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A flawed ideology -

The prevalence of unhappy relationships throughout the world suggests that choosing a partner based solely on the ideals of romanticism, the widely accepted ideology in the 21st century, is flawed.

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Overlooking practicalities -

The problem is that by choosing a partner in the manner that romanticism would suggest doesn’t account for the practicalities of a shared life with another person, and works on the presumption that someone who makes us excited is what we need first and foremost.

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Psychotherapy -

The school of thought influenced by psychotherapy points out that we don’t fall in love with people who care for us in ideal ways but rather with people who care for us in familiar ways.

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Mirroring our parents love -

Psychotherapy literature suggests that we fall in love with someone that mirrors the care that we experienced as children.

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The human condition -

However, the care that we experience as children, for virtually everyone, was flawed in some shape or form.

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The idea -

Maybe our carer gave their boyfriend more attention than us from time to time, or our father used to lash out if the house was messy, for example.

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The result -

As adults, this may result in us feeling uncomfortable, due to it being unfamiliar when a partner gives us their complete attention or when they are serenely calm, even though something seemingly disastrous has gone wrong.

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Contradictions -

The two schools of thought present contradictions to one another. Romanticism suggests that we should choose someone based on our instinctual attraction. But psychotherapy denotes that, for most people, this will present problems, because they’ll instinctually pick someone who has their parents flaws.

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"Too nice" -

As adults, how often do we reject potential candidates for partners not for obvious reasons like being cruel or unkind, but rather for being a little too perfect?

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Our odd reactions to forms of care -

How odd that we should find ourselves slightly repulsed that someone treats us with unwavering kindness, warmth, and tenderness.

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What can we do? -

The school of thought of psychotherapy suggests that it would be wise to tease out how pain, hurt, or suffering might be playing out in our feelings of attraction.

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Self-reflection -

We could discover what qualities we are looking for in a partner by writing down what kinds of people put us off and what types of people excite us. In doing this, we may trace back to the qualities that we first experienced from our caregivers in childhood.

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It's practical application -

In discovering these qualities, we may be able to examine precisely how aligned our impulses are with the qualities in a person that would make us happy.

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Our flawed attractions -

For example, we may discover that we may find ourselves at ease around someone who is slightly withdrawn or who doesn’t give us their full attention all of the time.

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Discovering our sense of love -

In doing this, we might be able to identify what love can feel like.

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An emotional awareness -

In analyzing what kind of traits in people are likely to make us happy in the long haul, and what types of traits in people are simply a result of instinctual attraction, we could ask ourselves the following.

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"What's important for me?" (example A) -

Is it necessary for you that your partners impress others?

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"What's important for me?" (example B) -

“Does my ideal partner give me all of their attention when I’m feeling down?”

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"What's important for me?" (example C) -

Is it acceptable that your partner will become so involved with work sometimes that you might not see them as often as you want to?

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Discovering our tendencies -

For example, we may discover that the qualities that we're instinctively drawn to in other people as a result of the care we received as children may not align with behaviors that we particularly seek from our partners in the long term.

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Discovering our tendencies -

Coming back to the previous example, we may discover that we often find ourselves instinctually, based on the familiar forms of love we experience as children, seeking someone mysterious, impulsive, and a little selfish.

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These tendencies' may have practical implications -

These kinds of qualities in a person may practically play out in not telling you who they’ve been with the night before or not doing chores around the house, or, on the extreme end, spending all of your savings gambling.

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We are limited in who we're attracted to -

By reflecting on our childhood and our emotional history, we may begin to discover that we can’t just be attracted to anyone. We are limited in the types of people we can be attracted to.

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Understanding our attractions -

By doing this, we may be more objective in our understanding of our emotional reaction when we, for example, begin thinking that somebody somewhat standoffish towards us is “the one,” as a result of being ignored quite often by our parents as children.

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Thinking outside the box -

Furthermore, by identifying the qualities that we are instinctively drawn to in others, we may realize that these specific qualities exist in different constellations in different people.

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Rethinking the archetypal partner -

In essence, we may begin to question archetypes, with their accompanying sets of qualities, regarding our ideal partner. This may, for example, mean that we can question our acceptance of our partner being emotionally distant and argumentative as well as funny and kind, just because our father was.

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We are flawed -

It is always important to keep in mind that, as humans, we are flawed by nature. Nobody is going to tick every box. We are flawed. It is learning to understand ourselves and our partners that is most important.

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Expecting perfection -

We cannot expect to find a partner that will never disappoint us routinely or make us feel unimportant from time to time.  Relationships aren’t perfect.

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A healthy dose of empathy -

We should have a substantial amount of empathy for ourselves in choosing unfitting partners in the past, and for the partners themselves.

Sources: (Psychology Today)(Thongsook College)(University of Texas)

See also: 30 liberating ways to express yourself to your partner

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