Initial attraction is often about projection of what we want onto some person who may or may not be that. If we're projecting, odds are they are mostly not that, or we wouldn't need to project.

This applies not only to 'romantic' and sexual attraction, but other forms as well. The mentor/teacher/sensei role is a common example where we project what we want from such a person onto an actual person, and then proceed to find out if they match our story , or not. What gets interesting is exploring why we project onto the people we do, and not others...