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> I hope most of you would agree that at least 70%-90% of being in love has something to do with the appearance of your person-of-interest (most of it visual). No matter how you cut it, no matter how much of an intellectual you are and how much you prefer to connect deeply with a person, in the end, given two individuals, you fall in love with the one that is more visually attractive

No, I don't agree with that even a little bit based on my own experience and that of many of my friends.

This comment reads like someone trying to explain to themselves why they are single.

Thought experiment:

Imagine you are not dependent on your current partner in any way. You are financially stable (let's say you a multi-millionaire). Either you don't have kids or if you do, somehow they're not dependent on you (or something).

Now think of your favorite media personalities that you have a crush on, and imagine one of them meets you in person and takes an elevated level of interest in you.

If you don't have any celebrity crushes and that there is no one in the world you find more attractive than your current partner, I give up.

If there is, would you be tempted to cheat? If not, I give up.

If yes, I rest my case.

Hmm. I'm sympathetic to your overall perspective (that love may not be the universal blessing as it is often perceived) but this is rather unconvincing.

You should not confuse how most people are, or how you perceive most people to be, and how you perceive yourself to currently be, with how you or other people could be.

I tend to think that if you're still interested in media personalities, people who you don't, at the end of the day, know much about, then you can't really hold high ground on romantic ideas. There are, of course, potentially appropriate and awesome people among media personalities, but there are also plenty of awesome people who are not media personalities, but the reality is, you don't know any of those people, and it's always easy to imagine that a person you know very little about is much better than what you currently have. This is not something you want to trust.

Which is too bad, because I think the discussion on what relationships mean should be opened up more, and I think people can develop much more complex preferences than "attractive, popular, wealthy", they just often think that their instincts cannot be overpowered despite that being the human experience in a nutshell.

Would I have consensual sex with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Sure.

Would I fall in love with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Well, no, not automatically anyway, I would have to get to know this person first and see how I feel about spending time and do things together. I'd definitely not dump a person I've known and loved for years over a fling with an attractive celebrity that I don't really know on a personal level.

You keep saying that sexual attraction and love are the same thing, but they are not.

My perspective is that falling in love with someone doesn't mean having to replace your current lover.

That's only true in a society that enforces monogamy.

My birth culture is plainly polygamous. My grandfather had five wives. My uncle has 4 and a half. My brother has 2.

4 and a half wives? would you mind to explain?

4 wives and a lover?

IMHO that should be counted as 6 wives. I was thinking of different scenario: if his wives has the same rights as he has - one of his wives can have 2 husbands. So if we look at it this way - he has 4.5 wives indeed

Wish a country had both polygamy and polyandry to allow for those situations. Although the tax code might become a tad complicated.

> Would I have consensual sex with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Sure.

Would you proclaim that at the time of marriage vows? No. (so the whole idea of marriage is either a hypocrisy or a joke).

Would you proclaim that when your recent date asks if it's time to go steady? No. (so the whole idea of monogamous relationship is either a hypocrisy or a joke).

And the very idea that you have celebrity crushes while you claim you're in love with someone flies in the face of the idea of love.

I'm not saying what you think is immoral. All I'm saying is this whole thing is a big make-believe, an arcane circus that we like to play our whole lives, when the alternative is quite simple: just admit the reality that it's way more superficial and increasingly more and more useless than what the society would like you to believe.

> Would I fall in love with an attractive celebrity if they took an interest in me? Well, no...

You completely missed my point.

> And the very idea that you have celebrity crushes while you claim you're in love with someone flies in the face of the idea of love.

How so? This is where you lose me.

I think they're trying to define "being in love" as "never having a romantic or sexual thought about anyone else, ever," and proclaiming the concept of love invalid if it can't meet that threshold.

>Would you proclaim that at the time of marriage vows? No.

"Freebie lists" (shared lists between couples of people they'd be allowed to cheat with, if the extremely unlikely opportunity arose) are a thing - at least in pop culture.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=freebie%20lis...

The premise of your experiment of your flawed: having a physical attraction towards someone does not mean you fall in love with them or suddenly want to replace the person you are in love with.

> is no one in the world you find more attractive than your current partner... would you be tempted to cheat? If not, I give up.

There are plenty of people whom I find less attractive than my current partner that I'd happily sleep with.

Of course, I would first ask permission to do so... and if not given I wouldn't be tempted to cheat. That's like asking "would you be tempted to steal if someone doesn't want to sell something to you?" I'd hope the answer is always 'no', not "yes, but I wont' steal because I'm afraid of being caught".

Most people would be tempted to cheat, but would not actually cheat. So love must be pretty strong to counter such a large difference in physical appearance.

