Chemistry is Predictable

Ever wonder why you always end up with the same type of person? Not hair color or height, I’m talking about relationship dynamic. The sticky. The unseen. The attraction that’s underneath the obvious.

Take two people.

A girl that had something taken away from her as a child. Maybe her voice, self esteem, or her entire childhood. Maybe she had to be an adult when she wasn’t. Mom was too busy numbing herself with television. Dad seemed “perfect”, except for his iron fist. Or maybe there was no dad, only boyfriends that came and gone with the seasons. This little girl spends a lot of time alone or outside playing with boys, aggressive boys. She picks flowers, climbs trees, walks barefeet. She is free except when she comes home to screaming parents. Or worse, silent parents. She turns inward, locks her emotions in a box, she blames herself for her dysfunctional family. This is your prey.

Then you have a boy. There is addiction in his family tree. Maybe not with him or his parents, but his grandparents or even further up the gene tree. Where ever it started, the addict was an adult child, low emotional intelligence and surrounded by enablers. Drug of choice? Sex, gambling, alcohol, food, anything to numb, escape, feel something. It doesn’t matter. Biology and the generational transmission process allows the addiction to be passed down from branch to branch. On a budding leaf way down by the trunk sits our boy, angry, confused, and ready to pay it forward. As an adult he is impatient and impulsive with low self control. He will have a venti size ego and no concept of rules or consequences. He will be defensive and ignore you and abuse you and make it feel like it’s you and not him. And he will smell familiar, which is why you gravitate toward him. He will break your heart and become a raging addict. Because whether he admits it or not, you mattered to him. Or he may not become a raging addict. But either way, he carries the addiction gene. He is what woman call a “bad boy”. This is your predator.

Now put the prey and predator in a room full of “normal” people at a party and see what happens.

They will find each other by the end of the night. Their attraction is instinctive, animalistic, and subconscious.

Now we have the perfect ingredients for a delicious dysfunctional relationship. Give them children and the cycle repeats itself. And again. And again.

This is attraction in it’s simplest form. And by simple I mean most common. But of course, there are many other relationship dynamics. Also women can be “predators” as men can be “prey”. We all have our stories.

What separates us from animals is our ability to be self aware, to change ourselves inside out, hence changing wiring, behavior, our definitions, and ultimately our choices. Sit in that for a while, and who you’re attracted to will change like taste buds when you stop eating something you were addicted to.

At the same time, we should not deny raw chemistry. Besides, we are all to a certain extent predators and prey no child enters adulthood unscarred. We have all suffered from some sort of trama and abuse. It’s just the world we live in.

Also, we can’t avoid our “types”. It’s what we are inherently drawn to. But what we can do is be aware of where we are in our growth process, and theirs with theirs. Meaning, if you’ve started the process of healing and you meet someone who has no self awareness, use protection.

But if two people are aware of themselves, have chased their behavior strings down to where they come, and maybe cut a few strings. If two people have the tools / ability to really look at what triggers them and why. If two people can have conversations without being reactive or defensive. If two people are on the same path.

Only that road is yellow

And made of bricks.