to talk about them all.

                I feel like I could talk about this kind of thing a lot but I am trying not to get on a soapbox so I will stop myself here and hope for the best.

                Please let me know what you think about my blog and feel free to comment on anything in here.