Proximity as a Hidden Matchmaker
Monday, August 14, 2006
In my 23rd year of being a bachelor and haven’t ever been in a relationship, I always want to find out what is happening. I am perplexed when it comes to relationship. I, again, seek help by reading. I understand that my life is unique, but I believe there is a collection knowledge shared by the entire human race and reading might help me discover a small portion of the encyclopedic information. I yearn to discover my life through reading other people’s experiences; in Grace’s words: I’m a “self-help junkie”. Anyway, junkie or not, I derive quite a lot of pleasure by consuming these (self-help) drugs. Recently, I have been reading Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose by Ayala Malach Pines these couple of weeks and I want to share some of the contents and my thoughts on them.
I think we have all heard people tend to get attached during SEP; I am intrigued by the statistics. Chapter 1 of the book, Proximity, the Hidden Matchmaker, provides some psychological explanation for this phenomenon.
We all feel uncomfortable around strangers. A child would be told not to talk to strangers as it is dangerous. We all assume a stranger is crazy, trying to sell us something, cheat us… all sorts of negative things. If we were to see a stranger repeatedly, say, on a bus. Repeated exposure tells us that the person is not dangerous so we can relax and enjoy the encounter. From what I understand from the book, the attraction to familiarity may have a great effect on romantic attraction than a certain physical look. This is a provocative conclusion! Pines mentioned “We may not be aware of our preference for familiar faces, but this preference seems to play an important role in our attraction to certain faces (8)”. If this is true then familiarity breeds content! Could we develop liking, attraction and comfort because we are spending time with a certain person? Yes, this proposition has been given support in a study in the 1960s with a group of female subjects. I shall not discuss the details of the study here.
In this blog entry, my interest would be repeated exposure during SEP. In a foreign land, the presence of a alien environment would make repeated exposure to a fellow Singaporean more frequent compared to when the environment is familiar (like back in Singapore). Therefore, it’s no wonder people tend to get attached during SEP. But what about familiarity that breeds contempt? For example, some people quarrel really badly after being on a trip together. The author has given an explanation for this. When someone annoys us, repeated exposure, rather than making us like the person more, will intensify our negative feeling. I think repeated exposure intensifies the dominant emotion in a relationship. When the dominant emotion is anger, repeated exposure enhances the anger. When the dominant emotion is attraction, repeated exposure enhances the attraction.
Hmm… I think as a self-help: I should avoid platonic love relationships by means of letters, telephone, and emails. As I foresee, these communications can be exciting. But repeated exposure is yet another requirement for a romantic spark to turn into a steady flame of a love relationship.
posted byWilliam at 10:47 PM