How to Create Chemistry

Sue, Rancho Rico, Big Sur. Photo by Nicola.

SEXUAL POLARITY
Polarity deals with the flow of energy between opposite poles: the North and South Poles of the Earth create a force of magnetism; the positive and negative poles of a battery create an electrical flow. Polarity creates energy. Consider how a magnet is nothing more than a lump of metal if both its poles have the same charge. It is when the poles are charged with different energy that a magnet gets its irresistible power. 

When we take the principle of polarity to the sexual arena, we see the importance of Sexual Polarity. These poles can be called different names: yin/yang, lunar/solar ... in modern language, we usually use the words feminine/masculine. 

Your biological gender does not dictate whether you "should be" more masculine or more feminine. Everyone has both energies within them and they both are important to develop. A person can be more of one at any given moment and two people who are flirting with each other are going to be doing both during that process. This is true between two women, two men, two transgender persons, or any other combination thereof. 

Of course, sexual polarity is only part of the reason a person feels chemistry. We also are attracted to similarities, which play a big role in creating the foundation where love can grow. What makes the relationship stable is what you have in common and what gives the relationship passion are your opposites, your polarity. Thriving relationships need both to work. 

Knowing where you sit and possibly making adjustments on the feminine / masculine scale will give you more clarity and confidence while dating and will help keep a longterm relationship passionate and alive. Maybe try these ideas the next time you meet a potential romantic interest!

MASCULINE ENERGY GIVES & FEMININE ENERGY RECEIVES
This is where it gets interesting because there are some powerful misconceptions here. (Note: I'm going to use the gendered terms "man" and "woman" here, but remember these energies can be in any person and are not gender-specific). 

Often times, in our society we think of masculine as macho, controlling, and aggressive and of feminine as passive, weak, and undervalued. These characteristics are partly true, but they only describe the dark energies of each. The light masculine energies include the energies of protection, giving, support, and doing. Yes, GIVING, is not a feminine energy, it is a masculine energy! Light feminine energies include those of nurturing, receiving, and being.

Yet, women have been taught to caretake, to be selfless, to put others' needs above their own. It can actually be quite difficult for a woman to allow herself to receive - she questions whether she's worthy or believes she has to give something in return. Allowing oneself to receive is allowing oneself to be nurtured. Is there anything more feminine than letting yourself be taken care of? And yet doing so requires willingness to relinquish control (that is, your masculine energy).

You maintain control when you make the plans and do everything for him, like calling his doctor, picking out his clothes, buying his mother a birthday gift, cooking delicious dinners, flooding him with affection and attention. In this relationship, there is not much room for him to offer any of these to you. When you invest so much, when you give up yourself to accommodate his needs he may rather see you as a mother or a friend instead of a lover.

If you are only giving and doing, you are neglecting your feminine side. When are you allowing yourself to just be and to receive? When's the last time you felt cherished? How would it feel to be lovingly protected and deeply cared for? To feel treasured? To know that your partner values you and holds you dear. What you have to do is to be open and willing to receive love from a man. And you also have to give something back: appreciation for everything that he is doing for you, respect for who he is and gratitude. 

With your partner you can practice being receptive to his intention, energy, and love expressed in various forms. It may show up in a form different than the one you’re wanting in that moment. Rather than leave him feeling like he did it “wrong” because it wasn’t the expression you really wanted, try gracefully to receive his love, in the masculine form that it came. In being received, his masculinity will automatically be validated & he will want to be closer to you.

I’m not suggesting you ignore your own wants or be denied the type of care you’re craving. The masculine gets to become skilled at giving to his feminine in the ways she craves. I am suggesting that you don’t use your masculine energy against him; to block him, push him away or do battle, especially during a time where he is trying to give to you. 

Being rigid about how things should be done is a masculine trait. Its feminine counterpart, allowing, helps you to be flexible and flowing. The perfect balance, then, is to insist upon what you want (masculine) but be open about how it is delivered (feminine).

