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Relationships
What About the Chemistry? The Mysterious and Paradoxical Process of Finding Your Other Half
Have we forgotten the utter complexity of human relationships?
Posted August 9, 2011
Single adults—young and old—often talk about wanting the right "chemistry" in a relationship. They mean that rare combination of the new and different with an unexpected ease, the sense that the other, a stranger, is somehow instantly familiar and compelling. Words such as "hot" and "way cool" go with "chemistry" and imply that we're speaking of bodily states. Depicting our human emotional life as "chemistry" expresses the extent to which, consciously or unconsciously, we have accepted neuroscience and biology--pre-programmed drives, configurations of facial features, hormones or the urge to reproduce-as the most fitting way to narrate our closest human relationships. Have we forgotten the utter complexity and subtle nuances of human relationships?
Not that singles believe they are really mindlessly pre-programmed in their search for the right partner. On the contrary, they hope to increase their choices by moving well beyond friends or family to meet a potential partner. They go out to community events that bring together single people; and, more, they willingly complete long and repetitive online questionnaires and submit them to computer programs that match up potential partners scientifically on a range of variables that they may know nothing of. Yet, when they meet those carefully selected candidates in person, the first question they ask themselves is "What about the chemistry?"
Don't misunderstand me. I don't refuse to learn about human behavior from studying contemporary biology or MRI scans that show us what happens in our brains when we experience desire or pleasure. There is useful information there. I just don't believe it's the best way to learn about the complexities of human love. I draw often on psychoanalytic thought and literature, as well as on the teachings of the Buddha and his followers. But to understand the human search for a perfect partner, I still turn to an ancient source of love's philosophy: Plato's Symposium. There Plato records a story of love told by the playwright Aristophanes. In this account, human beings were originally and famously spherical: literally two beings rolled into one! The two halves could clearly and frankly claim, "You complete me."
They were happy and entirely satisfied, but, alas, they became arrogant and unwilling to serve the gods. Royally offended by this outcome Zeus (the god in charge of the Olympic heavens) became enraged and cruelly sliced them into two. In one fell swoop, human beings became incomplete. "This then," Aristophanes explains," is the source of our desire to love each other. Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature." "And so," he continues, "when a person meets the half that is his very own . . . then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment."
At a deep level, each of us feels incomplete (have you noticed?) —just as we should. By yourself, you are not complete, whole, or perfect. When you first get to know a potential partner or your new baby (even your new puppy), you may see some version of your complete self! You want to merge and become one of Plato's complete-in-themselves, happy and arrogant spherical beings, rolling around in delusional satisfaction and pleasure. But it won't work out that way. True love requires not the mindless chemistry of attraction but a mindful relationship, the breaking down of sweet delusion and the rebuilding of real interest in the other as he or she is.
In my last couple of blog entries, I have been working toward a model of something I call true love. It has two components: Truth and Love. Let's say that Truth means reality, sincerity and integrity. It means seeing things as they are and being open about it, not seeing things just from our own point of view. Truth-seeing takes considerable skill; truth-telling takes even more. Here's a passage that comes, I believe, from the writings of Bodhi Bhikkhu—an American Buddhist monk who is also a major translator and teacher of the Buddha's original writings. (The passage was shared with me through a friend and I am a little unsure about its origin.) It goes like this: "Devotion to true speech is a matter of taking a stand on reality, rather than illusions—on the truth grasped by wisdom rather than the fantasies woven by desire." Yes, the fantasies woven by desire.
But where does love fit in? When we speak casually about "love" we often forget that love is a practice, not an emotion—that it demands we be mindful and kind and interested in the beloved. Love requires certain skills and attitudes: we truly begin to love when we vow to remain interested in our beloved through the ups and downs of life—and through the broken heart that is always love's companion. Whether it's love for our child, our parent, our partner or our pet, we are guaranteed to be disappointed, hurt, sometimes crushed, and transformed in all sorts of ways if we embrace and accept another being who is subject to change, illness, adversity, old age and death. Love requires our willingness to have our hearts broken as we move beyond the delusion of finding someone who is the mirror image of ourselves and instead come to accept deeply one who is different from us—a stranger who is particular, irreplaceable, and impermanent.
