The Pheromone Myth and Online Relationships

Today I ponder attraction. Have you ever instantly been attracted to someone? It used to be believed that yes, we are attracted to people because of some substance called pheromones; in short, actual signals that serve as some kind of sexual attractant, even though we can’t see or smell them. Recently, some experts are calling that an absolute myth. But it does beg the question, doesn’t it?

Why upon meeting someone do we have an immediate raised heartbeat or find our palms sweating or our breathing labored or our cheeks reddening with some inexplicable radiance? Why do some people just make us thrum and make us want to throw ourselves at them while at the same time making us so shy, saying hello is somehow an insurmountable task? We twirl our hair and struggle to make eye contact and bite our lips until they’re pink with worry.

It’s impossible to answer and yet I shall try. You can be in a room full of people and different people are attracted to different people right then and there, without a word spoken. Am I right? Yes. Sometimes we are attracted to the same person and then it almost becomes some kind of animalistic competition. Comical even. I dare say no gender is exempt from the gene of competitive fierceness.

We often answer it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. We say: It’s looks at first but then I have to like his/her personality…but that’s far too simple. Isn’t it?  Some of the aesthetically-agreed-upon good-looking people, do nothing for me. And yes, I can meet someone and grow to love him and his personality, but it still does not explain that immediate attraction, that glow, that desperate need upon a glance or first meeting.

Throw in online relationships and everything goes to pot. Have you met someone and you felt all of those things? Without touch? Without sound? Hell, even without knowing what they look like? It’s happened to me. So I know it exists. Is it scientific? Nope. It would not hold up in any scientific study. It’s anecdotal, but it’s as real as this laptop I sit in front of and tap.
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My answer: It makes me believe in an unidentifiable spirit or soul. I don’t believe in religion or the god I was raised to believe in. But I will be the first to admit, there is Energy that just exists. We cannot fathom its presence or existence but can only FEEL its strength to know it’s real. And when that energy somehow unites with another energy that serves as a magnet, it’s called love. And perhaps that is the only answer worth knowing at all.