You Are the Most Attractive, Therefore You Are the One I Love. – How Attraction Conditions Passion

One of the greatest contemporary hypocrisies is the idea that we love a partner for their personality and not for their physical beauty and, subsequently, for the attraction we feel toward it. The truth that many hide is how physical beauty conditions partner selection and, in turn, how our personality was influenced by society's perception of our beauty.

This reality has always deeply affected me over the years. I felt extremely frustrated by the fact that, irrationally, the attraction I felt for a given woman conditioned how I evaluated and valued her. It is an obvious concept that the more attractive and beautiful she was, the more exalted her personal attributes became—intelligence, maturity, sensitivity, competence, status, among others.

At the same time, it intrigued me how people with socially more valued physical attributes ended up being reconsidered more often than their less fortunate counterparts.

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Such a statement does not strictly correspond to the truth, as we will understand below.

If biology is clear about the impact of physical attributes on passion between humans, why does society want to praise the ideal of its contrary? Society does not deny biology out of ignorance—though there is no shortage of ignorant people among us—it does so for the sake of mass pacification. If we governed ourselves purely by the biological and evolutionary imperatives of visual attraction, social order would collapse.

Attraction is highly unfair; some are born fortunate with favorable physical and genetic characteristics, others are not—pure natural selection. Admitting this from a social standpoint would only create an unendurable and unsustainable collective frustration. By propagating the lie that moral merit and virtue govern emotional exchanges, civilization masks collective anguish, appeases the aesthetically less gifted, and preserves social stability.

This romantic narrative functions as a systemic sedative, hiding the fact that the battlefield of relationships is, ultimately, a Darwinian and ruthless scenario.

Passion, as it exists from a biological standpoint, is dangerous. It is ruled by selfishness, chaos, and reactivity. Under this lens, passion would be unsustainable for a society that requires rules, predictability, and stability. Therefore, we are conditioned to mold our instincts into the opposite. We try to value character, loyalty, and intellect, because these attributes do allow for the preservation of social order and stability in the long term—family, genetic heritage, and financial patrimony. It is worth noting that a capitalist society implies that power is centered on money, not on affections.

Our biology is an irrational economic management of affections, not a financial one. Therefore, praising the non-physical ideal is culture's attempt to domesticate the human animal, forcing it to value traits that guarantee social cohesion at the expense of primitive impulses that generate rupture.

Finally, just like legal impositions, we suffer from social impositions when we assume that we do not choose our partners for their beauty and attraction, but rather for their non-physical characteristics. This attempt to maintain societal cohesion through biological repression only generates more friction and chaos.

Beauty is not a malleable social whim; it is a fundamental signal of genetic fitness, health, and fertility.

In other words, physical attributes merely aim to reflect the genetic quality of the individual. Imagine the idea that, to choose a genetically favorable partner, you would have to submit them to a laboratory test of their genome. Sound ridiculous? Yet, that is exactly what happens. Evolution did not give us a laboratory to see the degree of genetic fitness; instead, it gave us each other's visual characteristics.

Looking at your partner is, deep down, looking at the result of that genetic test. And the passion you feel for them is the biological impulse motivating you to propagate your genes with that specific partner.

• Facial Symmetry: This attribute functions as a barometer of our biological stability, unequivocally signaling the organism's resistance against mutations or parasites during its development.

• Female Waist-to-Hip Ratio (WHR): The 0.7 metric is processed by instinct as a certificate of fertility, revealing optimal hormonal levels and a favorable biological predisposition for reproduction.

• Male Testosterone Markers: Elements such as a prominent jawline are, in reality, indicators of a robust immune system capable of sustaining the high biological cost of sex hormones. [image]

Why then, throughout history, have distinct physical attributes been valued?

Society looks at the shift in aesthetic standards over the centuries (from Rubens' opulence to the thinness of haute couture and fashion) and naively concludes that beauty is a malleable invention of culture.

Culture does not invent the standard; culture simply translates the same biological imperative based on the scarcity of the moment. Biology always wants the same thing: health, fertility, and resources. What changes throughout history is the visual signifier that indicates the presence of those three variables.

Our brain is programmed to detect signs of social hierarchical status and an abundance of resources—today translated, for example, into financial wealth.

