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2007 ARCHIVE
December
Christmas Presents, Catholic Presence, and Dating
November
Mr. Chemistry Lips
October
Choo-choo, Cha-cha, and Childish: Part Two
September
Choo-choo, Cha-cha, and Childish: Part One
August
Okay, I Admit It. I'm Desperate! Part Two
July
Okay, I Admit It. I'm Desperate! Part One
June
Why Am I Still Single? Part Two
May
Why Am I Still Single? Part One
April
Survive or Thrive?
March
How Open Is Your Marriage Window?
February
Interview-date-o-phobia
January
Angels, Demons, and Dating
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Mr. Chemistry Lips
Written by Thomas P. Schmierer
October 27, 2007 |
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 You've recently met a wonderfully gallant "gentleman" who has all of the qualities you were looking for in a man! He's friendly, loving, caring.... He loves being outdoors, meeting people, seeing new places, and trying new foods. Sometimes he even thinks it is just nice to relax at home and cuddle in front of the fireplace over a glass of champagne!
Whenever he picks you up for a date, he has a beam in is eye and flashes a big, Colgate smile. From the moment you met, you felt that "mystical" feeling called chemistry. It is like you have known each other your entire lives!
Whoever would have suspected... you have recently met someone better known as Mr. Chemistry Lips?
In the book entitled Emotional Unavailability: Recognizing It, Understanding It, and Avoiding Its Trap, author Bryn C. Collins describes Mr. Chemistry Lips as a "hand-kissing, champagne-pouring, look-deep-into-your-eyes-and-get-mushy kind of guy, [...] you are swept off your feet and into his embrace. [...] You're in full-blown, dream-state luuuuuuuuuuuuuvvvvvvvvvvv!" (1)
How to Know If He Really Loves You
Your mind wanders and you wonder whether or not he really loves you. You would ask if you didn't have reservations, but since you do, you just keep wondering. This is because no one ever taught you how to discern real love. All you know about dating is that there must be chemistry for there to be romantic love, but what about the real kids-and-a-white-picket-fence-this-lasts-forever type of love?
You need more than a kiss to know if he really loves you. According to Collins, you need to investigate his kiss AND the presence of factors such as "consistency, growth of the relationship, respect, and honesty." (2) One only needs to look at the prevalence of infidelity leading to divorce to see that many liars are convincing kissers. If his kiss says that he loves you, then his words and actions had better do the same.
Fooled by a Skill
The truth of the matter is that everyone feels a sense of chemistry with Mr. Chemistry Lips. Men like him are often successful salesmen and are very charismatic. The reason that almost everyone feels chemistry with Mr. Chemistry Lips is because he can build rapport - an essential people-pleasing skill. Yes, your perception of chemistry may be errantly based on a finely-tuned set of social techniques rather than a real loving bond.
There is a hidden part of Mr. Chemistry Lips that may take awhile for you to discover. His trademark is that he lacks honesty, faithfulness, and respect. Those who date someone like Mr. Chemistry Lips may be unconsciously giving up on important character traits for a mere social skill.
Social techniques can be refined and developed with effort. On the other hand, attributes like honesty, faithfulness, and respect seem to either exist in one's core or not. While it is true that people can generally change with the aid of God's grace, one must take into account the reality that Mr. Chemistry Lips is currently showing an inability to truly love.
The Inevitable
But what's the problem with trying to find out if he loves you by his kiss? Nothing per se, except that even though his passionate kiss may feel like it comes from a place of true love, this is not necessarily the case.
If you continue to date Mr. Chemistry Lips, one of two things will happen. He will either: (a) leave you and kiss the next "object" of his passion; or (b) stay with you because he thinks he loves you, even though he knows he might cheat on you. Why does Mr. Chemistry Lips cheat? He is hooked on romance.
Big Emotions Only
Mr. Chemistry Lips craves the intense rush of romancing you and only you. He does this until the rush fades, at which point he will enjoy the intense rush of romancing someone else and only that someone else until the new rush fades. (3) He likes big feelings and has never learned to identify smaller feelings. Even though he knows the huge rush of feeling that comes along with romance (which he calls love), he will not come to respect the subtler feelings until he lives a life of loyalty, trust, honesty, and truth.
He thinks subtle is inferior, thus the subtler feelings seem mundane to him. He does not understand that subtle feelings are part of every long-term relationship. They cover the range of the whole alphabet and include feeling appreciative, bewildered, committed, disappointed, eager, frustrated, genuine, hurt, inadequate, judged, kind, loyal, misunderstood, needy, optimistic, pressured, quiet, rewarded, secure, tolerant, uncertain, vindicated, wishy-washy, youthful, and zealous.
"Two Types of Women"
To Mr. Chemistry Lips, there are two types of women: those he respects, and those he uses. If you are deemed worthy of his respect, he will attempt to enter into a long-term relationship with you, but his "commitment" will not stop him from cheating. He cheats because he does not see it as betrayal. A man who cheats on you with the type of woman that (in his mind) is to be used, does not feel sorry for doing so. He may appear to feel bad for cheating on you because he enjoys the drama of comforting your pain, but he does not feel bad for using the other.
