Isn’t this the perfect romantic fantasy? You meet cute and live happily ever after. There’s no need to explain what you want or need because it feels like you’re already on the same page.

There are rare times when people are magnetically drawn together, and love happens easily. However, it’s the exception and not the rule. So what’s really happening in this situation? Is this feeling a sign from the universe that you’ve finally met The One, or is there something else going on?

Perhaps being magnetically drawn to someone may not be a signal you’ve met your match. It could be tied to your past wounds about love.

So, how do you know the difference? How do you know if being magnetically drawn to someone is kismet, or if this is once again that frustrating lather-rinse-repeat cycle in your love life?

What’s Going On When You Feel Magnetically Drawn To Someone?

You could argue that everyone has a relationship homeostasis. Similar to the way your body regulates your internal temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate, your subconscious mind constantly reverts your behavior back to a familiar pattern. If your habitual behavior in love is based on healthy strategies and good communication skills, then your relationship homeostasis supports recognizing an ideal life partner and long-lasting love.

However, if your subconscious strategies for love are corrupted by outdated or faulty “relationship software programming,” then your internal GPS for love may be guiding you to repeat and recreate old patterns that will never take you to your goal of long-lasting love.

If you identify as one of the latter do not despair! It’s not that lasting love is not in the stars for you. It’s that you’ll have to create a plan for lasting love rather than expect it to magically occur without any effort or adjustments on your part.

Your subconscious mind regulates your relationship homeostasis by using the Law of Association. Essentially, your subconscious evaluates information based on past experiences and highlights anything familiar to you.

This means that when you’re magnetically drawn to someone, it’s because your subconscious highlights an energetic match that feels familiar to you. This familiarity extends back to your early childhood. It encompasses your relationships with parents, siblings, and caregivers, as well as the strategies you developed for giving and receiving love.

Your Internal GPS For Love Was Formed In Your Family Of Origin

Your experiences in your early childhood (before age 8) created your unique imprint for love. As a child, you had two emotional needs that must be met to survive and thrive in the world. You needed to feel loved and safe. To have these needs fulfilled, you took on any belief, behavior, or strategy necessary. That’s how important they were to your survival.

Unfortunately, you were raised by flawed people who had their own issues and couldn’t meet your needs to feel loved and safe all the time. You developed specific beliefs, behaviors, and strategies to deal with the fact that your parents did not love you in the exact way you desired.

This childhood wound has a significant impact on how you interact with others in your adult relationships. This is particularly true when it comes to selecting a romantic partner.

Your subconscious mind recognizes a match to your childhood wounds and highlights them for you. It’s as if a signal goes off in your mind and body saying, “This is familiar! This is familiar!” Unfortunately, your subconscious cannot tell you if familiar is good or bad because its job is to remain aligned with your relationship homeostasis.

Ultimately, you’re often magnetically drawn to someone who matches your childhood wounds and thus won’t make a good life partner for you.

Is That Signal Of Familiarity Excitement Or Fear?

Your physical experience of fear and excitement is the same. Both emotions trigger adrenaline that causes your heart to race, your breath to become shallow, and your palms to become sweaty. The difference between fear and excitement lies in your internal dialogue while experiencing these particular body sensations.

Many motivational speakers will encourage you to take your fear and turn it into excitement. If you’re terrified of speaking in front of a group, you can change your inner dialog and tell yourself that you are excited to share your expertise. Those body sensations are occurring simply because you care.

However, the reverse is also true. You could confuse a fear response for excitement. Your subconscious is yelling, “This is familiar! This is familiar!” and you feel magnetically drawn to someone who will never be able to fulfill your desire for long-lasting love.

Your subconscious mind cannot judge, so it has no idea if the familiar is good or bad for you. Its job is to steer you toward what you already know – this is built-in for your survival.

To determine if you are being magnetically drawn to someone who matches your wound or your soulmate, ask yourself, how did you feel when you were with him? What did it feel like in your body? Did it affect your ability to focus or concentrate on your daily tasks? Did you find yourself obsessively thinking about him?

When your love GPS is faulty, then you’ll misinterpret those signals of fear and danger and confuse them with excitement and attraction. You’ll need to understand the differences between healthy attraction and unhealthy attraction.

Healthy Attraction Vs. Unhealthy Attraction

Just because you are magnetically drawn to someone doesn’t mean that you’re fated to be together. It also doesn’t automatically mean that the two of you are bad for each other. It’s what happens after the initial attraction that’s most important and will inform you whether this person is an ideal match for you long-term.

The key is to take things slowly so that your emotions don’t cloud your judgment.

Signs Your Magnetic Connection Is Not Healthy

1. Your Magnetic Connection Becomes An Obsession

Being magnetically drawn to someone can feel intoxicating. New relationships trigger the chemical high of falling in love. However, if you’re feeling obsessive and consumed with the relationship, then you could be with someone who is triggering your childhood wounds. If you can’t stop thinking about your partner and are unable to focus on other things in your life, then it’s a clear sign there is an unhealthy dynamic between the two of you.

2. The Relationship Moves Super-Fast

Pay attention if you or your partner takes steps to move the relationship forward quickly before you really know each other. It can feel romantic when you decide to run away together or jump into an exclusive relationship after only a couple of dates, but when fantasy meets reality, the relationship won’t survive the inevitable Power Struggle Stage.

3. You Don’t Have Healthy Boundaries

Love does not include merging into one being. True love requires respect, and respectful love always includes boundaries. You’re two separate people with different strategies, habits, and temperaments. Just because you’re magnetically drawn to someone doesn’t mean that they complete you. You are not half a person who needs to find your other half to be complete (by definition that’s a co-dependent relationship).

4. You Keep Your Love A Secret

Part of coming together in a new relationship is that you become part of their group of friends, and they become part of yours. Eventually, when the time is right, you introduce each other to your families.

When you are magnetically drawn to someone, do you wish to keep your relationship in an isolated bubble away from other parts of your life?

A relationship isn’t more exciting because it’s a secret – and if it is, it’s part of a detrimental pattern.

5. You Are Filling In The Blanks

When you are magnetically drawn to someone the many feel-good chemicals that are flowing through your brain can easily cloud your vision. The hope that you’ve finally met your soulmate can further confuse your judgment.

People who get scammed by someone catfishing ignore obvious signs. They get caught up and invest emotionally in someone they barely know or have never met.

Beware of filling in the blanks and only seeing what you want to see. Verify facts and use your discernment before you commit your heart.

6. You Lose Your Sense Of Self

If you isolate yourself and your friends complain that you disappear every time you feel magnetically drawn to someone, you may have a harmful pattern of sacrificing yourself in a relationship.

Merging quickly and allowing your needs and wants to take a backseat to your partner’s is a clear signal that you have a distressing strategy that needs to be addressed before you can find lasting love.

Signs Your Magnetic Connection Can Lead To Lasting Love

1. You Know How To Stay Grounded

Sharing your life with someone brings with it many challenges, as life will sometimes throw you a curveball. Staying grounded when you feel magnetically drawn to someone keeps you from falling for the fantasy of perfection. Your soulmate will not be a mind-reader who just gets you. You’ll have disagreements and miscommunication. You don’t need to idealize your partner to love them.

If you can enjoy and appreciate your strong connection and still stay present to see this person as they are without rose-colored glasses, then you can make things work long-term.

