6 Subtle Ways To Know If Your Connection With Him Is Real Or Just An Illusion
That magical 'love at first sight' feeling might not be so healthy.
Iona Studio | Canva If your plan for lasting love is no plan, you’ll find you are setting yourself up for heartbreak, frustration, and loneliness. Being magnetically drawn to someone might have a different meaning than you’ve come to expect.
The feeling of familiarity may signal from your subconscious that this person isn’t at all what you want and may be connected to your wounds about love. So, how do you know if being magnetically drawn to someone is kismet or if this is once again a frustrating lather-rinse-repeat cycle in your love life?
Here are six ways to know if your connection with him is real or just an illusion:
1. If the connection becomes an obsession, your connection may be an illusion
Being magnetically drawn to someone can feel intoxicating, and a study from the National Healthy Marriage Center found that new relationships trigger the chemical high of falling in love.
However, if you’re feeling obsessive and consumed by the relationship, you could be with someone who is triggering your childhood wounds. If you can’t stop thinking about your partner and are unable to focus on other things in your life, it is a clear sign that there is an unhealthy dynamic between the two of you.
2. If your relationship moves too quickly, your connection may be an illusion
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Pay attention to whether you or your partner takes steps to move the relationship forward quickly before you know each other. It can feel romantic when you decide to run away together or jump into an exclusive relationship after only a couple of dates. Still, when fantasy meets reality, the relationship will not survive the inevitable power struggle.
3. If there are no healthy boundaries, your connection may be an illusion
Love does not include merging into one being. True love requires respect, and respectful love always includes boundaries. You are two separate people with different strategies, habits, and temperaments.
Just because you are magnetically drawn to someone doesn’t mean that they complete you. You are not half a person who needs to find your other half to be complete. The Cambridge Handbook of Substance and Behavioral Addictions explains how that’s a co-dependent relationship).
4. If you keep the relationship a secret, your connection may be an illusion
Part of coming together in a new relationship is sharing your life. You become a part of his group of friends, and he is included with yours. Eventually, when the time is right, you each introduce one another to your families.
When you are magnetically drawn to someone, do you wish to keep your relationship in an isolated bubble away from other parts of your life? A relationship isn’t more exciting because it’s secret — and if it is, it’s part of a detrimental pattern, as suggested by research from the American Psychological Association.
5. If you fill in the blanks, your connection may be an illusion
When you are magnetically drawn to someone, the many feel-good chemicals that are flowing through your brain can easily cloud your vision. The hope you’ve finally met your soulmate can further confuse your judgment.
People who get scammed by someone catfishing ignore obvious signs. They get caught up and invest emotionally in someone they barely know or have never met. Beware of filling in the blanks and only seeing what you want to see. Verify facts and use your discernment before you commit your heart.
6. If you've lost your sense of self, your connection may be an illusion
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If you isolate yourself and your friends complain you disappear every time you feel magnetically drawn to someone, you may have a harmful pattern of sacrificing yourself in a relationship.
The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology explores how merging quickly and allowing your needs and wants to take a backseat to your partner’s is a clear signal that you have a distressing strategy that needs to be addressed before you can find lasting love.
If your subconscious strategies for love are corrupted by outdated or faulty “relationship software programming,” then your internal GPS for love may be guiding you to repeat and recreate old patterns that will never take you to your goal of long-lasting love.
This means when you are magnetically drawn to someone, it’s because your subconscious highlights an energetic match to all that is familiar to you and ignores everything that is not. This familiarity goes back to birth, including your relationships with your parents, siblings, and caregivers, as well as the strategies you learned for giving and receiving love in childhood.
Your childhood experiences shape your attractions as an adult
Your experiences in your early childhood (before age 8) created your unique imprint for love. As a child, you had two emotional needs that must be met to survive and thrive in the world. You needed to feel loved and safe. To have these needs fulfilled, you took on any belief, behavior, or strategy necessary. That’s how important they were to your survival.
The Attachment & Human Development Journal shows how a childhood wound has a significant impact on how you interact with others in your adult relationships. This is particularly true when it comes to selecting a romantic partner.
Your subconscious mind recognizes a match to your childhood wounds and highlights them for you. It’s as if a signal goes off in your mind and body saying, “This is familiar! This is familiar!” Unfortunately, your subconscious cannot tell you if familiarity is good or bad because its job is to remain aligned with your relationship homeostasis.
Ultimately, you are all too often magnetically drawn to someone who matches your childhood wounds and thus does not make a good life partner for you.
The reality is your subconscious mind cannot always judge well, so it has no idea if the familiar is good or bad for you.
When your love GPS is faulty, you will misinterpret those signals of fear and danger and confuse them with excitement and attraction. You’ll need to understand the differences between healthy attraction and unhealthy attraction.
Just because you are magnetically drawn to someone doesn’t mean that you are fated to be together. It also doesn’t automatically mean that the two of you are bad for each other.
What happens after the initial attraction is most important and will inform you whether this person is an ideal match for you long-term. The key is to take things slowly so your emotions don’t cloud your judgment.
Orna and Matthew Walters are dating coaches, the founders of Creating Love On Purpose, which takes a holistic approach to transforming hidden blocks into love, and the authors of Getting It Right This Time.