If love is a choice, then should attraction play any part in marriage?

[chevalier]

I keep hearing that “Love is a Choice”, so does that mean in marriage that attraction, particularly physical attraction shouldn’t play a role in marriage? For example there was this girl that really liked me. I didn’t find her attractive at all for a number of reasons, but I could see why some people would think we made a good match. So should I have just made the “choice” to love her and go out with her even though i wasn’t remotely attracted to her (she not only was not Catholic, she wasn’t really religious at all, was part of some women’s freemason group, had bad social skills, and also just wasn’t physically attractive which I know is mean, but she was nice, just not what i’m into.)

So if love is a choice, can you choose to love someone you aren’t attracted to?

1. Freemansons and Catholics aren’t really perfect matches, you know.
2. Social skills are useful in a spouse (and girlfriend, before it gets to that point).
3. Life’s gonna be hard if you end up marrying someone you aren’t attracted to. Not only will you be unable to go after other women, you will need to procreate and to take care of your wife’s sexual needs. That may become rather remarkably hard when you aren’t attracted.
4. ‘Love is a choice’ is a loaded slogan. Love requires commitment and commitment requires your will to reaffirm your previous choices. But love is not an easy 0/1 switch you can just ‘choose’ to switch on (or off, especially).
5. Don’t be desperate. You’re talking about forcing yourself into an unappreciated relationship with a Freemason who isn’t attractive to you. Just so you get perspective.

EDIT: I’ve just read it was some years ago, so adjust the tenses accordingly. I can’t be bothered.

 

[chevalier]

It does help. Part of the reason I thought this back then was that I was an unconfident college student who worried I wasn’t good enough to get married and that I was some ugly person with a weird personality. So when Iheard this girl liked me, even though she repulsed me, I would sometimes think, “well maybe if I can’t do any better, i could date her even if I’d have to fake it” and I thought that eventually i’d learn to love her even if I wasn’t attractive to her. Of course being that I just couldn’t stomach going out with her (sadly it was more her social skills than anything, granted she didn’t have much else going for her other than she was smart). I guess sometimes I still feel this way today, especially being at best an average looking man, that maybe I should date someone i’m not attracted to, especially physically because it might be good for the woman. However I know not to do this and feel a lot more confident about myself. So there’s where i’m coming from…

Avoid having standards like a supermodel with a Ph.D. and master chef and professional tour guide all in one, where they’d make you expect to receive more than you could offer. That sort of thing does have the potential to make people stay single forever.

On the other hand, if you don’t have a warped sense of attraction, then chances are you just simply want to be attracted. Which is not the same as holding people to unrealistic standards.

Finally, not being physically attractive to you (or attractive in some other specific way or even in general) is not a moral failing (or any objective shortcoming at all, in some cases), which you seem to realise, good. On the other hand, you must realise that failing to be attracted is not such a failure on your part, either. And the fact you can’t choose to make yourself attracted is not a moral failure either. As much as it annoys women to no end.(Rest assured that they cross as out for all sorts of attraction-related reasons, not necessarily including looks but even those also. Pot calling kettle black much of the time.) Forcing yourself into marriage where you aren’t attracted (and where both of you could find someone attracted and attractive at the same time), or pretending attraction (‘fake it till you make it’) is a markedly poor idea. There are other ways of mortification available, especially ones that don’t include wrecking a woman’s personal life to prove a lofty pretence.