In my often personal research on what makes couples (and triads, etc.) get together and stay together, I notice characteristics of happy unions and I have found a common thread.

I found there are usually three things present in a happy union:

1 - Chemistry

2 - Compatibility, and 

3 - Timing.

One of the reasons this was easy for me to notice and come up with is that it’s evident in my own enjoyable romantic relationships. Allow me to elaborate!

a) Chemistry is something that can’t be faked. It’s either there, or it isn’t. It is 100% totally up to chance, and nature. That’s it. 

b) Chemistry is most often thought of as having to do with sexual attraction and the electricity that partners feel when they touch and make love with one another. When sexual chemistry is there, everything feels like magic.

 Every touch of your partner feels electric. Every way you touch them they swear makes them swoon. Neither of you feels like you’re doing anything on purpose, but you both feel so amazing whenever you touch. That’s chemistry. Sexual chemistry is also non-physical. Just looking at, hearing the voice, or reading the writing of your partner can send you “to the moon”. Sexual chemistry can make you have physical responses to your partner when you’re nowhere near one another. 

But chemistry goes beyond sexual. It is also how it feels when partners talk with one another, it’s a feeling, which brings us to the next characteristiC:

a) Compatibility is when you feel you and your partner are well matched in your basic personalities and life values. Whereas chemistry is a good match in regards to things over which you have no immediate control to significantly and immediately change (such as   your physical being, and who you were made and born as), compatibility is about how well you feel you are matched with someone. For instance, someone whose personality matches yours beautifully.

b) When you are compatible with someone it feels like so many things about them matches you, and the other way around. It can be their points of view, their life choices, their values, their profession or career, where they prefer to live, how they set up their homes, what they like to eat, what their political sensibilities or spiritual beliefs are, or any combination of these. 

c) Compatibility can also be that you are “complimentary pairs” with your partner. This means that where you differ from one another is actually a benefit to you both. For instance, one of you may tend to run late to appointments, whereas the other tends to be a little too strict about being early. One may be more uptight and the other may need to relax more. One may be a bit of a stick in the mud and the other a little too footloose and fancy free. In this way, compatibility means that you and your partner have the opportunity to become better, improve as people, strengthen previously weaker areas, and become a more balanced and fully self-actualized individual. All of this could be, if you choose to treat it as such, a result of being around someone who has a feature that may help you to try a different way of being. So you are then compatible with someone whom you can help by your being, and who can help you by their being, provided you both take it as an opportunity to do so. And, finally, we come to:

a) When you have good timing with someone, it’s as if fate, the gods, and/or nature itself have deemed it that you be together at this moment. Everything you want to do together seems to flow easily, naturally, and in a synchronistic fashion. You and your partner(s) do not force anything, any meetings, any plans, and simply trust that when the time is right, you will get together, and you do, easily and with great pleasure. You and your partner(s) trust in the timing of all things together, and you are rewarded each time by relaxing and trusting the process. You and your partner(s) are calm, confident, and self-assured that you will get together when the time is right, and each time it does, increasing your confidence yet more, and increasing your sense of calm. 

b) Unlike chemistry and compatibility being more of a surreal feeling that fate, the gods, or nature supports your union, timing feels a lot more concrete. When you can observe a sense of good timing, it is something you can actually see, rather than feel as you can with chemistry or compatibility. Timing is when you see things actually happen based on scheduling or getting together spontaneously, or being able to see one another when you weren’t expecting it. It can be finding a great hotel rate at the last minute or being able to get away for a vacation with your sweetie(s), among other pleasant surprises. Timing is more visible “proof” of your compatibility with your partner(s).

c) Timing is also knowing that, regardless of the circumstances of how you met your partners(s), you know that the time is right for you to be together right now. It feels almost ordained. The conditions under which you got and/or stay together may not be totally convenient, politically correct, or completely ethical (you’re both or all consenting, unrelated adults), but you know it’s good and right for you in this moment and in this time of your live(s), and you and your partner(s) are definitely committed to making the relationship work.

d) Lastly, timing is when you and your partner are emotionally ready for your relationship. Your hearts are open, you have yearned for a certain something, a certain kind of connection, a certain missing thing from your life to be fulfilled. You’ve put out the call in some way, psychically, spiritually, romantically. You have reached out via the internet, or you have attended events. Either way, you have reached out and you have put it out to the universe that you want something. You want. You need. And you put it out to the universe that you have love to give. You want to love. You want to care. You want to help or comfort someone. You have a need to care for someone. You yearn, and the combination of your yearning to receive and your yearning to give is a powerful combination. When you find someone with that same combination, the timing is right.

These three things: Chemistry, Compatibility, and Timing, I have found to be the powerful formula for love.

May you notice when these appear in your life. Even if they don’t all appear at the same time, it’s okay, just notice when one of them is there, and then another.

One of the best ways to manifest something you want in your life is to notice when the essence of it is there in other areas of your life, as well as noticing when you have part of it.

So in your dating life, look for and appreciate whenever you have chemistry, compatibility, and/or timing with someone. You will see your goals of right romantic partnership loom ever nearer to you.

Happy dating and remember to have fun!

Cassendre Xavier has been writing the "Soulmate Attraction for the Rest of Us" series at Wisdom Magazine's online edition since 2011. She is the author of the forthcoming book Soulmate Attraction for the Rest of Us: Dating & Relationships for the Poly, Recovering, Survivor & Tantric, and has presented her workshop of the same title at Sisterspace Weekend in Darlington, Maryland (September 2014) and the 10th  & 11th Annual Poly Living Conference in Philadelphia (February 2015 & 2016, respectively). Cassendre was diagnosed with Bipolar 2 Disorder and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at age 23. She has been a member of Philadelphia's LGBT, polyamorous, and New Age/ancient wisdom spiritual communities since 1991, and from 1996-1999 facilitated Sisters Healing Together, a peer support group for women survivors of incest with a special focus on compulsive overeating, which she also founded, at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia. Under her self-assigned spiritual name Amethyste Rah, Cassendre released the popular Affirmations for Survivors guided meditation audio series (“Self-Love” and “Spirituality” in 2007, and “Sexuality” and “Life Skills” are forthcoming). For more information, please visit    http://cassEndrExavier.com n>