I had a conversation with Karen from girlwriteswhat over at the mensrights sub, and as a part of that converstation I wrote down the following text. Figured It may have some value here as well. I edited it slightly so it makes sense.

Attraction cannot be negotiated. People are attracted to certain attributes, with great overlap within the sexes in the attributes they are attracted to. Men like feminine traits: caring and fit, pretty looking women. They don’t like women who swear, and they are also strongly prefer tender steak over raw potatoes. Naturally, women are attracted to masculine traits. They appear to prefer physically and mentally strong men with high status and a lot of wealth.

This is as it is. Most men will never be attracted to obese and rude women, nor will women ever be attracted to weak men. There is nothing you can do to change this. Not without some very immoral and inhumane intervention anyway. -shivers-

You can, however, make a person more attractive.

Either by personal improvement or by changing environmental factors. A person can lose weight, improve their style, a person can change his or her behaviour. But you can also artificially raise a man’s status by placing more value on the role of patriarch. You see the difference right? The woman's demands are not compromised.

There are other things you can do. When initial attraction is established you can choose conditions that stabilize said attraction (i.e. make it stronger and last longer). For women this appears to be, among other things, little to no sexual history with other men and strongly enforced/endorsed monogamy, as you explained with example of the painting choosing experiment. (she talked about an experiment where people who were assigned a painting as a gift were happier with it than people who got to switch it for another one afterwards, regardless of whether they did)

It seems that if you assign a reasonably attractive (read: looks, but also status and money) man to a women, and downplay her option to branch swing, she will be attracted to this man more strongly. I don’t think this will work with a man who was never attractive enough in the first place though.

Furthermore, the fact that people are attracted to certain things doesn’t mean they will always end up with those same things. A women might choose to marry a man she isn’t attracted to out of necessity: perhaps she can’t support herself and needs a man with resources to provide for her, or perhaps an attractive man is simply not available. These are sub optimal conditions though, and she will be less happy for it. Perhaps over time she will come to like the man she ends up with and form an emotional connection. They will probably even have sex sometimes eventually. But this is out of friendship and lack of a better alternative, not as a result of sexual attraction.

I think that if you put any fertile man in a closed room with any fertile women long enough, they will eventually form some kind of bond and even have sex. The only exception being that one kills the other before they come to that point. Starve a man long enough and he’ll eat the raw potato too. That doesn’t mean he likes it now all of a sudden (is 'attracted' to it), just that he has been deprived of any other option. As I said, attraction cannot be negotiated.