I posted a collage of photographs on my Facebook wall.  I received the usual comments and likes for which I was thankful.  I actually posted the pictures as a coping mechanism: I thought that in case my house got flooded and I lost the hard copies of those pictures, I would at least have copies of those photographs on Facebook.  I also posted them because I learned how to use the free photo editing website, Pizap.com. The photos were of hubby and me during the first few years of our marriage.

I got one comment from a former student of mine which boggled me.  He said that my photos disproved most people’s idea that marriage should be based not only on love but also on physical attraction.

At first I was confused: I couldn’t understand what the comment meant. Did he mean that my photos showed that my marriage is based only on love and not physical attraction?  Did he mean that my husband and I were not physically attracted to each other?  Or did he mean that my husband and I married out of pure love without any physical attraction whatsoever?

I laughed it off.  It’s my fault.  If I didn’t want people to comment on those photos, I shouldn’t have put them up on my wall, right?  But I still puzzled and puzzled about the comment until my puzzler was sore.  What was it about the comment that bugged me so much?

This afternoon, I finally got it.  What bugged me about the comment were the presumptions behind the comment.  My student made two very shaky presumptions: first, he presumed that when two people marry for love, there must not be much physical attraction. He also presumed that physical attraction is limited to how a person looked.

First, let me say that I am one person who does not believe in judging people by the way they look.  I did not choose to love people who have become my friends on the basis of how they look.  I don’t do this out of virtue or because I want to be treated similarly.  I try to judge a person’s character more than a person’s looks because looks are fleeting but character is more or less permanent.

Second, when you marry a person, the marriage bond is not one single cord.  It is a cord made up of smaller fibers.  The more fibers there are that make up the marriage bond, the stronger it is.  The strongest fiber that makes up the bond in marriage is love, but love is not a purely metaphysical or emotional thing.  It has a practical side: love is kindness and respect flowing out in choices that put the beloved’s welfare before one’s own personal interest.

Third, one of the fibers that make up marital love is physical attraction.  God made humans not only spiritual beings who have emotions, intellect and a will.  God also made humans physical beings who have physical needs.  One of these needs is sex.  Sexual interest is closely related with physical attraction.  This is a biological fact. Physical attraction is more complex than just looks alone.

Fourth, most people automatically link physical attraction with a person’s looks.  This is what rubs me so wrong. Science has proven that humans have five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch.  Physical attraction may first be triggered by a person’s looks.  But to limit one’s physical attraction on mere sight alone makes for a very limited physical attraction. Physical attraction is not limited to looks at all. This fourth point is what I wish to dwell on in this blog.

I watched a documentary on the National Geographic Channel where they filmed a scientific experiment of single women who agreed to go out with blind dates.  Before they met their blind dates, the women were given T-shirts which were worn overnight by the males they were supposed to meet.  The women were asked to smell the T-shirts and rate it for attractiveness.  They were then shown pictures of men and they were also asked to rate the men’s faces for attractiveness.  The men in the study were also given T-shirts worn by the women to smell and rate for attractiveness.  They were also given pictures of the women to rate for attractiveness. When the men and the women met up, the men and the women gravitated toward those whose shirts they rated as very attractive.  The people whose smell they found attractive did not correspond to the facial features they rated as attractive.

What does this study tell us?  Smell makes up for physical attraction as much as looks. The way a person smells helps us decide if this person maintains good hygiene.  The way a person smell helps us decide if the person cares about himself or if he cares too much about himself.  For instance, a man who wears a light cologne may give the impression that he cares about the way he smells (he doesn’t want to offend others who might get close to him on the LRT or at the office) but a man who bathes himself in cologne might be a little too vain and materialistic.  He may also be masking something like body odor or bad breath. The way a person smells may put you at ease and it may also make you nervous. And this is only the sense of smell.

