I don’t look for casual chemistry or a temporary bond built on projected shadows of who someone really is. Instead, I’m interested in a connection grounded on four layers – body, mind, heart, and soul. I believe that when we are looking for that person we can really get close to, whether it is a romantic or just a friendship, we can’t achieve it without knowing what we are looking for. Our connections with other people are a close reflection of how we are connected with ourselves. Love, understanding, gratitude, closeness, presence, trust… all these things we need to see first in the Self. Whilst this particular article is going to be focused on connections between a man and a woman, a lot of the wisdom also applies to other types of bonds, with some quite obvious differences. For example, friendship does not require a close body connection, at least the physical attraction is not playing an important role.
“For me, the best relationships have chemistry, friendship, emotional depth, and something deeper that feels meaningful.”
I’ve been talking about these four layers for a while, and a few times I caught myself not being able to precisely explain what’s in my mind. This time I decided to create a bit more transparency on how I see it, why it is important and what these connections mean.
Starting softly from a small talk…
I so often hear people complaining about how much they don’t like small talk. Well, I used to repeat the same thing like a mantra, believing it was all BS, and I just want deepness, truth, honesty and vulnerability, otherwise the conversation has little value to me. That was clearly a very limiting belief, which I only now understand as my social interactions shot through the roof throughout the last year.
Now I can see how a soft, gentle exchange of who we are before we share the deeper parts of ourselves helps us to build a common language. This little dance of words, smiles, explorations, tests of our boundaries and a bit of mystery is what creates the anticipation, curiosity and space to let things unfold naturally.
A relationship is not just two people being around each other, talking and liking what they see. It’s a space between them, created and held together, where they can meet themselves and learn without expectations or judgment. We can observe the space between and let it unfold.
The only time we probably want to do a deep dive into our inner world quickly, show vulnerability, believing the other person can hold the space, is with our therapist… And let’s be honest, many people still have problems with that, and it takes them months, maybe years, to do so.
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Bringing the heaviness?
Without the soft start, we can easily get lost in some heavy topics. And yes, they will feel important and give an impression of building a true bond based on depth, but we often might forget that the person in front of us knows very little about our world. This radical vulnerability can bring a lot of assumptions and not only let them form about you some very unrealistic image, but also they might not be able to hold the space. Nobody wants to feel like a therapist on the first date!
Whilst it all feels rewarding to us, it can also be draining, leaving us happy in the moment, bringing a sense of disconnection afterwards. What likely started as purely physical attraction quickly got suffocated by heaviness and the false impression that we are making progress in the right direction, and we found our “twin soul”.
I’m not writing this to give you dating advice on how to create a balanced and meaningful connection without overwhelming your potential partner. What we really want to explore is the connection itself on all four layers, which helps us to move from purely physical attraction, and go beyond. It’s a journey worth taking, and enjoying the process and being present and tuned into the reality is what will bring the long-term results.
Connecting on all four layers…
I believe it is important to have all four layers in place to create a long-lasting and meaningful relationship. When we are looking for a partner, a life partner, all of them have to be there at a certain level. Whilst they are unlikely to all hit 100%, let’s not fool ourselves with perfection, illusions and fantasies. Probably, we need them to be somewhere up there, and how that looks will mean something different to each one of us.
Why? If one of them is not there, we will feel it. It will manifest itself in a form of lack or acting from fear, often dressed up as “needs”. It might bring big challenges in trust, surface avoidant or anxious attachment styles, or literally anything else. Of course, if we don’t understand what we are looking for, most of those mechanisms will simply stay unconscious. There are also a lot more things that might affect the dynamics, but that’s a topic for another story (or a few stories).
What we are looking for here is to connect deeply, well and across all of them, as this will be a good start to expand further and reach whatever our highest version of this looks like.
Whilst we are creating the bond, the connection requires us to be conscious and engaged on all levels. Not just physical, or maybe mind, but also heart, and very often forgotten soul connection. By staying long in a relationship, it is not a question of IF but WHEN one of those connections starts failing. That’s where others, staying strong, can help to transform and help to lift each other in needs. We will still see the point, have energy and faith that there is so much worth fighting for.
So let’s go to the layers, the most important part of this story…
Physical – Body
“I want physical attraction and intimacy to feel natural. I want to genuinely desire my partner and feel desired too.”
This feels like the most obvious connection in the current world of dating apps, and it is almost the default start for any new romantic connection to form. But it’s way deeper than just “I find you attractive.”
- Sexual attraction
- Desire / chemistry
- Feeling drawn to someone’s physical presence
Physical connection is often reduced to looks, but for me, it’s much more than that. It’s enjoying touch, affection, kissing and intimacy in a way that feels natural and mutual. It’s about feeling comfortable in each other’s presence and expressing desire with warmth, playfulness and care.
A bit less obvious part of the physical world is alignment in terms of energy, health, lifestyle and sensuality. We want to build something with a person who can match our energy levels and have similar goals in how they see health. Whether that’s exercise, activities, or eating habits. All these things don’t need to be perfectly aligned, but being aware of how they are not will help to create a better future. We tend to change when we encounter someone who inspires us by their consistency and love for their body. We want to change for ourselves with somebody we love.
As physical connection naturally softens with time, keeping it alive becomes a choice. One we have to keep making, consciously and for each other. As long as we choose each other, we choose to connect — in body, but also in everything that goes deeper.
Intellectual – Mind
“I love being with someone where conversation feels energising. We can be playful, deep and curious, challenging each other’s perspectives without being afraid to disagree.”
