The power of Teflon is in the bond between its components, of which there are only two: carbon and fluorine. It resists all other bonds, nothing can stick to it, because the bond between its two components is so strong. They form a polymer where the carbon chain provides the backbone and the fluorine atoms attach in a protective spiral around it. It’s one of the strongest single bonds in organic chemistry, and it gets stronger the more the chain grows. This causes the components to pull even tighter and closer together, as more links and connections in the chain are added, they draw nearer and nearer and become more and more inseparable.
Together, they’re hydrophobic (they resist the universal solvent, water) and have one of lowest friction coefficients of any solid. Teflon is often used as a coating for containers that hold hazardous chemical because it’s so non-reactive. Even strong, corrosive chemicals will just pass right through. The bond between carbon and fluorine is so strong and inseparable that they just won’t come apart to react with anything else. Teflon even helps prevent infections in hospitals; because it prevents bacteria from getting a grip on medical devices coated in it. Insects can’t get a grip on it. They use it in the seals on atomic bombs, it’s so perfectly resistant to damage, corrosion, and friction. It’s the only known surface to which a gecko cannot stick!
The components of Teflon are so attracted and fused to one another, in fact, the hardest problem to solve is how to get it to stick to something you want to use it on. In order to be useful, you have to attach it to something with structure, and this is usually done in kitchen pans with intense heat. The heat helps fuse it to the primed substrate, and you get a Teflon pan. Once it’s stuck there, everything that touches it can just be scraped off or will slide off. It’s been to outer and inner space, it’s used by NASA and in medical implants. It can be used to safely handle the most dangerous of chemicals. It can go anywhere because of its amazing bond between its paired elements that allows it to shrug off all other intrusions.
It’s not invincible though. It can be chipped away at. It can be damaged by a scratch, creating a weak point between the components and the underlying structure that holds them (the pan). Bit by bit it will flake off and degrade until there’s nothing left. The intense heat that was used to bind the Teflon to its foundation can also be used to destabilize that bond and slowly boil it away.
Do you have a Teflon relationship? Is the bond between you and your partner so strong that it protects and strengthens you both and helps the sticky situations of life slide off you? Are the two of you connected to your foundation, your marriage, in a way that makes your partnership useful? Do you have any wounds in your relationship, any weak points that might start to chip away at your bond? Are you allowing your relationship to be exposed to dangerous heat that might start to break it down? What would it take to change your relationship to a Teflon bond? How can you give more energy, direct more attraction, bend the bonds closer and tighter, connect to a larger chain and structure that strengthens the whole?
Life is often pleasant, but it’s full of sticky substances, corrosive situations, dangerous ventures, and malevolent diseases. At some point, you’re going to find yourself among them. Whether your bond will survive them, in those moments, will depend a lot on what kind of connection you built. And maybe you want to be able to do more than just survive. Maybe you want to be strong enough to enter the dangerous situations and be useful. You’ll need resilience to do that. Maybe it’s worth asking whether your inability to be useful, whether your fragility, has any basis in the strength of your bond to your spouse (or lack of it). Are you giving your attraction to one another? Are you giving your energy? What might you become together if you really were?
The stability and usefulness of Teflon far outstrips the properties of the individual substances that make it up. It’s power arise from their interaction and interdependence. They make each other stronger. People are like that. A good draft horse can pull up to 6000 pounds. That’s a huge amount, far more than it weighs. But a pair of draft horses can’t pull twice as much together. They can pull three times as much. And if they’re trained to pull together, if they’re experienced working together, they can pull four times as much. 24,000 pounds. Enormously more than their own weight! A particular pair of famous Shire horses are recorded as having pulled a load of logs weighing 100,000 pounds. However much they’ve pulled, under what conditions, the principle holds. And it’s scalability. The impact of a properly bonded and trained pair on the world is far outsized to their own individual strength.
— Notes for Further Reading (for the hardcore)
In fact the molecules undergo something called hyperconjugation, which isn’t easy to explain but essentially involves the sharing of electrons across the molecule, between the atoms, attenuating the charge and increasing stability and making the bond stronger. Their ability to share energy, their unique charges, across their bond allows them to become a closer, stronger, more stable whole. The electrons are given by one component, they travel out to the other side and back, the other side accepts them, and in the exchange its own energy orbitals are drawn back toward the other side, closer and closer, becoming more and more stable, literally bending their atomic bonds toward one another.
