Lisa Nowak and The Deep Realities of Romantic Obsessions
In February 2007, near the Orlando Florida Airport, a woman in a trench coat and wig chased Colleen Shipman to a dark parking lot. The woman of the trench coat had been following Colleen for several hours. Through the baggage claim, through the airport, through the loading zone. She even sat behind Colleen on the shuttle bus that took them to the parking lot.
And now they were alone, the woman in the trench coat sprinted after Colleen and caught up with her. Colleen ran to her car and jumped in. And just as she slammed the door, she heard the mysterious woman yank on the handle, trying to get inside. Then, without warning, the woman outside began crying for help. She said she needed a ride, that her boyfriend would leave her in the lot overnight alone.
She said she wanted to borrow Colleen’s phone. Finally, when Colleen cracked the car window so the two could speak, the woman whipped out a can of pepper spray and sprayed it through the window. That's when Colleen floored it. We don't know how much pepper spray Colleen inhaled, but she was able to drive away from the scene and get to the police. Later, when the police found the woman in the trench coat and wig, they also found she had packed for a kidnapping. Her wig and BB gun had been ditched in the garbage. But she had brought a steel mallet, a 4-inch knife, trash bags, a rubber hose, and diapers.
As you may have guessed by now, the mysterious one more talking about is Lisa Nowak. The NASA astronaut who stalked and attempted to kidnap a rival lover, Colleen Shipman. You might remember late-night talk show hosts making fun and Lisa for bringing her diapers on her 900-mile car trip. Even though, according to her lawyer, she never used them. But keep in mind that Lisa is one of the best of us. She's an aeronautical engineer with no history of mental instability. She was a Navy Captain, a test pilot, and a woman entrusted to operate a giant robotic claw in space on the back of a 450-million-dollar shuttle.
Now, if Lisa can't resist the temptation to engage in romantic obsession, what chance do the rest of us have? There's an old saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," which you might be surprised to learn comes from a play from 1697 called, The Mourning Bride. That has little more stink to it, doesn't it? Well, that's our topic today: romantic obsession.
When the pursuit of a mate goes too far, and if we want to know how far is too far, then we have a few myths we need to bust.
Myth one: When it comes to pursuing someone else, we like to know where we stand. Are we dating? Are we an item? Are we a couple? Surely, it's better to know, right?
We're going to start talking about how much control labeling relationships actually gives you and what is more attractive to people. This comes from the Reciprocity Principle, a well-known psychological phenomenon. It's the act of a person feeling an attraction to someone only upon learning that someone has been aware of their interest. So, to break that down, are you more attracted when you find out somebody is attracted to you already? Most of the time, sure. It means that they've selected you out. They've already picked you, and you're good enough for them. This is the classic idea of attraction; it’s been our model for a very long time.
Once you know that I'm a 7 in my attraction to you, the reciprocity principle goes up to a 7 potentially as well. And this has been upheld through studies throughout the years. Now, a new study has come out, and this came from “He Loves Me He Loves Me Not” and it claims that uncertainly can increase romantic attraction. They had a college study and had women reviewing Facebook profiles. And they had male students who would look at their profile, and they would be told that the men either like them a lot, liked them an average amount, or they liked them a moderate amount or perhaps higher. I'll frame this as a question, who do you think was the most attractive?
They found that the women and the men attraction levels mostly matched up until the uncertainty. When they were told this guy was average on them, they were average on the guy. They're like, okay, and so on. When they got to the research subject that was average or higher but didn't know how much their attraction level, their reciprocation didn't just meet that average or higher, it exceeded the guys that like them a lot. So, uncertainty is a big deal. Though it feels satisfying to hear somebody say they are attracted to you and how much, it causes you to be more attracted to someone not to know.
Myth Two. Why are some people irresistibly attracted to authority or flat-out unavailable people?
We’re going to ask the question, or at least I'm going to ask, are you attracted to power? Does someone's power make you attracted to them more or less? Probably, but why? Why are we attracted to power and wealth? Why are we attracted to authority? Well, we didn't need to go too deep into that wealth equals resources.
I remember reading an article that weight lifting is a resource to brag about to impress people with power and wealth. You boast that you have the resources to do it because it takes a lot of money to eat. It takes a lot of time invested in keeping up your physical prowess, and it also signals that you have good genes. Those are types of power that people are attracted to, and it's simply because it means higher survival surface survivability. If you have either of those things, you win the Survival Game.