I used to ask my mother what she liked about my Dad.  I ask this especially when I see their wedding pictures and my Dad looked too skinny and too bony.  My Dad was so poor he only had three shirts (all of them white) and he had only two pairs of pants (one blue, one brown). My mother said my Dad had a nice smile, he looked fresh, like he had just gotten out of the shower and he smelled clean. I think this is what women want most in a man they are with: a good clean well-bathed, well-scrubbed fresh look and smell.

There is also the sense of touch.  When a person shakes your hand, you feel the smoothness or roughness of the skin on his palm. This gives you an idea if the person does manual labor or not. This gives the woman an idea if the man is masipag and is willing to provide for her.  If his hands are clammy, you can tell that he’s nervous or he’s pasmado. If his skin is dry, then he may not be taking care of himself or he may be sick.  If his skin is oily, then he may not be bathing well enough.  Touch also accounts for physical attraction.

There is also the sense of hearing.  A person’s speaking or singing voice can tell you things about a person.  You can tell if the person is confident, if he is nervous, if he is unsure of himself or if he is uncomfortable. The way a person uses language is also an indication of his education, where he is from or what social milieu he frequents.  If your ears are extra sharp, you can tell what province a person comes from when he speaks. This also accounts for physical attraction.

I am not angry with that comment from my student.  I am not confused about it anymore.  I do not feel insulted about it either. It simply occurred to me that my student was very young and he is very inexperienced in physical attraction.  He thinks that looks are all that make up physical attraction.  I cannot blame him.  It is a popular misconception that looks are what make up for physical attraction. I’m sorry to disappoint you, hjo, pero hindi lang ang mga guapo ang physically attractive.  Kasi kung ganoon, mga guapo lang ang may girlfriend at may asawa.  Tumingin ka sa paligid mo, maraming mga pangit na may asawa at mahal na mahal sila ng mga asawa nila.  Marami ding mga magagandang babae na nag-asawa ng pangit. There is truly no accounting for taste or for physical attraction.

Love, my dear student, is not only for the young, the beautiful, the healthy or the strong.  It is for ordinary people, too.  There are more plain looking people inhabiting this planet and they manage to find love and keep that love.  On the other hand, I know so many truly physically beautiful people who cannot find love or keep the love they have found.  On the whole, most of us (beautiful or not) have to work hard to find love and to keep it.

It’s not the look of a person that makes him attractive, it is his total person: looks are just one small part that make up a person’s attractiveness. And by the way, married love cannot survive without physical attraction.  A friend of mine once told me that he married his spouse because there was “fire” between them.  I doubt if the fire was kindled by mere looks alone.

Good looks may get your foot in the door, but there must be more to a person than pure looks alone for him to keep the interest going, to get him to stay inside the door, so to speak.  To have above average looks is a blessing but it can also hamper the quest for love.  I know of people with beautiful faces who are so insecure that men relate to them only because they are pretty.  They are afraid that once they loose they looks, they will no longer keep the love or the attention showered on them.  They can never be sure if the person professing love for them truly loves them or just loves their looks.

Bottom line: be happy if you have the looks, but you don’t have to sit up crying at night because you don’t have the looks.  More often than not, it is not only the face that determines your attractiveness.  It is the way you wear that face that determines how attractive you are as a person.

What does the Bible say, after all? I Peter 3:2-4 says that people around you “behold your chaste conversation,” That is to say, people look at how you live your life.  And so, Peter cautions his flock not to dwell too much on making looks their priority. He said, “Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”

My best friend said that after he had made a prayerful mental assessment of God’s will, whether he ought to marry the woman he loved, the last thought that sealed his resolve was this: he imagined his beloved as she would be when she had just awakened in the morning (can you imagine her tousled hair, her morning breath and morning glory?).  He said he reminded himself that she would be the person who would first greet him when he opened his eyes in the morning until the day he died if he married her.  He found himself smiling at the thought of her in the morning. It was that thought that finally convinced him that he ought not waste anymore time and marry her. If this is not physical attraction, then I really don’t know what physical attraction is….