In antiquity and the Middle Ages, the majority of the population starved, while a total abundance of resources was concentrated in a minority. The common people were malnourished and worked under the scorching sun—which left them with darker skin. The standard of beauty at this time was voluminous bodies and extremely pale skin. Fatness and paleness were not mere aesthetic choices; they were physical evidence of an individual's social status and, in turn, their access to excess food and the fact that they did not need to work. Physical opulence was the visual translation of wealth and security.

In our contemporary era, since the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent abundance of cheap, ultra-processed foods, obesity has become a problem of the lower classes. Simultaneously, there was an inversion in the labor market. Work became sedentary, confined to enclosed spaces like offices, through a desk and a computer. The social status signifier flipped. Thinness, muscle tone, and tanned skin now indicate that the subject has free time to train, financial resources for a healthy diet, and financial capital to travel to sunny destinations.

Aesthetics do not reside in physical traits themselves, but rather in indicators of resource abundance and health. Biology always seeks the partner with the most resources. Culture merely alters the marker that signals who holds them. [image]

For example, the Waist-to-Hip Ratio (WHR) presented earlier has not changed over the centuries. Whether analyzing statues of Venus in Ancient Greece, Renaissance paintings, or modern supermodels, there is a mathematical constant: the female waist-to-hip ratio invariably remains close to 0.7. Culture may fluctuate between preferring globally heavier or thinner women, but the male brain remains the same. And why? Because this specific metric is linked to fat distribution governed by estrogen and the width of the pelvis for childbirth—pure biological indicators of fertility that culture cannot reprogram.

Throughout my romantic and sexual years, a certain aversion to women with a high or unhealthy body mass index was always clear to me. A polite way of saying I do not like fat women. The lack of sexual attraction was clear. It always carried a certain rational narrative behind it—namely, that a high, unhealthy body mass index reflects a long period of inconsistency, carelessness, or unfavorable circumstances that are, more or less, the responsibility of the woman in question.

When I was around 14 turning 15, I met a woman; let's call her Ana. She was two years older. Typically, women seek older men to balance the scales of maturity, which tends to lean further ahead in women compared to men of the same age. However, because I possessed a high degree of maturity for my age, I successively ended up seeking older women, much like they did with their men.

Before our first sexual encounter, a deep and intimate friendship preceded for about a year. This limitation to friendship stemmed exclusively from her—naturally, I desired her sexually. My investment in her was proportional to the attraction I felt; therefore, it was moderate. Because it was moderate, her personality traits were also categorized as average. Nonetheless, after our first romantic development, these traits, once viewed as average, were highly exalted. This increased my focus on her and, in turn, my affection and investment.

It did not take long for me to feel closer and closer romantically to Ana. Unlike the extreme example where total repulsion and disinterest in investing in women with a higher body mass index led to a complete disregard for their non-physical characteristics, Ana was quite beautiful. But not enough.

I was young, and this was extremely difficult for me to assimilate. Ana was rationally perfect. She was older—with her maturity aligned with mine—she was beautiful and attractive, she was intelligent, and she was extremely sweet and empathetic. We had formed a deep emotional foundation before our first intimate encounters. She was deeply invested in me—she wanted a commitment. She was an extremely pure woman, in every sense of the word. She didn't carry all those constraints that we naturally develop after successive failed relationships.

If she was everything I sought and valued, why did I break Ana's heart? Because she was not attractive enough. Today I understand and can forgive myself by understanding the biological imperatives that dominate our brain, but at the time I was completely devastated. Especially because I could separate affection from reason and analyze Ana coldly. And Ana was perfect.

When I entered high school, I fell irrationally in love with a classmate—where no solid foundation of friendship existed behind the relationship, only the primitive impulse of an irrational and uncontrollable attraction; in other words, this classmate was extremely attractive, beautiful, almost divine. The result? A totally dysfunctional relationship and dynamic where, even though rationally her non-physical attributes were clearly inferior compared to Ana's, her beauty led me to exalt them to unrealistic standards, keeping me trapped in an unhealthy cycle. Let it be clear that this was one of the great regrets of my life, and ironically, I had a very hard time when she moved on with another partner—fortunately, he has made her quite happy over the years.

