I see men and women commit this mistake constantly. It is totally baffling to me because you shouldn't need god level powers of perception to figure this out.

A lot of men and women will say - with absolutely no doubts - that a person's desire for another person is a binary and inflexibly constant condition.

"She's either into you or you are chasing a closed door."

"If he wanted to, he would."

"She's not cornering you like a cat in heat, so she just wants your attention not your affection."

"He only took me out once in the last month, so he must only see me as a friend."

People cling to these hard nosed absolutes because the fiction of desire being an impenatrable barrier to relationships and sex is simpler, less scary, and more self indulgent than the truth. If you tell yourself attraction is binary, either it is there or it is not, then you have less information to assess and collate when compiling your social map of potential romantic options. You also have a ready-made excuse for avoiding any risk of failure or wasted effort.

However I think none of these 'benefits' outweighs the consequences of living in an arbitrary fiction or denying yourself any chance for growth and change.

A closer look immediately shows that attraction and desire are more accurately understood as a spectrum, one ranging between absolute obsession and absolute revulsion with indifference in the middle. Human beings experience the emotional compulsion to advance towards things are attractive to them and retreat from things which repel them - however the existence of the desire is not the only factor that predicts behavior.

Desire can exist in different magnitudes; you may feel repelled by both an annoying sunbeam in your eye and a pile of putrid dogshit in a burning paper bag - but it's safe to assume the latter is far more repellant than the former and will provoke more action.

Another factor that alters how a person reacts to feeling desire is the surrounding context of the thing which inspired this feeling. If a person has two options to date who are both equally physically attractive, but only one of them has a car, one of those options is going to be easier to date than the other. This category also includes social, professional, emotional, and behavioral characteristics which can build up or subvert a person's perceived masculinity or femininity - ie while it may be a problem for some men if a woman doesn't have a car it's still safe to assume plenty of men will not care at all about that because her lacking a car does not decrease how feminine she appears to them. In fact it may increase how feminine she is to them!

These two factors - that desire is experienced in different magnitudes for different things, and that desire for the same thing can change depending on the larger context of a person's experiences and values - already turns the black/white binary concept into a Venn Diagram of five circles:

  • Not A Chance - the only feeling they inspire is repulsion, and no conceivable quantity of effort or differing circumstance can change this

  • Who? Them?? - there is no feeling of desire that is passively inspired but also no repelling feeling, and the circumstances that contribute or detract from the potential relationship are all wrong. With the right amount of work and framing a relationship can happen, but would likely take a lot of effort to sustain without major changes to either person's identity and without passive attraction there is little initial reason to invest that effort.

  • A Potential Maybe - still no passively inspired feeling of attraction or repulsion, but the circumstances surrounding this person are all aligned in a way which would make dating them pretty easy in practical terms. Would still take work, but there is real potential here IF both people want to realize it.

  • A Good Problem - this person checks off more than enough boxes for them to be desirable, but the context surrounding them would make a relationship difficult to start or sustain. If the desire is great enough those difficulties become less of an obstacle, but they are still a problem which directly impacts the perceived value of the potential relationship.

  • A Sure Thing - they are inarguably desirable, and you keep finding yourself looking for reasons not to date them but finding none. Doubt that they feel the same way is literally the only thing that is keeping you apart.

"But Markov you have only explained that desire can be broken down into 5 tiers, but not that you can move from one tier of desire to the next!"

Allow me to explain that as well. The capacity to change from one tier of desire to another is due to two primary reasons: it takes time to know another person, and people change over time.

The first is evident just by examining the first months of a brand new relationship. In general terms, barring the most positive and negative first impressions, most women's first impression on most men puts them in the A Potential Maybe tier for those men. This is because knowing fuck-all about a woman does not detract from her femininity to most men, who may even enjoy the novelty and excitement of figuring out more about a complete stranger.

Meanwhile most men's first impression on most women puts those men in the Who? Them?? tier, because knowing nothing about a man makes him both not 'successful' (if he's so successful why am I hearing about him for the first time now??) and a potential threat to her.