2. You Feel Accepted As You Are

Being magnetically attracted to your soulmate allows you to feel loved and accepted as is. You won’t have to change for your soulmate (although you may make some accommodations for one another, especially as you grow together over time).

You know your magnetic attraction is true because your soulmate gets you. They’ll love you because of your quirks and flaws, not despite them. They’ll understand your wounds and triggers, and they’ll support you to live at your highest and best self.

Your soulmate will choose to love you no matter what–yes, even when you make mistakes or disappoint them.

3. You Can Be Authentic

Being magnetically drawn to someone is a good sign when the two of you are authentic with each other from the start. You don’t hold back or keep your heart closed. You speak how you feel and clearly ask for what you want.

Your soulmate won’t be offended or put off when you speak up. They’ll be excited to discover what you need and will step up to honor requests. Authenticity holds a high vibration, and you’ll find it easy to connect with your soulmate when you’re not walking on eggshells or evaluating how you should or shouldn’t communicate.

4. You Respect And Value Differences

A relationship with someone who is just like you would be boring and lack chemistry. It’s the differences that make two people come together and last as a couple. An introvert ends up with an extrovert. Someone quiet and reserved connects with an emotionally expressive partner. One of you is a saver, the other a spender. The magic of differences means that in a soulmate relationship, you defer to each other’s strengths.

Being magnetically drawn to someone who respects and values the differences between you instead of getting stuck in a power struggle is a sign that your connection is true. In a soulmate relationship, you can let your partner take care of the things that you aren’t good at, and you can be appreciated for your areas of expertise.

5. You Work To Repair And Make Amends

Being magnetically attracted to someone doesn’t mean that you won’t experience disappointment. Life is full of challenges and part of a thriving, balanced life is having someone to navigate those challenges with you.

This doesn’t mean that your soulmate won’t occasionally let you down or disappoint you. Your soulmate is a flawed human just like you are. The difference is your soulmate will do what is necessary to repair and make amends when they mess up.

6. You Share The Important Things

You may not like the same kind of movies or music as your soulmate. The two of you may have very different hobbies. But you both know that these are not what is important. When you are on the same page with what is really important then you can trust your magnetic connection.

When you both value the same things in life and can respect each other’s strategies for achieving your goals, then your attraction can lead to lasting love.

It takes time to discover if someone is capable of being your ideal match. It’s easy when you feel magnetically drawn to someone to miss the signs that the relationship isn’t healthy for you. Take your time, no matter how strong your connection is, and you’ll be open to discovering if your love can stand the test of time.

Being magnetically drawn to someone is no guarantee that you’ve met your soulmate. Slowing down the dating process speeds up the opportunity to discover an ideal match for you for the long term. Not rushing into exclusivity ensures that you won’t fall into the unhealthy patterns embedded in your unique relationship homeostasis.

If you are tired of feeling duped by falling for someone you’re magnetically drawn to, pick up a copy of our book, Getting It Right This Time: Break Free From Your Hidden Blocks To Love. It’s your guide to healing your heart so you can find your forever person.

It’s not a binary choice between chemistry or someone who treats you well. Both are extremely important, however, in order to choose a beloved life partner a lot more goes into it than these two elements.

For example, if you were to create a list of ten ingredients that are essential for lasting love, treating you well and chemistry between two people are just two of the ten ingredients. If you place importance on only one or two traits, you’ll likely repeat your negative pattern in love again and again. Long-lasting love doesn’t come from just how you feel about the person, and how hot you are for them.

How important is chemistry between two people?

If you don’t have yeast in the dough, you won’t end up with bread. It won’t ever rise and become a yummy loaf. It won’t someday evolve into bread. All you’ll have is a cracker and that’s just not enough to satisfy you for a lifetime together.

Most people make the mistake of placing too much emphasis on chemistry and don’t look for much more. They leave their choice up to attraction, and if it’s present, they overlook everything else, even big giant red flags.

The most typical method to select a life partner is by paying attention to how you feel about the other person and disregarding everything else. Chemistry between two people is one important ingredient, however, it’s not all that’s required for a lasting, loving partnership.

Signs That You’re Putting Too Much Emphasis On Chemistry

It’s common to believe that chemistry between two people is a sign that the relationship is meant to be. However, feelings on their own aren’t a great measure of whether a relationship will last. How do you know if you’re too reliant on chemistry and are ignoring the red flags in your budding relationship?

1. You Lose Yourself When You Meet Someone New

Do your friends complain that you disappear every time you’re in a relationship? Merging quickly and allowing your needs and wants to take a backseat to your partner’s is a clear signal that you’re placing too much emphasis on chemistry.

A healthy relationship is when one whole and complete person comes together with another whole and complete person. Together they create a new entity — the relationship. Instead of relying on the other person to complete or fix you, the two of you complement each other and there’s also a balance of effort between you which keeps the relationship thriving.

2. You Keep Your Relationship A Secret

Are you keeping your relationship a secret from your friends and family? Secret affairs can feel exciting and make you believe you’re on a big romantic adventure, but secret relationships don’t last.

If you aren’t going to take your relationship out of the bedroom and into the world, then you’ve put too much emphasis on the physical connection. It may be fun for a short while, but it’s not satisfying in the long term because the key ingredients of a lasting partnership aren’t present. There’s a lot more to sharing your life with someone than hot sex.

3. Too Much Emphasis On Attraction

If you’ve struggled with short-term relationships that don’t pan out, even though they’ve been hot and heavy, you’re relying too much on attraction. Don’t rush to pause your dating profile and go exclusive. Getting to know a person requires time and there’s no need to hurry. The right person will allow you to set the pace.

The chemistry between two people is like a tick box, it just needs to be present. Then you must invest time to discover if all the other qualities necessary for a relationship to thrive and last are present. You won’t know if you’ve met your ideal match after several dates. Looking for a life partner requires you date like a grownup, and put off physical intimacy until you know more about their character.

4. You’re Addicted To The Feeling Of Falling In Love

Falling in love is a chemical high. Science has proven that when you fall in love your brain is flooded with feel-good chemicals that leave you walking on air. Those chemicals will naturally wear off over time. If you crave these feelings and get bored quickly when the chemicals wear off you could be addicted to falling in love.

You’ll have to learn to work through your differences when the high fades and develop the skills to navigate through the inevitable power struggle. Lasting love is possible when you know how to recreate romance with someone you’ve known for years.

5. You’re Confusing Fear With Excitement

If you have a pattern of choosing unhealthy or toxic partners, you could be confusing the signals your subconscious mind is sending you. Fear and excitement feel the same in the body; your heart races, your palms may get sweaty, and adrenaline rushes through your body.

These feelings of excitement may actually be a warning that you’re entering familiar territory, especially if you were raised in a toxic family environment. Your subconscious sends you the signal saying, “This is familiar! This is familiar,” and you mistake this signal as a soul connection with someone you just met.

You’re confusing a fear response with excitement and attraction, and the only way to break this pattern is by slowing down through the dating process so you can have time to recognize the pattern and go against the familiar dynamic you learned as a child.

6. You’re Wearing Rose Colored Glasses

All the feel-good chemicals flowing through your brain can easily cloud your vision. The hope that you’ve finally met your soulmate can further confuse your sense of reason. Hope is the first thing that comes into your mind when you meet someone you’re attracted to. Maybe this is the one you’ve been looking for!

That hope will also cause you to highlight their positive qualities and gloss over any red flags. Keep the rose-colored glasses off until they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.

