If you’re over the moon infatuated with another human being, it’s typically not because this person is your soul mate and you can’t let them get away. That kind of “chemistry” (oxytocin, adrenaline, dopamine, and vasopressin, to be specific) comes from inside you, not from someone else. Supernatural, electromagnetic attraction often has very little to do with the object of your desires and more to do with what they trigger inside you.
All compulsive behavior points to a dysregulated nervous system, unresolved trauma, suppressed emotions, or some kind of wound or dysfunction.
Have you ever noticed how it’s easier to be angry or hateful than to be sad or afraid? Anger is energizing, empowering, exciting! Sadness is vulnerable, scary, immobilizing. This is why people often choose indignation over compassion.
The same is true for infatuation versus real intimacy. Anger and infatuation are both roller coasters that you can simply strap yourself into and they’ll take you on one helluva ride. It doesn’t require a whole lot of effort on your part.
Genuine intimacy, however, is super vulnerable, and it’s significantly harder to pull off. Intimacy, contrary to popular belief, is also decidedly less sexy and glamorous than you might imagine.
Intimacy requires you to be human, flawed, and messy.
We don’t learn anything by being right. We learn by making mistakes.
The same is true of intimacy.
We don’t get closer to someone by being right. We get closer by making mistakes.
Of course, these mistakes are opportunities for both people to cultivate humility, compassion, generosity, forgiveness, communication, and ever-deepening connection.
After all, what is intimacy but a learning process that occurs between two souls?
If you find yourself chasing after people like a crazed lunatic, know that you’re likely self-medicating with emotional entanglements which resemble relationships just closely enough to convince you that you’re not actually just running away from yourself.
But you’ll never find real intimacy that way.