What about authority? I'm going to pull this straight from Psychology Today, that authority usually, for us, is an indicator that somebody is a parent to us even in modern times. For example, when the cops tell me to do something, I act like they're my dad. Or if there's an older male, you kind of listen to him a little harder and open the door for them. That can convey or be combined with the reality that when somebody has authority over you, you're more likely to be attracted to them. You want to please them.
Another thing is that if you had an unavailable caregiver when you were a child, you are more likely to be attracted to someone who is unavailable habitually. In our dysfunctional relationship episode, we have something called the familiarity principle of attraction, where we are attracted to people more if they repeat things our folks did.
The last one that we're going to touch on is just desirability and power in general. What is so attractive about powerful men and women, or people in positions of authority? I'm going to quote a Metro UK article:
“The desire for those in power is deeply rooted in our psyche in evolutionary terms. Someone in a position of power is seen as someone with resources and abilities that will create viable offspring. Therefore, we are driven to form an attachment to them.” - Natalie Crowley.
Basically, we have an attraction to power, and a lot of it is about nurturing and authority. It's the hinge that combines all the other attractions.
Myth 3. If we want to score a mate, statistically, we should just stay in our league and communicate in positive, honest ways, right?
Now, how frequently do people aim out of their league? How often do we aim for people who are unavailable or more attractive than us? Is it crazy or human nature? This study comes from the University of Michigan by Elizabeth Bruch and M.E.J. Newman, called the Aspirational Pursuit of Mates in Online Dating Markets. We're only looking at the data derived from heterosexual dating websites and the studies of about four cities that they did. They studied New York, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle, and they are looking at desirability.
Now when I say desirability, I don't mean how physically attractive someone is. They were only gauging how many messages people get early when they make their profile. That's our meter for desirability. Most people, when they start online dating, they get a handful of messages, but a small fraction receives far more. For this desirability study, a 30-year-old woman living in New York received 1,500 messages during the period of observation. This is equivalent to one message every 30 minutes, day and night, for the entire month. So, when we say some people on the higher end of the scale get more messages, they get a lot. This study should really just demonstrate to you that everyone shoots out of their league; everyone starts aiming at the top.
According to this study, the peak age for desirability in men seeking women is 18, and then it goes downhill from there. It is a linear progression. This is based on how many messages women got while doing online dating in 30 days. Now, the peak desirability age for men, according to this study, was 50. I think that based on our attractive metrics and what makes somebody attractive, the authority shows more when men hit about 40 to 50.
“We find that both men and women pursue partners who are, on average, about 25% more desirable than themselves by our measure and that they use different messaging strategies with partners of different desirability.” – Study quote.
When you try to impress somebody out of your league, do you act nicer, or do you act meaner? Generally, when somebody turns on the sweetness, it's an indicator (when women do it) that they are signaling that they are lower desirability than you. This entices the men to ask not interested anymore. Going back to the first part, this is where showing attraction, but not telling how much really matters. Show some interest, but not telling how much makes the reciprocity unknown, and the unknown seems to win.
“The effect size is modest but consistent across all four cities. In all four cities, men experience slightly lower reply rates when they write more positively worded messages.” – Study quote.
Final Thoughts
It's easy for us to get caught up in the pursuit of someone else, whether it's harmless, like daydreaming about a crush. Imagine your lives might be like together, or something more Sinister, like imagining kidnapping and torturing her romantic rival. Either way, we're built to pursue and be pursued. And because we're made for it, we can't help but fantasize about it.
Just remember, not knowing where you stand romantically can be more exciting than having the relationship defined. This can be even more exciting and more dangerous when you're pursuing someone who has power or success. You can find yourself confused, desperate, and entirely under their control. And if you have a habit of pursuing people who are out of your league, just remember, it’s not wishful thinking; it's human. Statistically, we're more apt to aim for someone 25% more desirable than us. It's up to us to calibrate appropriately if the person we're pursuing doesn't respond.
Where love is concerned, feel free to take risks. Forgive yourself for daydreaming or aiming too high. Above all, temper your romantic obsessions. If you start fantasizing about kidnapping a co-worker. If you're on the online dating market, stay positive. Unless you're a man seeking a woman, then stay slightly less positive.