Are You Alluring?

She remains forever a mystery…. that is exactly how I like it.

Honestly, I hadn’t given this much thought until recently. It wasn’t until I was listening to a podcast on the whys of who we choose to fall in love and why we continue to stay in love that this topic was brought to my full attention. Essentially the jest of the podcast was what traits are needed to stay in love with your partner long term and why do we fall in love with them in the first place? One segment was dedicated solely to this idea of wanting our partner to be alluring, to be a bit of a mystery to us…always. The idea behind this is initially if we find someone alluring we will want to get to know them better, we will be drawn to their mystery. Is this perhaps why when someone is hard to get there stock instantly goes up. By playing hard to get are they increasing their allure meter? Then what happens after we fall in love with our alluring new friend? If our partners continue to be alluring to us, even just slightly this will help us remain curious and engaged. The curiosity of wanting to know our partners more yet knowing that we never will (obviously this has to be in a healthy balance where it does not put intimacy at jeopardy) is what can help contribute to the health of a long term relationship. I guess sort of like a hook, bait and a fish only the fish never catches the bait, and the fisherman never catches the fish but both remain in the water happily hungry.

So then this had me thinking, who in my life do I consider to be alluring? I was not thinking about men in particular, I was thinking who in general do I find alluring and why? I thought of my one girlfriend whom I have known since we were pre braces and hormones. She has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Why? I think its because I consider her to be similar to me and one of my closest and dearest friends, yet there is so much about her that remains untouchable to me. Ultimately her interests span further than my grasp. She has passions and deep meaningful relationships that I will never be a part of, nor do I want to be a part of them. Because she remains independent from me yet attached to my soul she has taken on this beautiful place of being alluring to me. She does not expect me to understand or to participate or even to ask about these other areas of her life because she has cultivated them from a place of pure enjoyment and passion and they are 100% confidently hers. She will share if I do dare to ask, to break the veil of mystery but if I am honest here I don’t want to know that much - I would rather keep things as they are. When we are together it is fully our shared experience and story. We fall blissfully into the old routines of talking and laughing, the word volley that we do so well and the inevitable jokes that we have been layering since forever continue to be built upon. The do you remember whens and I can’t believe we used to wear that flows with an ease and a tenderness that comes through years of soul friendship. Yet when she is away from me living in her life of alternate passions, other deep and meaningful relationships that I know only the periphery of, moving about her day to day life in only a way that can be imagined to me, it is as if the closeness I know we have gets put in a closet to be pulled out for another time and that feels great .

I am not sure what it would look like if I tried to consume her more. To get inside her worlds that I am not a part of? Perhaps it would just make us closer, maybe I would have a deeper more intimate connection with her because I would know more of her sides, her edges, her shadows and light? Or, perhaps it would dull us?

I think I like my loved ones a little out of reach. I like them to have their own lives, their own interests, their own passions, their own relationships - that I have nothing to do with. I like the allure of knowing I do not know everything about those that I want to know everything about.