We have just explored how we influence each other in relationships, often without being aware of the depth of that process. But there is a moment prior to any mutual influence, the moment when two people feel drawn towards each other before a relationship has truly begun. Attraction. A fascinating subject, much discussed and, in my view, profoundly misunderstood in popular culture.

Attraction is usually treated as something that simply happens or doesn't, as a clear signal of compatibility, as proof that someone "is the right one." The reality is considerably more complex and, once understood, changes the way we choose with whom we build meaningful relationships.

What attraction actually is

Attraction is not a single, homogeneous phenomenon. It is a mixture of biological, psychological and social processes operating simultaneously, and they don't always point in the same direction.

At the biological level, attraction is mediated by an impressive neurochemical cascade. Dopamine produces the intense focus and euphoria specific to falling in love. Noradrenaline triggers the accelerated heart rate and physiological excitement. Serotonin drops, producing the obsessive thoughts characteristic of the early phase of attraction. Oxytocin and vasopressin contribute to longer-term attachment. Helen Fisher, anthropologist at Rutgers University, studied the brains of people in love using neuroimaging and discovered that the systems activated are the same ones activated by cocaine dependency. This is not a metaphor. It is a precise neurological comparison.

This explains why intense attraction can be so hard to ignore and why, in its acute phase, our judgement is seriously compromised. We are not less intelligent or less rational as people. We are simply under the influence of substances produced by our own brains.

Familiarity and the attractiveness of the unknown

There are two apparently contradictory vectors that contribute to attraction and which operate simultaneously in the human mind.

The first is familiarity. Research by Robert Zajonc demonstrated that simple repeated exposure to something or someone increases appreciation of that thing or person, a phenomenon known as the "mere exposure effect." We feel more attracted to people who are familiar to us, those we have seen before, whose gestures or expressions are recognisable to us, who resemble important figures from our past.

The second is novelty and slight unpredictability. The brain responds more intensely to new and unpredictable stimuli than to predictable ones. Someone who is partly mysterious, whose attitude is difficult to read completely, activates the reward circuits more powerfully than someone completely transparent and predictable.

The paradox is that we are drawn simultaneously to the familiar and to the mysterious. And that is why we are often attracted to people who remind us of early attachment figures, but who also have something new compared to them. Psychoanalysis has extensively explored this mechanism: often, powerful attraction contains an element of repetition, an unconscious attempt to resolve an old, unfinished relationship.

Chemistry is not a predictor of compatibility

This is, I believe, one of the most important distinctions you can make in your romantic relational life: chemistry and compatibility are not the same thing and they don't imply each other.

Chemistry is the intensity of the emotional and physical experience in someone's presence. Compatibility is the alignment of values, lifestyles, visions of the world and ways of managing life together. Chemistry is present or absent in the first hours or days of knowing someone. Compatibility reveals itself over time, through repeated interactions, through difficult situations, through shared decisions.

The problem is that chemistry is spectacular and immediate, while compatibility is subtle and gradual. Our brains, built for stimulation and rapid reward, are far more sensitive to the first signal than to the second. And that is why we tend to overestimate the importance of chemistry and underestimate the importance of compatibility.

There are relationships with intense chemistry and low compatibility. These tend to be passionate, turbulent relationships, hard to leave and even harder to transform into something stable. There are relationships with high compatibility and moderate chemistry, which at the start seem "lacking in sparks," but which become, over time, the most satisfying and stable. And there are, of course, relationships in which both coexist, rare, but possible.

Attraction towards what is familiar and painful

One aspect of attraction I find important to understand, even if it is uncomfortable, is that we are often drawn not to what is good for us, but to what is familiar. And familiar can include the patterns that produced pain in the past.

If you grew up with an emotionally unavailable parent, you may feel more intensely attracted to people with fluctuating emotional availability than to those who are consistently available. Not because you enjoy suffering, but because inconsistent availability activates your attachment system more powerfully, reproducing a well-known pattern.

This mechanism explains why people sometimes repeat painful relational patterns, not out of conscious masochism, but from an attraction that operates below the level of rational choice. Becoming aware of it doesn't eliminate it immediately, but it makes it visible. And a visible pattern can be examined and, with time and sometimes with the help of a therapist, modified.

Attraction and projection

A significant part of what we experience as attraction towards a new person is, in reality, projection. We project onto the other person qualities, values and potential on the basis of minimal information. The brain fills in the gaps with what it wants to see, not necessarily with what is actually there.

This doesn't mean attraction is false or that it doesn't matter. It means that in the early phase of any relationship, part of the intensity of the experience is connected to your own projections, not to the real person in front of you. The real person is revealed gradually, as the projections fall. And how you feel when those projections fall, when you see the real person with their limits, contradictions and imperfections, is far more relevant to the viability of the relationship than the intensity of the initial attraction.

Compatibility is built, not just discovered

One final thing I want to say about compatibility is that it is not only discovered, but also built. Two people with fundamentally similar values can become more compatible over time, through the shared effort of getting to know each other, of communicating and of growing together. And two people who initially seemed very compatible can become less so if one of them grows and the other doesn't.

Compatibility is not a fixed state that you either find or don't. It is a dynamic process, influenced by how much each of the two people invests in the relationship and in their own evolution.

Attraction brings you to the door of the relationship. Compatibility is what determines what you build once you have walked in.

Think about the powerful attractions in your life, past or present. What do you think you were projecting onto that person in the early phase? And when the projections fell, what remained? Was there enough for a real relationship?