You know that feeling. Where your stomach backflips, your palms sweat, and you suddenly forget how to form complete sentences. We’ve been told that all our lives it is — the magnetic pull, the electricity, the undeniable “spark” that separates a boring coffee date from the beginning of a movie-worthy romance.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth no one wants to admit: That spark is often just anxiety wearing a fancy disguise.
Think about it. The person who keeps you guessing, who texts you enough to keep you hooked but never enough to make you feel safe, who makes you feel like you have a puzzle to solve – that’s not passion. It’s lighting up your nervous system like a pinball machine because it doesn’t know what’s coming next. And we somehow confused that rollercoaster with love.
Chemical traps
I watched my best friend date the same person four different times in three years. Different name, same script. Every time, after the first date she called me short of breath: “I don’t know what it is about him. There’s just something.” And each time, six weeks later, she would sit on my couch, wondering why what made her feel so alive could also make her feel so invisible.
The answer is uncomfortable. We gravitate toward what feels familiar—not what’s good for us. If you grew up walking on eggshells, a calm, steady partner won’t feel like “chemistry.” It would seem boring. Meanwhile, one will feel the unexpected Exciting Because your brain is literally replaying an old pattern it mistakes for home.
Meanwhile, the really good ones? People who show up on time, people who don’t play games, people who actually listen When you talk? They get demonized for being “too nice” or “too available.” We move past them in search of the next dopamine hit.
No one asks the real question
Here’s what I started asking myself – and I think you should too:
Does this person make me feel calm, or do they make me feel alive?
Because here’s the catch: feeling “alive” is temporary. It is the height of a new work, the first day of a holiday, the opening night of a play. But love is not an act. Love happens when the high wears off and you’re just two tired, messy people trying to get dinner out and who forgot to take out the trash.
Shant doesn’t sell movie tickets. No rom-com ends with the couple sitting in cozy silence on a Tuesday night. But that’s where real relationships live — not in grand gestures, but in the thousands of tiny, annoying, vulgar moments of choosing each other.
What to look for instead
Next time you go on a date, ignore the butterflies. actually, run If they feel nauseous from butterflies.
Instead, notice this: Do you feel strangely… safe? Can you be slightly awkward without panicking? When you disagree on something small, are they defensive or curious?
The best relationships I’ve known didn’t start with fireworks. They started with a quiet “Ha, that was easy.” There is no game. No guesses. Just two people who liked each other enough to become monogamous from day one.
And here’s the part they don’t tell you: After that quiet comfort are the fireworks. Not the anxious, stomach-churning kind—the deep, warm kind that makes you realize you’d be more bored with this person than electrified with anyone else.
So yeah, stop chasing the spark. You may just be chasing your own trauma in a leather jacket. Instead look for calm. It’s cool, sure. But it also does not leave.
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This post was Previously published at medium.com.
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Photo credit: Leongsan on splash
