Chemical Reaction

Okay, I’m back from vacation. Well, kind of. My brain is still resisting making re-entry into the everyday world. It is taking a little longer every time I go on vacation.

Between this post-vacation slump … and before that, the vacation itself … and before that, prepping for the trip … and before that, the holidays … and before that, prepping for the holidays … between all that, I haven’t written much of anything in the past six weeks or so.

I’m going to use this blog entry to get myself writing again, so I have spent the last several days casting about for a topic that would get me going (all the while urging my brain to Focus! Focus!!). But it wasn’t until I read Katrina’s very amusing account of her experience with speed dating that a topic occurred to me.

And that topic is: Chemistry.

No, not Perodic-Table-of-the-Elements Chemistry. I mean that spark between two people that attracts them to each other for reasons they probably don’t understand themselves. The spark that triggers the flames of romantic love. Love-at-first-sight chemistry. This is actually something I’ve been fascinated with for a long time. What IS chemistry? What causes it? And what is its impact on a relationship?

Certainly romance novels are very, very big on the idea of chemistry. I don’t think I’ve ever read one where the couple didn’t have it, and have it almost instantly. Romance heros and heroines typically fall for each other with a POW! They may realize they’ve fallen, or admit it to themselves -- it may even manifest itself in conflict initially -- but it’s definitely there. In fact, the timetables for love in most romance novels are so short that they are frankly terrifying. A book I just finished reading, by a popular author, took the couple from “I’ll never get married” to professing undying love and planning their lives together in five short days. And during most of that five days, they are both trying to convince themselves that the other is “not their type” despite the fact that they can’t quit thinking about each other.

The speed dating phenomenon really banks on the fact that people will know whether they “click” on some level in only a few minutes. I actually think that, for the most part, this is correct. The most terrifying part of blind dating, as far as I can see, is knowing in the first two minutes of the date that you aren’t and won’t ever be attracted to this person, but you have to spend the next two hours with them anyway. Speed dating alleviates that agony. You only have to survive for eight minutes. And if that works out, there’s a pretty good chance that if you take a chance on two hours, at least it won’t be torture.

The speed daters apparently know they only have a couple minutes to make a good first impression. They feel compelled to make immediate excuses for what they think will be immediately perceived as unacceptable flaws. Of course, that very act, as Katrina pointed out, gives the worst possible first impression. But I can understand why do it.

(I’m at a loss to explain how any man would think that a limp handshake would make a good first impression on a woman, though!)

What intrigues me most about chemistry is that it’s an unpredictable mystery what creates it between two people. Hundreds of perfectly good looking, quite acceptably nice men can move through a woman’s life. Only a few trigger that sense of connection, that romantic spark. Why is that? What exactly IS it? Pheromones? Personality mesh? Some kind of supernatural meeting of souls? And could any dating service, no matter the sophistication of their screening service, ever successfully predict which two people will feel it with each other?

I do believe that chemistry exists and I do believe it’s important to a successful romantic relationship. It’s the thing that separates a romance from a friendship. I don’t believe that chemistry alone is (romance novels notwithstanding!) a guarantee of a successfully long term relationship. But I wonder how often that compelling gut instinct is correct.

I read a book that took a scientific view of love-at-first-sight. (One of my reading addictions is anything that helps me understand human behavior.) One of the studies they did was to investigate the relative success of marriages where the couple reports falling in love at first sight, vs. where they report “growing” into love. I don’t know how carefully the study was done, and I don’t remember how big a sample it was, but it reported a statistically significant advantage to the love-at-first-sight marriages in terms of both longevity and satisfaction.

Score one for chemistry! Maybe all those romance novels are onto something.

Happy writing,

Samantha

P.S. I’d like to invite the readers of this blog to respond with comments about your own experience with chemistry. Specifically, I’m curious as to whether your current relationship, or any past significant relationship, started with love at first sight, or whether it grew more slowly. If so, how long did the feeling of chemistry last? And what has been the relative success rate of the “fall in love” vs. the “grow into love” relationships?