We Have No Idea What Attraction Is Really About

And, in truth, all potential aspects of it are valid

There’s been lots of commentary on the fact that actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who is 48, only seems to date women who are 25 or younger. While this habit may well speak to him being part of a culture where women are often objectified and treated as trophies, it’s also in many ways, none of our business. If two consenting adults want to enter into a relationship, characterized by whatever they’ve agreed to about it, they have that right.

After all, we don’t really know anything about DiCaprio's relationships (or anyone else’s for that matter) beyond how they appear on the surface. We can speculate about what’s going on, and note how it appears to fit into broader sociological dynamics, but even if we’re spot on in our analysis, it’s still none of our business. Men can date women for their looks and the status they convey and women can date men for the same reasons, or for access to power, or even for money, or any other reason under the sun.

As a social scientist, I’m well aware of all sorts of cultural dynamics. I even talk about them from time to time, as you may have noticed. This is particularly true when 1950s social dynamics are being laid out as how humans are just “hardwired” because it’s an erroneous cultural narrative.

A relentless focus on “mating value,” narrowly conceived, also contrasts with an analysis of several data sets reporting what characteristics men and women find more and less important in a partner. These show that for the past seventy-five years, across a number of different countries, the most important attributes in a long-term partner for both women and men have nothing to do with youthful fertility traded for resources.

Fine, Cordelia. Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society (p. 75). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

The real truth is, that people get together for all sorts of reasons — some of them pure chemistry, some of them perhaps more calculating, or maybe even a mix of both, and in the end it doesn’t really matter which. They often break up for reasons we don’t comprehend either. Someone who seems like a good match early on may well turn out to not be who you thought they were, and in fact, that’s what dating is all about — trying out different people to see who really is a good match.

And while they are doing that, people get to date who they want to for a good reason, a bad reason, or reasons that nobody else understands. Ted Danson and Whoopi Goldberg were together for 18 months. Who really knows what drew those two together or what finally drove them apart? We can speculate, but unless they are willing to share that, it’s all that we can do. And that’s only one example.

Lots of dating experts seem to have lists they are anxious to share, and some of them may even have some useful tips, but people are not a monolith. What some women are looking for in a man may be very different than what others want — if she’s even looking for a man. A businessman in Manhattan may well have different things that spark his interest in a woman than a rancher in Wyoming — due to location, but also because different people are attracted to different things about people.

And in the end, most people don’t end up with somebody who matches their list (if they even have one). They end up with who strikes their fancy and connects with them on some sort of ineffable level. Chemistry is hard to quantify, so unless you really are looking for very particular characteristics and not a love match, who makes your heart beat faster might actually surprise you. This is true of all relationships, not just heterosexual ones.

There’s very little agreement about what attraction is comprised of, perhaps because it is so individualized. But I know that I’ve often met someone that I just instantly liked and clicked with — both as dates and as new friends, or even someone you meet only in passing. Other people grow on you and become more attractive, the more you get to know them. Certainly, particular qualities can be more engaging or off-putting right away, but others are just too subtle for us to truly consciously identify.

Most cognitive scientists believe that only about 2% of what we consider to be thought is conscious (the rest think that really none of it is). Everything else is impulses and information coming out of deeply subconscious places that consist of a Mulligan stew of culture, upbringing, media, peers, previous experiences, religion, natural tendencies, individual personality, etc.

We can appreciate somebody’s twinkling eyes or easygoing demeanor, but that doesn’t necessarily tell us why we like one person with those traits and not somebody else with the same ones. While it’s true that confidence is attractive to almost everybody, what that looks like and means may be quite individual. The line between cocky and confident really depends on who you are, and what your background and preferences are. Introverts are looking for different things than extroverts, and some introverts actually want someone to help bring them more into the world, while others want someone who is happy to spend most of their time at home together.

Getting too bogged down in purported “evolutionary impulses” is largely a mistake as well. The social conditions 100,000 years ago when humans lived in small mobile egalitarian hunter-gather bands where gatherers provided the most daily calories and women routinely hunted alongside men are vastly different than during the 1950s, and in turn, those are different than today.

Sexual attraction for women goes way beyond who would be a good potential co-parent and mate, just as it does for men. As anthropologist Jonathan Marks has noted, “To confuse human (cultural) sexuality with (natural) reproduction is classically pseudo-scientific. Of course, sexuality is for reproduction — if you’re a lemur. If you’re a human, sexuality is far more than for reproduction; that is what evolution has done for human nature.”

And even people who are looking for a lifetime mate, and not just a casual sexual fling, aren’t necessarily looking for the same things either. People of different ages, backgrounds, social classes, and geographic areas may all have different things they find attractive, and even those categories are not a monolith. People are individuals. Some want no children, some want a full quiver. Some want one parent to stay home, and many expect that both parents will work outside the home — often by economic necessity. Etc., etc., etc…

There was a time when highly educated women with careers might have a more difficult time finding a partner, but that dynamic has been on the way out for over 50 years. Today, well-educated high-performing women are actually the most likely to get married, but even so, you simply can’t say, “All women want this” or “All men are like that” even within these categories. There’s just way too much individuality.

There are certainly cultural markers, gender indoctrination, social pressures, and other broad-spectrum dynamics we can point to. It’s quite likely that Leo exclusively dates young women for all the reasons that we think he does. It’s OK to talk about where those come out of outdated and patriarchal norms but at the same time, Leo still has every right to date who he wants.

And so does everyone else.

For love, for money, for looks or status, for sexual chemistry, or for any and all of the above. People fall for other people for all sorts of reasons — and fall out of attraction for all sorts of reasons as well. Some of them are about real connection and chemical appeal, and sometimes attraction has more to do with what you’ve been told you ought to find attractive. Sometimes you like someone at first glance and like them less as you get to know them. Sometimes you like them more as you get to know them.

I think the more you know about who you really are, the more likely it is that actual chemistry comes into play, over trying to date who you think you’re supposed to — but again, that’s not our business. People can date who they want to (if that person is also amenable) for terrible, selfish, mercenary, “This is my trophy wife” reasons. Or it may look that way to us, and really be a true love match. Mostly, we don’t really know what’s going on inside other people’s relationships or why they are attracted to each other and that’s just fine. The constant armchair analysis of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s relationship makes me a little bit nuts. We have no idea what they’ve agreed to or why they do what they do, and pretending that we can know that and judge it from reading about them is delusional.

Attraction isn’t a checklist, and overwhelmingly, it’s not transactional. Chemistry is a mysterious thing that is often hard to put our finger on. While we can certainly comment on societal dynamics, purporting that all women are alike and want the same things, or that all men are largely the same in who they are attracted to just isn’t reasonable. People are highly individual in what they are looking for in a partner and, in truth, whatever their reasons are are valid.

Leonardo DiCaprio seems like a cliche to me, but I could be completely wrong about him. And even if I’m not — his dating life doesn’t affect me and isn’t my business. It isn’t yours either.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2023