rethinking attraction in an over-aware world

“He is, well, harmless.”

“And that is a problem because?”

At first, I thought she was joking. How could you call someone decent, ‘harmless’, and ghost him before a second date? Her argument was that it’s because he was too simple that she couldn’t get around the idea of hanging out with him as a potential partner for the future. She ghosted him because he was too simple. Not inappropriate, not emotionally unavailable and/or confusing in any way, at least not in the way that modern dating these days are. He was rather clear, consistent and most importantly present. He liked her, and was interested in getting to know her more than caring about how he is perceived. In other words, he was untwisted. There was nothing to decode, to question or to fix. And somehow, that was exactly where the problem began. To reaffirm whether what I just heard was correct, I asked her what exactly went wrong. She paused for a moment before saying, “I didn’t feel anything ya, he’s too vanilla”.

I did not sense any dramatic presence, there was no intense emotion or lingering attachment to this rendezvous. No anger, no regrets. It was the kind of emotional neutrality that felt slightly deliberate. It struck a chord in me, not because it was impossible to believe, but because I started spotting a pattern. I have heard this before, different faces and situations, but the same thought. That they are nice, consistent amongst others, but all of these passive adjectives were accompanied with a but. Always a BUT. The sentence always trailed off in the same place.

A couple of weeks later, I met someone from a book club. At the age where everyone around me is either in a serious relationship or looking to have one, the conversations do seem to revolve around a similar theme. So when the person started saying that they’re seeing someone, I responded with my usual excitement and said that it sounded like a good thing, to which she agreed. I could instantly detect the agreement to be uncertain in nature. She was uncertain how to respond correctly to what I just said. “I mean yes, he planned dates, chose places, checked if I got home. There was thought in his actions, care in the way he showed up. BUT.. “. Then she hesitated and said she did not know what they would talk about long term. It was not dissatisfaction. It was not even a disappointment. It was uncertainty, the kind that comes not from something being wrong, but from something not being enough.

I started making notes after that. About the way we speak of people we date, the way we evaluate them. It is rarely about how someone makes us feel in the moment and more about how they hold up under reflection. We make our own set of questions to judge the longevity of a relationship, one that sounds reasonable and the mature thing to do, but become exhaustive when combined.

Is he emotionally available? Is he self aware?

Is he intellectually stimulating?

Is he aligned with me in the ways that matter?

At some point, attraction stopped being something we experienced and became something we assessed.

I wish I could say I was only observing this from a distance. But I’ve felt it too. That quiet disinterest in something that should have been enough. That instinct to withdraw, not because something was wrong, but because it wasn’t compelling in the way I thought it should be.

In the film ‘The Worst Person in the World’, it's seen that the relationships do not crash under obvious issues. They dissolve under doubt. The protagonist, who is an intellectual creative, is also a professional ‘leaver’. She leaves every time she has a doubt impending. Not because she feels unloved, but because she is unconvinced. There is always an aching feeling within her that somewhere something more aligned and fulfilling exists, that which she hasn’t found yet. It reflects a kind of restlessness that feels less like confusion and more like awareness. Not unhappy. Just not convinced.

Watching it, the familiarity is unsettling. This is not, however, the rejection of love. If anything, it’s the increasing seriousness around it. We understand emotional patterns now. We recognise unhealthy dynamics. We know when to leave instead of enduring. There is clarity in that, and a kind of safety that did not exist in the same way before. But there is also a shift that is harder to name. We do not just feel things anymore. We analyse them as we are feeling them. We identify the emotion, trace it back to its origin, and place it within language almost instantly. Very little is left undefined.

The expectations reflect this shift. A modern partner is not just someone who shows up and cares, but someone who understands, articulates and engages all at once. He is expected to read James Baldwin, empathise with Sylvia Plath, be taking therapy, and seem effortless in the way he exists. It is not an unreasonable standard in isolation. It becomes one when it replaces the simpler qualities that once defined compatibility. Kindness and reliability have not lost their value, they have rather become the bare minimum to survive. They do not demand attention in the same manner that intensity does. They do not create urgency. They do not leave you wondering. And so they are often overlooked, not because they are insufficient, but because they are quiet.

In the series ‘Sex and the City’, Carrie Bradshaw does not struggle to find true love, but to remain loyal to the one that stays. Her excitement in relationships often stems from unpredictability, and the stable ones with a kind of steadiness feels easy to dismiss. This plot works as an interesting storytelling because tension elevates interest, but outside of fiction, however, tension is not what often sustains connection. And the subtle competitiveness that has entered the way we approach relationships, has made it look like a marathon. Someone being right for you is not even a point of concern anymore, It is about whether they meet a version of you that has been shaped by everything you have read, learned, and internalised. Intellectual compatibility has become a form of attraction, but also a form of comparison. You are not just connecting with someone. You are measuring them against an idea. Here being impressed is as important as being understood. It becomes less about presence and more about stimulation.

There is a tendency to believe that more awareness leads to better outcomes. In many areas, it does. In relationships, it is more complicated. Awareness can create distance. It can make you more cautious, more selective, more precise in your decisions. But it can also make it harder to surrender to something that does not immediately meet every expectation you have constructed.

Love was supposed to be irrational, it always demanded a willingness to step into the unknown without fully ever understanding where it leads. Having said that, it's not recommended to be lacking in self awareness and ignoring red flags, it just means allowing space for something to exist before dissecting and evaluating it in your head.

We can name every feeling now and having butterflies is rather funny. It's like two people coming together to argue on who knows and understands love more than the initial, who loves more.