On their own carbon and fluorine are fairly reactive, but together they become almost impervious. The way they give and receive is perfectly matched. Carbon really likes to form bonds with other little atoms, which is why it’s the basis of all life. It’s very happy to get together in lots of little structures with other carbon atoms and other similar atoms and form connections. Fluorine is the most reactive halogen gas, it’s extremely electronegative, meaning it’s hungry for electrons and will react with almost anything to get them. Put them together and you get something with the structure of carbon held together by the intensity of fluorine.
The carbon electrons are shared with the fluorine and mostly hang out there, but they still belong to the carbon structure, and the whole construction pulls in closer and closer. The fluorine becomes so attached to the carbon and its energy that it stops being able to react to anything else. And the carbon chain structure within is protected from everything by the surrounding fluorine. The structure of the carbon tames the hunger of the fluorine and uses it to pull them together instead of tearing them apart, its sharing of energy transforms the reactivity of the fluorine and protects it from the world; and the protective structure of the fluorine builds a wall around the carbon, and its hunger for the energy of the carbon pulls them closer together.
Maybe you can find yourself or your partner somewhere in this relationship. Maybe in different moments you’ll see yourself in one role or the other. The important thing to realize is that it’s the action of both that protects the other. It’s not a one sided reaction. It’s what they need and what they can give one another that makes the bond strong.
Me, it’s easier to find myself in the fluorine. I’m a bit more needy, more driven toward my wife, both physically and emotionally. I’m a pursuer. And that power, that need, is part of what pulls us together. My desire and need for her pulls me to her, and her acceptance of that pursuit draws her toward me. At the same time, it’s her willingness to share herself, her giving of her own energy and creativity and essence that fulfills my need and makes me able to handle the harsh, corrosive conditions of the world. If she wasn’t willing to share, if she was withholding or ungenerous, that pull would be frustrated and would make me more unstable and reactive with my environment.
And she does help connect me to the structures and substance of life, to relationships and endeavors. She accepts my desire for her, but it has to connect to the structure she approves and represents. She’s more conscientious and more concerned about others than I am. She helps direct and take my desire for her and uses it help connect me to the productive and connective structures of life.
In return I can use that energy and the resilience she gave me and use it to better both our lives, to protect her interests and build a wall around her. I will and can do almost anything to help and protect her. I’m more needy, but she’s a bit more fragile. And my strength can be made to serve and protect her, to strengthen her. But I didn’t get that power from myself. I got it from from us, from our interrelationship. If we didn’t each come to the table with what we have, the bond wouldn’t be able to be so strong. Our strength comes from our willingness to embrace our surrender to one another. And if we compromise and try to step away from what we contribute, that bond will weaken.
My need, my instability, my passion isn’t a liability, but it could be. In the right circumstances it’s a powerful tool. It bends those bonds closer instead of resulting in destructive connections and reactions. But if I try to preserve my emotional safety and independence by denying my pursuit, my need, or by redirecting it toward outside connections, I’ll weaken our bond. We won’t be so strong, so durable, so able to enter and escape difficult situations without having them stick to us. She won’t be pulled in return toward me.
And if she stonewalls me, if she’s ungenerous, impossible to please, unwilling to give or receive, too harsh in her judgment of the worth of investing in the connection, it will erode our bond. It won’t draw in my pursuit and use it to bind me to her, it’ll push me away. It won’t be a sufficiently close acceptance of that bond to make it effectively strong.
And if she didn’t have structure, if she didn’t maintain her standards and expectations and connections and so that something useful and complex and durable was being built, it would weaken our bond. The reaction would be consumptive rather than constructive. The carbon atom doesn’t just give up its electrons and let the fluorine go. It shares them so they can be connected, drawn closer, it uses them to link the flourine to the chain. And the bigger and more complex the chain gets, the stronger it gets, the closer the bonds between the atoms get.
Making Nobody Happy 