Looking at attraction through the lens of biology is actually the purest way to see it.

All the extreme trappings of the modern-day dating scene—Ferraris, tiny bikinis, sprawling mansions, pick-up lines—ultimately work toward the exact same purpose. They create attraction in an instinctual and almost animalistic way that we can’t really rationalize to ourselves. They excite and release hormones, and then something happens. We don’t know how to explain it, but we know it when we see it! It’s happened for thousands of years, and only recently have we as a species been able to study scientifically what is actually happening when two people make eye contact with each other across the room or decide to move in together.

Often, we don’t fully understand our own actions, but they can usually be boiled down to one of the factors presented in this chapter. This is because attraction has been hard-coded in our genes. We have evolved over thousands of years to be attracted to certain aspects and traits that indicate that someone will be a good partner—in biological terms, at least.

We can see this in our conscious actions: in the beginning phases of dating someone new, you do this to an incredible degree. You pay for everything, you put your best face and outfit on, you act courteously, and you generally try to make your best impression. You make sure you smell nice and look good and pay special attention to showcasing your talents and skills. We present all our positives while subtly obscuring our negative traits and shortcomings. This influences everything from haircuts to wearing high-heeled shoes.

How do we recognize these effects in our subconscious actions? Well, some of the aforementioned conscious actions are subconscious to some! Just because something seems like a no-brainer in terms of attracting a mate doesn’t mean it’s a no-brainer to everyone. Why do men suddenly suck in their guts and puff out their chest when a beautiful woman enters the room, and why do women flip their hair and also puff out their chests when a handsome man walks in? If someone doesn’t realize they are doing that by instinct, imagine how many of our actions or criteria for mates we are simply using by unexamined reflex?

The point is, our ways of generating attraction are mostly subconscious and mostly biological and evolutionary by nature. Even the way you talk to the opposite sex and attempt to flirt has biological roots and is not a product of random chance. It explains why you tend to be attracted to certain types of people and even why certain types repulse you.

At the most basic level, this is best summed up with the sociobiological theory of attraction, which puts everything through the perspective of propagating our offspring (that’s the biology part) in our particular society (that’s the sociological part). In other words, what heavily influences attractiveness in each gender is an unconscious consideration of the likelihood of children and genetic offspring.

Men will seek young, attractive women—women who can physically bear children and aren’t sexually involved with others so as to reduce the chance of raising another male’s children. Women will seek men not necessarily based on physical strength, but rather on power and dominance within a society. They are seeking to provide safety and security for their children, and that can be found in many forms. You can already see how this theory plays out in our modern era.

You can see the common stereotypes of men being more physically shallow, while women are more financially shallow. Could it actually be true, for non-nefarious, subconscious biological reasons? Some would say yes. Human beings are powerfully influenced by our biology, but we are also a complex species. What about the seventy-year-old couple who claim to be more madly in love with one another than ever before, even though both are retired, have no financial worries and have long since forgotten about child rearing? What about young women who get obsessed with men who are neither physically attractive nor financially successful? And no matter how raging any teenager’s libido is, they are also a demographic known for strenuously avoiding pregnancy!

All this is to say that though biology is a significant influence on human sexuality (biology), it’s not the only one (culture). Nevertheless, by understanding one of the oldest and most fundamental aspects of human attraction, we start to see that attraction is not quite as mysterious and unpredictable as we may have thought.