Hard Feelings / Are We Loveless

Have you ever been dancing on a night out, and suddenly you lock eyes with that one person you swear might be the most attractive person you have ever seen? They might not even be the most conventionally attractive person. Still, something about them has you hooked, almost like you could go over to them and immediately connect, and they would understand you like they had known you forever. So, you turn to your friend to ask them what they think, and they just hit you with, “I don’t know, bro, as long as you’re happy...”. But you could swear that they’re perfect in every way. Well, psychology might have the answer for exactly why you feel this strong attraction to the stranger across the room.

Being in a social environment such as a club, where people are constantly moving around and dancing to varying degrees of success, can cause people to appear to seem so much more alluring than if you were to see them walking down the street. This is because the physical activity in the club releases hormones known as endorphins into the body, which interact with specific receptors in the brain that both reduce the sensation of pain and trigger a sense of euphoria. This makes the brain much more vulnerable to making impulsive, emotional decisions, especially in a romantic sense. Now add some alcohol to the mix, and there is a high chance you’ll end up planning a future with a stranger.

Another reason why you might not be able to get that one person out of your head is because of natural pheromone secretion. Everyone releases pheromones (hormones secreted externally) to varying degrees; the type differs according to a person’s biological sex. For example, androstenol, a male pheromone primarily secreted in sweat, can increase a biological male’s sexual appeal toward women. Only about 10 percent of the male population secrete this specific pheromone, and this tiny proportion of people is usually regarded as the most sexually attractive among males. Interestingly, pheromones are also secreted in saliva, and your body can process this information whilst you are kissing someone, which is why some hook-ups feel better than others. Meaning that maybe the fluffy, brown-haired boy in the club is just blessed with increased levels of masculine pheromones and is not your future husband. This attraction is amplified by the brain’s subconscious tendency to buy into classic romantic fantasies, as, from an evolutionary perspective, it increases the likelihood of passing on your genes.

I’m sorry for bringing parents into your sex life, but it turns out that they play a significant role in your sexual attraction to others. This is primarily why some people have particular ‘types,’ both physically and personality-wise. For most people, parents are their earliest role models of what to expect from a partner. You are more likely to rate people who share similar physical attributes or personality traits as your parents to be more attractive. It might just be that the stranger you’re eyeing across the dance floor has activated a small part of your subconscious that pertains to the example of an ideal partner imprinted on you by your parents. If Freud were alive today, I swear he would be having a field day.

This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the science of attraction. It’s worth noting that most research studies around attraction have been focused on heterosexual individuals, and the science around LGBTQI+ identifying individuals is still emerging. But for now, maybe the most useful advice you could hear is maybe stop falling in love with every cute person you have a semi-decent conversation with in a club ;).

Hey Stranger Thank you for coming On such short notice All the way in the dark To my quiet suburban castle

Come in please Let me get you a drink We should bide our time wisely Have a seat and talk to me About your travels and hopes and what you study

Oh, you go to ANU? So do I I know I’m not getting a job with my English degree Don’t laugh too hard Or you won’t get your treat

Would you like to see my bedroom? It’s just down the hall Sorry the heater doesn’t quite reach in there And that the posters are peeling off my walls Sorry my little string lights are so dim

Don’t mind my housemates They’re sweet and quiet They won’t hear a thing You and I are here alone Let’s pretend we know each other

Was it good for me? Sure Did I finish? Well … Aw, you feel bad? That’s nice But not quite bad enough

You’re putting your clothes on Facing away from me No eye contact now So Goodbye Stranger The deed is done And I hope to never see you again

“In total [Connell] had only had sex a small number of times… He’d had to hear his actions repeated back to him later in the locker room: his errors, and, so much worse, his excruciating attempts at tenderness, performed in gigantic pantomime.” - Normal People, Sally Rooney

1: Hard Feelings How do young people conceptualise the hard feelings of love? Pop culture has instilled sky-high expectations of romance and intimacy. This can often be hard to reconcile with the more disconnected emphasis on physicality and sexuality in widely-used technologies such as dating apps. The jarring differences between our hopes for love and the reality of our interactions with the people we desire may contribute to a growing view of love more as a fear than a promise. We fear it won’t be how we romanticised and close ourselves off to intimacy instead of splaying our emotional guts to failure. This ‘sweep it under the rug’ mentality presents itself in many forms, but in particular, through a hesitancy to express genuine love for others in our youth.

i. 30 is the New 20 For most of us, love in our late teens and twenties is no longer a victory march to collect marriage, a house and babies. Generally, we have an extra ten years our grandparents never had before we begin the ‘settled’ chapter of romantic life. That is, if we choose it at all. For some, this decade is simply killing time, enjoying the freedom of sleeping around and relationships that ‘don’t count’. We keep our lovers at arm’s length because real love supposedly means commitment, and we’re not emotionally prepared to commit to this linear timestamp.

For others, the rise of new age belief systems has redirected the focus of our love from long-term partners onto ourselves. Our investment (I use this word in the capitalist sense because ‘self-help’ has become a heavily commercialised industry, disproportionately targeted towards women) in our own self-worth is seen as one of the most noble things a woman can do. Seemingly at odds with this is the almost predestined belief that God/the universe is conspiring to our highest evolution. We reassure ourselves with the Law of Attraction; that everything, including romantic love, will effortlessly find a way into your life at the ‘right time’ if we stop forcing it.

ii. BuzzFeed Feminism Second-wave feminists of the Sexual Revolution seismically changed our understanding of where happiness for women is derived from. While the traditional messaging for Western women has been that fulfilment is rooted in the family unit, the rhetoric that we are responsible for the self-respect and compassion necessary to make us happy is now mainstream.

However, this can result in equating female empowerment with hookup culture, and immersion in loveless relationships as an act of self-respect. There’s danger in associating sexual prowess with empowerment, particularly for heterosexual women when personal value comes from performing as sexual objects for men. We act as though sex is not an emotional experience; we sever ties from our emotions in the name of sexual empowerment. We feel like we shouldn’t get attached to people when our relationships with them are casual or temporary.

Interlude: “What is this tape?” Lorde’s six-minute track, Hard Feelings/Loveless from the album Melodrama epitomises the way we disvalue emotional intimacy, particularly in our youth. The first half navigates the death of a relationship and the foundation of intimacy, trust, and love it built. After Paul Simon asks “What is this tape?” the second section is almost comical, with a recklessness that trivialises the nostalgia and emotion that the singer has just poured out of her chest. The shift from “I” to “we” and references to a “loveless generation” portrays how, amongst her peers, the singer won’t be perceived as having lost something. So adopts this destructive outward persona in the internal depths of heartache.