Later, well after my 20s, in an increasingly digital and computerized era, I tried the classic "dating apps." Being an old-school person, I made sure that the few matches I made (the male and female markets are exponentially distinct) involved phone conversations. This way, I understood better who the woman was. One date in particular that arose, I still haven't forgotten to this day. The woman in question appeared beautiful and attractive. The conversation flowed; she was sweet and intelligent. We had highly aligned values. In this type of conversation, because there is no personal contact yet—and even though the match was based exclusively on each other's physical attributes—non-physical characteristics tend to be a more determining factor after this initial physical screening, which dictates the probability of a date.

The date was set, and I planned an entire day with her. Everything went well until the moment I picked her up. Well, let's just say her profile pictures corresponded to a body mass index that was once substantially lower than her current one. Remember those non-physical characteristics and aligned values? Well, that all went down the drain. As a man who was once in the same situation this woman found herself in, I gave her the exact treatment I would have liked to receive. I was honest and transparent about our potential, yet non-existent, future. However, I gave her a calm day, treated her well, and was a gentleman. Once again, no romantic relationship developed.

By an irony of fate, some time after this date, I met my now current ex-partner. Stupidly beautiful and attractive, both to my eyes and to everyone else's. The passion was intense and irrational. Within a few weeks, we were already dating, committed, and destined to live together forever. Well, it was the most chaotic relationship I've ever had in my life. Dangerous even, in every sense.

We must balance the ratio between beauty and non-physical attributes. How to do so, I cannot answer.

I have been commenting that physical attraction distorts the way we evaluate the personality of our potential partners.

The mechanism behind this cognitive bias is called the Halo Effect. The Halo Effect causes the brain to make a systematic error in judgment: we automatically associate beauty with an unfounded "character credit." The attractive individual is judged from the outset as more honest, kind, intelligent, and successful, causing their mistakes to be tolerated and their virtues to be inflated.

Something I systematically observed is that a beautiful person, especially a woman, was considered more competent, and in turn, treated as such—which only conditioned her to be competent.

It has long been known by science that attractive people are systematically treated better growing up than unattractive ones. A beautiful woman ends up being associated with more socially valued virtues, which conditions her to develop those very same characteristics. However, this comes with a cost.

The woman is validated by her aesthetics and not by her effort, creating a latent insecurity within her. The woman grows up without knowing whether her success is due to her real merit or to the environment's condescension toward her image. At the same time, a certain intra-sexual ostracization occurs. Beauty activates rituals of aggressive competition and passive-aggressive exclusion by other women, who view her as a threat from both a social status and reproductive standpoint. Finally, there is a sense of chronic anxiety over the aging of an identity structured entirely around beauty, which severely depreciates over time.

In the labor market, a woman's beauty is often exploited as a profitable corporate asset in customer service and sales roles—which is a secret to no one. Lastly, attraction is often seen as fragility, causing the success of a woman deemed beautiful to be attributed to favors or manipulation, requiring her to redouble her efforts to prove her technical competence.

This factual narrative tends to be interpreted as women being victims of a chauvinistic labor market. I can understand that. However, there is no shortage of smart women out there who, instead of protesting against the reality of the game's rules, use them to their advantage. From the popular girl at school who always had the smart boy chasing her—leading him to do favors to please her—while she was involved with the socially accepted boy. To the woman who seduces to climb the career ladder, to OnlyFans models who make millions off an illusion of exclusivity and intimacy provided to desperate men longing to be noticed by these women viewed as unattainable.

In the case of beautiful men, things are different. Male beauty is viewed as an indicator of dominance, leadership, and competence at any hierarchical level. This chronic ease these men face generates a clear lack of resilience and discipline—running the risk of developing narcissistic traits and emotional immaturity, as they never need to develop intellectual or emotional skills. When they face crises where their beauty is not enough, they tend to collapse.

Over time, I have always prized maintaining a serene and rational posture when evaluating daily situations. Like any individual, I deeply valued making decisions in a measured, rather than impulsive, manner. And as a general rule, I had some success doing so. An exception to the rule occurred in contexts where an attractive woman was in the middle of the decision-making process. In this scenario, decisions that were once measured became impulsive and even chaotic. Today, however, I understand the neurological foundations behind these reactions.

The processing of a highly attractive face activates the mesolimbic reward system, triggering massive dopamine releases. The brain reads beauty as an immediate reward identical to chemical addictions or financial gains, which justifies the loss of rationality and rapid obsession.

