Why do we like the people we like?

This is not the first time I am writing an article that is in some way about love. Last year, I wrote an article titled The Uselessness of the heart, that had a very sceptical view on love and the part the heart played in it. There are a few established ideas about ‘love’ and everything in between. We like ‘love’, we like loving people and the way it makes us feel. Many people have had some experience with the joy that fills the heart when we see someone we like. In the same way, going through heartbreak has a similar intense impact on the body. It hurts, a lot. I saw a tweet recently describing feeling extremely cold as a result of heartbreak and it felt relatable. The language we have been equipped with to describe love plays into just how magical it tends to feel to us. We say things like ‘falling deeply in love’ and ‘going through heartbreak.’ Metaphors and similes that paint love as this somewhat divine thing.

Science has been able to find ways to explain why our bodies react the way they do in relation to these emotions. It has pointed out what causes us to feel this way and how un-unique the feelings we attach to love are. In my last article, my aim was to steal away from the magic we associate with love. To explain that we do not fall in anything and the heart has very little to do with the concept. Most of it happens in your brain. I don’t know why this was so important to me back then. No one is going to touch their head when saying they love you. They will always touch their chest because that is where they feel it. In that article, I also talked specifically about the parts of the brain involved in love and said that love made us act stupidly. It made us less reasonable and was addictive. Things that are not entirely wrong but definitely don’t give ‘love’ a good rep.

The title of this article is something I and a friend have discussed at length; although have never really been able to answer. In the past, I have attempted to do research around it. I have googled the question, read tirelessly on the matter and watched countless videos. There are some pretty interesting concepts. A while back I stumbled onto the formula for love (mathematical, not chemical.) An idea shared by Hannah Fry who has a Ted talk (and book) titled the mathematics of love. She explored the formula that postulated when a person was likely to find true love, taking into consideration when you start dating, when you hope to settle down and how many people you are likely to date. The summary of it is that if you start dating at 15, want to settle down by 30 and assume you are likely to date 100 men in that time, then reject the first 37 men as marriage potential and settle down with the first man that is better than everyone you have already dated. There is another interesting mathematical study done by a guy in the UK named Peter Backus. He wrote a paper titled ‘Why I don’t have a girlfriend’ and in it explored how many women in the UK were actually compatible with him. After eliminating the people based on age, shared interest, being attracted to and being found attractive by, he ended up with ‘26.’

Out of over 30 million women, he was really only compatible with 26.

There are a few logical ways to attempt to look at love. I have read not one, two or even three articles where someone shares the idea of using a spreadsheet to find their potential soulmate. I have a friend who developed a model for calculating how eligible a partner was. It took into consideration what was most important to her.

The thing about the logic people attempt to ascribe to the phenomenon of love is that it never actually answers the question. Someone scoring a very high point on your spreadsheet does not automatically make you like them and some times you like someone that’s really just a bad fit.

I had thought that when I finally wrote this article, I would have a strong argument that presented an answer to the question. That I would be able to say that we like the people we like because of this reason or that reason.

We like them because they make us feel a certain way or because they had certain values that we admired. Usually, these things are included but sometimes we like people that do not make us feel good. And people whose qualities we do not admire. What then is the explanation for that?

I also considered that a good answer would be that the people we like is influenced by the way we were raised or things that had happened to us in our lives. Again a good argument but not infallible.

At the end of the day, here is what I think about the question ‘why do we like who we like?’

My answer is not backed by logic or reason and you are very much likely to disagree with it, but in my experiences here’s how I feel about liking people.

I haven’t liked many people in my lifetime. If I am being honest, maybe a total of three people. Only one of whom I ended up being involved romantically with. All of whom were and still are very good friends of mine. I have always imagined that the person I marry will be someone with whom I was already good friends. Because most of my friends aren’t exactly marriage candidates to me right now, I assume I have not yet found her. For most of my life, I have been in search of ‘the one’.

I have some ideas about how my eventual soulmate will make me feel. The things that we will have in common and will do together. I even have thought of why I would like her; because of her quirkiness and the way she would do certain things. We would have shared interests in books and adventure. We would both like walks and long hugs.

But why have I liked people in the past? It has not been because of these things, the things usually came after the fact. And I did not like people simply because of the way they made me feel. I have liked them because...

I have been giving critical thought to why we believe in what we believe. Do people believe in God because of proof of ‘their*’ existence? They claim yes. People who do not believe in God claim the same. People who believe in different versions of God believe in different proofs. The question of what you believe in the end is a matter of choice even though it does not feel like it to many people. People don’t think that they can simply stop believing in God same way people going through heartbreak don’t believe they can just stop caring. I am not trying to liken love with belief but I wanted to make a point about choice.

I think we choose to like the people we like. I don’t know the reason we choose the people that we choose. I want to believe there is a little magic to it.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end.

Their*: I did not want to use any gendered pronoun

Plug

You should check out the youtube channel of my friend Ojuolape who makes video essays about her introspection.

Support

Always looking to get support from you guys. The easiest way to do that will be to share with one friend who you think might enjoy (or benefit) from reading this. You can take it a step further and share on all your social media pages. For a grand gesture, you can support by becoming a patron on my Patreon. Patrons help me make podcast episodes.