I just simply can’t imagine a relationship of any type with this type of connection not being at a high level. Things can become boring very quickly where there is no intellectual stimulation, challenges and healthy disagreements. It’s all part of learning from each other, constantly.
- Stimulating conversation
- Curiosity
- Respecting how the other person thinks
- Being able to challenge each other intellectually
- Learning from each other
One part of this connection that often seems to be missing is the lightness in conversation that often helps to test the boundaries and set new, unexpected directions. I’m talking about humour. I never considered this as a must, but when this particular part of the mind connection closely matches, it can heavily change the dynamics in the relationship and take away the tension and “edge” in many hard situations.
To be clear, by shared humour, I don’t mean sarcasm, I don’t think it’s a healthy way of enjoying time together… although I can imagine two sarcastic people getting along together quite well.
When we connect with another person intellectually, we discover endlessness – a feeling that there’s always more to discover in the other person. It carves a path toward soul connection, and in this curiosity, we create space for quiet moments, where we can start connecting on the heart and emotional level.
Emotional – Heart
“I want emotional depth, warmth and honesty. I want a relationship where both people feel safe being real.”
With no surprise to anyone, people very often confuse what we call “chemistry” with a deep emotional connection. In early stages of relationships, we should really avoid calling it “emotional”, unless we enter the realm of emotional dependency, the unhealthy sibling of heart connection.
True heart connection feels like safety. Emotional dependency feels like urgency. One expands you, the other contracts you. The tricky part is that in the early stages, urgency can feel like passion, and we confuse the two. How to recognise it actually did form way too soon, or something is not entirely right? If in the first weeks we are having problems, as you’ve already been together half a year (or more). It feels all too intense, too quickly, too much. The rollercoaster type of relationship, which brings chaos.
A lot of signs that somebody is even capable of connecting emotionally with others are visible very early. If you know what you are looking for, you can very quickly spot it and explore as you deepen the relationship and confirm whether that was true or not.
- Emotional safety
- Feeling seen
- Kindness
- Care
- Consistency
- Empathy
Too early a deep vulnerability can create a lot of challenges, and one of them is a shift in the dynamics when the connection starts resembling a therapy, rather than aiming to build something together. To save you time – I tried, but it always ended in a similar way.
When we can see somebody being able to match how we feel, and not leaving us confused in the conversations, especially on sensitive topics, it’s usually a good sign of emotional maturity. This kind of emotional maturity pairs naturally with the energy alignment we talked about in the body, and the lightness we find in the mind. It is this energy that people can really connect with us when we are in the moment.
One last thing that I feel lands nicely in this connection is “being able to repair conflict”. Unfortunately, this is challenging to test and takes time as we build trust as we move away from the initial pink-tinted glasses state, and we start finding our “edges” on which we hook. Conflicts, triggers and disagreements will arise, and with that plenty of examples of whether we, and they, can repair damages done in heated exchanges.
I believe this layer is the one that determines whether things can last. Not by merging into each other, but by remaining two whole people who choose to stay soft and human toward one another… Even when it’s hard.
The phrase that always resonates with me when I think about it is “I choose you”.
Soul
“Our connection means something beyond attraction and compatibility. We help each other become more fully ourselves.”
Most people will experience physical attraction, intellectual spark, and even emotional depth. Soul connection is different. It doesn’t announce itself. It arrives quietly, and you only recognise it when you’re already inside it.
I also feel that for some people, it might also have a totally different flavour than how I perceive it. Whilst I’m not focusing on faith or religion, I wanted to avoid spiritual jargon and empty phrases, and describe it as something more grounded, but also transcendent.
We can talk about it in quite superficial phrases like twin flames, destiny, the universe brought us together, etc., but I always felt that these things don’t really explain what it means. I want to focus particularly on three areas which are important to me.
Shared meaning – Similar values, similar vision for life, shared purpose, alignment around what matters most. To me, this sounds the most basic and critical to have a fundamental soul connection with another person. So many times, I met someone whose values and vision for life did not align with mine, and there is not much I can do about it, even when other connections felt ridiculously strong and aligned.
Spiritual resonance – Growth orientation, depth, interest in truth, consciousness, purpose, faith, service, and personal evolution. This is more about where we are in our journeys, what is behind and what is still ahead. We meet for a reason, and very often, two people will help each other to evolve, as long as they are not on opposite sides of the scale. We need to be on a similar path, likely at a slightly different point.
Energetic recognition – This “I know you” sensation, deep peace, feeling more like ourselves around them, wanting to build something meaningful together. This one is so rare to find, and once experienced, it really changes how we perceive another person. It can also be very dangerous because it can easily hijack our understanding of reality, and we can get lost within ourselves or a relationship that doesn’t serve us.
Deep soul connection feels like the hardest one to achieve, at least I find it challenging. Some parts of it might create a very unhealthy attachment style, and our belief around the depth of this connection can put us into a spiral without escape. The ending of such a relationship brings deep and long-lasting pain…
It feels like the death of part of us we didn’t even know we had.
Does it all matter?
Without physical → relationship can feel platonic.
Without mind → relationship can feel boring.
Without heart → relationship can feel unstable or unsafe.
Without soul → relationship can feel pleasant but ultimately lacking deeper meaning.
That last one is often what people struggle to articulate: “Everything looks good on paper, but something deeper feels missing.” That’s often what people mean by soul.
These four layers aren’t a checklist. They’re an invitation to know yourself well enough to recognise what you’re looking for, and to show up fully enough to be worth finding.
Have you ever thought about it? Do you know what is important to you when you connect with a partner in your life? Maybe you identified some gaps in your current relationship? I would love to hear from you…
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