Chemistry And Compatibility Are Not The Same Thing

Be careful overcorrecting when chemistry has steered you wrong. You can’t throw out chemistry altogether just because it’s caused you problems in the past. You’ll end up in a relationship with your best friend and roommate, one that lacks passion and cannot withstand decades together. The chemistry between two people is the glue that keeps lovers sticking together through a lifetime.

Chemistry and compatibility can work together as part of a recipe for lasting love, however, on their own they aren’t enough.

Chemistry comes from a combination of your feelings of attraction and emotional connection with someone. Compatibility is when you have shared interests and ease of communication. Chemistry comes from your energetic differences, like two magnets. Compatibility comes from your similarities.

These elements are essential in a healthy relationship and for love to grow over time. You can’t forego compatibility and expect chemistry to be enough. Your relationship won’t survive if you’re unable to get along. Compatibility without chemistry between two people is a platonic friendship. You’ll feel like a team, but your life will suffer because you lack the desire to work things out when life throws you curveballs.

It’s not possible to settle for a lifetime with someone. Chemistry and attraction are part of the equation of soul-satisfying, long-lasting love.

Dating Is A Selection Process

When you allow chemistry between two people to be your primary driver, you end up dating backward. You go exclusive with a stranger before you know who they are and if they’re capable of meeting your needs. You get stuck in a pattern of short-term relationships that rarely last more than 3-4 months and you end up frustrated and burnt out with dating.

Dating is best when you commit to a rotation of seeing several people and cultivating discernment through the process. Slowing down the dating process, and not rushing to exclusivity and physical intimacy allows you to discover if you’re a match for the long-term.

Most people rush into a commitment and after several months discover the other person isn’t a match for them. This pattern creates dating burnout because these short-lived relationships drain you of hope to find an ideal match.

In the beginning, everyone is on their best behavior so it’s important to wait to discover what they’re capable of when your differences arise. Can you resolve conflicts between you? Has this person earned your trust? Can they offer you an apology and take responsibility for their own behavior and shortcomings?

Getting along at the beginning is easy, but can you find your way back to each other after miscommunication or conflict?

The Ingredients For Lasting Love

There is a skill set for lasting love because ultimately love is a choice. A healthy, thriving relationship includes chemistry between two people, but it’s not the only important ingredient. Lasting love also requires compatible lifestyles, shared values, and healthy communication.

Compatible lifestyles ensure that you’ll want to spend time together. Quality time will be difficult if you don’t enjoy some of the same activities. It’s important to have your own interests and friends, but having compatible lifestyles keeps you connected to each other and makes sharing a life together easy.

Shared values are the why behind your lifestyle choices. Values drive your decisions and influence the choices you make. If your values don’t match, then you’ll be in conflict with your partner. You may have different strategies but shared values give you the ability to get on the same page.

Healthy communication means you can respectfully talk to each other even when you disagree. Kindness and respect give you the ability to talk about anything, even while knowing you don’t have to talk about everything.

Chemistry between two people is the glue that holds it all together. Without it, you’re just friends and roommates. With it, your relationship maintains its spice over the years and you have the energy to commit to sticking it out over the rough patches.

Lasting Love Needs More Than Just Chemistry Between Two People

Romance is great, but not every day will be a romantic adventure. You’ll have bills to pay, kids to raise, and jobs to manage. The mundane grind of day-to-day life can come between you, or it can be enlivened by the right partner.

When you choose well, life doesn’t feel so lonely or burdensome. You’re happier, more capable of handling stress, and likely to live longer.

Your ideal match will get you. You’ll feel supported and understood. You’ll have each other’s back. You can count on each other like you know the sun will rise tomorrow. Finding an ideal match doesn’t magically happen in just a few weeks or months, it begins with curiosity and is nurtured over time.

Have you allowed chemistry be your only guide when selecting a partner? Or maybe you’ve tried committing without attraction and discovered that you need more than just a friend? Ready to break free from the unhealthy patterns you’ve created? Tired of the hope-to-disappointment rollercoaster?

Join us for a complimentary Breakthrough Call. Let’s get to the root cause of your struggles in love so you can break free to your beloved life partner.

Emily Dickinson famously said, “The Heart wants what it wants — or else it does not care.”

It’s discouraging when what your heart wants is unhealthy or toxic. Being attracted to someone who’s emotionally unavailable, mistreats you, or doesn’t love you back, can leave you believing that you’re somehow destined to be alone.

What if you could discover why your heart wants what it wants? The answer will lead you to create a healthier, more fulfilling relationship.

The reason you feel powerless to change this pattern is the reason you feel stuck. Because just knowing the pattern won’t break it. Journaling about it won’t break it. Talking about it won’t break it.

Once you clearly identify your specific pattern and why you created it you can take your power back. With entirely new strategies for love, you can create healthy, long-lasting love with a partner who treats you with kindness, respect, and compassion.

The key to the brain science of attraction is knowing Your Love Imprint and its role in selecting who you find attractive.

The Science Of Attraction And Your Family Of Origin

Whether you ever had a stable family unit or not, whether you were raised by one parent or both, you learned about intimate relationships from the people who raised you.

Psychoanalyst John Bowlby was an early proponent of the idea that mental health and behavioral problems could be attributed to early childhood. His groundbreaking work on early childhood attachment (commonly known as attachment theory) deduced that the same desire that creates the emotional bond between parents and children is responsible for the bond that develops between adults in emotionally intimate relationships.

What’s in the way of you creating a healthy relationship was created from the experiences of your early childhood.

So, the part of you that has been selecting a life partner is a much younger part of you that has no idea how the world works. Your strategies for love were cobbled together in your mind through your experiences during the early years of your life.

It doesn’t matter if you grew up in an idyllic home that was the envy of your friends, if you grew up in foster care with multiple caregivers, or anything in between. Because your mind is set up for you to survive at all costs and from your survival strategies you created a system for love.

We call this system Your Love Imprint.

What Is Your Love Imprint?

Your Love Imprint is the program in your subconscious mind — your internal GPS settings for love. It determines who you’re attracted to and dictates your unconscious strategies in your intimate relationships.

Your Love Imprint consists of three parts: your limiting beliefs, mental/emotional patterns, and behavioral strategies for giving and receiving love. This is a simple explanation for a complex system, one that has many layers and is unique to you.

Through the lens of the science of attraction, Your Love Imprint is the psychological underpinnings of your attractions. The unconscious desire of a newborn baby to bond with its parents is driven by two core emotional needs — to feel loved and to feel safe.

Your Core Emotional Needs And The Science Of Attraction

When you were born, you were physically incapable of taking care of yourself. You were unable to walk or communicate and were helpless to take care of yourself. So, you needed someone to take care of your physical needs to survive.

You also had two emotional needs to not only survive but to thrive. You needed to feel loved and safe.

As a young child, you would do anything to feel loved and safe. You’d take on any belief or behavior to get these needs met. That’s how important they were to your survival.

A famous experiment reveals how the science of attraction is formed from your core emotional needs.

Psychologist Harry Harlow ran a series of experiments with baby Rhesus Monkeys in the 1950s in which he replaced their mothers with different types of dolls replicating the adult mother monkey.

One of the dolls was made of wire, another was covered with a cloth, and there was one doll that was metal and had spikes on it that would strike the baby monkey when it came close.