There's no doubt that physical attraction plays a strong - perhaps dominant - role in determining who we pair up with. But after initial pairing most people develop a deep emotional bond that counteracts the desire to switch partners when someone more attractive comes along.

Respectfully, your argument doesn't hold water because it doesn't look like you understand what being/falling in love is. Sexual attraction is 70%-90% visual appearances and mostly biological, but falling in love is not about sexual urges, it's about happiness. We fall in love with the person that brings happiness and joy to our life by merely spending time together, not necessarily the one we want to ram our genitals into.

Most people pursue partners based on sexual urges, sure. But falling in love is a whole other game, and they don't go hand in hand.

> We fall in love with the person that brings happiness and joy to our life by merely spending time together.

If you need to spend time with someone in order to have happiness and joy in your life, you have a problem to solve before you even think about love and dating.

Many people do have a need to be loved, you can't argue it away.

Most people have plenty of issues growing up, like low self-esteem, need for validation, etc. A combination of training, therapy, meditation, sense-of-purpose, etc can work wonders.

One such issue is nihilism, the kind you're showing here. Growing out of it often makes people happier, unlike growing out of love.

How about you worry about yourself and stop diagnosing people that choose to be with another person?

No one said anything about "needing." A person can have happiness and joy in their life while single, yet find another person who adds even more happiness and joy.

Exactly. I love my sister, mother, a few of my best male friends, and my wife. Love doesn't equate wanting to have sex with someone. Most humans happen to enjoy sex so given the proposition of commiting to a single person sexual attraction (hence visual attraction) becomes an important factor.

I appreciate you sharing, but you need to realize that your own, internal experience is guaranteed to be unique to you. This is why studies have to be done; otherwise, we all go off our non-generalizable* personal experiences.

* I mean, some part of it is generalizable, but which parts and how?

> beauty is in the eye of the beholder

I have (and am actually currently) feeling my brain changing its opinions on human aesthetics and forms. This is far from the first time. It is actually a distinct feeling that I quite enjoy, and it's very different from the "acquired taste" feeling from, say, whiskeys.

In other words, although I have no idea how many people share this experience, I have a direct, personal experience of beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

I have also noticed this. When I was younger, I had 0-1 crushes at any time. But today I find beauty in a lot of different people.

Maybe it's maturity, maybe it's the 'clock' in my male brain urging me to find someone, anyone, but like you I do enjoy this change.

Maybe one day when I've fully progressed from the binary rating of beauty to the continuous rating I will continue on to the unary rating: everyone is equally beautiful in their own way.

> 0-1 crushes at any time

It's only this year or so that I've got 1+ (1-3, I think) proper crushes at the same time. Part of it is the "unbundling of intimacy" - if I like you one way, I don't need to like you ALL of the other ways, or be bothered that I might like someone else in more ways / more strongly.

Not true. What you describe is the mindset of a 17 year old who never was in a relationship that lasted more than 2 weeks.

Yeah, when I was that age I was only going for the looks too. Now, 15 years and 3 long term relationships later I am looking for something else: someone who I can trust, someone who is mature enough to consider marriage+children in a few years, someone who I can laugh with, someone who is mentally stable. Looks are now pretty low on my priority list, I've had enough sex that I know it's not everything.

I'd say you appear to be already over the idea of love and are more concerned with practical aspects of your current and future life.

That leaves us with the institution of marriage.

You invoke the practical concerns of trust, raising children, being able to laugh with someone, most of which are not tied to marriage and/or monogamy. Let me ask you,

- If your government and/or your lawyer and your friends provide you enough "trust net" that you don't need to rely on trust of a marriage partner.

- If you can have children through surrogate pregnancy, or if you are a woman, you wish to raise your child as a single mother (not to mention, the incoming future of genetically modified babies, so much so that after you've optimized your baby's features, there's hardly anything left in the DNA that relates to the parent).

- If you can laugh with a good number of friends. Maybe one or two of those friends live next door so there's no chance of loneliness. Not to mention social media, entertainment industry, the list goes on.

Do you really think the concept of marriage and monogamy remains as valid as it has been through history?

The validity of a lot of what I'm saying is tied to, not in any arbitrary time in history, but the current state of technology and human progress we're witnessing right in front of our eyes. I mentioned genetically-modified-babies. Forget about that. I'm a big believer of medical progress and the need for healthful longevity. If, in the next few decades, a person is able to live the life of a healthy 25 year old for 200 or 300 years, would that person be even interested in having children? If artificial intelligence can take care of 90% of your trust, and entertainment needs, would you even feel unsafe? lonely?

