Attraction is Addiction. What is chemistry between two people, really?
If you find yourself:
often going for a specific ‘type’ of girl or guy
or/and
chasing that exciting feeling of being ‘swept off your feet’, over and over
or/and
chasing that ‘chemistry-click’
or/and
falling in love with someone because of the ‘great chemistry’ you may be feeling
or
being in relationships which fade away relatively quickly (after one year or even less) or break up within the first three years
or
seek that ‘intense feeling’ with someone and won’t settle for anything less
you may need to read the following, which I learn through tough experience and a lot of therapy.
There are several biological, anthropological, sociological reasons we find someone attractive and plenty has been written about it. Simplistically put, we subconsciously seek symmetries, or physical symbols of strength (or fertility in case of female attractiveness). Then there are psychological reason we seem to find certain ‘types’ more attractive than others; these range from childhood memories of love (or ‘pathological’ experiences in childhood) to emotional and psychological triggers which temporarily seem to fill our voids and/or give us a ‘boost’ in life.
But, in persevering with one or more of the above-listed behaviours, attraction becomes addiction and can, indeed, function as any other addiction which, as we know, is used to fill emotional/psychological voids, used to ’dampen’ pain we are trying to escape and, of course, used to feel ‘high’, to feel ‘happy’, to act as a stimulant. So, when a fifty-year individual starts dating a twenty-five-year-old and states ‘she/he makes me feel so alive, so young, so rejuvenated, etc, what the fifty-year-old is in fact saying is that he (or she) has found a drug-type substitute to avoid dealing with issues he/she may be facing (and, by this, choosing to avoid), in a way someone feeling tired and depressed may reach for a stimulant rather than dealing with the underlying issue causing the condition.
In a similar but more insidious way, the individual who falls in love over and over only to be disappointed may indeed be following a cycle of emotional addiction rather than truly seeking love and companionship. Partly misguided by fairy-tales of exhilarating love, we tend to forget (or we simply don’t know) that true love comes from mutually-supportive and mutually-enriching companionship: support and understanding come way above emotional stimulation; in loving relationships emotional challenges are treated as ways to learn about ourselves and the other and not as reasons (or excuses) to leave the relationship because it’s not the perfect fairly tale we were led to believe, or because it does not provide us with the sexual exhilaration we seek. If we ignore what love is (the act of loving the other, as explained in more detail on this page) and we seek the ‘in-love’ feeling instead, or a connection which is intense and ‘consuming’ (for example), we are merely addicted to those feelings and treat them as our drug of choice to escape, to forget, to kill our own pain or to fill our own inner void.
True love is very different. Until we understand what true love is, until we understand that love is created and re-created on a daily basis (and not just ‘found’), we are doomed to failure. Go to this page to know more.
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