This third doll was the most illustrative of how important it is to feel loved and safe. What Harlow discovered was that the spikes did not dissuade the baby monkey from seeking love from its surrogate mother. What happened was that the baby monkey would try different strategies of approaching the mother to avoid being hit.

The baby monkey would act playfully, approach slowly and cautiously, be flirtatious, or even be bold in its approach. The baby monkey never gave up its quest to get love from its surrogate mother.

You could think of yourself in much the same way.

You’ll take on any belief, any behavior, or any strategy to feel loved and safe in your family of origin.

Your Need To Feel Loved And Safe Drives Your Behavior

It’s so important for you to feel loved and safe that you’ll take on any belief system to ensure that you fit in your family of origin and that they’ll continue to provide for you – even if it means thinking less of yourself.

Children have a unique way of taking responsibility for their circumstances. When a child isn’t getting what they need from a parent, the child doesn’t say some version of, “Gee Mom, that isn’t very helpful. What I really need is to be told that you believe in me and that everything will be all right.”

No child has that level of self-awareness, nor would it even be safe in many families to speak that way to a parent.

Instead, children ask themselves, “What is wrong with me that my parent is behaving this way?”

As a child, you took full responsibility for the fact that your parents didn’t have the best strategies for raising you. This act of taking responsibility creates within you a core wound. This wound comes from an experience that you’re not loveable exactly as you are.  And this wound causes you to adopt limiting beliefs, behaviors, strategies, and emotional reactions to reconcile your core emotional needs with your current reality.

According to the science of attraction, your core wound influences who you’re attracted to.

How Does Your Love Imprint^® Affect Your Choices And Your Behavior?

The childhood strategies that formed Your Love Imprint manifest in your choices and behavior in your adult relationships.

Maybe you were rewarded when you took care of your younger siblings or were successful academically. On a subconscious level, you feel loved when you have to earn it through your actions. This leads you to constantly feel like you have to prove yourself or overcome some obstacle to be loved. Unconsciously you don’t believe anyone would love you as you are.

Maybe you had to sacrifice your desires because you were raised by someone who was sick, depressed, or alcoholic. You were forced to take care of the person who was supposed to take care of you. This strategy leads you to believe that love requires you to sacrifice your wants and needs and can land you in a co-dependent relationship. Underneath it all you feel angry and resentful because your partner can’t meet your needs.

Maybe love feels elusive and mysterious because your parents weren’t emotionally available, and so you seek out other emotionally unavailable people in hopes that they’ll choose you when your parents didn’t. You’re constantly yearning for emotional connection and believe that when you’re finally chosen it will prove that you’re lovable.

The brain science of attraction reveals that your relationship patterns are programmed into your subconscious and keep you stuck in a pattern of unfulfilling relationships. Breaking the pattern of Your Love Imprint requires you to rethink your response to the familiar excitement when you meet someone new.

You Are Attracted To What Is Familiar

The main job of the subconscious mind is to keep you alive. It does this by highlighting the familiar. You have a physical homeostasis that is required for you to survive. If your body’s temperature, heart rate, or blood pressure falls outside of a very narrow range, you’ll die.

You also have a behavioral homeostasis. Your subconscious mind strives to keep your behavior consistent within a familiar narrow range. Because you are wired for survival (and not necessarily for thriving) your subconscious mind directs you toward similar circumstances again and again and again.

Your subconscious mind recognizes familiar qualities and behaviors in a potential partner and an alarm goes off telling you, “This is familiar! This is familiar!” The problem is your subconscious doesn’t distinguish between what is familiar and good for you, versus familiar and bad for you.

The alarm is misinterpreted as excitement and attraction. When you think of falling in love, does it feel all-consuming, unbalancing, or like you’re floating on air? These are signs that you’ve met a love imprint match, not a lifelong partner.

The subconscious mind cannot judge – that occurs only in the big pre-frontal cortex part of the brain. You can think of the subconscious as having two buckets – Known and Unknown. What is known is considered safe and everything else is considered unsafe. This is because whatever age you are right now – you’ve made it this far.

Your subconscious wants to bring you more of the same experiences because it assumes you’ll continue to survive through whatever you’ve already experienced. Because the subconscious cannot judge, it has no clue if you’re alive and blissfully happy, or if you’re miserable and suicidal. It only knows that you’re alive and you’ve lived through all your experiences.

Love Imprint Examples

Your Love Imprint^® manifests in unique ways in your love life. Discovering the language of the core wound brings clarity to your strategies and behavior in your intimate relationships. Here are a few examples from clients we’ve worked with through the years (names and identifying details have been changed). Even these few examples show you the myriad ways that a childhood wound becomes the guiding force in who you find attractive and your struggles to find lasting love.

Sarah – I’m Not Worthy Of Love

Sarah is a thirty-six-year-old divorced accountant struggling to move past the heartbreak of her failed marriage. She grew up hearing that her father truly wanted a son instead of her. He couldn’t handle her emotional nature and would often manipulate her by twisting her words against her. Her mother was neither warm nor affectionate; she expressed love through her actions instead.

Sarah never felt she could please her ex-husband. Her biggest fear was that she was never going to be enough — good enough, smart enough, thin enough, or pretty enough. She struggled to re-enter the dating world for years after her divorce because she believed that to find love, she’d have to sacrifice her wants and needs. Her feelings of unworthiness led her to choose selfish men who weren’t interested in making her happy.

André – I’m Not Enough

Andre is a widowed fifty-nine-year-old human resources specialist. Raised by a strict father who was always disappointed in him and a mother focused on fitting in with the neighbors and supporting her husband’s ambition, he never felt acknowledged or valued. His father died when he was sixteen years old, so he never had a chance to prove himself to his dad.

Andre is attracted to strong, powerful women but he believes they are out of his league. He’s had several relationships with women who want him to take care of them but doesn’t find them satisfying. He’s caught between feeling rejected and rejecting women he thinks are not worthy of him. Believing he is not enough, he ping-pongs between women he doesn’t deserve, and women he doesn’t respect.

Rebecca – Love Is For Other People, Not Me

Rebecca is a single, never-married, Jewish fifty-one-year-old schoolteacher. She is the youngest of two children and was regularly and relentlessly teased by her older brother and father while growing up. She internalized their jesting to mean there was something inherently wrong with her and felt emotionally unsafe with the men in her family. Her mother was extremely conflict-avoidant and incapable of sticking up for her. Instead, she would downplay Rebecca’s feelings and tell her to shrug it off.

Rebecca didn’t have any romantic relationships until she was in college, initially dating men, and later experimenting with women, she identified as lesbian for over a decade. In her late thirties, she started dating men again and found that the same issues followed her into those relationships. No relationships lasted more than a year, as she was very guarded and easily triggered. She had a long list of red flags to warn her and another list of qualities she desired in a partner. She was holding on tightly to the belief that love is for other people, but not for her.

Souza – I Am Invisible In Love

Souza is a single, never-married, forty-seven-year-old hospital technician from a close traditional family. As the oldest, she would help her mother around the house and took pride in being able to care for her siblings. Souza’s strategies for earning love were shaped by focusing on other people’s needs to the detriment of her own.

From a young age she was attracted to girls, not boys like her friends, and this made her feel like an alien in her community. As a teenager, she tried to find someone like her in the community as she was desperate to alleviate her feelings of being different, but she did not succeed. Feeling like an alien caused Souza to jump into relationships quickly because the emotional and physical intimacy gave her the feeling of belonging that she never received in childhood. Rather than finding a beloved life partner Souza ended up having many short-term relationships that left her feeling chronically heartbroken.

