> So they all got together/started to date as complete strangers?
Yes or as loose acquaintances (they would never call each other friends or anything of the sort - just that they knew of their partner but that's about it). Not everyone was like random bumping into people off the street but almost all of them were not that far off from that.
I know dozens and dozens of relationships and none of them were friends before they got together. After all - they all needed to find each other physically attractive. If they didn't - it was never going to work. That is one thing that is remarkably common among all of them too - they all distinctly find their partner when they met them and now as physically attractive. There is no bridging that gap and no amount of "power of friendship" will fill that hole.
There's plenty of ways in a real-world context. No, friendship alone will not do it of course, but having the right attitude will. She really needs to find you intuitively compelling in a general sense, and this will be practically interchangeable with physical attractiveness in her mind. One reason I know this is that it works just fine the other way around. Many guys have experienced finding a woman very 'plain' and uninteresting, but then radically changing their mind about her after she got the chance. That woman has just become "attractive" to them in a very real sense, even though nothing physical about her has changed.
> No, friendship alone will not do it of course, but having the right attitude will.
This is very much "power of friendship" put into different wording. It's the same thing, man. Stop saying this is normal - it's by definition exceptional. I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm saying it's hella unlikely and no one should rely on that as a mechanism because it generally doesn't work.
Also - just to let you know - never tell a woman that you are dating/married/whatever that you didn't find her physically attractive. (ever) This is how I 100% know you don't know anything about women in the USA. That woman would be bawling her eyes out as soon as you said that shit. Unbelievable that you're acting as if you're the source of all information about how to date women. JFC. Are you that out of touch with how much most women in the USA are deeply ingrained with associating their natural beauty with their own worth? Are you even remotely aware of it? If you were - you'd know that if you ever told your significant other that you grew to find her attractive but you didn't find her attractive to begin with - you'd be broken up with on the spot. That's incredibly insensitive.
> ... Are you that out of touch with how much most women in the USA are deeply ingrained with associating their natural beauty with their own worth? ...
Just because you don't want to phrase things like that to anyone does not mean they don't happen to people. What you said is just more evidence that our culture/"folk" worldview conflates physical attractiveness and general relationship-worthiness; you're taking this conflation at face value, just in a slightly different context, and saying that it's thus impossible to work on being more valued in the context of a relationship. (After all, how many people really want to date someone they don't find physically attractive? That's why she's bawling her eyes out - you've just said to her face that you wouldn't have wanted to date her in the first place!) Which doesn't make all that much sense now, does it?
(I'm not saying that your attitude is not common. It is both very common and quite dysfunctional. Including, of course, for the women who are drawn into putting so much reliance on their physical attractiveness, and so little on everything else that could make them more appealing and desirable. This is, by the way, a common complaint from feminist(!)-leaning folks - it's neither some sort of secret nor something that has ever marked anyone as "out of touch".)
> ... and no one should rely on that as a mechanism ...
It's not like you've proposed any alternative in this thread. You've even said that some non-trivial fraction of guys are basically seen as undateable, so even a fairly low chance of success would still be better than that.
> She really needs to find you intuitively compelling in a general sense, and this will be practically interchangeable with physical attractiveness in her mind. One reason I know this is that it works just fine the other way around.
That of course assumes that men and women work the same in this respect. There are so many differences between the sexes, both biological / hormonal and social / expectations, that this is not a given. (Though yes, personally I'd guess we're rather similar. Just pointing out that it's not a given, at least not just because it works that way for men.)
Yes or as loose acquaintances (they would never call each other friends or anything of the sort - just that they knew of their partner but that's about it). Not everyone was like random bumping into people off the street but almost all of them were not that far off from that.
I know dozens and dozens of relationships and none of them were friends before they got together. After all - they all needed to find each other physically attractive. If they didn't - it was never going to work. That is one thing that is remarkably common among all of them too - they all distinctly find their partner when they met them and now as physically attractive. There is no bridging that gap and no amount of "power of friendship" will fill that hole.