Tag: attraction

It was 1998, and I waited nervously in my doctor’s waiting room. The blood tests were in, and I was convinced something was wrong with me. I thought I had cancer, a thyroid imbalance, or my ovaries weren’t releasing the proper hormones. I needed a medical reason to explain why I didn’t want to have sex with my husband. After all, I was only 25 and married for just one year.

The doctor came in and gave me the news:

"Lindsey, there is nothing wrong with you. You are perfectly healthy."

"This is the body that engages in sex, a body with so much soul that any attempt to deny its layers of meaning will come back to haunt us."  ~Thomas Moore

  Maybe the smartest book I have ever read about how sexual attraction happens and why it is such a powerfully transformative healing response came from Stanley Siegel’s book, "Your Brain on Sex."

What determines the chemistry between you and your spouse? Who has not said, "They have good chemistry together?" We hear it so often that it seems trite. Typically, we direct that remark towards a couple that looks mismatched to our judgment. We ask ourselves, "What do they see in each other?" Our usual answer is that their chemistry is just right. This is often our only way of reconciling the force of attraction between these two.

However, what if the concept of chemical attraction has a direct biological basis? New research is revealing that it does and many of those reasons had not been previously expected or explored.

Let's get the big question out of the way—it's normal to develop a crush on someone other than your spouse. Unless you decide to live as a monk with absolutely no human contact it’s inevitable you will periodically meet someone who shares an attraction. You may think you’re the worst person in the world, but in truth you’re simply human. Chemistry is uncontrollable and a natural phenomenon.

As my deeply-in-love parents told me growing up, "We’re married, not dead." Just because you are in a relationship doesn’t mean you suddenly stop noticing people. Crushes on bosses, co-workers, cute coffee shop attendees, waitresses, neighbors and anyone else you come into contact with on a regular basis is bound to happen…and that’s okay.

Many couples (particularly males) have come to view Valentine's Day as a tedious obligation: to buy chocolates or flowers, to go out for a "romantic" dinner, or to trudge off to the local drug store in search of a silly or syrupy card.

Having coached thousands of couples and trained thousands of couples' counselors worldwide, I'd like to offer you a new perspective: Valentine's Day is a once-a-year opportunity to try out new behaviors that can strengthen your relationship.

"The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest." ~William Blake

Most of us have never learned how to consciously receive love. Sure, falling in love is easy; our biological imperative to mate kicks in naturally opening our hearts and flooding our nervous system with the euphoric experience of idealized connection. In these early moments of love’s embrace, we receive love viscerally.

In Part I of this series, I end by asking the question: If people having affairs are like people who have addiction, but they don’t have a sex addiction, what kind of addiction is it?  My answer: Infidelity is a flame addiction.

What is a flame addiction?

The noun "flame" isn’t used much these days when people talk about relationships. A flame is an object of romantic attraction as in, "Taylor Swift is my flame." Flame also describes an internal state of the person who feels the attraction as in, "I have a flame for Taylor Swift."