Importance of chemistry in a relationship
How important is chemistry in a relationship?
Its not.
Chemistry. It’s the spark that ignites connection. Its electricity when you touch. Its that look that makes your heart skip a beat. Its feeling like you’ve arrived home, where you were always meant to be. It’s a bunch of lies really..
The chemistry we feel when we first meet someone new or start a new relationship, aka the honeymoon phase, is evolutions way of facilitating initial attachment. It helps us turn a blind eye to any flaws we see in another person, because if we didn’t, the human race would become extinct.
It’s really just naturally occuring biological hormones and chemicals that course through our veins. But it doesn’t stay with us and it doesn’t tell us anything at all about the relationship.
A relationship truly starts after the honeymoon phase. Feeling strong chemistry when we start the relationship is not at all an indicator of long term relationship success. And actually, arranged marriages are more successful than relationships with free rein. Arranged marriages have a lower rate of separation. Why?
Love is a concept, as much as it is a feeling and a verb. What you expect from love and how you define it will have a significant bearing on the partners you seek and on the level of satisfaction in your relationship, our concept of love mirrors our caretakers. When we experience a sufficient number of matches or similarities, the more love and chemistry we feel.
Theres good and theres bad news here.
The good news is that if you came from a relationally healthy family, you would likely find a partner to match. Likewise, if you came from relationally damaged family, you would unfortunately likely find a partner to match. For the latter, High chemistry = unfinished business, instead, seeking low chemistry may stir up less trouble from past. Especially as We tend to bring our most damaged selves to our intimate relationships.
Arranged marriages avoid this problem by taking away chemistry as a factor. It’s not as important as we are lead to believe.
Hollywood would have us believe that a partner for love is the same as a partner for life. This is a misconception. There will be partners we have for life who we may not be passionately and madly in love with and partners we have for love who just aren’t made for us to build a life with. A partner for love and a partner for life is not always the same person. In other words You can find strong chemistry and the relationship can still fall flat.
Too many people get caught up in looking for initial chemistry they neglect relational chemistry – how complementary you are as a couple, how you get along, through the good and especially the bad.
