Relationship “Chemistry,” explained.

Imago theory suggests we seek partners who remind us of our trauma, and expect to them to heal us.

According to Harville Hendrix in Getting the Love You Want (1988), we unconsciously seek out romantic partners that remind us of the people who wounded us in childhood, because we believe only they can heal our childhood wounds.

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In more recent books, like Playful Parenting (Cohen 2002) and The Body Keeps The Score (van der Kolk 2014), researchers explain that one of the ways Nature programs us to heal or childhood trauma is to recreate the trauma from a position of control.

What these theories suggest is that our bodies are programmed to release pleasure hormones upon discovery of the potential partner whom we “recognize” as corresponding to our imago (i.e., bear a resemblance to the childhood caretakers who hurt us). When two people experience that kind of reaction in response to one another, we say they have chemistry.