I went golfing a few weeks ago with my dad, his best friend, and a friend of his. We went to a course owned by another mutual friend. As we were about to tee off of the first tee, this very attractive 20-ish girl comes and sits down near the tee. The friend who was a friend of my dad’s best friend (whew, you got that?) starts chatting with this girl in a quasi-creepy flirty way. Now he’s not a bad guy, and I certainly don’t think he was trying to do that, nor do I think he had bad intentions. I found out later that she was the neice of the owner of the golf course, and the owner himself actually accompanied us to lunch.

Now the reason I explain all that boring crap above is because of a conversation we had afterward for lunch. The quasi-creepy flirty guy says to the guy who owns the golf course “Your neice seems real sweet.” Now, when we were standing at the first tee, the neice never said a word. Or if she did, it was one of those “…heh, yeah I guess so……yeah…school’s fun…” The classic trying-to-do-small-talk-with-the-creepy-guy-without-being-mean thing. So my question is, how is that sweet? I’m suggesting he should have just said “Your neice is hot.” However, this got me thinking along the lines of attraction and perception (as if I don’t think about that enough), and I’m wondering how often people assume that someone is sweet, or nice, or smart, simply because they’re attractive. When I think about it, there have been several times where I’ve met a woman that I find very attractive, and after hanging out with her a couple times I’ll say “She’s REALLY cool.” As if she didn’t really need to be cool because she’s attractive, so when she turns out to be cool, it’s extra good.

I guess maybe I’m getting to the point now where looks are starting to mean less and less to me. Initial attraction and overall attraction is important, don’t get me wrong (to quote Karl, “No one is ever going to say, ‘Well, she’s not very attractive, but we communicate well.'”). But the more and more I learn about attraction and love and whatnot the more and more I realize that attraction is so much more than skin deep, and romantic love (and sex) can only do so much.

Now some of you may have learned this a long time ago, but I’m a slow learner. And it never fails me how many people (men especially that I’ve noticed) have not learned this yet. Whenever I hear someone say something like “She seems really sweet,” when she hasn’t said a word, I kind of laugh to myself that they don’t get it, but then I look around and no one is laughing with me and I wonder “Am I the only one who notices this?”