Yes, I quoted Ed Sheeran because I wanted to talk about this phenomenon that is "love/attraction" in a different light than the way we usually talk about it here in this place.

Personally, I've only ever become interested in someone after getting to know them and by spending more time with them in the context of either work or through mutual friends. I can think of some exceptions, but that's beside the point.

To me, it's almost unreal how people can meet a total stranger, talk to them, want to get to know each other, want to continue seeing each other, and then form a relationship after seeing them one time in public or on a dating app.

...and yet it happens.

It seems like it mostly happens this way because both people just want it to happen that way, or allow it to happen that way (or because one person is more experienced/has more game and the other is like a deer casually strolling along the savanna, unaware that it is being hunted). Otherwise, it just doesn't make sense and people have little to no actual reason to want to make this happen otherwise.

I'm gonna say that it's somewhat safe to assume that more non-looksmatched couples met through mutual friends/family or at work, because that wouldn't be as likely to happen "out in the wild." With no context or prior information to go on, people are/can be very shallow, and only going after attractive people tends to be the default.

I'm going to present a wild theory of my own here, which is that people are capable of developing feelings/"love"/attraction for just about anyone, but what holds people back is their willingness to do so. I don't want to get into some New-Age-y discussion about free will and how it affects people's perception of others and reality and whatnot, but there seems to be a pretty large disconnect with what people fantasize about being attracted to, and what they actually become attracted to. I've heard it expressed before by some people that they "never thought they would end up with who they did," and had other ideas and preferences about their romantic partners.

I've noticed that women tend to prefer relationships forming from the way I mentioned above, but men have to do the cold-approach. The question is: Are men only cold-approaching because they basically might have to? Would men prefer warm-approaches like women if they didn't have to cold-approach or weren't told that "men have to approach because that's part of men's roles in dating?"

If everyone had to choose who to approach, we would presumably mostly approach people who we thought were attractive rather than who we liked, or thought well of, or were compatible with, so what is it that makes the difference between those two things? Is it pure feeling/infatuation, or is it choice, and why do people pretend like one is more important than the other?

Discuss.