With our vow to love, we commit ourselves to cultivate the skills of concentration (paying close attention); equanimity (maintaining equilibrium and gentleness in the presence of our beloved); dialogue (engaging in an exchange of views and feelings with another rather than just trying to make our own points); and self-knowledge (observing dispassionately our own emotional habits, patterns and needs and tracking them to their roots in the past or the present). With a new baby or at the start of a romance or friendship or other important relationship, all of this may seem easy. We are lost in our own desires for what our beloved will bring us. We want our missing other half--someone who completes us, recognizes us, brings us the goodness or status that we otherwise have not had. And at the start, our fantasies and delusions about our beloved will seem to promise perfection or at least something desirable.
But just as life delivers big doses of reality to our wishes for success, wealth and security, so true love delivers reality to our desire for perfection in ourselves or our beloved. Often people ask me how they can know if someone is "right" for them. Just recently I read in The New Yorker that people feel most attracted to others who look like them, have the same or similar facial features. Good luck with that. Just as you get comfy with that new mirror image of yourself, you'll find that he likes to eat garlic fries and wash them down with lots of beer, that she prefers an afternoon at the spa to bowling, that he'd rather go skiing with his brother than see a movie with you.
Frankly, I don't believe we can ever know whether the person we've chosen (in friendship or romantic love, for instance) is really the "right" person. When you meet someone you're interested in as a partner or friend, you have to jump into the fray and get to know that person- come to know what you need from each other, know what it is that draws you to each other. (It can't be just sex, by the way, but that's a topic for another post.) Aristophanes wisely recognized this: "[W]hen a person meets the half that is his very own, "he says," they don't want to be separated from one another, even for a moment." But, mysteriously, such couples "still cannot say what it is they want from one another. No one would think it is the intimacy of sex-that mere sex is the reason each lover takes so great and deep a joy in being with the other. It's obvious that the soul of every lover longs for something else; his soul cannot say what it is, but like an oracle it has a sense of what it wants, and like an oracle it hides it in a riddle."
After you get to know your partner for a while, you can ask, "Are we a perfect couple?" Of course, I use the term "perfect" with plenty of irony since I wholly endorse the Buddha's teaching that life is inherently unsatisfactory. The First Noble Truth of the Buddha's is that everything in this world, including you and me, is full of limitations and weaknesses and disappointments. You're not perfect. Your friend will not be perfect. Your child will not be ideal. Your relationship will be difficult and require emotional discipline and wisdom. These are realistic perspectives, not complaints or bad news. But then, what do I say when people ask me, "Do you think this person would be a good partner for me?" "What about being ‘in-love' rather than simply ‘loving'?" or "What's good partner material?"
Here's my answer, and it shouldn't come as a surprise: good partners in life (life-partners, parents, children, and friends) are those who remain truly interested in each other. How does this come about? Initially, in many ways; but ultimately there must be an intention or vow to love - to remain engaged in following a path of attunement and discovery, especially through adversity and challenge. Then there must be some kind of recognition of the gap between you and your beloved, as well as the crack in your own heart. In other words, you need to be aware of, and want to know more, both about the similarities and about the differences between you.
You also need to know that you are not complete in yourself: you will come to know yourself as you walk the path of love if you do so in a true and truthful way. As soon as you mix betrayal, lying or hiding the truth into a relationship, you have torn the fabric and can no longer be held by true love. You'll bounce from delusion to delusion and desire to desire. That might seem to work for a while, but it will soon lead to exhaustion and confusion, not happiness. So if we truly want true love, we begin by acknowledging that we do not know ourselves well and that we long to be completed by another. And yet, that is only the beginning of the path that, as it unfolds, will reveal the particular ways in which love challenges us with the paradoxical combination of the familiar and the mysterious.