In general, we need the qualities of both energies. There are times where we want to do, give, and be active. And there are times when it is more helpful to be receptive and nurturing. If we give all the time, we can get depleted. If we are simply being all the time, we won’t get much done! We all need both masculine and feminine energies. We need to engage in both in order to be balanced.

Men have their own set of struggles. They are raised to be tough, to be non-emotional, to be bread-winners, sacrificers. Young men are programmed to compete with each other. It takes some special attention to learn to be deeply masculine without being macho, to be forceful and direct and mighty without being brutal. It takes some practice and honing to learn to be connected to emotion and have an open heart without being a “soft male.”

You can picture the light masculine energy as an unconditionally supportive, protective, enabling energy. This energy enables you to feel safe, secure, and supported in going after your dreams. It’s like the energy who watches over you. The masculine is supportive in what you want to do, without stepping in to do it for you. And in the flow of exchange, he gets to feel respected, honored, and admired by his partner. She brings pleasure, beauty, love, spirit, relaxation, calm, and ease into his life. She supports and trusts him and encourages his growth. 

The Masculine - goes after, gives, serves, does, protects, achieves, is driven, pursues, focuses on one thing at a time, simplifies, contains, quiet, a pillar of strength and safety, provides, is an aggressor, warrior, requires freedom, is predictable, solid, fearless, and is determined.

The Feminine - receives, allows, accepts, magnifies things, opens, flows, storms, nurtures, radiates, is creative, multi-tasks, focus on pleasure, soft, willing to be vulnerable, is emotional, talkative, compassionate, loving, requires safety, unpredictable, surrenders, feels deeply.

FIVE SIMPLE WAYS TO ENGAGE THE LIGHT MASCULINE ENERGIES:

Give something freely, without expecting anything in return. This can be volunteer work, your time, your attention, a gift, or even money.

Take on challenges. You build self-esteem not by necessarily winning or succeeding in your challenging moments, but just the fact that you tried to challenge yourself tells your brain that you believe yourself worthy and capable of being challenged in the first place. So set goals, and run after them. Whether you succeed or not is secondary to the fact that you are out there doing something.

Offer protection to someone. Picture yourself protecting and giving to that person, financially or otherwise. Maybe it’s a dream or a wish they have. Without telling them what to do, just give them the support, protection and energy they need. Then watch over them as they do their work without stepping in and telling them what to do or how to do it.

Do something you enjoy. This can include working out, riding your bike, working your garden, or driving up the coast. Any activity that you enjoy that requires “doing” will work for these purposes.

Give yourself permission to go first. Don’t sit back and wait for permission, an invitation, or everyone else to speak before you make a move. What you have to say deserves to be voiced, so be confident in your power to go first and get things moving.

FIVE SIMPLE WAYS TO ENGAGE THE LIGHT FEMININE ENERGIES:

Simply receive. Whether it is a nice smile from a stranger, a compliment, a gift, a kind gesture, simply allow yourself to receive without having to give back.

Say “yes” the next time someone offers to do something for you. Allow yourself to receive and be nurtured! And don’t step in to “fix” it if they don’t do it “right.” For example, if your partner offers to fold laundry or do the dishes, don’t say yes, and then go back and rearrange the stuff or refold it. Simply receive what they are giving!

Be nurturing. Care for and encourage the growth or development of your loved ones, but don't take over and do it for them. Help them see themselves through your supportive eyes: strong, capable, confident, good, whole, steady. 

Engage your creativity. Dress up, draw, paint, dance, sing, however you want to engage your creativity, do it!

Nurture your body. Take a bath, eat healthy foods, rub essential oils on your skin, wear soft & flowy fabrics, slow down instead of rushing, enjoy the litheness of your body as you move throughout your day. Simply engage the senses and nurture your body in a way that feels good to you.

I'm excited for you!!

Dr. Pat Allen, "It's a Man's World and a Woman's Universe"

David Wagner, "Backbone: The Modern Man's Ultimate Guide to Purpose, Passion and Power"

Coach Violetta, Embrace Your Femininity

Why You Should Not Have Sex With Him

Faye Dunaway & Steve McQueen, "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968)

Ladies, hear 83-year-old feisty relationship expert Pat Allen: No sex without commitment! 

