This is not about what makes a person attractive. There are myriad different philosophies and coaches for that. Rather this is about how we know that a person is attractive.
I like who I am when I’m in that person’s presence.
That is a fair threshold for measuring another’s attractiveness, however we explain it.
You feel witty or creative or beautiful or dependable or robust or confident or even just comfortable.
It requires a pause and a touch of self-management to detect. In this way it’s a little like the way we measure others’ eloquence in languages that are not our firsts: By listening to ourselves – as we semiconsciously imitate native speakers – and appraising the sophistication of our own speech.
If we know what attractiveness feels like, it is not unreasonable to ask how we might, ourselves, become more attractive – enduringly so. From here things get almost impossibly tricky, though.
Howsoever does one make others like themselves best in one’s presence?
Generosity, graciousness, empathy, intuition – these words seem an apt starting point, especially the latter two.
Concentrating on intuition and empathy raises its own interesting question like: Is empathy not the borrowing of another’s intuition? *
(That, too, raises a chicken-n-egg question like: Is it possible to be empathetic but not intuitive?)
Whatever the answer to the riddle, presence and intentionality seem prerequisites for turning the feat. The presence part we get and can work on.
But what intention do we set?
Maybe: “I will help this person be proud of who s/he is about to show me”?
If that doesn’t turn out to be the right intention, surely it can’t be a wrong one.
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* All paens to economy aside, this reads differently from another’s borrowed intuition, no?