Fortunately, there are strategies to combat this state of dopaminergic intoxication when interacting with an attractive woman so as not to lose control and rationality—which is often exploited by them.

First, we must separate beauty from perfection. When our brain detects an attractive person, it inflates their remaining attributes. Learning to separate and evaluate the person outside the context of their physical traits is a way to lower physiological levels and restore lucidity.

When I finished high school, I had to spend a year studying various scientific disciplines required to attend medical school. I was in several classes of distinct ages, everyone younger than me.

On one of the first days of class, I arrived at the college on a motorcycle. As I parked, still with my helmet on, I noticed a girl who was practically standing still watching me; it was a matter of seconds. I didn't need to take off my helmet, but I did so to observe her better. She was extremely attractive. Beautiful, delicate, and seductive. In the weeks that followed, we exchanged a few glances, but no matter how much attention I tried to give her, she paid me no mind. What bothered me was the impulsive association of attributes I assigned to her.

Her name was Teresa. I didn't know Teresa from anywhere. I had only crossed half a dozen glances with her. The problem began with the irrationality that her face and posture triggered in me. Following that, those seconds of exchanging glances made me assume a remote possibility of reciprocal interest. I quickly gathered some rumors and small pieces of information about her—starting with her name, her age, and a few details about her personality. All of this was vague information, and quite possibly devoid of truth. Yet, I found myself attending classes I didn't need just to try to be near her, and even more shockingly, I found myself inferring and analyzing her personality. I perfectly recall the moment I realized something was wrong when I caught myself thinking: Teresa is an attractive woman, clearly intelligent and mature, sweet and sensitive. Finally, I ended this daydream by assuming she had gone through something in her past, which led to this leap in maturity compared to her peers.

When I realized the problem and the fallacies my brain was playing on me, I completely ceased all investment in Teresa. From the outside, what I just described seems totally ridiculous. However, it is the exact process we have been describing in practice. If this dynamic establishes itself—for example, if Teresa and I had actually interacted—it had every reason to be unstable and chaotic, not to say toxic. If the idealization process were reciprocal, the foundation of the relationship would be a fantasy, where each person's expectations were built on the abstract rather than reality. If it were unilateral, the idealized person—in this case, Teresa—would hold far superior control and power over me in the relationship. The capacity for manipulation would be very dangerous; it would be enough for her to merely feed parts of the idealization to give me the sensation of being close to reaching the unattainable, in order to get whatever she wanted from her partner—in this case, me.

When we think about relationships skewed in terms of power, we tend to think of those where one party is entirely dependent on the other financially. More frequent, however, are relationships built on the idealization of the partner, which leads to a power imbalance where egocentric mechanisms will inevitably take control of the dynamic. Idealization tends to stem from projecting desired or lost ideals onto a present emotional object.

Second, we must remove ourselves from the excessive and irrational stimulus in order to lower our physiological reactivity to it. In other words, distancing ourselves—even if for brief moments—from the person making us irrational allows physiological levels to drop. Consequently, when we return to that person, we are calmer and now possess the ability to evaluate them for what they do and are, rather than by the impulsive inferences their beauty leads us to assume.

Finally, rapid obsession frequently happens because your brain reads that physical attribute as an ultra-rare and irreplaceable resource. The panic of missing the opportunity amplifies the addiction. Therefore, understanding that this emotional euphoria is a scarcity fallacy, and that thousands of other people exist with the same level of attraction causing those sensations, allows you to objectively evaluate the person for who she is, and not for what she appears to be.

Knowing the biological impacts that attractive people cause us, why aren't we all with supermodels?

The simplest way to answer this question is the law of supply and demand. There is high demand for people considered highly attractive, but few are effectively available to supply all that demand. It is a matter of natural selection and the fact that the best genes are concentrated in a minority of the population, leading to fierce competition for them. However, if nature only allowed us to reproduce with the ideal partner, we would hardly ever reproduce; hence, the species' survival rate would be low. At the same time, society is structured hierarchically, with the minority at the top possessing the best genes and greater resource abundance, versus a majority with worse genes and fewer resources. The functioning of society from a social standpoint requires all layers of the hierarchical pyramid. Therefore, for this social cohesion to maintain itself, the propagation of, let's say, average genes is ultimately necessary.

