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Time Misses The Mark

The cover story for the Jan 28 Time magazine was titled "The Science of Romance" and featured some cutting edge neuroscience about attraction. While much of the science was quite interesting, Time managed to say almost nothing about the real reason we're attracted to the people we are.

I've become somewhat of an expert on the subject, mostly because I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why my relationship history was so dysfunctional. It had nothing to do with neuroscience or the smell of DNA, I found. It wasn't nature, but nurture.

Let me give you an example we're all sadly familiar with. Why do abused women go from one abuser husband to another? It's all in the family background. And it's all in the family background for all of us. In the simplest view, men marry Mom and girls marry Dad. We've all got an image in our mind of the perfect mate, and we are attracted to others who match that image. What makes it hard to spot sometimes is that is often not physical resemblance, but behavioral. And the behavioral can be quite subtle.

Psychologist Harville Hendrix describes the process like this - we all have "issues" with our parents which leave us with unresolved psychological wounds which our minds want to heal. Our search for a mate, then, becomes a search for someone who will recreate the childhood environment in which we were wounded, so that we can heal that wound. For the woman who was abused by her father, that means finding an abusing man and being "good enough" so that he will approve of her.

I didn't say this was logical, I just said this is the way our mind works.

You can see the problem with this. We find someone with a characteristic that was similar to what injured us, and then we try to change them! What are the odds of that? Now for many people who had reasonably normal families, the wounds are shallow enough so that the marriage can be functional. However, even good marriages like that will often have a particular conflict that occurs repeatedly, a squabble or fight over the same issue, throughout the marriage. This is that wound pattern showing up. And you see, it's on both sides. Both the husband and wife have this process going on.

How does this show up when you're dating? Well, if you meet someone and it's love at first sight and you want to get married and settle down even though you've only known each other for 2 weeks, watch out! If you feel like you've known them your whole life, you probably have. They're a good match for that image in your mind.

What about someone you date for a while and really like? You enjoy them, you get along fine, you can't find anything wrong with them, but you have this feeling that "something's missing." Like the spark is not there. That means that they're probably perfect for you, but they don't match that internal image. This could be good, depending on what your image is like.

So this whole process is the major driver in relationships, and Time managed to spend 50 pages not mentioning it. What a shame! A lot of people will go away from the magazine thinking that an instant strong attraction just means compatible immune systems. What it means is strong image match.

Did you ever hear someone (or yourself) complaining "why are all men (or women) like that?" It's the mental image at work. All men or women aren't like that, it's just all the men or women that you are attracted to are like that. And that's something to think about.

posted by Wes Hopper @ 5:58 PM