The People We Choose

A few weeks ago, I hated a woman for ten minutes.

Not because she had done anything wrong.

Not because she was rude.

Not because she was cruel.

She was beautiful.

The kind of beautiful that changes the temperature of a room.

Not dramatically.

Almost invisibly.

The waiter found her first.

The bartender remembered her order.

The men sat up straighter.

The women noticed.

And for ten minutes, I hated her.

Not because she was beautiful.

Because everybody noticed she was beautiful.

There is a difference.

The feeling disappeared as quickly as it arrived.

Mostly because she turned out to be lovely.

But the ten minutes stayed with me.

Not because of her.

Because of what they revealed about the rest of us.

We like to think attraction is personal.

Private.

Unique.

We talk about chemistry as though it appears from nowhere.

As though we arrive at our desires independently.

But I am not sure that is true.

I think most of us inherit our desires long before we ever act on them.

We learn who gets looked at.

Who gets chosen.

Who gets forgiven.

Who gets pursued.

Who gets another chance.

Who gets described as intimidating instead of difficult.

Who gets described as ambitious instead of selfish.

Who gets to be complicated.

Who gets to be human.

By the time we begin dating, the lesson has already been taught.

The room taught it to us.

The culture taught it to us.

The people around us taught it to us.

And we spend years mistaking those lessons for preference.

A beautiful woman walks into a room and people call it attraction.

A powerful man walks into a room and people call it chemistry.

Maybe sometimes it is.

But chemistry has always had a suspicious relationship with status.

What we call attraction is often aspiration.

We do not simply desire people.

We desire what proximity to them might mean.

Their beauty.

Their money.

Their influence.

Their social capital.

The life they seem to represent.

The version of ourselves we imagine standing beside them.

That is the part nobody likes admitting.

Because it sounds transactional.

And most of us want to believe love is pure.

But dating has always been political.

Not governmental.

Social.

Every swipe.

Every first date.

Every rejection.

Every choice.

A small vote for what we value.

And what we value is often revealed by who we overlook.

The person who is kind but ordinary.

The person who is stable but unremarkable.

The person who would probably love us well.

There is a reason the phrase “out of your league” exists.

Leagues are political.

Leagues imply hierarchy.

And hierarchy implies that some people are worth more than others.

Most of us claim not to believe that.

Most of us behave as though we do.

What fascinates me is not beauty itself.

Beauty is innocent.

The beautiful woman did nothing wrong.

The handsome man did nothing wrong.

The interesting thing is what happens around them.

The gravity.

The assumptions.

The way attention bends.

The way opportunity bends.

The way desire bends.

And maybe the most unsettling part is that nobody is outside of it.

Not the people being chosen.

Not the people doing the choosing.

Not even the people writing essays about it.

Especially not them.

Because for ten minutes, I sat in a room and watched everybody notice her.

And for ten minutes, I noticed too.

And that was the part I couldn’t stop thinking about.

And as usual, thank you for dating.