Women who are interested in a longterm relationship must signal men before sex that they are moving toward that, or too often the women will be hurt and time will be wasted. 

Most liberated, sexually active women believe they can maintain control over their emotions after sex. What they may not realize is that casual, non-committed sex for many woman can trigger a bonding that verges on physical addiction. This is due to a sexually stimulated hormone called oxytocin. 

Oxytocin is a pleasurable, bonding hormone released when you are on your way to orgasm, and when you orgasm. It increases the feelings of love, well-being, peace, affection, nurturing, security and attachment and causes humans to want to stay together and organize as family units. Since it is released in a man's semen, it literally is the glue of the family structure. 

Men and women both have oxytocin, but women have much more and it affects them differently. A woman will bond to her man after one instance of good sex. A man may feel bonded too, but he can easily go off and bond with other women as well.

Women get attached to the man's smell, his touch, the sound of his voice. If you keep contact with these things, you can stay bonded to a man for a year or longer, from one sexual encounter, as long as you keep getting a fix, even if it is only via his voice.

Other brain chemicals also play cupid during this time. Whether you like it or not, neurotransmitters are highly involved in your sex life and your romantic passion is largely a function of your own endocrinology. When you're thinking about him to the point of obsession, you're soaked in a cocktail of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine more potent than a martini and similar to the chemical combo found in obsessive-compulsive disorder. A jigger full of dopamine gives you the same high as that from alcohol or drugs. 

So what is building is a chemical connection with the emotional g-force of an atomic bomb. The chemical portion alone is enough to super glue you to this guy. According to Dr. Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and and Chemistry of Romantic Love, "These are truly intense and insane attachments that produce a crazy energy drive, emotional elation, mood swings, emotional craving, separation anxiety, childlike possessiveness and total madness."

All of this can set women up for heartache. You think that if you're easy-going, cool, not needy, that the guy will want to be with you. However, giving yourself to a man too early, if what you want is a monogamous, committed, sexual relationship, could leave you longing for a man who can't give you what you want. 

To alleviate this epidemic, try drawing a line and NOT having sex with men unless you have a commitment. This commitment is for continuity, longevity and monogamy. You want to know that he has time to spend with you, intends to be here for an extended time, and will only sleep with you.

Getting to I Do by Dr. Pat Allen

Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love by Dr. Helen Fisher

Women Who Love Psychopaths by Sandra Brown

You're Single? There's Nothing Wrong With You

Loma Vista Garden, Big Sur

Why is it her? Why isn't it me? ... That woman in the grocery line with her little girl and her husband. It's not even envy, you're just wondering? 

Why has she been liberated from the purgatory of looking? Why is she allowed to remain blithely ignorant of the politics of the post-date text? Why does she never have to wonder who she'll spend New Year's Eve with? Why is she free of these concerns? And, more important, why aren't you? 

Single people often ask themselves the question, "What's wrong with me?" The corollary question is, "What's right with her?" 

Our culture encourages the idea that people searching for love have some fundamental deficiency that's preventing them from finding a partnership. People want answers - "How can I find someone?" "What am I doing wrong?" - so it's no surprise that there's a big business around selling books and seminars about how to upgrade yourself into a person who will "attract love." 

These relationship experts are offering you help in a particularly American way - by cultivating positivity, by rolling up your shirtsleeves and getting to work. They offer personal growth as the pathway to better luck, and there is something very encouraging and optimistic about that. 

Why not take yoga classes and develop your self-esteem? Why not make vision boards and volunteer with the homeless? Sounds great, but it doesn't necessarily lead to a relationship. There are plenty of people in happy relationships who have never once read a self-help book or stepped inside a yoga studio. Why do you have to work so hard when so many others don't?

