The A-Z Guide For Singles – L is for Love

Have you ever known a married couple that just didn’t seem as though they should fit together–yet they are both happy in the marriage, and you can’t figure out why?

You know what I mean – the gorgeous woman that turns heads wherever she goes on the arms of Mr. Ordinary.  Or the hunky, handsome athlete with ‘plain jane’.

Or do you know someone who has been in several relationships and you can’t help but notice how their partners have an uncanny resemblance to each other?

One of my very good friends always dates tall, skinny women.  In fact, I had a party recently and one of my guests commented on how his date this year looked a lot like the date he brought to my party last year.

What is the mysterious force that drives us into the arms of one person, while pushing us away from another who might appear equally desirable to any unbiased observer?  One theory is offered by John Money, professor emeritus of medical psychology and paediatrics at John Hopkins University.

Your ‘Love Map’

According to him, one of the many factors influencing our idea of the perfect mate, o is what he calls our ‘love map‘–a group of messages encoded in our brains that describes our likes and dislikes. It shows our preferences in hair and eye color, in voice, smell, body build. It also records the kind of personality that appeals to us, whether it’s the warm and friendly type or the strong, silent type.

Money suggests that we fall for and pursue those people who most clearly fit our love map. And this love map is largely determined in childhood. By age eight, the pattern for our ideal mate has already begun to float around in our brains.

I’m fascinated with the answer I get whenever I ask couples what drew them to their partners or spouses. Answers range from ‘She’s strong and independent’ and ‘I go for redheads’ to ‘I love his sense of humor’ and ‘That crooked smile, that’s what did it.’

I believe what they say. But I also know that if I were to ask those same men and women to describe their mothers, there would be many similarities between their ideal mates and their mothers. Yes, our mothers–the first real love of our lives–write a significant portion of our ‘love map’.  Not very romantic theory is it?

When we’re little, our mother is the center of our attention, and we are the center of hers. So our mother’s characteristics leave an indelible impression, and we are forever after attracted to people with her facial features, body type, personality, even sense of humor. If our mother was warm and giving, as adults we tend to be attracted to people who are warm and giving. If our mother was strong and even-tempered, we are going to be attracted to a fair-minded strength in our mates.

The mother has an additional influence on her sons: she not only gives them clues to what they will find attractive in a mate, but also affects how they feel about women in general. So if she is warm and nice, her sons are going to think that’s the way women are. They will likely grow up warm and responsive lovers and also be cooperative around the house.

Conversely, a mother who has a depressive personality, and is sometimes friendly but then suddenly turns cold and rejecting, may raise a man who becomes a ‘dance-away lover.’ Because he’s been so scared about love from his mother, he is afraid of commitment and may pull away from a girlfriend for this reason.

While the mother determines in large part what qualities attract us in a mate, it’s the father–the first male in our lives–who influences how we relate to the opposite sex. Fathers have an enormous effect on their children’s personalities and chances of marital happiness.

Just as mothers influence their son’s general feelings toward women, fathers influence their daughter’s general feelings about men. If a father lavishes praise on his daughter and demonstrates that she is a worthwhile person, she’ll feel very good about herself in relation to men. But if the father is cold, critical or absent, the daughter will tend to feel she’s not very lovable or attractive.

I recently worked with a woman who shared with me her story of several destructive relationships she had with men over many years.  The theme running through was how she kept attracting men who hurt her.

Once I heard more about her relationship with her father it made sense – he was an alcoholic who was absent, rejecting and dismissive.

So part of your ‘love map’ also includes information about what psychologists call ‘attachment styles’.   The four patterns are:  secure, anxious, fearful and avoidant. Research conducted over many years consistently shows that a child’s early attachment style carries right on through into adult hood.

I worked with a man who had come to me again after a break of several years.  He came to me the first time after coming out of a olatile relationship.  Here he was back again in my office, having just come out of another volatile relationship.  The thread running through his love stories was a clear pattern of drama.

It wasn’t difficult to see the ‘template’ he was carrying from growing up and witnessing his early ‘love models.’  His parents marriage was characterised by constant arguments and fights and dramas.  They divorced when he was quite young, the children were the object of the parents fights, being dragged back and forth between them.

As long as your ‘love models’- your parents- were good models then your chances for successful relationships stands in good stead.  If your ‘love models’ however were unhealthy models, it would go a long way to explain the reason you attract unhealthy and maybe even destructive relationships.

The good news however is that your ‘love map’ isn’t fixed forever more. You can be the author of your story and you can decide on how you want to write the ending of your story.