Hence, the Matching Hypothesis. Originally formulated by Elaine Walster (Gatfield) in the 1960s, this theory demonstrates that although an individual desires the aesthetically ideal partner, their actual binding behavior is guided by pragmatism: we tend to choose and establish stable relationships with partners who possess a level of physical attraction similar to our own. In this manner, our degree of genetic quality is propagated with partners of the same level, which even serves to maintain hierarchical cohesion across generations.

Three mechanisms interact simultaneously to preserve this system.

The first is the minimization of the cost of rejection. Trying to interact with or retain a partner whose aesthetic value is significantly above ours implies an unsustainable rejection cost for the Ego. Whether consciously or unconsciously aware of our own positioning in the beauty market, we use it to determine the tier of beauty we seek in a partner. Seeking someone with aesthetic equivalence reduces the probability of facing rejection. Matching is, first and foremost, a psychological defense of the ego or our self-esteem.

Second, every relationship implies a certain maintenance cost. Staying with someone substantially more attractive triggers a chronic state of hypervigilance and separation anxiety. The same applies not only to physical factors but also to the partner's social standing. A partner inhabiting the top of the hierarchical chain constantly attracts the attention of rivals and approach attempts. For the less attractive element of the dyad, this translates into an asphyxiating psychological maintenance cost: the constant fear of betrayal and the paranoia of abandonment. Aesthetic matching buys psychic stability; by choosing an equal, the subject minimizes competition and stabilizes the bond. If we are the element with more social status in the couple, we rarely feel fear of losing our partner since they are in an inferior position to ours, meaning we add status to them. If it is the other way around, we are the ones receiving status, and therefore, any subject with a status higher than ours will, in sum, add more to our partner. Power imbalances also generate unbearable relational dynamics.

Finally, a stable relationship requires reciprocity to be sustainable in the long term. When a brutal asymmetry in physical beauty exists, the scales of power become dangerously misaligned. The significantly more attractive partner holds what sociology calls the "Principle of Least Interest"—whoever needs the relationship less has the power to dictate its rules and threaten rupture. For the asymmetrical couple to survive long-term, the aesthetically disadvantaged element is forced to make a cross-capital transaction, injecting other massive resources (such as socio-economic status, power, or security) to balance the visual deficit. Without this compensation, the system collapses due to a lack of equity. A relationship is a negotiation. Various resources are placed on the table, and the balance of what we receive versus what we give will determine the success of the relationship. I will go even further: the partners we have are a very precise reflection of the value we hold at that specific moment.

Another question that normally arises is: for what reason are attractive people successively with unattractive people?

If we easily observe couples with a glaring asymmetry in their physical attraction, doesn't that challenge everything I have been defending? Giving hope to the dream that choosing our partners is a conscious, intentional, and meritocratic process? Unfortunately, no.

The resources we offer in a relationship go beyond physical capital. This primitive resource mirroring genetic quality has now been expanded with the introduction of consciousness into the decision-making process. Today we understand that a partner, no matter how attractive, lacks the ability to give us security, for instance, will not be able to give us a lasting relationship. Therefore, we operate within a "Resource Compensation Model," an exchange of capitals. The market operates through cross-capital transactions. The less attractive partner compensates for their physical disadvantage by injecting other high-value resources into the relational contract, such as socio-economic status, power, security, or exceptional intellect. It is a contract of power equivalence using different currencies (Beauty for Resources/Status).

Lastly, and paradoxically compared to what was stated before, being with someone of equal aesthetic value demands an asphyxiating psychological maintenance cost (hypervigilance, risk of betrayal), as we have been discussing. However, by choosing an aesthetically inferior partner, the beautiful individual acquires a position of dominance and security. The less attractive partner, aware of their positive asymmetry, offers greater submission, emotional investment, and fidelity to retain a spouse who is "out of their league." Beauty abdicates the other's aesthetics to buy psychic peace and absolute control over the bond.

How do physical attraction and beauty operate in friendships?

It is not the first, and certainly won't be the last time I mention that the idea of friendships being based on blind altruism is a fallacy. What surprises some people is the fact that, even in friendships, the choice of a friend began with the attraction felt toward them.

