The Truth About Chemistry.
You’re one of those people who, after a first date, “just knows” whether or not there’s chemistry.
You don’t need time. You know within the first five minutes of sliding into the booth across from your date, caramel brûlée latte in hand.
You get “that” feeling. That rush of chemistry. That sparkling feeling that starts as butterflies in your tummy and then sends electricity allllll the way down to your toes and then bubbles up like champagne until it spills out the top of your head.
But . . . do you really know?
Here’s a tricky truth for us today:
If we tend to pride ourselves on knowing “right away” whether or not we have chemistry with a new romantic partner, what we may be missing is that in the early stages of a new relationship, feelings of closeness and excitement may reflect our subconscious emotional patterning and beliefs about connection more than they reflect a relationship’s potential to be enduring, fulfilling, or passionate.
If we’ve previously dated only emotionally unavailable partners, abusive partners, or partners who avoid intimacy, it may be the case that we’re wired to only feel that "chemistry feeling" with people who are unavailable to us for one reason or another.
This can be true for us for lots of reasons. Our relationships with our childhood caregivers, childhood trauma, and our early emotional associations with safety can have a lot to do with it, but so can our experiences with relationships, trauma, and emotional safety as adults! Alllll of these factors combine to create our ingrained subconscious associations with safety, stability, and chaos, and what they mean to us and to our brain's love maps.
If our brains, for any of a myriad of reasons, are wired to code "emotional unavailability" as what chemistry "means" to us, we will (and probably already do!) meet attractive, interesting, “full-package” partners, who we nevertheless, mysteriously . . . and inexplicably . . . "don't feel anything for."
This IS miswired attachment programming at work, and it's why doing attraction pattern work is NECESSARY to finding healthy love and feeling safe in committed partnership for many people.
In the case of those of us who are experiencing the emotional ups and downs of miswired attachment programming, there is no such thing as "just waiting for the right person to come along.”
For those of us who subconsciously associate “love” with “chaos,” “the right person" never WILL come along, because the "right person" . . . Doesn't exist.
Our dilemma is an internal one, and needs to be resolved internally. The belief that our circumstance is one that is external to us ("I just haven't met the right person yet!") instead of something internal ("My attraction system is stuck in a loop that isn’t serving me") is what keeps us stuck.
Minding our side of the fence and taking responsibility for our own healing is our work here.
We mind our side of the fence by working through our attachment wiring, soothing our anxiety when it shows up, slowing down when we date, learning how to easeeee into healthy, safe connections, making different choices, and often by working with a practitioner (a therapist or a coach!) who has experience in this arena.
This is the work of building healthy, safe, fulfilling partnerships. In our willingness to first look inward, we permit ourselves to bring forward the aligned relationships that we seek.
PS. Leaning into changing patterns and rewiring our minds and hearts for healthy love IS the work I do with my 1:1 coaching clients.
On that note: I have a very small number of 1:1 coaching spots open for new clients starting in May and June.
If you’re interested in diving deep into your attachment patterns and learning how to move into choosing healthy, secure partners, get in touch and let’s chat about private coaching!