I believe we're headed towards drastic sociocultural change and the thinking of current populace, no matter how educated, is lagging behind substantially.

The idea of marriage/monogamy/love is getting more and more optional. Not to say people will reject it outright. You have the right to choose love and marriage and monogamy. But it's becoming more of a choice than a practical necessity.

Fortunately for those who are generally considered unattractive you are correct for most people most of the time but 'the race is not always won by the swift'. As I try to impress on particularly lonely young people - the best way to win over a stranger is to make them feel your fire, and that fire - that one of the things you are deeply passionate about - might be music it might be dancing it might be poetry it might be mountain climbing it mostly doesn't matter. Because in romance and sex enthusiasm trumps appearances and with time a person you like more and more starts to appear more and more attractive. If you are introverted it will take more time and more luck but it you can eventually share your excitement with someone there is a good chance they will find you exciting. And if you have imagination and persistence it can last a lifetime.

Surely you have some irrational beliefs that make you happy and make your life worth living. For example, since you got up this morning, it's evident that you feel living is worthwhile when in fact all evidence points to the fact that death is final and life is meaningless. It seems pretty silly for you to listen to your lizard brain telling you to try to stay alive each day. You get hungry and your brain tells you to eat, and lo and behold you eat food and survive. What a coincidence!

Anything other than pure nihilism is a conservative notion should be marginalized.

See what I did there? Those who live glass houses should not throw stones.

>Note that I do not buy the silly notion that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' and that 'I don't find that person attractive but I'm sure someone else will'. This is somewhat backed by data (e.g., the OKCupid survey), but I have developed this belief on my own. Humans of all races have a built-in instinct to find some visuals more appealing and attractive than others. It is sad but true. To take it to an extreme, if we find some visuals disgusting (e.g., spilled guts, slimy things) we don't all of a sudden go "I'm disgusted by slimy spilled guts of animals, but that's just me, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who have the exact opposite reaction, that they love to look at slimy spilled guts".

Physical attractiveness standards are nowhere near as specifically biologically determined as the reaction to "slimy spilled guts." Even just looking at western Europe-derived cultures, the "beautiful female nudes" of art from just a couple of hundred years ago are much heavier and less muscular than those of today. And "I don't find that person attractive but I'm sure someone else will" clearly can apply for cases like hair color preference.

I believe there has been research showing more universal preferences for, for example, bilateral symmetry - but the specifics vary by culture and individual.

Biological imperfection? Genetic defect? Bit harsh, no?

You've painted love in this way, and it may be true for the majority of us. OK. But there will always be exceptions in a million other forms.

I know ugly people who are utterly charming, either sweet or swaggery and others fall for them all the time.

I also know beautiful people who are foul-mannered, and their relationships never last.

And then all the others in between these two extremes. The good-looking one who had stinky pits like the rest of us after an all-nighter. The average-looking one with a wicked sense of humour, only after 3 conversations though. The dummy-looking one who actually has a strength so niche it's effing admirable. The chatterbox, the joker, the quietly brilliant ... on and on it goes. Oh and let's not forget the time factor; personalities change, experience builds up et cetra.

See, that's how you get over this "biological defect." First impressions may be Tinder-like, but we (life?) are so much more sophisticated than that.

No idea what social individualism is but the way I see is this: Nurture yourself to be the person you think you are, and open yourself to interactions. Invest in the relationships once you get them. Be empathical, even if you 'lose'. If everyone does this, we're on track to a happier, more loving society.

> I hope most of you would agree that at least 70%-90% of being in love has something to do with the appearance of your person-of-interest (most of it visual).

Absolutely not. It's her heart and mind that I fell in love with.

Bear in mind that everybody loves something, even if it's just beer, or ice cream, or criticizing other people.

'Love' means giving something full attention (metaphorically speaking, to "open your heart fully" to that something).

Btw, this Roald Dahl extract from 'The Twits' is relevant to visual attraction:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/e8/54/ef/e854...

The most hacker-news comment ever

Define love

This is almost nihilistic.

Almost?

Actually, men used to like it when women were fat about two centuries ago. Nowadays, it's completely reverse: super-models are all slim.

This wouldn't happen if attraction to beauty was mostly subject to biology. (You know that biological structure doesn't change so fast in less than 200 years, right?)

Also, you seem to underestimate how much humans are driven by their emotions and sense of loyalty to someone else. How would you explain the affection between people who fall in love with the disabled?

I don't have any data on weight or body fat, but there's plenty of research into attractiveness of women with various waist-hip ratios and yes, it has dropped steadily from around 0.77 in 1500 to 0.68 in the last half-century. However, does even a WHR of 0.77 correspond to being fat?

Source: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....