Lately I’ve been kind of obsessed with something called non-linear dynamics. I discovered this particular brain-buster while researching for my current work-in-progress, which involves a college student majoring in physics. It fascinated me to learn that apparently this corner of physics has applications to finance. Finance, of all the things! It seemed to me so strange for something so esoteric as non-linear dynamics to apply to something as mundane as finance. But evidently it does. In fact, if I’m understanding it correctly, it applies to all physical systems. So I started wondering, what about romance?
Maybe a relationship isn’t precisely a physical system. But I think it could still behave like a non-linear system in some ways, and you could use a non-linear dynamic to model it. Kind of.
Think about it. In a non-linear dynamic, the history of the thing is important. If you start at a different point in time, for instance, you get a different result. Isn’t that pretty much always true in a relationship? There are no straight lines (thus the name). There’s no absolute predictability. You might go around in more or less the same circles over and over for a while, then suddenly take off in a completely different direction (like in the picture). That sure sounds like a relationship to me!
There’s a certain amount of predictability to it. If you’re a physicist and understand those nasty-looking equations, which Ally definitely does not. In fact, I’m not even sure I totally understand everything I just wrote! LOL. I’ll keep plugging away and trying to make sense of it all, though. It’s too interesting a subject to give up on, even if my brain wasn’t built for advanced science 
Many thanks to Dan for his patience in explaining the whole business of linear vs non-linear systems and non-linear dynamics to me, and for the way-cool Lorenz attractor picture! Dan, you are a doll!
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