[attraction] the eternal mystery

Welshcakes and I dancing recently. Lop off about 20cm, cut back on the brawn and c'est moi.

When one falls blindly for the other and the other is swept along by being loved, the momentum is enough to last some time. However, it must eventually drop back to a point where one of the two loves the more.

This one is usually the less beautiful of the two, the less capable in matters social, the more serious and trouble is on the horizon, as it's a case of, in Welshcake's words:

... ignoring the warning signals – and there always are warning signals – because, like many lovers before me, I had wanted to believe.

The less besotted will tire more quickly and the eye will once again roam, which is precisely the wrong thing with the besotted because for this person, despair is just round the corner:

it’s not about not having friends or even family. It's about not being first with someone.

My last "romance" was strange - I was besotted first and then the roles changed a little. I'd had to work pretty hard at it and when she finally fell, I suppose I dropped back to "cruise mode", thinking I'd achieved the desired result and in so doing, lost all.

The signs were there but I didn't understand the dynamics. Placed on an unrealistic pedestal which flew in the face of the "me" I really knew, I allowed myself to think I was younger, more handsome, more a "catch" than I was. Don't we always hope against hope for that?

With her, there were elements of the dilemma Ruthie pointed out:

The danger, I suppose, is in placing too much responsibility for your happiness in another person. I often hear that a person can't be happy in a relationship unless he/she can be happy alone, and that's probably true.

My darling could never be alone. She wanted me to bale her out of things I wasn't capable of - I'm a very ordinary person who appears to be something more in some people's eyes. Perceptions - it always comes back to these in the end.

Thus she started saying yes to invitations where before she wouldn't have. Thus I became first suspicious then upset; thus I became less pleasant as a person and let things slide at precisely the time I should have worked on attraction.

Fast forward and Ellee said:

There is a difference between being "lonely" and "alone"; one is chosen, the other is not. It's always lovely to have a special partner, but from what I've seen, they are few and far between. Most people make do, people's lives are often not as you imagine.

Assuming, for the moment, that there's nothing grossly offputting in you like a third eye, a giant protrusion or a sudden, uncontrollable temper, then often it comes down to very subtle things which turn the other away.

For example, there's one good friend who tends to close in to 30cm and grab your arm. I find myself backing away, sometimes backing the whole way round the room over a 40 minute period. Every time I take a half-pace back, she'll close in again.

She thinks I'm not interested because she's not a beauty.

Then there are the clearly mixed signals. Has it happened to you? You know you're no David Beckam and yet when you walk in, people outside your range whom you could never hope to attract gravitate towards you but the instant she sees you're interested she finds an excuse to slip away.

So you go over and talk to others and then become conscious that the same one is back again and as friendly as ever. The moment you suggest the balcony she finds an excuse again but then reappears again later. It's always this way.

I don't understand it and I really think it's better to be alone. I really believe there are people for whom a partner will never be. The trick then is to come to terms with that and even find happiness in other ways.

Maybe.