Connecting Love, Passion, and Our Relationships – Part II

By Jed Diamond, PhD, LCSW

Editor’s note: This post is the second in Jed’s series about keeping passion alive in your relationship. Click here to read the first post.

We are drawn together because something is missing in each of us.

“We are all angels with one wing,” says Luciano De Crescenzo. “We can only fly embracing one another.” Part of the reason we fall so deeply in love with our partners is that we feel fully alive in their presence. Although you are not always conscious of the fact, you feel so alive because some part of you feels complete in the presence of your loved one and you feel incomplete when they are not around.

I’ve long believed that all of us have experienced some degree of trauma growing up. As a result, some part of our being is damaged. Subconsciously, we seek out a partner who gives off a certain emotional “vibration” that resonates deep inside. Carlin and I met and fell in love. It took us both some time to recognize that I felt in her someone who could love and accept me in a way my father never could and she was looking for someone she could count on not to abandon her as her mother had done.

Like Bruce Lipton, an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit, my background is in the physical sciences. I was a biology major in college before going on to medical school. Though I dropped out of medicine, I’ve continued my professional training and now have a Ph.D. in International Health. Lipton uses the analogy of chemistry to show how most of us connect.

There are 118 elements in the periodic table and 112 of them (more about the other 6 in a moment) readily form chemical bonds with one another to create the physical molecules that make up the stars, the planets, and all of us.  You may remember something about the structure of an atom from chemistry class. The protons have positive charges and the electrons have an equal, but opposite negative charge. All 112 elements have shells of electrons that “want to bond” in order to balance the atom. For instance, the element sodium has one electron in its outer shell while the element chlorine is missing one electron in its outer shell. “Neither sodium’s nor chlorine’s outer electron shell is complete,” says Lipton. “But when sodium and chlorine atoms get together, they ‘make chemistry.’”

Like the 112 elements that make up the physical universe, we are all incomplete in some ways and seek out each other to fill our unmet needs. The problem arises when we hide our wounds from our partners or ourselves or try to change our partners in order to get them to give us what we lack.  One of the paradoxes of love is that we are drawn together because we are incomplete. We can be there for each other emotionally, but ultimately we must each complete ourselves. Passion will eventually fail if we don’t learn to love ourselves fully and completely.

But one of the hardest things in life is to love ourselves, unconditionally and completely, just the way we are with all our excesses and deficits. As Bruce Lipton recognizes, we can learn great wisdom from looking at the way the universe is constructed. Just as the 112 elements have an excess or a deficit of electrons in their outer shells, so all of us humans have too much of some ingredients or not enough of others.  Just as the elements bond with other elements to make them more stable, humans bond with each other to stabilize our lives.

But even when we’re bonded and emotionally supportive of each other’s insecurities and fears, we still must learn to accept ourselves. Ultimately we can’t rely on the qualities of another to fill the void within each of us. We all are missing some of the mother love or father love we didn’t get growing up. We all have a hole in the soul in the shape of our mother or our father. Some of us try to fill the void with alcohol, drugs, gambling, food, or pornography. Others try to fill it with the love of that special someone.

The bonding that brings us together can give us the support we need to heal our old wounds, but we can’t ever fill the hole in our soul with another person. We have to fill it with our own love and acceptance. Bruce Lipton again draws on science to illustrate the need to be a complete person, not one who is only alive and happy if we are connected to someone else. He says, “Once you’ve aligned your conscious and subconscious minds, you are no longer a sodium atom desperately looking for a chlorine atom; you become a noble gas spinning in perfect balance—you don’t ‘need’ another element to be balanced.”

What are the “noble gases?” They are the six elements on the right column of the periodic table and include Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radon. “The most significant aspect of these odorless and colorless gases is that noble gases are the only elements in the periodic table that don’t (except under very special circumstances) form chemical compounds.” Their outer shells of electrons don’t have an excess or deficit. They’re not seeking another in order to balance or complete them. Like well-integrated humans, they have a life and vitality all their own. Though they aren’t reactive, they do connect under special circumstances.

When a noble gas atom is hit by a photon of light, it becomes excited. “A noble gas atom in an excited state will seek bonding with another noble gas atom so it can share that excitement,” says Lipton. Humans who love themselves and feel complete are like noble gas atoms. “Unlike conventional ‘chemistry,’ which is based on codependent bonding to produce spin-balance and stability,” says Lipton, “energized noble gas atoms are like people primed and ready for selfless love, a world of sharing and caring.” As Carlin and I have worked on our own healing, we deepen our experience of love. Life becomes a “noble gas” where we give to each other rather than take. When people love themselves deeply, feel whole and complete, they naturally want to continue to grow and to give love to others, particularly their mates.

Jed Diamond, PhD, MCSW, is the Founder and Director of the MenAlive, a health program that helps men live long and well. Though focused on men’s health, MenAlive is also for women who care about the health of the men in their lives. Diamond’s book, MenAlive: Stop Killer Stress with Simple Energy Healing Tools, brings together the wisdom accumulated in 40 years helping more than 20,000 men, women, and children.