However, the first few seconds of in person interaction can dramatically change the tier of desire they end up in. While there are usually some limits on how many tiers a person can move through, for the most part I think it is more accurate and more practical to believe that anyone can become repulsive to anyone with the perfect storm of toxicity. It doesn't really matter how wet Bill Clinton made a woman in 1994 if that woman later learned about his connections to Epstien and has anything close to a functional moral compass - Bill Clinton might as well be Quato from Total Recall now.

But it is also possible to climb those tiers towards being more desirable. Say a woman's first impression of a man puts him firmly in the Who? Them?? tier. He's average or worse in looks and social presentation, and she's not very curious to change her impression of him. But then he successfully hides his desire for her from her, thus instantly distinguishing himself from all the fawning people pleasers who are nothing but forgettable to her. Because he stands out she becomes curious - and he already has moved up a tier to A Potential Maybe because remaining secure in himself and inspiring curiousity in women are firmly masculine traits. This is usually not enough to ignite passive desire, but it is enough to change the perceived viability of a potential relationship with him since she now believes he would not be clingy or insecure in that relationship. And he made that move up by literally doing nothing but keeping his feelings under control!

Now bro's got his foot in the door, but he hasn't actually inspired passive sexual attraction yet. She sees him as intruiging, not hot. This is the end of the line for his climb towards ultimate desirability, and he can't ascend another tier, right? Wrong!

What people value changes over time as we learn more about the world and ourselves. She may not have seen him as hot while she was focused on just exploring her sexuality, making connections, and having fun - but say a toxic partner or bad breakup reveals to her how men who engage in casual sex tend to categorize women into 'temporary fun' and 'permanent wife' groups. After a little reflection she realizes her short term trysts never made her feel satisfied much less fulfilled or happy, and in fact as she gets older they start to make her feel less and less safe because the absence of commitment is a direct threat to a woman's social status and long term quality of life (especially if she wants kids). As she puts more work into understanding what she actually wants and how to attract men who want the same things, she comes to the conclusion that she had prioritized the wrong things and her values start to shift.

Abruptly, she discovers that the qualities which used to keep a guy in the A Potential Maybe tier are the same characteristics that are now inspiring passive attraction. He was boring, but now he's stable. He was annoying when he asked too many questions about what she wants him to do, now he's mature enough to invite criticism or instruction for the sake of being a better partner. He was cheap when he didn't take her out to a fancy dinner for the first date, but now the retry first date at a coffeeshop shows he's responsible about saving his assets so he can leverage them towards the best life for his future wife and kids.

I can already hear the "She hasn't changed, she just hit 'The Wall' and she's still the same selfish shallow slut!". Sure, that applies to some women no doubt. But ask yourself what is more impactful on your happiness and quality of life: failing to call out and criticize every immoral woman you encounter in life? Or giving everyone - possibly including the woman you may eventually want to marry - the impression that you invariably and reflexively assume the worst about others?

Anyways, back to my point. Major turning points in a person's maturation into adulthood can redefine their interests and values so much that someone who used to inspire no feelings of attraction can become someone who is completely unforgetable. This can happen for both sexes, and is ultimately why a strategy of publicly performing your sexual role combined with a neutral respect for those performing the opposite role to yours works best over the long term.

As a final note, there are obvious limits to how far a person can ascend through the tiers of desire. A gay man is never going to get much further past Who? Them?? with a straight man, and a strongly masculine woman is going to have a hard time getting above A Potential Maybe with most straight men. Likewise an effeminate man has to put in a lot of work to climb out of Not A Chance for most women, and will only experience A Sure Thing within the tiny minority of women who can feel raw attraction to him.

Yet despite those limitations, I think the impulse to assume desire is a binary state is clearly inaccurate. Those who cling to that assumption are choosing to reject reality in favor of an assumption which indulges laziness and despair. Life is a lot more nuanced, not to mention far less bleak, than that.