December 18, 2014,
Relationship, Script 
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Recently I was having dinner with my friends in one of our local restaurants, far away from the noise of the city. At the table next to us another company of friends were enjoying their Saturday while having a good feed drinking fine wine and sharing stories. Suddenly their conversation turned to the methods for choosing a partner to spend one’s life with.
I couldn’t help extending my ear to them. This was a true niggling for my experience as a therapist. What were these love couples thinking of love, their relationships, and of life in general?
What I discovered was that they were each very strongly in favour of their opinion and were clearly in support of one of two positions: The first one defended their thesis that love was chemistry, and the second one – that love was somehow pre-ordained, something that I would call script.
Is Choosing a Partner Chemistry or Script?
Your script is activated by the chemical response you have when you first meet the person you think will be the love of your life. In other words, you have a neurological response to every thought you have, every feeling you feel, and everything you do. When one of your nerve cells is stimulated, it releases a flood of chemicals that sets off other neurons, until a whole chain of them goes off. A physiological response to something in the environment demonstrates what happens from stimulus through to the response.
In short, I have described here the physiology of love. But what was happening at the table next to us? What were the conclusions drawn by those couples? One of the ladies took passionately the initiative and tapped her fork against her glass of wine. All became silent and she said with a smile: “Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye”. Then she took a sip of her wine and added – “Just stop this arguing of yours, haven’t you heard H. Jackson Brown’s words?” Silence set in. Everyone understood and gave his own description to Choosing a Partner. She had chosen chemistry in love as her faith.
Choosing a Partner and the Patterns in Your Life
This process explains the phenomenon often referred to as “patterning.” Whenever you experience some event, whether it’s negative or something good, the likelihood of it occurring again increases significantly. And the more often you experience the same event the more likely it becomes to reoccur.
And if you let me summarize here: Choosing a Partner starts with finding those personal skills that you like the most about the person standing in front of you, but you don’t recognise in yourself in the light of your own judgement. The truth is, what may really be driving your attraction is an underlying belief that this person will confirm your values and the beliefs you hold about yourself and others—your script—for good or for bad.
This impulse is based directly on your satisfaction of the five Fundamental Needs: your physical, safety, feeling, love and belonging, and spiritual needs. How well these were met for you as a child will create your life script, which in turn becomes your guide for choosing who you are attracted to in your adult life.
Let me take you back to the scene at the small and neat restaurant. The table next to us made its own choice to accept these truths. A dare-devil stood up and proudly stated: “A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.”, then smiles and just kissed the woman by his side. He had just cited one of the greatest masters of pen – Honoré de Balzac.
What is your own opinion? Is it chemistry or script? Please, write to me and share your own thoughts on choosing a partner to spend your life with.
To the wonder of you,
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