Friday night and the local bar is getting
crowded. It is a small, dark, smoky hole in the wall place. Locals come every
day after work for their regular beers. On a Friday night the crowd grows
around ten p.m. The regular locals all seem to leave by 10 pm, to make room for
the younger crowd. The place is very dark and filled with cigarette smoke.
There is a pool room to the right and an outside patio in the back. There are
two security guards watching the front and back doors. The bar fills up
quickly.
There
is a regular man in the bar tonight who stayed later than usual. Tonight he has
a lady in a black shirt with him. They are talking very close. He has his
normal beer and she has a mixed drink. The man stands up, and they walk out of
the bar. The couple comes back in and goes back at their spot a few minutes
later. The regular man is standing up next to his lady in the black shirt. She
touches his face, there is a whisper exchanged. She starts to act more shy now.
He gets closer to the lady in the black shirt. The regular man’s friends come
in, and he introduced them to his lady friend. They get ready to leave again,
this time not coming back. They are an older couple that are not as touchy
feely as the couple to their left.
A few seats to the left there is a younger
couple. The woman wears a green shirt, and the man is wearing a black shirt.
The man is smoking a cigarette. The couple is talking very closely. A man walks
up to the couple. He has one a hat and a white shirt. He walked up to the woman
and she stood up. He touched the lower part of her back and sat down in her
seat. The woman then went to the bathroom, and left the two men sitting in
silence. The woman came back to the group and sat on the man with the hats lap.
She still spoke with the man in the black shirt, but had more interaction with
the man in the hat. The man in the hat gets up and leaves, seeming to be
following another woman away from the group. The woman in the green shirt gets
closer again to the man in the black shirt. The man in the black shirt and the
woman in the green shirt pay for their own drinks. He was drinking beer and she
had a few mixed drinks. The man in the hat comes back. The man in the hat and
the woman in the green start to dance very close together. The man in the hat
then sits down and the woman in the green again, sits on his lap. They start to
kiss now. Forgetting that everyone else is in the bar, even the man in the
black shirt, they kiss for a few minutes. A phone rings and the man with the hat
gets up and goes outside to talk on his phone. He comes back a few minutes
later and gets the woman in the green shirt, they leave together.
A few seats to the right there is another
couple. The man is wearing a sports jersey and the woman is smoking a
cigarette. They are talking rather close. There is a slight arm brush and they
move closer. They are drinking a pitcher of beer. They get up and move into the
pool room. They play a few games of pool. The man sneaks up and kisses her on
the cheek. It seems to surprise her, in a good way. They flirt a bit more and
finish up their game of pool. The end up on the back patio. It is raining now
and they do not seem to care. They are now kissing and very into each other.
Maybe it is the alcohol, maybe it was instant connection. They stand and kiss
in the rain for almost ten minutes before they leave together out of the back
door.
Mutual attraction grows when each meets
the other’s unmet needs. An example of reward theory of attraction: Those who
reward us, or who we associate with rewards, we like. Rewards can be seen as
anything from simple conversation to a sexual relationship. This also goes
along with the second version of the reward principle. That principle states
that we like those we associate with good feelings. For example, after a hard
week of work, we relax enjoying food, drinks, and music, we will most likely
feel connected to those around us. We are much less likely to take a liking to
someone we meet while dealing with a horrible headache or after a bad day at
work.
The idea of matching hypothesis is the idea
that most people find friends and lovers that are on the equal level of
attractiveness as themselves. “In the field of social psychology, the idea that
people are more likely to form successful relationships with and express liking
for people whose level of physical attractiveness roughly equals their own.
Example: A man of average attractiveness goes on one date with an extremely
attractive person, and then another with an average-looking person. He finds he
likes the average-looking date more” (Grinnell 2010).
A lot of relationships come from mutual
attraction. There needs to be some kind of mutual attraction for a relationship
to start. Sitting next to someone at a bar and your arms touch, or you both
cannot look away from each other, can be signs of mutual attraction. Maybe even
before the mutual attraction comes the matching hypothesis. You see someone
across the room and feel that they are on the same level as you, so you go over
and talk to them. After seeing someone, maybe you talk to them and realize
there is a mutual reaction. There also seems to be bit of a chemical reaction
to others also. You do not quite know why you are attracted to someone but you
have strong feelings for them, that could be chemical. It is very interesting
all the ways we can be attracted to someone.
References:
Grinnell R. Matching
Hypothesis. PsychCentral.com 2010
http://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/matching-hypothesis/
Copyright © 2017 Kate Stap
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