What is the primary difference you see between them?
“A couple, actually. One is connotative and the other is denotative.”
What is the denotative difference?
“Attraction is a part of magnetism but only half. Magnetism comprises repulsion as well. That is not a difference that came to mind immediately, but a friend helped me see it on her drive back from a Co-Active Fulfillment workshop.”
Go on.
“I recall, as she was alluding to this distinction, I was remembering a novel I read years ago, Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie. There’s a passage in there where Lurie describes a man so magnificently handsome that his great struggles in life are the women he offends by not reciprocating their attraction. The scenario struck me as memorably unlikely.”
What does gender have to do with this?
“It’s the reason I missed the distinction, methinks, between magnetism and attractiveness. For the very large majority of men, little thought is given to repulsing others intentionally. Subsequently, we seek to be attractive, not magnetic.”
What do you imagine is the difference in a woman’s experience?
“A graceful sort of repulsion is a necessary tool to have in her kit. Not repulsion in the way we think of the word ‘repulsive’ but more a means of keeping those that might otherwise be attracted at a magnetic sort of distance. Close enough to be appreciated while never quite touching.”
What is the connotative –
“I was just thinking we’re already in to the connotative difference. When I use the word ‘attractiveness’ – no matter my intent – it conjures a physical connotation. A man who is tall, a woman whose face is symmetrical. So it’s the wrong word.”
I notice you feel strongly about this.
“I wonder if I haven’t used this ambiguity to create attraction, ironically.”
What do you mean?
“I am thinking I know the slightly repulsing effect a word like ‘attraction’ has in a professional setting. It seems instantly inappropriate, which brings attention and causes tension. Then I walk through my actual meaning, sanitizing it back to what I originally intended but knew would not be inferred, and I appear more reasonable for having shouldered the burden of the other person’s inappropriate inference –”
That you knew you were causing –
“Right?”
Go on.
“I need to start adopting all the implications of the word ‘magnetism’ along with the word. To say someone is attractive is less than I mean. I mean to say, with the word magnetic, a person is . . .”
Dare we say polarizing?
“Oh. Well. That’s an entirely different connotation.”
And conversation.