Some people feel almost impossible not to be fascinated by. Others, just as pleasant on paper, leave us completely untouched. For a long time I thought it was chemistry, something unfathomable that either existed between two people or didn't. Now I believe something else. I believe it rarely says much about the other person at all. It says at least as much about what's already happening, or not happening, within ourselves.
Someone already in contact with both her driving and her receiving side rarely feels that same desperate pull toward others who carry those qualities. She can appreciate them, admire them, even feel inspired by them, without feeling that finally, the one that reveals a real, unprocessed lack.
The more out of balance we are, the stronger the magnetism toward whoever seems to carry what we ourselves are missing, because attraction is really a measure of the distance between who we already are and who we haven't yet dared to become.
Jung called it projection, the old mechanism where what we don't want to see or acknowledge in ourselves gets pushed outward and placed onto someone else instead. Someone who has never developed their own inner direction is often magnetically drawn to someone radiating clarity and decisiveness, as if the psyche is unconsciously searching for the complementary force it lacks within itself. Someone who has never given their own feelings room tends, in the same way, to be drawn to someone whose inner life flows freely, openly, without restraint. That attraction rarely feels like a choice. It feels like recognition, even though it's rarely the other person themselves creating that feeling. It's our own, still unprocessed side seeing its reflection somewhere else for the first time.
Research on attraction actually shows that similarity in values and attitudes best predicts both initial attraction and long term relationship satisfaction, rather than the classic idea that opposites complete each other. That doesn't make the projection any less real. It can arise just as easily between people who already resemble each other at their core, you can very well idealize someone's sense of security or emotional openness even while sharing values and background in every other way.
It works in both directions, regardless of who's seeking what in whom, and it extends far beyond romantic love. A boss who radiates the kind of undisputed authority you've never quite dared to claim yourself can awaken an almost childlike admiration. A friend whose ability to set boundaries without guilt sparks both admiration and a touch of envy might carry exactly the quality you've been searching for but never quite found. Even an artist or writer you've never met can stir a fascination that says more about your own longing for what they represent than about the person themselves. Mentors are a particularly clear example, the person you seek out for guidance often carries, consciously or not, exactly the quality you're already growing into but don't yet trust that you possess.
What all these relationships have in common is that the intensity of the reaction rarely matches what the situation objectively calls for. An ordinary work relationship doesn't stir that feeling. Only that particular boss does, that particular friend, that particular person who happens to carry exactly what we ourselves carry in its unprocessed form. The stronger the reaction, the more worth asking, not what is it about that person, but what is it in me that has just been seen.
That explains some of love's most puzzling traits, how quickly and powerfully it can strike, and how rarely it delivers on what it promised. In that first meeting, the other person rarely appears to us in their own, full reality. Instead they carry an image, something we've projected onto them, everything we long for but haven't dared to claim. The stronger the initial pull, the more projection it tends to carry, and the further the fall when that person eventually turns out to be a complete, flawed human being rather than the rescue we'd unconsciously hoped for.
That doesn't make the attraction false or worthless. It often points very precisely to where our own inner work is waiting, and it can serve as a first, powerful invitation to begin that work, provided we understand what we're actually seeing. The question is what's required of us in the moment we feel that strong pull. Rarely to act on it right away, chase down the mentor, imitate the artist, try to become the boss. More often something quieter. To let ourselves grow curious rather than swept away. To ask what exactly it is about the other person that grips us, and then turn that same question inward, where in my own life would that quality get to exist, if I let it.
Admiration directed only outward remains a thirst that never gets quenched, because the person we admire can never give us what we're actually missing within ourselves. Admiration that becomes a question turned inward is rarely comfortable, but it's often the fastest route to exactly the growth we'd otherwise only ever watch from a distance.
You can read more about this in my upcoming book, There's Nothing Wrong With You, You're Just Out of Balance. This is a condensed excerpt from the book, which draws on Carl Jung's ideas about anima and animus, the inner opposites every person carries regardless of gender, and what happens when they're allowed to work together or are silenced instead. The book moves between cells and cosmos, between single moments in a hospital room or a living room and ancient myths people have carried to one another for thousands of years, always circling the same question, what is it that aches, and what would it actually mean to finally come home to yourself again.