For some time now, you have been surprised to appreciate Julien, a developer of the IT department. If it does not correspond in any way to your usual physical criteria – and does not look like any of your ex – it goes without saying that it soothes you. Soft, sensitive and attentive, it makes you laugh like no one and even manages to take your peak. However, can her kindness be enough to make you forget his features (and her belly belly)? Amélie Boukhobza, clinical psychologist, enlightens us.
In matters of desire, does the physical take precedence over everything else?
In everyday language, the term “desire” evokes a drive, a desire, which irresistibly pushes us into the arms of the other. Your neighbor’s simple dimples can thus be enough to give you palpitations, like the arms of this actor in vogue, which haunt your nights. However, is it reasonable to “bet” only on a body? What about Julien, your famous colleague, who illuminates (despite everything) your lunch breaks?
In reality, in love, few rules exist – and it seems completely plausible to fall in love with someone we don’t like at first. This is what we call “relational eroticism”: the liveliness or the humor of the other end up “triggering” a form of desire.
“”However, falling in love with a person who does not attract us should not be done at any cost“Recalls Amélie Boukhobza.”It is not a question here of renouncing desire. Nor to force yourself. But sometimes the desire comes after … and it does not look like the one we had imagined “, she says.
Indeed, it is often believed that attraction is immediate, that it is a matter of body, chemistry, drive. But not only. “”There are people who have not noticed immediately, who we did not like, and who, one day, upset us. Because we exchanged … and RI. Or because we were seized by a way of thinking, moving, seeing the world. By an inner force, a calm, an audacity. By a detail that completely escapes appearance“, Confides the expert.
The admiration proven towards the other can overwhelm
Sometimes still, admiration precedes desire, recognizes the expert. Indeed, even before (physical) desire settled, we can face a form of glare: the posture or the way of being of the other seduces us, terribly.
“”Physical attraction follows then, because something lights up, because we look at the other otherwise. And that the body becomes desirable, precisely because we want what it gives off“Says the practitioner.
So yes, of course, we can fall in love with a body that did not immediately like.
“”Because a body is dressed, lights up, and sometimes becomes beautiful thanks to the love that one has to the person who inhabits it. In reality, there are no rules“Concludes Amélie Boukhobza.