I stopped trusting chemistry. Here’s what I trust instead.
Non-members can read it HERE.
In my younger years, the parameter of determining who I wanted to be in a relationship with was pretty simple: he was ‘nice’ enough, he liked me enough.
Now, after years of dating narcissistic and emotionally unavailable men, I have paid for my lessons through an embarrassing amount of therapy, heartache, and self-shaming. I now have a precise procedure for judging the men I meet — whether they’re potential partner material I could see myself growing old with, or the potential case study I’ll be discussing with my therapist in our next session.
The 3rd date is judgment time. Some men expect intimacy by then. I expect myself to be brutally honest and cut the weeds out no matter how much chemistry there is. Not because I stopped believing in chemistry — because I stopped trusting it. When you’ve spent years in a trauma bond, your body confuses danger for desire. The racing heart, the can’t-stop-thinking-about-him, the ache when he doesn’t text — that’s not fate. It’s often just trauma bonding. The chemicals fluctuating in your body make you mistakenly think you need them, like a sad lab rat pulling the lever again to get a doze of relief from the pain…
