What is it that attracts us to certain individuals, while we find others unappealing?

In some circles, this force of attraction has been attributed to fate, destiny or even karma. Beyond the romantic dream of soul mates, there is a very real scientific cause at work here: the secret language of love that is hard-wired into your physicality.

Each one of us consists of 6,000 miles of neurons wired through the body. These neurons affect every area of our lives, including our complex behaviors in love - a process that is totally subjective and illogical.

If you’ve ever fallen in love, you know that it sometimes has nothing to do with whether the person is “right” for you or not. Why does this happen? This happens simply because what we describe in our society as “falling in love” is the formation of a subjective neural pathway inside our brains.

What does it mean? It simply means that in response to previous emotional experiences, your brain has become wired to interpret love in a very particular way. And this way is shaped by what you have interpreted love to be in the past.

You have a unique love formula or equation that contains all the behaviors, emotions and expressions that you interpret as love. Together, they comprise your secret language of love which operates largely on a subconscious level.

One aspect of your love equation contains a specific set of criteria that must be present in order for you to fall in love. This aspect explains why some of us are inexplicably drawn to individuals with dark hair, blue eyes or some other physical characteristic. When we find ourselves attracted to another, the brain chemistry starts generating the appropriate endorphins and we “fall in love.”

Another aspect of your love equation contains the set of criteria that must be present in order for you to feel loved. This aspect operates for the duration of the relationship: if the relationship is to have any chance of surviving the initial phase, it is imperative for us to learn more about what we need from one another in order to feel loved. This is what I refer to as your secret love equation, because it happens at a subconscious level.

Your secret love equation is based on the concept of reward. If you were rewarded for certain behavior such as compliance when you were growing up, you learned to interpret that reward as love. You are likely to repeat some version of that behavior with a partner in the hope of getting a similar reward. Hence, the compliant child becomes a submissive partner and expects to be rewarded for that behavior, which is then interpreted as love.

And that’s where the rub lies! Despite research conducted with thousands of people and their love equations, there are no two partners who have identical love equations for feeling loved. Love equations are completely subjective. Therefore, the way you express love could be very different from the way your partner interprets love.

When one partner expresses to the other, “I don’t feel loved by you,” the other may respond by listing many things they do to demonstrate their love. However, for the partner who is feeling unloved, none of the actions listed may equate to love in their mind, because these actions are not wired into their secret language of love. It is entirely possible for one partner in a relationship to feel they are being extremely loving, while the other partner is actually feeling completely unloved!

In general terms, men find it easier to express their love by doing things for their partner. Women, on the other hand, may disregard these actions as expressions of love because they are looking for some romantic verbal expression of love apart from the daily routine.

And the plot thickens: While the basis for your unique love equation is based on emotional experiences from your past, your beliefs about what happens after you fall in love can change dramatically as a result of a major emotional upheaval.

In the traditional (mythical) love equation cherished by our culture, you meet the person of your dreams, fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. Most of us start out with a love equation similar to this… until the first experience of infidelity or a breakup!

After suffering a broken heart and broken dreams, your love equation may change to meeting the partner of your dreams, falling in love, getting married, suffering infidelity and living in the pain of that experience forever. For such a person, even the thought of meeting a partner and falling in love, now equates to pain.

Every time that person mentally replays the negative emotional experience, they are actually strengthening the new, disempowering love equation by firing off a synaptic response in the brain that makes this new equation real for them.

How do we master the secret language of love in ourselves and in our partners? We do so through honesty and commitment. We need to honestly look at our areas of wounding and pain, and express it to our partners along with what we need to feel loved. We also need to consciously commit never to hurt our partners intentionally in their areas of wounding and to express our love for them in the language they need to receive it – even when their love equation is different from ours!

Developing a loving relationship requires mutual commitment to honor and respect our own truth and our partner’s truth without compromise. When we are not honest with our love and our pain, our wounds and our fears, we compromise our truth. Over time, the compromises made by not facing up to truth, breed resentment that will eventually destroy all intimacy and push our partners away.

When two souls are drawn together, it happens because there is a resonance in their resonant energy fields. These fields draw people together because of their common energies.

These matching fields offer powerful opportunities for healing and growth, provided a mutual commitment is made to learn each other’s secret language of love, heal each other’s wounds and to evolve as fully conscious, loving beings.