"How Attractive am I?"

The wrong starting place

It is common for people trying to navigate the modern dating world to worry about whether they're attractive enough to find a partner of the kind they're seeking. But "how attractive am I?" is the wrong question. Attractiveness is a very important component of a relationship, but it's very subjective and focusing on only whether you're attractive versus attracted to someone else leads to relationships of one-sided attraction, which leaves the person who is attractive to their partner doing a lot more of the relational work than their partner, creating situations where the person who feels the attraction often feels like they are begging for crumbs from their partner telling themselves that attraction will grow over time. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but you could save yourself a lot of heartache if you simply started in the right place.

A strong foundation

Instead of just asking how attractive am I?, you also want to be paying attention to how attracted you yourself are to the other person. You could be the most attractive person in the world to someone else, but if you're not attracted to them at all, then their answer, if you were to ask them, "how attractive am I?" wouldn't matter at all because your answer, if they were to ask you "how attractive am I?" wouldn't be the same. People who are not attracted to you are not going to find you attractive, but that does not mean you are not attractive. What you want to be looking for is mutual attraction, where both people ask "how attractive am I?" to each other and can give the same answer. "Very!"

Why mutual attraction?

"How attractive am I?" probably can be answered scientifically, but that's not going to be very helpful when what you're looking for is for someone you are attracted to to also think you're attractive. Practically speaking, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." You want the beauty to be in both your eyes and the eyes of your potential partner; this is not just about thinking the other person has a pretty/handsome face. This is about being physically drawn to them for physical, emotional, spiritual and relationship reasons, and them being drawn to you as well. This is not about the fleeting moments of thinking someone's hot; this is a deeper experience that draws two people together and calls them to be the best versions of themselves. If that's not what's happening, it's not mutual attraction.

Mutual attraction is where Iris Dating starts. Before politics, before career, before religion. The idea is that mutual attraction is more powerful than most of the external requirements we have on our lists, even including what we think we're attracted to. When you start with mutual attraction, you'll stop just asking "how attractive am I?" and start also asking "how attracted am I?"

This article will help you recognize the signs of mutual attraction.