Nope, this is silly. Mutual attraction is what leads you to become couples in the first place. The physical part of attraction is what leads you to notice the other person and then building an emotional bond with each other will increase the attraction. So attraction is a symptom not a cause. Like any emotion attraction comes and goes. IMHO believing this folly is what leads to so many people breaking up when they could be very happy together and why so many people are lonely these days.
My own experience after 15 years of marriage is that attraction comes and goes for both me and my wife. But by not doing anything rash when that happens we have both discovered that it also comes back. Sure the first few times it happened it was quite scary, but then we've found a rhythm with the ebbs and floods.
This is my experience too. Sexual attraction brings you together. This may lead to love, if the circumstances are favorable. And then you can choose to make the effort to nurture that relationship, or not.
To be fair there are a lot of very unhappy coupled folks out there as well stuck with essentially the opposite problem: the attraction has left the building and hasn't been there for a very long time and waiting for it to come back is likely an exercise in futility. See r/deadbedrooms etc.
Well, rereading what I wrote I was maybe not so clear on that.
If you are just waiting for the attraction to come back, chances are that it doesn't, even though it certainly could. It all depends on the reason that attraction disappears. Sometimes it's related to the things you do and sometimes it isn't. The key, I believe, is to always try to be a better spouse than you were a year ago, or even a month ago. But that of course presupposes that there exist mutual trust and respect between you. It won't work if only one part is trying to be a better self for the other.
I think you may need to define what you mean by attraction, then. He said again comes and goes for both him and his wife. I see no reason to disbelieve him, especially since that is what I experience with my wife as well. It's fine if you have a different definition of attraction, one where the members of both couples here (his and mine) can be considered to still be attracted to each other. But simply stating that he's wrong does not advance the conversation or reveal what your point of view actually is.
My physical attraction to my wife comes and goes. When that first started happening, it was traumatic. At this point, it really doesn't feel like a big deal. There are always more important things to be working on when it happens. (Probably not coincidentally!)
A bit later in our relationship, the same thing started happening for more general attraction. The decision to stay together would get very practical for a time. Again, this was initially very traumatic, but over time it became more and more clear that it was an effect, not a cause. Our focus shifted to the true causes, to the extent we could figure them out, and that was vastly more effective than trying to somehow address lack of attraction directly.
In short, my experience directly contradicts your position, anecdotal though it may be.
Shared trauma, childhood upbringing, and many other factors have a much higher correlation to successful relationships than merely attraction.
Attachment Theory attempts to explain why certain relationships are better than others which is dependent on how secure or insecure each partner is with regard to attachment. For example, if both parties are classified as having “secure attachment”, they may feel distress when their partner leaves them for say a long work trip but they’re able to compose themselves and control those worries. That sort of relationship would be said to have a higher chance of survival than two partners who are both “anxious-ambivalent attached” because in this case, the parties would instead have strong fear or worry of rejection by their partner, higher dependency on each other, and less likely to be comfortable being alone. None of those elements rest solely on the basis of attraction. This type of behavior stems from being a witness to conflicting figures in their life (e.g. divorced parents, unsafe family habitat, etc.)
The first definition I see for attraction is "pleasing to the senses" and the second is "sexually alluring." If OP meant something more than physical, then "attraction" was a misleading word choice.
Even with your definition of attraction, attraction-based love is fundamentally self-serving, and those who practice it rob themselves of the beauty of blind commitment in loving relationships.
If the definition of attraction is to be read to encompass everything that makes you like a person, doesn't it make the original statement vacuous? "Liking each other is what helps couples stay together?" I suppose it's true that few couples ever got divorced who wanted to be together. But it doesn't tell us anything.
What would it even mean to have a romantic relationship without attraction?
Why do people bother dating if it’s sufficient to move in with a friend?
How do we explain people who already live with close friends and are also out seeking romantic partners? What marginal benefit could they be looking for? Why limit the search according to gender, if attraction is not essential?