Moving From Surviving To Thriving

According to the science of attraction, you’re stuck being attracted to similar situations because your subconscious is trying to keep you alive. You’ll continue to struggle until you break the cycle by identifying and healing Your Love Imprint. You can’t thrive in love if you’re in survival mode.

It’s not your destiny to continue to struggle. Your survival mechanism is working to keep you safe, but your strategies for selecting a mate are using faulty software.

Thriving in love requires you to grow past your childhood wounding and choose love from your heart’s desire, not your subconscious need to survive. You’ll never find love looking outside of you, especially if you’ve never experienced it before. The solution you seek is inside.

As a child, you assigned meaning to the events that occurred. These plot points of your past are not changeable; however, the meaning you assigned to those events is malleable. Having a new experience of love changes what’s possible for you. It rewrites your love software on the subconscious level. Just like riding a bike, once you learn how to do it, you cannot unlearn it.

Your Love Imprint^®, your specific homeostasis for love, isn’t your destiny; it’s a story you learned as a child. You can change that story and the first step is to identify your specific childhood wounding.

If you’re tired of just surviving in your love life and are ready to thrive, join us for Your Love Imprint Session. We’ll diagnose your unique pattern blocking you from long-lasting love and share with you our approach for transforming your heartache and opening the door to a new type of love – one where you can count on your partner as sure as you know the sun will rise tomorrow.

Apply for Your Love Imprint Session here.

Knowing how your mind is wired for attraction puts you in the driver’s seat to change your patterns and, finally get love right. You can take a new approach that doesn’t just rely on chemistry and attraction to choose a mate. You’re not destined to be attracted to the wrong people. Lasting love doesn’t have to feel elusive.

When You’re Attracted To The Wrong People You Can Feel Broken

Discovering that you’re stuck in an unhealthy love pattern may make you feel like there’s something wrong with you and that your picker is somehow broken. When your inner coordinates for love keep steering you in the wrong direction, you may believe that you’re stuck in this pattern.

You’re not stuck forever being attracted to the wrong people. Everyone suffers from a version of this dilemma. However, the degree to which your coordinates are off determines how much of an adjustment you need to make.

The first step is to identify your unhealthy pattern and where it comes from. The coordinates of Your Love Imprint are programmed in your family of origin. The need to heal the relationship with your parents through your romantic relationships is universal. It’s part of the human condition.

The brain science of attraction reveals that healthy love wasn’t modeled for you in your family of origin, so you don’t have an effective internal guidance system to create lasting love. On some level, every person is not loved exactly as they desired by their parents and they play this dynamic out in their adult, intimate relationships.

Though this pattern can leave you feeling broken, it simply means you’re human. The wound of Your Love Imprint is part of the human condition and affects your strategies and behaviors in your intimate relationships.

You’re Attracted To The Wrong People Because Your Love Imprint^® Has Defective Coordinates

Your Love Imprint is your subconscious program for love and intimate relationships. It includes your limiting beliefs, your mental/emotional patterns, and your behavioral strategies for giving and receiving love. It’s formed in your family of origin and drives your choices in your romantic relationships.

When you’re an infant you have two emotional needs that must be met for you to survive and thrive. You need to feel loved and safe. Your need for love and safety causes you to take on any beliefs, behaviors, and strategies to achieve your goal. They set the coordinates of Your Love Imprint — your GPS for love.

To get your needs met you took full responsibility for your parents’ inability to love you the way you needed to be loved. It was your responsibility to change, not theirs.

Maybe you learned in your childhood that you were more likely to feel loved and safe if you were quiet and didn’t speak up about your needs. You’d come to believe that it was safer to sacrifice yourself than it was to get your emotional needs met.

Or, in your family you might have learned that love and rejection are connected. The rejection you felt from one of the most important people in your life becomes intertwined with the need for love and acceptance.

The wound of Your Love Imprint significantly determines who you find attractive as an adult. The strategies you used to cope in your childhood become the strategies you use in your intimate relationships.

Ultimately, the brain science of attraction shows you’re attracted to the wrong people because they match your childhood wounds, and you end up repeating the same unhealthy pattern over and over again.

You’re Attracted To The Wrong People Because They Feel Familiar

Your attraction to the wrong people is a match to your childhood wounding. This is a Love Imprint match — your subconscious mind is highlighting certain characteristics as feeling familiar, and you interpret this signal of familiarity as attraction and chemistry.

Just as you have a physical homeostasis, you also have a behavioral one. Physically, your body’s temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate need to stay within a narrow range for you to stay alive. The same feels true of your behavior. It feels uncomfortable or frightening to step out of your relationship comfort zone.

Your subconscious mind recognizes a match to your childhood wounds and highlights them for you. It’s as if a signal goes off in your mind and body saying, “This is familiar! This is familiar!” Unfortunately, your subconscious cannot tell you if familiar is good or bad because its job is to maintain the relationship homeostasis of Your Love Imprint.

It’s like you’re confusing the signals of fear and excitement. Your body is producing adrenaline, increasing your heart rate, and making your breath shallow in response to the perceived threat. You’ve been misinterpreting those signals as chemistry, attraction, and love.

Your attraction feels intoxicating and intense because your mind is sending you a loud “This is familiar!” signal. You misinterpret that signal to mean excitement when it’s a fear response. The brain science of attraction has you confused about what love feels like.

Your Fear/Excitement Trigger Needs To Be Recalibrated

The first step to changing this pattern is to avoid people who trigger this “danger/excitement” feeling. Rather than dive in headfirst when you experience this familiar signal, slow down and use caution. Start reorienting what you’ve believed to be chemistry as fear.

If you were to describe what love feels like to you, your description probably includes feeling off-balance, having obsessive thoughts, butterflies in your stomach, or inability to control your impulses. These are symptoms of a fight/flight response, not love and acceptance.

The brain science of attraction keeps you stuck in this unhealthy pattern. Until you heal the wounds of your childhood, you’ll keep repeating the same unhealthy relationships. If you’ve been burned enough, you’ll over-correct and choose safe partners who you don’t feel attracted to or shut your heart off from love altogether. None of these choices lead to the lasting love you desire.

When you’re attracted to the wrong people, you need to recalibrate how you think about attraction. Recognize the fear response attached to Your Love Imprint and avoid getting intimate with people who trigger those familiar feelings.

Don’t Choose A Partner Based On A Feeling

When you’re attracted to the wrong people, you’re putting too much emphasis on your feelings while ignoring potential issues. Attraction is important for love to last, but it isn’t the only ingredient. Putting too much importance on chemistry can cause you to miss the red flags right in front of you.

The brain science of attraction highlights people who feel familiar to you. If an emotionally available, kind, and loving potential partner was interested in you, you’d likely not find them attractive because they wouldn’t be charged for you in the same way as your familiar relationship pattern.

You’ve yet to experience being loved by a supportive, nurturing partner who values you and wants you to be happy. Or experienced being with someone who’s curious about you and your feelings and doesn’t allow you to go into sacrifice.

For you to find a kind, supportive person attractive, you’ll first have to change your relationship with yourself to recalibrate the settings of Your Love Imprint.