In friendships between men and women, female beauty acts as a magnet for male resources and cooperation, even if there is no sexual consummation whatsoever. Because the male brain responds to physical attraction through the mesolimbic reward system, a man tends to be significantly more altruistic, protective, and available for a female friend he considers attractive. The friend's beauty functions as a disguised biological reinforcement. The man invests time, chivalry, and protection (resources) because static proximity to this woman elevates his own social status in front of other men and feeds his unconscious fantasy of future access. The woman, in turn, consumes this validation and support. It is an implicit contract where her beauty buys his loyalty and effort.

I have never had many friendships over the years, let alone several simultaneously. The friendship, if we can call it that, which has lasted the longest began roughly in 2017. The closest proximity occurred from 2019 onward, especially from 2021 onward. What bothers me about this friendship is the fact that I am fully aware I would not tolerate half the headaches I've had with her if she weren't an attractive woman. And do not misunderstand me; I nurture a deep feeling of, let's categorize it as, adoration for her. And at no point does her beauty cross my mind and condition my behavior toward her from a conscious standpoint. However, I have found myself in situations with other people, of another sex, or even women who didn't possess half her level of beauty, where I didn't tolerate half as much.

Another aspect is the inherent vanity in sharing social contexts while being with her compared to other, let's say, less attractive people. I find myself more confident when standing next to her than with other women less attractive than her. This idea seems outrageous, yet it has a clear biological backing—social status. A higher perception of social status by third parties leads them to treat us according to that status. A perception of higher status by ourselves regarding ourselves, added to the social treatment of that same higher status by third parties, causes us a greater degree of confidence which, in turn, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We all like to be well-regarded and respected by society, and we live in a society where female beauty carries a very heavy symbolic value. Consequently, men like to be seen with beautiful women, which generates respect and competition, and women like to be seen as beautiful, which only increases their self-esteem and status.

In friendships between individuals of the same sex, especially among women, beauty introduces a tension between cooperation and rivalry. Common-looking people frequently seek the friendship of highly attractive individuals to benefit from their social reflection. Being in the same group as a beautiful person guarantees access to parties, better tables, greater general attention, and an indirect elevation of status (the so-called Radiating Effect of Attractiveness). The beautiful friend is used as a social passport.

The reverse of the coin is the destructive asymmetry. When the difference in beauty is stark, the less attractive friend is relegated to invisibility in the dating market (the "sidekick" effect). This activates unconscious rituals of envy and resentment. The friend's beauty becomes a direct threat to the individual's self-esteem. In evolutionary terms, the beautiful friend "steals" the glances and potential partners in the vicinity, leading to dynamics of exclusion, depreciating social comments, and subtle sabotage to level the playing field.

There is that cliché of the group of female friends revolving around the most popular one. The most popular tends to be the most attractive. For this woman, surrounding herself with less attractive and popular women brings her security, control, and power. The less attractive friends raise their status by no longer being just less attractive women next to an attractive woman, but rather part of her social entourage. It is an exchange where everyone wins. The same happens among men, where the most popular and attractive man finds himself surrounded by other less popular and attractive men. It is the exact same dynamic between sexes in this regard. The lowest status elements of the group tend to follow the steps of the most competent and popular one, which increases their value as individuals even outside the group.

Does beauty determine love?

The partner's beauty does not determine the love we feel for them. The impulse to love a certain partner stems from their beauty and attraction, but it is the interaction with them that will sustain or fail to sustain that love. Several factors operate to sustain love, both in social and chemical terms, such as oxytocin.

Our character enters the field after the impulsive choice of the partner. Attachment begins to develop from attraction, this being a much more rational and conscious process—carrying more fairness and meritocracy. I do not believe in an absolute biological determinism—only that we must be aware of the biological facts.

The acceptance of facts, and the disengagement from fantasy.

It has become clear that physical attraction and beauty have a chronic impact on our choice of partners. Denying this fact only aims to appease the naked, raw truth—life is not beautiful, fair, or much less, virtuous. We are animals, and we act like animals. What distinguishes us from other animals is our capacity to suppress and channel the energy of our primitive impulses into rational choices. We have the capacity to decide, and not just react.

No decisions are made without total acceptance of the facts we cannot alter regarding our essence. Physical attraction opens the door to the relationship, but it is character that keeps it open over time. Understanding how our brain is conditioned to evaluate our potential partners effectively allows us to take the reins in this selection process. Otherwise, we will merely fall into chaotic, dysfunctional, and impulsive relational dynamics. Who we love is an impulse; how we love can or cannot be a choice. If a relationship's longevity depends on the character of both parties, only rationality—that is, efficient emotional management—will sustain the relationship.

