
Others strike out again and again in affairs of the heart. We obsess over love and we endure bad loves, relationships that damage our egos and leave our self esteem cracked and bleeding. Nevertheless, we continue to seek love despite any emotional scarring. The goal is union, connection, and only love can feed such a hunger.
One theory about love is that it facilitates our basic desire to send our genetic codes into the future. That theory certainly has merit and may well move the tides of love. Once we get caught in the wave, we risk not being able to return to shore without having incurred some damage.
As anthropologists study the evolutionary and familial benefits of falling in love, scientists investigate how love is rooted in the physiology of the body. That’s why we have welcomed the word chemistry into our lexicon of love it implies that a mysterious but wonderful reaction is happening within us.
When we speak of love in terms of chemistry, we describe passionate, distracting, even frightening encounters that can send us over the moon. What can we make of love that ignites instantly? Can we trust our immediate reactions to another person?
Are our bodies equipped at a physical level to help us sort through and analyze our relationships? Should we believe in what Jung called “the ultimate honesty of the body”?
When Michael and Barbara met in the museum, some unknown force sparked a mutual interest in a matter of minutes. Moreover, had it been David instead of Michael in the museum that day, the chemical reaction might not have occurred, and Barbara would have walked onto the next exhibit alone, her life unchanged.
Michael and Barbara relied on a host of sensory cues when they met. For example, he liked the deep brown of her eyes and she was attracted to the sound of his voice. But there was more. As this couple followed the siren call of their attraction, they were subconsciously tuning into important messages provided by the sixth sense.
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