Liked For Being You
What do people want to be liked for? You are advised to tell a pretty woman she is smart and a smart woman she is pretty. But people don’t seem that happy with being liked for features like wealth, fame, beauty, strength, talent, smarts, or charisma. People do seem to prefer being liked for more stable features that they are less likely lose with time. But they still often aren’t that happy with being liked for easily visible and hence “shallow” features, relative to “deep” features that take time and attention to discover. And they sometimes say “I want to be liked just for me, not for my features.”
I’ve often puzzled over what people could mean by this; surely everything you could like about someone is a feature of some sort. And why does a feature being harder to see make it better? But I recently realized the answer is simple and even obvious: we want people to become attached to us. Attachment is a well known psychological process wherein people become bonded to particular others:
Bowlby referred to attachment bonds as a specific type of “affectional” bond. … He established five criteria for affectional bonds between individuals, and a sixth criterion for attachment bonds:
An affectional bond is persistent, not transitory.
An affectional bond involves a particular person who is not interchangeable with anyone else.
An affectional bond involves a relationship that is emotionally significant.
The individual wishes to maintain proximity or contact with the person with whom he or she has an affectional tie.
The individual feels sadness or distress at involuntary separation from the person.
An attachment bond has an additional criterion: the person seeks security and comfort in the relationship. (more)
Other people don’t start out with a deep preference for the exact combination of features that we embody. But if they like our shallow features they may expose themselves to us enough to see deeper features, and in the process become attached to our particular combination of all features. And it is that attachment that we really want when we say we want to be liked “for being me.”
"given how little we can usually do to make ourselves look better" Well, that's actually pretty subjective. What might be a little difference to one person could be a major improvement in another's eyes. For instance, if I shave my legs, I open up my dating opporuntities by probably something like 95% where I live. But I don't really like shaving my legs. It's partly the actual shaving and itchiness of stuble and all that fun stuff, but more the rule that I have to.
To me at least, I've always thought that the "like me for me" thing is more about "warts and all". Not so much about the "deeper", slower to reveal (positive) features, but about the negative features (which are inevitably more evident the more one gets to know a person and their other "deeper" positive features).
I could quite easily change quite a few things about my appearance and presentation which would increase the number of people who would consider me attractive... but do I want to? How much of a pay off is it? I certainly wouldn't say being hairy is an integral part of what makes me "me", but -even discounting the beliefs &/or personality aspects it represents to most people - it still seems like false advertising.
How much can one change about themselves without changing "who they are"? Is conceding to change something one doesn't want to change, in order to increase their dating prospects, just showing maturity and understanding of society works and that relationships are about give-and-take? Or is it insecurity, surrendering values (whether firm or loose), signalling acceptance of inevitable conformity and willingness to further change oneself in exchange for greater acceptance &/or affection? And is it "who one truly is" (ie. "the real me") receiving the affection and acceptance, or is it now a character one is playing?
And then there's the subjectivity of which features are negative or positive or neutral...
"Willpower" is fairy dust. Or perhaps, being unattractive makes it more difficult to gather the willpower. But I can't imagine anything people would want more than being attractive in our extremely judgmental culture, and still the weight loss odds are 20%.