Finally, by understanding the impact our beauty has on how others see us and interact with us, instead of feeling resentful about the rules of the game, we can use them to our advantage. Starting by dressing well, taking care of our health and physical appearance. Thus, instead of protesting the unfairness of the facts, we take advantage of the facts to reap their benefits.

Beauty is not everything. There are countless factors we can work on and improve to achieve the social status we desire. This does not mean living for others; it simply means living with others. If we want certain benefits in life, we have to add value to society in order to obtain them. We no longer operate on the basis of the strongest, but rather on the basis of the highest status.

Loving stops being something impulsive and robotized; instead, it becomes one more beautiful phenomenon of our human nature. Now that we are conscious of how the process works, we can finally participate in love, rather than being victims of it.

Scientific Sources:

• Buss, D. M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. (Proven cross-culturally across 37 distinct societies that men consistently value physical attraction and youth more than women do, as direct biological indicators of reproductive value).

• Singh, D. (1993). Adaptive significance of female physical attractiveness: Role of waist-to-hip ratio. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (Demonstrates how the waist-to-hip ratio acts as a universal biological trigger for fertility).

• Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (Classic study that isolated the cognitive bias of associating aesthetics with socially desirable personality traits).

• Snyder, M., Tanke, E. D., & Berscheid, E. (1977). Social perception and interpersonal behavior: On the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (Proved that people treated as though they are beautiful begin to act in a significantly more confident and socially competent manner).

• Heilman, M. E., & Saruwatari, L. R. (1979). When beauty is beastly: The effects of appearance and sex on evaluations of job applicants for managerial and nonmanagerial jobs. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance. (Isolated the phenomenon of how physical attraction sabotages women in applications for managerial and leadership roles).

• Judge, T. A., Hurst, C., & Simon, L. S. (2009). Does it pay to be smart, attractive, or confident (or all three)? Relationships among general mental ability, physical attractiveness, core self-evaluations, and income. Journal of Applied Psychology. (Demonstrated that handsome men capitalize on their image continuously and linearly throughout their entire careers, while women face barriers based on constant suspicion of their actual competence).

• Agthe, M., Spörrle, M., & Maner, J. K. (2011). Does attractiveness always help? Positive and negative effects of attractiveness on social decision making. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. (Proved the unconscious tendency to negatively discriminate against highly attractive candidates of the same sex due to intra-sexual competition).

• Aharon, I., et al. (2001). Beautiful faces stretch the brain's reward system. Neuron. (Functional magnetic resonance imaging proving that attractive faces activate the brain's dopaminergic reward circuits).

• Feingold, A. (1988). Matching for physical attractiveness in romantic partners: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin. (Statistical and empirical confirmation of physical attraction equivalence between partners in stable real-life relationships).

• Elder, G. H. (1969). Appearance and education in marriage choice. American Sociological Review. (Established that aesthetic capital is a tradable asset capable of enabling social mobility and status acquisition within the matrimonial market).

• Buss, D. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (1997). From vigilance to violence: Mate retention tactics in humans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (Evidenced that individuals with lower physical attractiveness invest disproportionately in submission and material resources to ensure the retention of beautiful partners).

• McNulty, J. K., Neff, L. A., & Karney, B. R. (2008). Beyond initial attraction: Physical attractiveness in newlywed marriages. Journal of Family Psychology. (Confirmed that marital stability is enhanced when the woman is more attractive, given that the husband compensates for his visual deficit with greater support and deference).

• Bleske-Rechek, A., et al. (2012). Benefit or burden? Attraction in cross-sex friendship. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. (This study isolated that men experience significantly more attraction to their female friends than vice versa, and that the friend's level of beauty directly dictates the level of investment and aid the man is willing to offer in the friendship).

• Agthe, M., et al. (2010). Don't hate me because I'm beautiful: Anti-attractiveness bias in organizational evaluation. Social Psychological and Personality Science. (Demonstrates how physical attraction generates defensive reactions and negative evaluations from individuals of the same sex who feel threatened within their own arena of competition).

• Snyder, M., et al. (1977). Social perception and interpersonal behavior. (Grounds the Radiating Effect: being associated with someone attractive positively alters how third parties evaluate your own worth).