Sure, you have a lot to show for your work, but often there only feels like one true measure of success: finding that relationship. This is the problem with the attitude that treats self-improvement as the means to finding love: it begins with the fundamental premise that there is some defect in you that must be corrected. 

So I ask you: Are your friends who are in relationships perfectly self-actualized human beings? Are they all their ideal body weight? Are they free of all their insecurities and neuroses? Then why do you think you should be? 

Instead of self-improvement, I'd suggest self-care. Exercise and eat healthier so that you'll feel better, rather than look hot for this or that guy. Develop your confidence so that you can be a better advocate for yourself rather than to convince some dude that you're not weak or needy. Get out in the world because it's fun to have new experiences and meet new people, even if none of those strangers end up being the love of your life. 

With self-improvement, you're always looking for a validator to prove that you've "achieved" something. With self-care, you can't lose. All you need to do is be good to yourself. 

- Sara Eckel, "It's Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You're Single" 
More at her website 

- VIDEO: Bill Maher proposes a national day to recognize the contributions of single people 

Love Addict

Todd Hido, "Between the Two"

Even if you've never heard this term, I bet you can think of someone who fits the description. Pia Mellody is the expert in this field and the following theories come from her book, Facing Love Addiction. 

Possibly the most significant characteristic of love addiction is that we assign too much time and value to another person. Love Addicts focus almost completely on the person to whom they are addicted. At the beginning this relationship feels fantastic. The Love Addict feels special, it's a kind of high. They experience relief from the pain of feeling empty, of being alone. The connection is usually intense and finally gives meaning and vitality to the Love Addict's life. 

It is believed that people fall into love addiction because of the unhealed pain from childhood abandonment, and the feeling that they cannot be safe in the world without having somebody else hold them up. They cling to a delusional belief that the other party has the power to take care of them, affirm them, and somehow make them complete. Love Addicts usually didn't have enough appropriate bonding with their caregivers, and probably experienced moderate to serious abandonment or neglect in childhood. Because they weren't nurtured for who they were, they have trouble being or liking their natural selves. 

Eventually, as Love Addicts try harder and harder to manipulate the other person to live up to the mental image they have created -someone who will care for and love them the way they long to be cared for and loved- they experience repeated disappointments, because no one can satisfy these insatiable desires. Love Addicts begin to retaliate with toxic fighting against what they interpret as a willful failure to love on the part of the other party. 

The irony is that while Love Addicts want to avoid being left and want to be connected to someone in a secure way, the close, demanding connection they try to establish is actually enmeshment rather than healthy intimacy - which they also fear, at least unconsciously. This denied fear also comes from the childhood experience of either physical or emotional abandonment. Love Addicts did not experience enough intimacy from their abandoning caregivers to know how to be intimate in a healthy way. 

This is the cycle of the Love Addict. 

Love Addicts are usually drawn to Love Avoidants, who tend to avoid commitment and healthy intimacy. This makes Love Addicts desperate and needy for their partners' affection, always demanding more out of them. And since they cannot tolerate the thought of being alone, they stay in the relationship, becoming more and more angry. They can't leave, because they fear abandonment; but they can't be comfortable staying, because their desire to be rescued, cared for, and protected isn't being satisfied. 

Love Avoidants, meanwhile, fear intimacy because they believe that they will be drained, engulfed, and controlled by it. This is because in their families, the child was expected to nourish the parent. These enmeshed children get drained dry and used by Mom's or Dad's need for companionship, attention, and love. This experience of childhood enmeshment created a deeply ingrained conviction that more intimacy will bring more misery. 

It's complicated, though. Children who have been enmeshed develop the idea that taking care of needy people brings them self-worth. They believe that taking care of needy people is their job. When they stay in relationships, it is often out of duty and to avoid guilt, not love. This is the only way they know how to have relationships. 

Paradoxically, while Love Avoidants actively avoid intimacy, they also fear being left. This fear is usually unconscious. Because they were valued for their caregiving, they derived their self-worth from it. Although they resent this role, it's the way they know to receive attention and love. They worry that if they don't allow themselves to be engulfed by their partner, they'll be worthless.