Mr. Chemistry Lips only knows how to feel intense passion, sadness, and anger. If he marries, his remorse for emotionally hurting his wife may be just as intense as romance, thus it feeds the same original emotional fix. In this frame of mind, getting caught could be seen as the best thing that happened to him, because it brings a rush of emotion with it. Plus, anger is one of the few emotions that Mr. Chemistry Lips respects, so if you get angry at his cheating, he will see it as a good emotional bonding experience. He is only aware that soothing your anger feels good to him and he never really feels true remorse.
Collins offers a checklist similar to the one provided below to aid women in identifying Mr. Chemistry Lips.
Checklist
- Intense interest in you in the beginning
- Poorly explained or unexplained purchases, missed rendezvous, tardiness
- Heavy on chemistry, poor at pure affection
- Mysterious, has many secrets
- Only present during crisis situations
- Shallow and artificial
- Not in touch with his emotions
- Unable to accept responsibility
- Pushes boundaries of physical intimacy (4)
Mrs. Chemistry Lips
Collins acknowledges that there is a matching female version of the caricature of Mr. Chemistry Lips. I have found this to be true in my dating experiences, but because I intentionally kept the first date on a pure friendship level, the Mrs. Chemistry Lipses of the world would typically refuse to go on a second date with me because they would not have felt chemistry. I actually possess some rapport-building skills, but would downplay those skills in order to avoid the false sense of chemistry that comes from intending to have chemistry.
Some women unknowingly trade the slow pacing of pure intimacy for early physical contact or a deep, "romantic" gaze. They receive a false sense of security by initiating early physical contact, rather than enjoying the true comfort of pure friendship. (5)
One time, after feeling rejected, a young woman said to me, "No one believes in that old-fashioned way anymore. You're never going to find anyone Tom!" I could have fallen into despair at her comments and decided to submit to her plea for early physical intimacy, but instead I felt I had no choice but to distance myself from her for the sake of my own purity.
It takes superhuman efforts to consistently resist the seductive impulses of Mrs. Chemistry Lips, and I know my own limitations. Because I distanced myself from her, I was able to stay pure and single. Since I stayed single, I was free to enter courtship with my current girlfriend when the opportunity presented itself and we have a wonderful, pure relationship. If no one believes in pure love anymore, then my girlfriend and I must be a couple of nobodies.
Unique and Unrepeatable
Pope John Paul II said that each human person is unique and unrepeatable. This means that there is not one "type" of person that we can call Mr. Chemistry Lips. Mr. Chemistry Lips is a caricature, a simplified teaching instrument that has been used to discuss some behaviors that you might see in a real person.
Not everyone who enjoys chemistry is destined to cheat. There are as many types of people in the world as there are people. The concept of Mr. Chemistry Lips accentuates elements of what you might see in a real person, but it is only a concept and is not intended to provoke fear of naturally occurring passions. To feel passion is necessary to experience all that it means to be human.
Conclusion
While chemistry and romance are not evil, when they are intensely present at the beginning of a relationship, you might want to exercise some caution. If you follow the advice of Fr. Morrow, author of Christian Courtship in an Oversexed World, you will not give that sweet, pure kiss to your date until you have entered a formal courtship with him/her. The formal courtship phase is preceded by a friendship dating phase which contains none of the types of "romantic" physical contact that are found in Mr. Chemistry Lips' social repertoire.
The victims of Mr. Chemistry Lips, like so many of us, have been influenced by Hollywood romance films and ill-informed peers. If we allow romance films to influence our dating habits, then we might end up dating someone who is not fully available on an emotional level.
When someone only respects the big emotions of anger, sadness, and intense passion, he/she cannot experience a full emotional connection with you. A full emotional life consists of both big and subtle emotions. The good news is that while no plan can predict 100% success, using Christian dating principles can reduce the chance that you will marry someone who is emotionally unavailable and vastly increase your chances of finding true love! (6)
Footnotes
(1) Emotional Unavailability, p. 97; Collins uses the name Romeo for whom I call Mr. Chemistry Lips.
(2) Emotional Unavailability, p. 97.
(3) This way of thinking is akin to Dave Sloan's concept of serial monogamy. See http://www.GodOfDesire.com.
(4) Emotional Unavailability, p. 103.
(5) For those wishing to learn more about the Friendship Dating, please listen to the audio file The Pacing of Intimacy for Adult Catholic Singles by clicking on the "Listen for free!" link at http://www.vaticanvalues.com/singlesadviceaudiorecordings.html.
(6) The thought of Collins presented in this article has been blended with information that I have learned either through the experience of meeting various kinds of men or through formal education on communication skills and emotions. My conception of Mr. Chemistry Lips differs in some ways from her conception of Romeo.
Thomas Schmierer is a Catholic counselor, writer, and evangelizer for V2C╝. Visit www.vaticanvalues.com to learn more about Mr. Schmierer's work.
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