When Opposites Attract

Remember the days of that sizzling hot/heart-thumping/I’ve never felt this way before/best sex you’ve ever had in your life/can’t eat, can’t sleep, “can’t live without” relationship that you had?

Census bureau says it probably turned into a baby, or two...or three. And that, like it or not, is biologically speaking the foremost reason you felt all of that off-the-hook, head-over-heels/knock-your-lights-out chemistry.

It was simply Mother Nature’s way of tricking you into procreation. It’s terrible, I know. Just when you thought you had found the one (or at least a decent one), you had been hoodwinked by several hundred thousand watts of biological voltage surging from your brainstem up to and through your frontal lobes, saturating your ability to reason for a sustained (albeit relatively brief) period of time, prompting you to fall for someone who smelled and looked a certain way (indicators that they had a most dissimilar biology…and everything else, it turned out) and making you feel an overwhelming desire to have sex with this person with one goal in mind (not the goal we love to glorify); exponentially increasing the odds of the offspring’s survival.

If this biological ploy failed and you are still with said object of desire even after all that chemistry has worn off, I’ll bet you are either: fighting about your glaring differences because you have become attached (an altogether different type of chemical reaction), learning to tolerate this person you have likely very little in common with (other than your va-voom physical attraction), waiting for the lightning to strike again with someone else, wondering how you could have made such a terrible error in judgment, OR have fallen prey to another equally compelling kind of chemistry; your “love story.”

Let me explain, because while both kinds of chemistry are disarming, this one is far more complicated. Your love story is your early psychological imprint about love. When chemistry ignites, it means you have attracted someone who may match or resemble that. For example: you seem to attract stingy and emotionally unavailable people (like your mother or father), or really charming and fun alcoholics (like one of your parents), or people incapable of fidelity (perhaps your father), or people who love you one minute and forget you the next (maybe your mom was a narcissist).

Whatever your story (i.e., your psychological interpretation of love, which is a survival issue), these particular chemicals that flood your brain, making it seem this person is a good fit, create attraction based on familiarity and recognition; not necessarily an indicator of a good or healthy match. While this doesn’t always attract an opposite, per se, the unconscious choice we make will likely feel in the same league when and if we awaken and realize we have fallen into the chemistry trap.
But hey, come on, it’s going to be all right! We have frontal lobes now! I mean can you imagine when we didn’t? We don’t have to imagine, we can look back through time and count all that we have to be grateful for, namely that we have a choice. So then, what do we do about the tension, the build-up, that kind of friction that makes you want to devour someone, merge worlds, get lost in each other’s souls, leave your current situation/spouse/family/country?

My best advice is: think it through. Complementing someone with your differences is one thing, being incompatible due to real and glaring “great divides” is completely another. And try this: try to feel your attraction and not act on it. Maybe even feel it all the way down to your bones and surrender to it completely but DO NOTHING and see what happens? Just inquire. Then if you think it will kill you not to be near or possess the object of your desire, inquire into that, and so on. If you feel you cannot live a full and happy life without someone, inquire into that. Why? What are these stories and feelings about? Are they true, and if so, are you willing to pay the price for acting on them?

When we set out on the path of self-inquiry we still have the luxury of fooling ourselves, but why would we do that to ourselves? Why would we, once we know the truth, choose something that’s not for our highest good? Why would we go for the chemistry of opposites, in this case, if it isn’t what’s best for us and those around us? Inquire, I say…and then you tell me!

Then when you say potato and he says porn star…you can play with a different kind of chemical reaction and…RUN!