The Love You Seek Is Inside Of You

The story you created about yourself because your parents were unable to love you the way you desired to be loved feels true. It feels like part of your identity. The brain science of attraction proves that you’ll reject someone who doesn’t mirror that dynamic until you change your relationship with yourself.

The pattern of being attracted to the wrong people is part of Your Love Imprint, but it isn’t your destiny. It’s a pattern you learned, and you can learn a new pattern for love.

To break this pattern you need to begin a practice of self-love. One of the first steps is to start speaking up for your wants and needs, as well as setting and keeping clear boundaries. When you treat yourself respectfully, you’ll reject anyone who doesn’t match your internal energy.

The brain science of attraction says that your outer world experience is a reflection of your inner world. When you realize that you don’t get love from another, instead you share the love you have for yourself with another, then you’ll start nurturing your feelings of self-love and self-respect.

Developing Your Self-Esteem And Self-Respect Is The Key To Transforming Your Love Imprint

A lack of self-respect causes you to tolerate people who don’t treat you with respect and deep-down hope that they’ll change for you. You end up trying to prove your lovability and wishing you’d have said no to their requests. Or maybe you find yourself apologizing for your behavior when there’s nothing to apologize for.

Changing this pattern of being attracted to the wrong people begins by making agreements with yourself and sticking to them. Instead of dwelling on the people who’ve mistreated you, decide today you will treat yourself with loving kindness — no matter what. Even on your worst day, decide you’ll find compassion for yourself.

Change your inner dialog from beating yourself up and internalizing your parents’ voices to one that is supportive, kind, and loving. You can become your own best friend by saying nice things to yourself about yourself.

It’s time to forgive the child inside of you who was doing the best they could. Find compassion for all that you went through as a child, and now as a grown person make better choices because you have more resources. When you make this shift, the brain science of attraction assures that you’ll no longer be attracted to the wrong people.

Don’t Put Your Lovability In The Hands Of A Stranger

You’re the only one responsible for your lovability. Treat yourself with love and compassion. Focus on healing the wounds of Your Love Imprint so that you can find a better caliber of person attractive.

Wishing and hoping that someone will prove that you’re lovable by choosing you gives your power away and leaves you feeling insecure and full of regret. No one can give you love. You share the love you already have within yourself with another. Focus on growing the love you have for yourself before looking for someone to partner up with.

If you’re stuck in a pattern of attracting the wrong people, those who are unable to fulfill your needs, you’ll need to transform Your Love Imprint. Then you can develop a new way to create lasting love. Transforming your GPS for love puts you in the driver’s seat of your love life and utilizes the brain science of attraction in your favor. You can take the first step by clicking here.

There’s a rush of connecting with someone new when you’re hot for each other. The conversation flows easily, you have butterflies in your stomach, and the chemistry is off the charts when you finally kiss. Next thing you know you’re obsessing, constantly thinking about them, and it feels like you’re walking on air.

How do you know if you’ve found your soulmate, or if it’s just another person who’s going to break your heart?

While chemistry is essential to lasting love, it’s not the only important component. You may have been burned by diving in quickly when there’s intense sexual chemistry.

Can you have long-lasting love without chemistry at all? Can stability and friendship be enough? What if they don’t turn you on? Is it possible to spend the rest of your life with someone you’re friends with but doesn’t turn you on?

If intense sexual chemistry has always led you to heartbreak and frustration, then perhaps it’s time to reevaluate your strategies in the dating process.

You aren’t destined to remain stuck in the same lather/rinse/repeat cycle of unrequited love. Instead, you can approach love in a whole new way, satisfy both your heart and your mind, and create lasting love with someone who turns you on and is a good match for the long term.

So, what do you do when you feel intense sexual chemistry, and how do you make the right choice to steer clear of heartbreak and create a love that lasts?

Love v Lust – What’s The Difference?

Lust is a surface-level attraction that’s all about chemistry and sex. Attraction can grow into love only when you add in emotional connection, shared values and beliefs, compassion, and respect. Then you have the real thing. Lust is temporary and fleeting. Love can last a lifetime and grow deeper through the years.

Lust is not triggered by a physical attraction alone. You can lust after someone who isn’t the most attractive, or even the one with the hottest body.

So, what triggers that intense sexual chemistry?

One aspect of attraction is chemical and sensory. It’s driven by the biochemistry of the brain and is an entirely unconscious phenomenon between two people. The way they smell, the color of their eyes, and the sound of their voice, all factor into creating intense sexual chemistry.

The other aspect comes from a subconscious recognition of a familiar pattern, one that you learned in your family of origin.

You learned how to give and receive love from the people who raised you and this programming is written in your subconscious mind. This familiar pattern plays out in your adult intimate relationships. Your own personal GPS for love was created when you were a little child and isn’t a match to what you desire as an adult.

When your subconscious recognizes a similar emotional and energetic pattern from your childhood it sends you a signal that says, “This is familiar! This is familiar!” Unfortunately, your subconscious cannot distinguish between whether familiar is good or bad. It simply highlights the familiar dynamic from your childhood.

For many people the familiar dynamic is unhealthy or even toxic. Love may have come with high stakes for going into sacrifice, keeping your emotions to yourself, or with feelings of being unlovable. The familiar can drive you to only seek out those who are a match to your childhood wounds.

This is why you can repeatedly be drawn to partners who aren’t a good fit for you. Like a moth to a flame, you can’t help but connect with the person you know will break your heart.

Intense Sexual Chemistry Does Not Guarantee Happily Ever After

In fact, the exact opposite is often true. The people who are most likely to trigger intense sexual chemistry (that can include anxious butterflies in your gut, sleepless nights obsessing about them, and feelings of exhilaration when you’re together) are often the ones who are the most emotionally unhealthy for you to get involved with.

The problem with intense sexual chemistry is that it can blur your vision so that you don’t pay attention to the red flags right in front of you. Do they alternate hot/cold, one day super into you and then disappear for a few days? Are they reaching out to you at the last minute for a hook-up? Do they push your boundaries or ignore your feelings when you’re upset?

To determine whether this is love v lust, you’ll have to get some objectivity by slowing down the dating process. You’ll also have to be aware of your own patterns and strategies for giving and receiving love so you don’t sabotage your results. Discovering an ideal match for you takes time.

1. Do You Lose Yourself In The Relationship?

If your friends complain that you disappear every time you feel intense sexual chemistry with a new partner you may have an unhealthy pattern of self-sacrifice in your relationships.

Merging quickly and allowing your needs and wants to take a backseat to your partner’s is a clear signal that you have an unhealthy pattern that needs to be addressed before you can find lasting love.

A healthy relationship is when one whole and complete person comes together with another whole and complete person. Together they create a new entity – the relationship. Instead of relying on the other person to complete you, or fix you, there’s a balance of effort between you to keep the relationship thriving.

Use extreme caution if you continually bend to your partner’s will and give up asking for your needs and wants to be met. Be aware of twisting into a pretzel to try to earn love. Remember, you are worth loving as-is — change not required.

2. Are You Hyper-Focused On Chemistry?

If you reject someone outright after one date because you don’t feel intense sexual chemistry, then you may be putting too much emphasis on the wrong qualities for love to last. It can be exciting and romantic to have a 24-hour first date, but it will likely burn brightly and then burn out.

Chemistry is a necessary ingredient for a healthy relationship. You should never sacrifice it. But don’t put more importance on attraction than all the other qualities necessary for a relationship to thrive and last.

