I am magnetic. I attract my soulmate by radiating my inner light.

Watch who gets remembered after a party and it is rarely the funniest person in the room. It is whoever asked a second question — not the polite opener, but the follow-up that proved they had listened to the answer.

They frequently leave with a number they never asked for, having spent the entire evening talking about somebody else.

Magnetism, in practice, is attention pointed outwards. It reads as confidence from a distance and it is nothing of the kind up close.

Which is a relief, if you have been treating attraction as something a person either has or lacks. The mechanism is available on any given Thursday and it costs one more question.