Song Stuck in My Head

For a couple years now, there has been a song stuck in my head. Actually, the more accurate depiction would be that there's a song hiding in my head. I think it's a love song, but I don't have any words for it, nor even a tune. It has a sound I can't quite describe, but I know it involves an aggressive, rising chord sequence between the verse and the chorus–or bridge, I'm not sure which way it will go. Each change should create more tension until it resolves with the last chord. 


Thing is, I'm not sure what the chord sequence is, or even exactly what it sounds like. 


That sounds a little bit addled, I know, but–it's kind of how a terrier knows a rat–I'll know it when I hear it, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to hear it. I think if I can get that chord sequence, which right now seems to be at least eight chords long, I can get the rest of it.


I've tried to nail it down a couple times, and that wound up in a couple of songs I thought weren't bad, one of them an instrumental, "Cady Jo," but those weren't what I was trying to find.


I think maybe I'm going try to pick out a melody line for the chord and then amplify that g and see can I get there from here. 


Now is when I wish I had the music theory to figure this kind of stuff out instead of trial-and-error ...