Sex is a form of communication. You could strip away everything and compare it to anything from holding hands to instant messaging but that would not be fun, and who wants to strip away the stuff that makes sex fun? Not me. The point I'm trying rush into is that with sex, like other forms of communication you have to decide who to communicate with, for how long, and what you want to walk away from the communication with. This is where attraction come into it - and why this attraction theory graph is so interesting:



My friend Zadi sent that out to friends the other day and most of us laughed and that was that. I thought it was amusing and showed it to a few other people and everyone seemed to have their own take on it. Some people commented how dead on accurate it was, others suggested it was bullshit right away. One friend of mine, who is male, instantly wrote it off until it was suggested that maybe it was made by a girl, which changed his perspective on it right away. Of course the science of who we are attracted to isn't so simple, but this is an interesting spark of an even more interesting larger discussion. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that the folks here on SG might have some good insight and could help mold it into something better.

After showing the graph in it's current form to a handful of people I had a good bit of starter feedback. The biggest issue I heard from people right away was the fuck buddies part. First of all, very few people actually have fuck buddies. And they certainly aren't in the same proportion to people they consider "just friends." I understand where that came from - opposite ends of a spectrum. People you want to talk to and people you want to have sex with. The thing is those two are not mutually exclusive, and someone you want to have sex with but don't want to talk to doesn't instantly become a fuck buddy. So clearly that's a misclassification to look at. I also heard that there wasn't enough awkwardness and it wasn't enough places.

It's also worth looking at what point in a relationship this graph is trying to speculate on. I know I have friends that I'm physically and mentally attracted to, which would plant them firmly in the "dating zone" yet I'd never date them. I also know people who might have fit in one area when I first met them, but the more I got to know them them moved to another, so this has to look at a small snapshot of time, rather than the span of a relationship. I'd say first 24-48 hours of meeting someone perhaps.

Taking these comments into account, I whiped up a quick revision, which looks something like this:



I changed fuck buddies to one night stands, because I know lots of people who have had one night stands, and very few who actually have fuck buddies. Also a one night stand seems like a more plausible outcome of the "want to have sex with but don't want to talk to" problem. And I added a ton more awkwardness because, um, you know. Yeah.

Even with those changes, it still seems like it's not quite there. Maybe missing something, maybe trying to fit too much in there. It makes you think, but doesn't make you agree. I'm hoping this is where you can help. What is there that shouldn't be. What's missing. What's in the wrong proportion. What isn't lining up. The more feedback I get the better. If we can put together something that makes more sense I'll release it on the web and credit it back to everyone here. What do you think?