Conscious Dating

An Excerpt(From Chapter 8) from the book "Conscious Dating"
by David Steele

Balance Your Heart With Your Head

Is it chemistry or common sense? It’s both! This chapter will explain how readers can make their relationship choices consciously, paying full attention \to their vision, values, goals, requirements, needs, and wants, while still feeling that powerful combination of chemistry and attraction. While some may fear that making conscious relationship choices diminishes romance, I can assure you that it is still exciting!

This chapter will discuss the phenomenal power of physical and emotional chemistry, and how to balance that with making conscious choices.

We often have strong physical and emotional reactions to potential partners. At those times, we can feel more alive and excited than at almost any other time of our life, akin to the rush of adrenaline when skydiving or riding a roller coaster. In fact, these metaphors of thrilling movement often pop up when people describe their dating relationships: we “fall in love” and we’re “on a roller coaster.” At its most extreme, some become addicted to this feeling and move from relationship to relationship seeking to recapture and sustain it. Many singles, overwhelmed by these feelings, interpret them as “love,” and a sign that a relationship is “meant to be.”

These physical and emotional reactions are what people commonly have in mind when they think of “attraction, “infatuation,” and “following your heart” when they first meet a potential partner. Most people would agree on an intellectual level that this is not the kind of love that they really expect to last. After all, this phenomenon occurs prior to really knowing and building a relationship with someone.

What do these feelings mean? Should we follow them or ignore them? Are they reliable guides?

Our physical reactions may include increased heart rate and blood pressure, feeling warm and perhaps sweating, tingling skin sensations, or sexual arousal. These responses are actually driven by pheromones (chemicals emitted to attract a partner), hormones such as oxytocin (which acts on the hypothalamus to produce emotions), PEA or phenylethylamine (natural amphetamine), dopamine and norepinephrine (natural mood enhancers), and testosterone (increases sexual desire). These chemical reactions are involuntary and strong, leading to powerful feelings of attraction.

Our involuntary emotional reactions can also be very powerful, and it’s easy to understand why some may interpret them as “love.” These reactions include anxiety, fear, self-consciousness, excitement, happiness, and infatuation (defined as strong feelings of romantic idealization). The theory of emotional attraction that makes the most sense to me is Harville Hendrix’s concept of the “Imago.” According to Hendrix, we have an unconscious image of our ideal partner (or “Imago”). This Imago is composed of the positive and negative characteristics of our parents or caretakers. Hendrix theorizes that because we always seek to emotionally heal and complete ourselves, we are unconsciously attracted to potential partners who match our Imago. For example, someone who grew up with a critical parent might unconsciously choose a critical partner in the hopes of finally winning approval. Our Imago match is best suited to help us finish our unfinished childhood business because of their resemblance to the people who had the heaviest impact our early development. What is the likelihood that our physically involuntary and emotionally unconscious attractions will result in good relationship choices? The failure rate of relationships suggests that the odds are pretty low. So how can we balance our heart with our head? Should we take drugs to prevent our biology from driving our partner choice? Should we defer dating and go into therapy to work on our unfinished childhood business to prevent our Imago from choosing a partner resembling our parents? The rest of this chapter will discuss how we can use our physical and emotional reactions to potential partners as useful information. It will show how readers can balance their Requirements, Needs, and Wants to make conscious relationship choices.