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For 10 years I carefully studied my chemistry reactions in lab - running daily experiments, scouring the literature for hints, speaking with colleagues, and practicing theoretical drills of complex syntheses.
There were weekly guest lectures to stay up-to-date on the latest thinking in the field. I knew what the best minds in the world had to say about chemical bonding.
But then I looked at my own marriage and realized I’d never had a single class on the other kind of bonding - human bonding, or romantic bonding.
Unfortunately we expect romantic relationships to “just work,” without study, room to experiment, or the permission to consult the literature and wise counsel.
That gap in training cost me my marriage.
It’s no secret that the health of our closest relationship is one of the strongest predictors of how happy we will be: the Harvard Study of Adult Development followed people for more than 80 years and that was a clear result.
Yet we walk in with no training.
So, I started to think: what if I studied relationships the way I used to study my experiments, and broke them down into the conditions that work to make the bond form?
I finished my postdoctoral fellowship and changed careers back in 2012 - and I haven’t run a reaction since. Yet my old textbooks - Classics in Total Synthesis, Quantum Chemistry - are still right there on my bookshelf and this way of thinking never really left. I reserve the right to keep tinkering with this chart as my thinking evolves.
The real question is: can organic chemistry help your marriage? I posit that it most definitely can.
Let me walk you through the table. I’ve listed out, in no particular order, some of the main variables that I had to consider in my experiments as a chemist. They are listed in the left column labeled “Condition.”
In the middle column, I’ve written down what effect varying each condition had on the reaction, on the bond formation. On the right, I’ve made a parallel between the chemical condition and what the equivalent might look like in your relationship.
In other words: what are all the variables that you have access to, all the levers you have to pull in your relationship in order to make a better bond?
Let’s take one condition in particular - say #5, order of addition. In chem lab this is about the order in which you add reagents to the flask. At worst, adding things in the wrong order could cause an explosion. At best, it would use up all of a precious starting material in pointless side reactions.
You can immediately see a parallel here with relationships: open a hard conversation before your partner has had a chance to eat, when everyone is under-slept, or when emotions are running high, and…
At worst, you’ll cause an explosion. At best, you’ll waste time in pointless side arguments (probably about the fact that you picked a terrible time to bring something up rather than addressing the thing you wanted to address in the first place).
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Every one of those conditions was something I had to address for a bond to form in the lab. I’ve come to believe the same is true at home - that a marriage often isn’t failing for lack of love so much as for lack of the right conditions.
Which is, strangely, the hopeful part. Conditions can be changed.
I didn’t find my way to a class in human bonding until after my divorce. At which point, I was livid because I couldn’t believe that what I learned wasn’t standard teaching in school.
That’s why I changed careers - to bring to you what the best minds in the world know about relationships, so we can all give ourselves permission to experiment.
If you want to actually run an experiment, I made you a free companion: The Chemistry Experiment - three short audios for men who want better bonding in their marriage. You can move through them while you’re on the go or at the gym.
And if you’re the kind of person who likes to open the hood - keep going. Below: why trying harder actively makes the wrong product, which lever can burn the whole thing down, and what it takes to pull a marriage out of its old equilibrium.
1. Concentration. Concentration usually changes how fast a reaction proceeds rather than changing the reaction pathway itself. If the real limitation is simply too little reactant, adding more works. Otherwise, more of the same produces more of the same.
Relationally it is more of the same: more initiation, more effort, more pressure, which is what most stuck relationships are doing. It works only if the real deficit was quantity, which in a long marriage it rarely is, though if you have genuinely run out of a reagent, adding it is correct.
2. Stereochemistry. Most people have never heard of this but it’s paramount. The right atoms in the wrong three-dimensional arrangement either do nothing or make the wrong product, and some reactions only proceed when the geometry lines up.
Relationally it is attunement and delivery: the same apology or bid, delivered with the wrong tone, timing, or posture, does not bond, or bonds into a worse configuration. All the right ingredients still fail if the two people are not oriented toward each other.
3. Temperature. Raising temperature speeds things up, which is low leverage, but it can also flip the system from kinetic to thermodynamic control, in systems where competing pathways exist.
