Close your eyes and breathe and remember being held by your parents or by a close friend or by a lover … remember a moment where the boundaries between your body blurred next to theirs and you found yourself lost in the warm scent of entanglement, disconnected from your own separateness and softly smudged into a joining. It is a formative experience no matter the age. The safety of merging.

It’s biological of course, a chemical surge that feels so blissful and assists us in forming family bonds, which are vital to the communities in which we live. Bonding is one of the ways our species has survived and the chemicals associated are so powerful that the loss of the bond can feel like the removal of a vital bit of YOU.

Interestingly, the full assimilation into the bond is the ultimate good feeling and prison cell all rolled into one. The heroin of relationships. The ruination of good people and beautiful partnerships. The slippery slope of ‘true love’.

“If you elect to join the herd you are immune. To be accepted and appreciated you must nullify yourself, make yourself indistinguishable from the herd. You may dream, if you dream alike.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

The Assimilation available here.