You may think you know after one or two dates if there is any chemistry, but you can have off-the-charts chemistry with someone who isn’t the kind of person you would want as a life partner.

To determine love v lust you need to have the spark of chemistry present, and then discover over time if there’s enough there for love to develop between you. Ideally, you’ll want to cultivate discernment through the dating process. Love and affection become even stronger when you feel emotionally safe and supported by your partner.

3. Are You Addicted To The Feeling Of Falling In Love?

Falling in love is so intoxicating that many scientists equate it with the high that comes from high-quality drugs. And the truth is, you’re on drugs when you’re in the Romance Stage of a relationship. Your brain is literally being flooded with chemicals when you feel infatuated with your new guy.

Feelings of euphoria, and the release of a medley of chemicals in the brain, including dopamine (pleasure), adrenaline (fight or flight), and norepinephrine (alertness), can make falling in love into an addictive rush. Adrenaline, for example, causes your cheeks to feel flushed, your palms to feel sweaty, and your heart to race when you’re with someone you like.

If you crave these feelings and get bored quickly when the chemicals wear off you could be addicted to the feeling of falling in lust. The problem is that you mistake it for love.

Just like a drug addict, you’ll have to wean yourself off those feelings and develop the skills to navigate through the inevitable power struggle that comes when the chemicals wear off. Lasting love is possible when you know how to recreate the romance with someone you’ve known for years.

4. Is Your Subconscious Sending You A Warning?

Fear and excitement feel the same in your body. The adrenaline that causes your heart to race, your breath to become shallow, and your palms to become sweaty is triggered by both emotions. The difference between fear and excitement is your internal dialog while you’re experiencing these body sensations.

Many motivational speakers will encourage you to take your fear and turn it into excitement. If you’re terrified of speaking in front of a group, you can tell yourself that you are actually excited to share your expertise and those body sensations are occurring simply because you care.

However, the reverse is also true. You could confuse a fear response for excitement. Your subconscious is yelling, “This is familiar! This is familiar!” when you meet a handsome stranger. Unfortunately, this part of your brain cannot judge, so it has no idea if the familiar is good for you or bad for you. Its job is to steer you toward what you already know.

To discern between love v lust it’s up to you to recognize the familiar signal and avoid falling into your unhealthy patterns.

5. Are You Filling In The Blanks & Slanting Toward The Positive?

All those chemicals flowing through your brain can easily cloud your vision. The hope that you’ve finally met your soulmate can further confuse your sense of reason. People who get scammed by “Tinder Swindlers” ignore obvious signs. They get caught up and invest emotionally in someone they barely know or never met.

Instead, approach the early stages of dating (both online and IRL) with healthy skepticism and never give a stranger the benefit of the doubt. That has to be earned over time. So, don’t share personal information or make excuses for bad behavior because you really want it to work this time.

Do not wear rose-colored glasses through the dating process and instead allow yourself to be objective and discover who they really are.

Then once you’re in a committed, long-term relationship you’ll want to put on your rose-colored glasses and see your partner in his best light. That’s because they’ll have earned the benefit of the doubt through their consistent actions over time.

Intense Sexual Attraction Isn’t Only Love v Lust – How To Transform Lust Into Love

Feeling intense sexual chemistry doesn’t automatically mean it’s going to end badly. Chemistry and attraction can transform into a healthy, respectful, loving relationship. The key is knowing how to evaluate if something more meaningful is possible. Are you compatible beyond the bedroom?

Using your emotional guidance system you can determine if they’re the right person for you.  How do you feel when you’re together and how do you feel when you part? Do they trigger feelings of insecurity or a critical inner voice?

Do you share similar life goals and values? Have compatible lifestyles?

Notice what happens when you make a request or when there’s a conflict. Do they minimize your upset or get defensive? Or are they able to hear you, share their feelings and be vulnerable? Navigating through your differences to repair and reconnect can create magic.

Yeast is necessary to make bread rise, and you need chemistry to keep the spice alive. You won’t ever be satisfied with just a cracker when you really want chewy on the inside, crunchy on the outside yummy bread.

Don’t put aside sexual chemistry as if it’s something you don’t need or can’t trust because it has caused problems for you in the past. Instead, notice when the chemistry is so intense that it throws you off as this is likely a signal that this isn’t the right person for you.

If you’re feeling like your picker is broken, or you’re not sure if your current partner is part of your unhealthy pattern, don’t despair, book a complimentary Soulmate Strategy Session with us so we can show you a new way to “do” love. We’d be honored to be your guides to the long-lasting love you desire and deserve.

Question: If I have no chemistry with a guy I’ve met, how long do I wait to see if attraction develops between us?

I have met a very nice man. We have the same interests in hobbies, books and music. He’s retired and has tons of time. I work full time and also have a photography business and am very busy with limited free time. This is sometimes a problem, but my real question is about sexual attraction. How quickly do you know if it’s there?

I thought we had some chemistry but now I’m not so sure (at least on my part). He says he’s attracted to me, but I’m having trouble recognizing his cues. He’s a very nice man, but I want passion too. I don’t want to settle like I have in the past. Please help!

Julia”

Hi Julia,

Thanks for your heartfelt question. This is a common conundrum, you have no chemistry and wonder if it will develop over time, and how long do you wait for it to develop? It takes more than just sharing hobbies and interests for a relationship to last. Chemistry alone is not enough; however it is an essential ingredient.

Many people think that marrying their best friend is a good idea, but if there’s no chemistry between them it’s much more difficult to get through the challenges that will inevitably come their way.

Logically, your brain wants to have the same hobbies, interests, and share a similar lifestyle. Your heart on the other hand desires that magical feeling of chemistry and spark.

In order for love to be long-lasting your head and heart must be in harmony — and not in conflict. No chemistry between you may mean it’s just a platonic relationship.

How Important Is Chemistry?

All the messages you receive about love through books, songs, poetry, and television demonstrate that a lightning bolt of chemistry and connection lets you know you’ve met “The One.” While attraction and chemistry aren’t the most important reasons for dating someone, they’re definitely part of the equation. Bread doesn’t rise without yeast present. Otherwise, you just have a cracker (and no one wants to settle for a cracker when you desire yummy chewy bread).

Trying to eliminate chemistry from the recipe will make it very difficult to weather the storms together.

Every relationship begins with a romance stage that comes from chemistry, it floods your brain with feel-good chemicals. This creates the sensation of “falling” in love. A relationship cannot survive a truncated romance stage, if it’s cut short there won’t be enough gas in the relationship tank to make it through the inevitable power struggle stage that comes next.

The feeling of falling in love is a powerful drug and creates the glue that bonds two people together. It’s the promise of what’s to come if both people decide to stick it out and create a lasting connection built on commitment and choice.

Sadly, many people mistakenly believe that the romance phase will last indefinitely and think they’ve made a mistake when they end up in a power struggle. All five stages of relationship are unavoidable, it’s the journey through them that bonds the couple together.

When the romance wears off the couple individuates (like a teenager from their family) and provides the opportunity for the couple to make a choice that they’re better together than apart.

No Chemistry Equals A Platonic Friendship

Friends are important to your overall emotional well-being. There’s a need for human beings to live in communities and your friends deliver the feeling of belonging that’s necessary to function as part of society.

The difference between a friend and a romantic partner is the desire for physical intimacy.

