Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Now what?

Attraction.

Chemistry. Attraction. Feeling comfortable with someone you have just met. Believing someone is your soul mate. Or, saying to another person you have only been with a short time, “it seems as if we have been together for years.” What is going on here? Why are some people attracted to others instantaneously while they are repelled or rejected by others? There are a number of reasons and clues to this unique behavior.

1. The concept of resonance. Each of us sends out non-verbal signals that are a reflection of our inner desires, attitudes, feelings and consciousness. When we meet someone who has similar internal feelings, attitudes etc. we are attracted to them. For example positive people like to be around other positive people. They don’t like to be around whiners. They don’t resonate. Just look at the people who you like to be around. I’ll bet you have similar beliefs, goals, philosophy, background; something, but the list of potential issues is too long for this short overview.

2. Each of us has an unconscious picture of our ideal mate. That picture can originate from our early childhood and the messages sent to us by our caregivers, later maturity and the result of life experience or just downright fantasies that we conjure up as we move through life.

3. And finally our unconscious desire to find someone who will help us heal from our childhood wounds. We are attracted to someone who reminds us of one of our parents both their weaknesses and strengths. Take a serious look at a person you are in a relationship with now.

You may have been attracted to them at a previous time in your life and now, for whatever reason some of that attraction has died. Is it unrealized expectations? Excessive disappointment? You or your partner has changed some aspect of their life i.e. career, hobbies, interests, education lever or knowledge, physical appearance? There are numerous dynamics in relationships. Initial attraction is important for the continuation of the human race, but so is the maturing, growing and eventual changes in both the people in a relationship as well as the relationship itself.

So what do we do with this chemistry? We can keep our antenna up. We can hibernate. We can honor the attraction and do nothing with it. We can recognize that it is present and give it energy. We can keep our antenna down. We can accept the fact that there are thousands of people in our world that we will be attracted to but can’t experiment with all of them. There just isn’t enough time.

This attraction is just as much between members of the same sex. Think of your best friend of the same sex. Similar views, attitudes, likes, dislikes etc. But, you also have different views on a number of things.