After the latest hilarious series of misunderstandings in what is laughingly called my love life (the laughter being at a Black Books level of bitterness, obviously), I've been wondering as to whether life genuinely would be any better if we could consciously decide who we were and weren't going to find attractive. I've heard the idea suggested before as something that would do away with all the irritating pissing about, which admittedly wastes a lot of time which could be more gainfully employed drinking my liver three feet outside my torso. Of course, though, nine times out of ten (at least), what people implicitly mean is actually "Life would be better if people chose to find me attractive". I personally have been at the end of at least one teeth-grindingly hideous speech about how someone is "sorry" that they couldn't give me what I wanted, and the subtext was never "If I could flick a switch, I could" so much as "Holy Hell I wish this had never come up; I just wanted someone to lavish me with attention until I found myself a real man". Who's going to have some hideous, foul-smelling idiot sidle up to them and offer to buy a drink and think, "Right, I am so totally activating my horny chip for this one."?
No, I'm pretty sure that the level of rejection people face in this world would remain essentially constant. Only now, it's much worse, because when somebody knocks you back it's no longer "Those idiot hormones I can't possibly control say 'no', and I am helpless against them," but "I could find you attractive if I wanted to, but I am making the conscious choice to hold out for something better". You start getting rejected on paper, rather than in the confusing swirl of battle. It might be of more use when a long-term relationship starts going south, but then of course it's at least arguable that a decrease in the degree to which you find your partner attractive is symptomatic of a larger problem, and I'm not sure shooting yourself up with Puck's love potion (a classical reference! I am so smart!) is going to do anything than fuck you up worse in the long-term.
Which leaves us with the genuinely useful aspect of this hypothetical application of human pheremone: allowing the last pathetic remnants of the human population to fix themselves up after all the people who are just not naturally repulsive have left the singles bar. Of course, the cynic in me tells me that this tends to happen anyway. I guess in a few years, when I leave my twenties forever in tears, and my scalp finally gives up clinging to the increasingly irrelevant remaining patches of servicable follicles, I shall find out.
Fingers crossed...
4 comments:
There with you man. The only people who appear to fancy me are those who I don't fancy. Life sucks.
But if you had the magic ability to force yourself to find one of those women attractive, would you do it?
I can maybe think of one woman in my life that I might have considered that for, although I doubt she'd be happy to hear it. "If I could consciously override the sense of nausea I feel each time I see you, we could so totally get it on."
Not in many cases, but in or two, yes. There's a girl I'm 90% sure was into me quite recently, and who I can tell is very attractive, but somehow I just didn't fancy her much. I think there's something wrong with me.
What *would* be occasionally useful though, would be a switch to stop yourself from being hopelessly and unrequitedly in love. But I'm not sure many would agree except when they're in the throes of such things.
Actually, I think everyone would agree. Think of the time we could claim back from all that moping around.
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