wavelength/chemistry?

Question

(can you tell me more about this from a scientific point of view if possible. )

I can understand the concept of chemistry between people who are attracted to each other (sexually) but what about people of the same sex (heterosexuals) who take an instant liking to each other - whether it be looks, spirituality, whatever. what's behind it?

Answer 1

This is one of the deep mysteries of Being that I obviously cannot fully answer here, but I will offer this possibility. Carl Jung (and others in the tradition of depth psychology) say that we project parts of ourselves onto the world, and then we experience strong emotional reactions to these projections because we are (unconsciously) trying to "find ourselves" – become whole again, reconnect with the hidden parts of our nature. These hidden parts constitute what Jung calls our "shadow". A lot of the stuff in our shadow is nasty, scary stuff because it is knowledge that we do not want to have about ourselves – stuff that we don't like about ourselves, fear in ourselves, etc. But our shadows also contain a lot of very positive stuff. This is stuff that we suppressed because (typically in childhood) we were punished for expressing it. For example, if we were highly creative, but this creativity was not understood by our parents and friends, we might have repressed it because we felt it made us weird or nerdy or just too freakin' different. Virtually any positive trait can be turned into something that we fear if we grow up in an environment where that positive trait is not understood, not respected, makes people envious, etc.

So now, finally, a possible answer to your question: Certain people might reflect the positive parts of our own shadows. We feel an instant bond with them because they show us the good part of ourselves that we have been keeping in our shadows. They provides a sense of completion, holism, or fitting into place because they help us to recognize and reconnect with these missing parts of ourselves. This can happen no matter whether we are sexually attracted to the person or not. (Obviously things get way more complicated than this. Sometimes, instead of this good feeling, we feel envious, jealous, or unworthy because the person inspires us to connect with a positive part of our shadow, but the repression is so strong that we fight against the self-knowledge. And, of course, when we project the negative part of our shadow onto someone, we typically hate them because they represent what we hate about ourselves, and so on.)