In relationships, the uncomfortable-but-familiar arrangement (“living as roommates” or bickering) is the kinetic product, the deeper partnership is the more stable one, and reaching it takes standing in the fire instead of avoiding. But it sometimes just burns everything down. This lever requires skilled, careful application.
4. Solvent. In organic chemistry the effect of solvent is huge. It can change rate by orders of magnitude and decide which product forms, all without touching the reactants.
Relationally it is the felt environment: the ambient nervous-system state, the field everything happens inside. Same two people, different solvent, different marriage. It’s the water you swim in.
5. Order of addition. The same ingredients combined in a different sequence give a different product, or avoid a violent side reaction, without changing the identity of the starting materials.
In relationships, how you begin a conversation has a big effect on how it ends. Effort in the wrong order is not neutral; it actively makes the bad product. That’s why trying harder is not the answer when a marriage is stuck.
6. pH. Some reactions are gated rather than simply dose-dependent. Until reaching the pH where the reactive form exists, adding more reactant has surprisingly little effect. Once that threshold is crossed, the reaction can accelerate dramatically.
Relationally it might be a threshold in the tone of the field: below a certain quality of safety no bid lands, and above it the same gesture suddenly takes.
7. Leaving group. In substitution and elimination the displaced group has to be able to leave, or the reaction stalls regardless of everything else.
Relationally the old occupant of a site has to be released cleanly: a grievance, the need to be right, an identity that has to depart before a new self can bond into the space.
8. Protecting group. You temporarily shield a highly reactive site, perform the chemistry elsewhere, then remove the protecting group to reveal the original functionality.
Relationally, this could be pacing, pendulation, or shadow work. We often protect our most vulnerable parts behind defenses or personas until enough safety exists to reveal them. Sometimes the protection is necessary - the key is knowing when it can come off.
9. Reagent. Chemically, reagents are consumed in the reaction.
Relationally, a reagent is a missing ingredient introduced into the system, such as self or co-regulation, or a repair attempt. Without these, certain changes simply cannot occur.
10. Catalyst. Lowers the activation barrier without being consumed and without changing what the system already favors, so it offers a cheaper route to a state both people already want.
Emotional safety or a new skill are catalysts that lower the cost of a vulnerable conversation, and the coach is the catalyst who does not change the two people but lowers the barrier between them.
11. Purity. Impurities spawn side reactions and can poison catalysts, so purifying doesn’t push the reaction harder - it removes interference so the intended reaction can proceed.
I want to be careful with this parallel, because humans don’t need to be “purified” - that is emphatically not what I’m implying. Think of it instead as what needs to come to light and be addressed: a secret, an addiction, unrepaired betrayal, unacknowledged wounds, or the adaptive strategies that make us act out under stress.
Every other condition can be great and bonding will still be impaired while the impurity is in the flask.
To be clear, this is not a pre-condition of love. It is in relationship that these things come to light, and in relationship that they are often healed.
12. Inert atmosphere. You exclude oxygen and water so a fragile intermediate is not consumed by a competing reaction before it can go where you want.
Relationally these are things you want to keep from leaking in to protect your romantic bond: contempt, criticism, scorekeeping, being distracted by the phone. Gottman names the specific oxidant, contempt, the horseman most predictive of divorce. Terry Real names losing strategies.
13. Equilibrium. Many reactions are reversible. At equilibrium, the forward and reverse reactions continue simultaneously, but at equal rates, so the overall composition appears stable. You can temporarily push the system away from equilibrium, but unless something fundamentally changes, it drifts back. Change the equilibrium itself, however, and the system naturally settles into a different balance.
Relationally, this is the couple’s default pattern. Grand gestures, promises, or a burst of effort can create temporary movement, but unless the underlying emotional dynamics change, the relationship returns to its old equilibrium.
Lasting transformation comes not from pushing harder against the system, but from changing the conditions that determine where the relationship naturally settles.
Dr. Jessica
P.S. I made a free companion to this - The Chemistry Experiment: three short audios you can move through in a weekend. It’s about how our brains default to linear thinking in relationships and how we just “push harder” instead of using higher-leverage moves that actually work in complex systems - like a marriage, or a total synthesis. You can find it here.
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