Atracciones

Attraction and Childhood Memories

Our opinions about people begin to form from infancy onward. Our childhood has a significant impact on how we pick our mates. The people who play the most important role in our childhood days are our parents.
We are influenced by external and internal factors in the selection of our mate. (P101) According to Dr. John Money we are looking for someone who hasthe predominant character traits of the people who raised us. (WAWATPWE)
Dr. John Money states that each of us begins to form ideas of the perfect partner the moment we are born. (CWMP) He also believes that by the time we are eight years old, we have an unconscious but very precise idea of what our future dates and mate should look like. (CWMP)
Furthermore, If our parents were depressed,unavailable, distant and critical we are more likely to replicate these external factors.(HWRCOM) If they were happy and content the same is true.
Our fathers and mothers play an important part in who we are likely to date because they were the first examples of relationships that we saw. (WAUTACTP) In essence we are looking for someone who reminds us of them. (WAUTACTP)
For example, It has beenshown that men with overbearing mothers tend to look for and like women who want to be the boss of the show thus reproducing feelings they felt in childhood. (WA)
From the moment you are born you are a complex, dependent creature with a never-ending cycle of need. (WAWATPWE) At birth we start to make a mental list of the qualities we most value in those closest and dearest to us. (CWMP) Based onthese childhood memories we become very selective of our choice of mates. (WAWATPWE)
If we are brought up in households that are happy we see more positive aspects of the world and try to duplicate this feeling later in life. (P101)
If we are surrounded by people who are sad and see more depressing aspects of the world we are likely to repeat this pattern. This may be due to the fact that wefeel comfortable in these environments. They are what we know. (P101)
Freud states that no parents, no matter how devoted, are able to respond perfectly to all these changing needs that we have as infants. (WAWATPWE) He goes on to say that we are all insatiable beings. (WAWATPWE) And as such we carry around inside of us childhood hurts and unmet needs. (HWRCOM) These same hurts and unmet needs maycompel us to select mates that can help us heal these wounds. This may be why we believe in Love at first sight.
Basically what we are looking for is a partner who will require us to grow in areas we are deficient so that we can be a healer for them. (HWRCOM) Someone we can connect with at the deepest level and is similar enough to the wounding parent for healing to be possible. (HWRCOM). Wewant a mate who has the ability to heal emotional wounds which can only be healed in relationships and can recreate a particular kind of relationship similar to our childhood days. (HWRCOM) In conclusion, we want healing by the one who wounds us or someone very similar to the one who hurts us. (HWRCOM)
WAUTACTP: What attracts us to a certain type of people?
HWRCOM: How We Really Choose Our MatesP101: Psychology 101: Our View of Self and Others
WAWATPWE: Why Are We Attracted To the People We Are?
CWMP: Children who marry their parents: the psychology of courtship.
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SPCR: Social Psychology: Close Relationships

New Brain and Old Brain

Our Search for a partner who is similar to our parental parents is based on the theory of Old Brainverses New Brain.
In this theory Old Brain lumps people into categories. It wants to know if a person is someone to nurture, have sex with, run away from, submit to, or attack (UTACTP) The Old Brain has no sense of linear time. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday do not exist. Everything that was still is. (WAWA)The Old Brain is trapped in an eternal now and has only a dim awareness of the outside...