So Love Avoidants have the same two fears as Love Addicts: intimacy and being left. The difference is that what is conscious for one is unconscious for the other. Love Addicts have a strong fear of abandonment and an unconscious fear of intimacy, which causes them unconsciously to pick someone who can't be intimate. Love Avoidants have a strong fear of intimacy, and yet also deep underlying fear of being left. This keeps them on the front edge in relationships, where, for part of the time, they can feel powerful by meeting someone else's needs without being engulfed. 

Why Do You Want to Be in a Relationship?

Korakia Pensione, Photo Della Chen

If you are a person who wants to be in a relationship, have you thought about why? Actually, there are two very different reasons for wanting a relationship. The first is about what you want to get, and the second is about what you want to learn and share.

Wanting a Relationship in Order to Get

If you ask people why they want a relationship, many will say things like:

• I don’t want to be alone and lonely anymore.

• I want to have children.

• I want someone to love me and make me feel special and worthy.

• I want to feel safe and secure.

What they might not say outright is that they want a relationship to:

• Complete them. They hope that their partner will give them what they are not giving to themselves and what they might not have received as children.

• Fill the empty place within them.

• Make them feel taken care of emotionally, financially and/or sexually.

You might be thinking, “Right! Aren’t these the reasons everyone wants a relationship? Why be in a relationship if not to be loved, cherished, made to feel special, safe and secure? What’s the point of a relationship if not to fill me, take away my loneliness and make me feel okay about myself?”

There really is another reason for wanting to be in a relationship.

Wanting a Relationship in Order to Heal, Learn and Share Love

The other reason for being in a relationship stems from the fact that relationships are the most fertile ground for learning about what is unhealed in us, and for having an arena to heal. Most of us have baggage from childhood that we carry into our primary relationship — such as fears of rejection and fears of engulfment. These fears generally get played out with a partner, which offers us an incredible opportunity to learn about and heal them. Relationship can be the Ph.D. of personal growth!

Learning about your fears of intimacy, as well as about control issues that may surface with a primary partner, can lead to much personal growth — enhancing your ability to love. The more you learn to take responsibility for your own feelings — learning to love yourself, cherish yourself, make yourself feel special and valued — the more you may want a relationship in order to share your love rather than to get love. Contrary to what many believe, it’s not the getting of love that takes away loneliness, but the sharing of love.

The most profound and beautiful experience in life is the sharing of love. But we can’t share our love unless we are filled with love. When we learn to fill ourselves - with presence, with love from nature, spirit, the energy of the universe or whatever that is for each person — then we come to our partner with inner fullness rather than with inner emptiness. Rather than needing a partner to complete us, we desire to share our completeness with our partner.

When two people come together to get love rather than to learn, heal and share love, there is a strong possibility that their relationship won’t last. With both partners trying to get loved and filled by the other, and neither one having learned to love and fill themselves, each will ultimately be disappointed. 

When two people come together because they want to learn together, grow together, heal together, share their time and companionship, and share their love and passion, they have a good chance of creating a lasting, loving relationship.

When these people are asked why they want a relationship, they say:

• I want to learn and grow with someone who also wants to learn and grow.

• I have a lot of love to give and I want to share it with a partner, who also has a lot of love to give. Possibly, we might want to have children with whom to also share our love.

• I want to share time, companionship, lovemaking, laughter and play with someone with whom I feel deeply connected.

If you tune inside and honestly ask yourself why you want a relationship, and you find yourself on the first list rather than on the second, do not despair. You can learn how to love yourself and fill yourself with love so that you have plenty of love to share with a partner.

It’s important to realize that we attract people at our common level of health — which is the level of taking personal responsibility for our happiness and wellbeing — or at our common level of self-abandonment — which includes making someone else responsible for our feelings. Given this reality, you have a far better chance of creating a healthy and loving relationship with a partner when you have a healthy and loving relationship with yourself.

- Dr. Margaret Paul, Inner Bonding