Friendships develop from similarities, and chemistry comes from the differences between you and your partner. Just like the same side of two magnets repel and the opposite sides stick making them magnetic.

Opposites attract, it’s built into species survival. Introverts are attracted to extroverts. Intellectual men often end up with passionate women (and vice versa). Spenders end up with savers. Those who are oriented as “You first,” end up in relationship with a “Me first” person.

Sharing similar interests and hobbies will often fall short of creating a lasting love relationship, but love will not last if there’s no chemistry between you. There’s no reason to stick it out through the rough patches without it!

Energetics That Create Chemistry

Every person has masculine energy and feminine energy (regardless of gender), and usually one side is more dominant. A lasting love relationship has a natural balance of masculine and feminine energy between you.

The most common combination is a more masculine male with a more feminine female, but the opposite can also last for a lifetime. This is evident with most same-sex couples, one partner is more masculine and the other is more feminine.

The majority of heterosexual women don’t feel fulfilled in a romantic relationship by being more in their masculine energy partnered with a more feminine male. This isn’t about tasks, jobs, or chores, the female can be the breadwinner and be more feminine in her intimate relationship.

Many heterosexual women pursue and drive the relationship forward only to initiate the dreaded, “Where is this going?” conversation. A lot of time can be wasted without being clear on energetics and the role they play in creating chemistry and attraction.

The energetics we’re referencing describe behavior within an intimate relationship. Are you the pursuer? Do you want to be in charge and make the decisions? Or would you rather respond and redirect your partner’s lead?

In your current situation, it seems that neither of you is leading, and just like with two dancers without a leader there’s not a lot of choreography going on. He says he’s attracted to you, but he’s not taking action to pursue you or claim you.

He might be waiting for a clear signal that you desire him, or he could simply be looking for some companionship and isn’t a relationship-ready man.

Since both of you appear to be mostly in feminine energy each of you is waiting for the other to lead, there’s no chemistry between you despite having similar interests. Beware of wasting time with the guy who leaves you in the driver’s seat.

Is Chemistry Enough For Love To Last?

Chemistry is an indication of opposing energies, but it’s not an indication of a good match for the long-term. In fact, many relationships with off-the-charts chemistry can be unhealthy and toxic.

If you don’t understand how relationships progress through five stages you’ll bail when the power struggle begins thinking this isn’t the right person.

The glue that holds two people together over time is sharing common goals. When you value the same things you’re able to be on the same team when trouble hits. Sharing goals allows you to find common ground during a disagreement.

Ultimately, for a soul-satisfying, long-lasting partnership you’re looking for a combination of chemistry and shared values. When you have passion as well as a shared vision for the future you’ve found the sweet spot that can create lasting love.

No Chemistry? How Long Do You Wait?

The spark of attraction doesn’t need to be there on the first date. Expecting love at first site is an unrealistic expectation. Spending several dates to see if chemistry grows gives some time for nerves to calm down and see if there’s a spark between you.

The largest erogenous zone is the space between your ears — your brain! How you think about someone can trigger attraction. After five to six dates if there’s still no chemistry it’s probably not going to develop between you.

No matter how much you have in common or how good a match he appears to be on paper chemistry doesn’t come from your logical mind. If you’re not feeling the urge to kiss him or have his arms wrapped around you it’s best to move on.

Waiting too long to move on when there’s no chemistry can make dating a chore. You’ll want a balance between rushing to exclusivity and taking too long to deselect a potential match. If you’re not sure when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em you can end up wasting a lot of valuable time which can create apathy.

Date Intentionally To Meet Your Ideal Match

Waiting for chemistry to develop over time won’t deliver your relationship goals, and neither will rushing to physical intimacy when chemistry is high. This is the definition of Love By Accident.

It’s an accident because you’re expecting a feeling to inform you if you’ve met the right person. You’ll never find an ideal partner for long-lasting love this way because all of your feelings are temporary.

Instead of waiting for chemistry to just magically develop between the two of you, take matters into your own hands by taking a new approach to dating.

Take it slowly and evaluate over time to discover if you share the same values and also have the spark of chemistry between you. Date multiple men at the same time so you can date with non-attachment while first observing yourself through the dating process.

Evaluate your strategies for giving and receiving love to see if they are getting the results you desire or leaving you in dead-end situations again and again. You’ll also gain clarity of your desires by having different experiences with different kinds of men.

Most people are clear on what they don’t want, and the vision of what they do want is rather vague and fuzzy. Your true desires are not the opposite of what you don’t want. Plus, you can’t manifest from lack so knowing what you don’t want doesn’t bring you closer to creating your ideal relationship.

Get curious about your inner dialog and how you feel with each guy you date. What types of men inspire you and attract you and what types don’t? Are you able to speak how you feel and make requests with a man you feel a strong attraction to, or are you only able to be yourself if there’s nothing at stake?

Relax Into Your Feminine

If the guy you’re dating isn’t moving things forward you can’t speed him up. Relaxing into your feminine energy will either cue him to step it up, or he’ll disappear.

Most importantly don’t rescue him — don’t be his mother if you want to be his lover! If he isn’t reaching out regularly to see you or doesn’t ask you out in advance it’s his loss. Have a busy life, and don’t be overly accommodating.

A guy who deselects you through the dating process is doing you a favor. His rejection is protection against a partner who’s not an ideal match for you (regardless of your temporary feelings for him).

If there is no chemistry, you’ll quickly discover if there’s the potential for it by being in your feminine energy through the dating process, so you only respond and redirect rather than initiate.

Relaxing into your femininity means you wait to see if a guy will move things forward and pursue you. Guys who are attracted to you and want a relationship with you will move the relationship forward and make an effort to claim you and take you off the market. Guys who want companionship and convenience will relax into their feminine and let you take the lead and make all the effort.

Being feminine has absolutely nothing to do with being passive. Feminine energy is receptive and responsive. Allowing a man to lead doesn’t mean you have to follow, you always have veto power. You can speak up, share how you feel, and make requests. The feminine sets the pace of the relationship by slowing things down if he’s moving things to quickly.

When you’re embracing your more feminine side you’ll put a lot less effort into connecting with him, and you’ll leave the driver’s seat empty so there’s space for him to sit in it. If he doesn’t start driving the relationship, he’s not ready or not interested in a committed relationship.

Say No To Everything That Doesn’t Fit Your Vision

Right now, you’re spending time with a man who leaves you feeling confused and unsure. You don’t really know what he wants, and you feel no chemistry with him. He’s not suddenly going to become a different man.

For a passionate, soul-satisfying relationship that lasts say, “No” to anything that doesn’t fit the vision of your true soul partnership. Because you feel no chemistry with this man, doesn’t make him a bad guy, it simply makes him not the man for you.

Long-lasting love is not something that just happens by accident, it’s created just like everything else in life worth having. The first step is to create a clear vision of your ideal relationship, not a list of qualities in a person. Write out the details of the relationship you want, how it functions, the dynamics between you, and your sensory experience.

Through the dating process see if you can find a match to your vision, rather than trying to make it work with someone who is a nice companion.

Are you finding that your head and heart are not in harmony as you date different men? Do you have chemistry with partners who aren’t an ideal match for your values? Maybe you end up in platonic relationships with no chemistry and hope it will develop over time? Whatever pattern you’re stuck in we can help you break it! Join us for a complimentary Soulmate Strategy Session and we can get to the root of what is blocking you from the long-lasting, soul-satisfying love you desire and deserve.