You meet someone and suddenly your brain has abandoned all other responsibilities. You’re supposed to be working, but you’re thinking about them. You tell yourself you’re not going to check your phone, then check it anyway. Nothing. You put it down. Two minutes later, you check again. Still nothing. Then, finally, their name appears on your screen, and your entire mood changes. There it is: the spark, the chemistry, the thing everyone talks about. But what if the most powerful part of what you’re feeling isn’t attraction? What if it’s uncertainty?

We tend to assume that intense feelings tell us something important about another person. If our heart races, if we can’t stop thinking about them, if we feel an almost ridiculous amount of excitement when they finally get in touch, we conclude that the connection must be special. But our nervous system isn’t quite that sophisticated. It can respond strongly to attraction, but it can also respond strongly to uncertainty, anticipation and the possibility of rejection. From the inside, these experiences can feel remarkably similar.

Think about what happens when someone is inconsistent. You’ve had one date, maybe two, and you don’t actually know this person very well. You don’t know how they handle stress, whether they’re kind when nobody is watching, or whether they can have a difficult conversation without disappearing. Yet somehow, you know exactly when they were last online. You know they haven’t replied. You know they watched your Instagram story. You’re already emotionally invested in someone you barely know.

Sometimes we’re responding to the person. Sometimes we’re responding to the possibility of the person. And sometimes we’re responding to the gap between what we know and what we desperately want to know. That gap can be incredibly stimulating. An unanswered question keeps pulling our attention back because the brain wants to resolve it. Relationships provide an almost endless supply of unanswered questions: Do they like me? Why haven’t they texted? Did I say something wrong? Are they losing interest? Why were they so affectionate yesterday and distant today?

Before long, the relationship becomes a detective story. They used a heart emoji. Good. They took four hours to reply. Bad. They said “maybe” instead of “definitely”. Potentially catastrophic. Your friend says you’re overthinking, so you explain that you’re simply trying to understand the situation. Meanwhile, you’ve spent forty minutes analysing whether the absence of a kiss emoji has some deeper psychological meaning.

This is where anxiety can start masquerading as chemistry. Your attention is constantly activated because the relationship doesn’t feel settled. And the brain is remarkably good at confusing what occupies our attention with what matters to us. Just because you can’t stop thinking about someone doesn’t mean they’re right for you. They may simply be difficult to figure out.

There is another uncomfortable feature of attraction: rejection can sometimes make people more attractive. Someone is available, you’re interested, and they like you. Then they become slightly less available, and suddenly you’re much more interested. Nothing about their personality necessarily changed. What changed was the situation. Now there is something at stake. You might lose them, and loss has a way of making things feel more valuable.

At this point, the question can quietly change. Instead of asking, “Do I want this person?”, you start asking, “Why don’t they want me?” Those are completely different questions. The first is about attraction. The second is about your sense of worth. And once those become tangled together, pursuing someone can feel like pursuing proof that you are desirable.

This is one reason emotionally unavailable people can sometimes feel extraordinarily compelling. If attention is inconsistent, every moment of closeness becomes more significant. The message after hours of silence feels fantastic. Affection after distance feels intense. Reassurance after doubt brings enormous relief. That relief can easily be mistaken for love.

But it would be too simplistic to conclude that all intense attraction is anxiety. Being attracted to someone can genuinely make you anxious. You like them. You want them to like you. You don’t know what will happen. Of course your stomach might flip. Some anxiety is built into intimacy because caring about someone means giving up complete control over the outcome. You cannot guarantee that someone will stay, and that uncertainty is part of what makes relationships emotionally significant.

The more useful question, then, isn’t simply whether someone makes you anxious. It’s what happens to your anxiety as you get closer to them. Does knowing them better gradually make you feel safer, more settled and more yourself? Or does getting closer create increasing confusion, insecurity and obsession? There is an important difference between the nervous excitement of caring about someone and the chronic activation created by never knowing where you stand.

This can also explain why a person who is emotionally available can sometimes seem strangely “boring”. Imagine dating someone who is predictable. They like you and tell you. They call when they say they will. They make plans. They don’t disappear. You don’t have to compete for their attention or decode every interaction. There is no emotional rollercoaster, and you find yourself wondering where the excitement has gone.

Perhaps some of the excitement you’ve become accustomed to wasn’t entirely desire. Perhaps it was the feeling of finally getting what you were afraid you wouldn’t get. The text after the silence. The affection after the distance. The reassurance after the doubt. That relief can feel fantastic, but relief isn’t necessarily intimacy.

This doesn’t mean that you should force yourself to date someone you don’t fancy because they’re emotionally healthy. Nor does it mean every attraction needs to be analysed for evidence of childhood trauma. Sometimes you simply don’t like someone. Sometimes the chemistry is real. Sometimes another person is simply behaving badly. Psychological explanations become useless when every ordinary human experience gets squeezed into the same three labels.

The point is to become curious about your own pattern. Imagine the person you’re obsessed with suddenly becoming completely available. They tell you that they really like you. They want to see you. They are consistent. They stop disappearing. There are no games and no uncertainty. Would you still want them?

If the answer is yes, you may simply be very attracted to them. If the answer is, “I’m not sure,” that is worth exploring. Perhaps what kept you hooked wasn’t only the person. Perhaps it was the pursuit. And pursuit can be intoxicating because it keeps offering the possibility of finally getting what you want.

The next time you feel that enormous, consuming chemistry, you don’t need to distrust it. Instead, ask yourself a more useful question than, “Do they like me?” Ask, “Do I actually like them?” Not their potential. Not the version of them you have created in your imagination. Not the feeling you get when they finally give you attention. Them.

There is a difference between being fascinated by someone and knowing someone, between wanting someone and wanting to be wanted by them, between excitement and relief. Sometimes butterflies mean, “I really like this person.” And sometimes they mean, “I have absolutely no idea where I stand.”

Learning to tell the difference doesn’t make attraction less exciting. It makes it more honest. Because chemistry can be real, powerful and worth pursuing. But before you decide that the person who keeps you awake at night must be the person you want, it is worth asking whether you’re awake because you’re falling in love — or because you still don’t know what happens next.