What to experience when a partnership forms this bond.

For Newcomers

If you’ve noticed a solid line connecting two centers on your shared BodyGraph chart, you’ve discovered an Electromagnetic Channel. This is where your unique energies combine to create a specialized spark.

However, this bond is high-voltage. When aligned, you inspire others by being yourselves. When out of sync, you may feel friction or a repulsion, often due to one person forcing recognition or trying to conform the other’s expression.

This “Electromagnetic Channel” series helps you navigate where you might click and where you might find friction, and how to navigate Channels and their Gates. Enjoy!

Introduction to Channel 10-20

Here we have a Throat Center gate with Gate 20 and a G Center gate with Gate 10, which you could summarize as the “expression of self-love through behaviors.” The G Center is all about self-love through different archetypes. The 1st Gate is self-love through creativity, or the 2nd Gate is self-love through following one’s inner direction. Here we have behaviors, where action and movement is everything.

I’d call it “embodiment”. They embody their love. If the 10th Gate were by itself, they’d simply become a role model of how one could live their life. They could inspire others from a distance, with the thought “You can do life like that too?” They can be transparent, open, and in touch with themselves in ways that others might try to emulate.

Then you pair the 20th Gate, which means that we don’t just isolated self-love, but a voice to say “This is how it could be for you.” It’s not just inspiring people from a distance, but actually coming up to people and telling them that they can also find their own truth in self-acceptance. Channel 10-20 might just go ask people, “Are you loving all of this as much as I am?” However, I wouldn’t recommend this as you’ll run into a lot of people who don’t understand what this is all about.

But paired together, the 10-20 is attached to The Now, and enjoying all it has to offer. And at times it will be sad about The Now, but that’s just part of the programming. Just remember that you don’t have to explain sadness. It’s part of lived life. It’s part of the programming. And it’s what allows one to know what to love even more when the joyful moments return.

Experiencing this Electromagnetic Channel

Electromagnetically-connected channels require that one side is defined by Partner A, and the other side is defined by Partner B. Two gates form a channel that behave in more ways than the sum of its parts!

Gate 10 — Love of Self — The vessel that pours love through behavior

The Gate 10 partner brings the profound theme of self-love expressed through behavior. This is someone who is learning to love themselves, to love being alive in the world, and to accept life's precariousness. Their gift is behavioral modeling—they show love through how they move through life, how they carry themselves, how they create environments where love can exist. This gate is deeply individual and melancholic, carrying both the highest potential of self-acceptance and the deepest vulnerability of seeking love from others to validate their own worth.

Gate 20 — The Voice of the Now — The purest expression of "I am"

The Gate 20 partner brings the voice of existential presence. This is the only "I am" in the Throat Center—fundamentally selfish in the highest sense, meaning fully self-referential and present in the now. They speak existence into being. Their voice declares "I am here, now, doing this, being this." This gate doesn't plan, doesn't rehearse, doesn't think about tomorrow—it simply is. When this voice activates, it brings everyone into the present moment through sheer existential force.

The Result:

Together, these gates create what Human Design calls "awakening." Not awakening as a spiritual concept, but awakening to the simple reality of being alive in a body, on this earth, right now. Gate 10 learns to love themselves through Gate 20's voice declaring their existence, and Gate 20's presence gains depth and meaning through Gate 10's capacity to love what is being lived.

The Experience

You likely feel that your relationship has a quality of realness that cuts through all the bullshit. When you're together, you're HERE—not planning, not fantasizing, not rehashing the past, but actually present to what life is. There's a mutual recognition that happens: "You see me as I am, and in seeing me, I can finally love myself." The relationship feels like permission to exist fully, to be melancholic when sad, to be alive when alive, without needing to perform or prove anything.

Key Mechanical Dynamics

Below are the highlighted themes of this electromagnetic channel.

Melancholic Chemistry: This channel generates melancholy—the individual emotional chemistry that moves in spikes rather than regular waves. Your relationship will have moments of profound aliveness and joy, and moments of deep sadness. Neither state is "the truth" of the relationship; both are the chemistry moving through you. Learning not to make up reasons for the sadness is essential.

The Recognition Dynamic: As a projected channel (no motor), the 10-20 requires recognition to function correctly. Gate 10 needs to be recognized for their capacity to model correct behavior and love of life. Gate 20 needs to be invited to speak their existential truth. When either partner tries to force their energy without recognition, bitterness takes root quickly.

Behavioral Guidance: Gate 10 establishes codes of behavior. How to be in the world, how to love oneself through action. Gate 20 makes those behaviors existentially real through voice. Together, you're learning how to behave correctly in each moment, not according to rules, but according to what's alive in the now.

The Love Paradox: Gate 10 seeks self-love through the other (at the mundane level), while also needing to love themselves independently (at the transcendent level). This creates a beautiful tension in the relationship: you're learning to love yourselves through each other while simultaneously learning that love doesn't depend on each other. It's a spiral, not a destination.

Present Moment Obsession: This channel keeps you in the now with intensity. Planning can feel difficult. Living for tomorrow feels impossible. Your relationship operates best when you surrender to what's happening right now, even when that's uncomfortable. The electromagnetic pull constantly drags you back from fantasy into reality.

Stayed tuned for the frictions of the 10-20…

Thanks everyone for the support!

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Best,
Dom w/ Badwater