I am finding myself pondering the topic of attraction. We can be attracted to many things. We find people, places, foods, colors, movies, etc. attractive. Meaning that we find these things to be something we want to move toward, enjoy, be closer to, have more of in our lives, etc. My question is what causes that attraction? Why do we find ourselves attracted to owning certain types of pets, but can’t imagine owning others? I’ll begin by saying that I do not have the answer to the questions. I do have some observations based on myself and my circle of people that might start to shed some light on the subject.
One thing that causes attraction for most people is our past experiences. If we have a pleasant experience with something, and then we encounter the possibility of that happening again with something new but similar, we will often find ourselves attracted to that new thing without knowing much about it. Like, if we enjoyed a movie that had Queen Latifah in it, and we heard she had a new one coming out, without knowing much about the new movie, we would probably be drawn to seeing it based on the previous movie. Conversely, if you did not like her last movie, you would probably not be attracted to the new one. However, my question is deeper than that, why would you have liked or not liked the movie in the first place. Well, that might be all based on experiences too. What was the movie about? Did it trigger emotions? Were those emotions fun? What are fun emotions to you? Why?
I don’t have those answers either. To be honest, I think they are super individualized. I think that is because we all have experiences that are unique to us. Only we have had the exact set and combination of experiences in life as ourselves. No one else, even like, twins, have had exactly the same experiences. I think those experiences will cause both attraction and repulsion.
I was in elementary school when I had my first asthma attack. We did not have furry pets at my house. I spent the night at a friend’s house for the first time. They had a cat. I had an attack and was terrified I was dying. I couldn’t breathe. I panicked, etc. I was like 8. I don’t think it would surprise you that I don’t like cats. It turns out, I am really allergic to them. So, I ended up being attracted to dogs instead of cats. I am also allergic to dogs, but it is mild and does not cause asthma, just some congestion and itchiness sometimes, depending on the dog. Most dogs don’t bother me at all. You see how that attraction got developed.
Great, now think about people. How do we get attracted to people? I think it is similar, but I also think it can get way messed up too. Like, if you had a sweet, kind and generous mother, you might be attracted to women like your mother. However, you and I both know, we also see people who had horrible mothers who were unkind, critical, and abusive, who are also always attracted to people just like their mothers. What the heck is that? Based on the experience theory, we should not be attracted to an evil parent. We should be repelled by that, like the cats for me. That is where I get a little confused.
Gender is another thing. Being attracted more for sexual things to one gender or another. That isn’t based on experiences really. Most people can see all the way back before they had any experiences to attach to sex that it was just there. I had no words for what attracted me to people when I was young. I didn’t understand sexual attraction. But here’s what I did know, when I stood in line next to a pretty girl, my stomach did this twisty, flippy thing, and my brain kind of fogged over, and I had an overwhelming urge to touch her. Girls had cooties at the time, so I was mortified of that thought. Girls were usually mean to me too, so it wasn’t that.
Recently, I am single again. I am a serial monogamist. I have been single for possibly a total of 6 months, prior to my recent divorce, since 1986. In that time I have been married twice and had two other long-term relationships. I dated the first person I married, but then didn’t date any of the others. They were friends who became relationships quickly after the previous relationship ended. Obviously, I was attracted to the people I entered new relationships with before ending the previous one because we were friends. I have lots of friends, but most of them I don’t think I would date if I was single. The moment I turned single, I sort of did an inventory of my single, female friends. Were any of them potential new relationships. They were not. I also decided to break the serial pattern this time, so there was that.
I keep digging back into my memories, into my experiences and the memories I made of them. I keep ending up with the same person in my relationships. I imagine you noticed that about yourself too. Obviously not literally, but there are specific things they all have in common, AND those are both the things that made the relationship good and also destroyed it in the end. They were also not my mother.
I wonder how much past lives affect current life attraction. What if the attraction experience was set in your previous life and it carried over to this one. Yes, I think I get it. What if it is a combination of things? So, our experiences shape our attraction and repulsions, for sure. But what we find attractive about an experience came from somewhere first. What is that source? What if that is either from past life experiences we don’t remember, or from our plan we created with our higher self before birth, or both?
Past life stuff might look like, repeating karmic experiences with the same souls who reincarnate with you to try to repair the past relationship. I definitely had readings where my ex and I were in past lives together and we thought this one was going to be the one to repair the damaged bonds of our souls. It was not. Even if that was the opportunity we had, we did not achieve it. So, now, we are probably destined to be attracted to each other again in the next life. New body, same souls, no memories. Maybe next time.
AND/OR When we are working with our guides to set up our current life path, we determine which exact souls or type of souls we needed to encounter in order to achieve the chosen path, so that sets up the attraction pattern for our life. We are attracted to the souls we are meant to spend time with to gather the experiences intended for this life path. Yes, that feels right. It makes sense then why we go back to people who are not good for us, because there is something to learn there. We need to repeat it until we learn it, then we can move on to the next lesson. I am grateful that I seem to have learned my lesson in my last relationship. I have moved on to a new pattern and type of life experience. So awesome for that.
Stuff to think about for sure. I don’t have all of the answers for you, but that feels right for me in my patterns, so there is that.
-Namaste