The Real Secret of Attraction

The secret of attraction is the unconscious hope for healing and understanding. This is why you are so discriminating in choosing a marital partner. Not just anyone will do!

You become infatuated when you find the right person and fall head over heels for them—your passion and hope for a lifetime mate often borderlines on the absurd. Typically, what you see in them is a self-generated fantasy. You are in “la la” land. You unconsciously “block” out all of their negative characteristics and distort their positives. You imagine them to be loving, caring, intelligent, funny, patient, giving, attractive, interesting, and hard-working when, in fact, they are often not many of these qualities. However, and in all fairness, despite what you think about yourselves, you are also far from this ideal!

The simplest proof that much of what you know about a future mate is “imagined” is demonstrated by the fact that in North America, about half of all couples that marry ultimately end up divorced. And of those that remain married, when asked, the majority believe they have chosen the wrong partner. What happens? Why is everybody so disappointed in their mate? After six months or a year of marriage, when the fantasy bubble pops, each individual begins seeing their partner for who they really are.

One might err in thinking that human beings are unsuited for finding appropriate lifetime partners to live together until separated by death. Perhaps you would be more successful if you just rolled the dice and let chance determine who your lifetime partner should be. The truth is, however, you are very skilled in finding the right partner. Your folly is not knowing what to do when the fantasy bubble pops and problems occur. You often don’t know how to understand your disappointment and frustration properly.

To understand yourself and how you select a particular person as a mate during courtship, you must begin by exploring childhood. Childhood is rarely ideal. Most adults are less than perfect because their parents lacked appropriate parenting skills or were burdened with their own personal and unresolved issues that had a negative impact on their children. Also, uncontrollable circumstances such as poverty, emigration, or illness can negatively affect children. A natural consequence for most adults of an imperfect childhood is that some of their basic emotional needs are not entirely met. For example, let’s consider a boy raised by his mother who maintains a position of emotional distance from him as he grows up. As a result, this boy is deprived of the natural emotional support and love he needs.

Consequently, this boy will grow into adulthood with an emotional deficit. In this particular case, what is missing is “emotional intimacy.” This will then become a strongly felt “core value.” When he is married, he will expect his wife to provide for him what his mother did not. The irony, however, is that typically, the women he will be most attracted to will remind him of his mother, an emotionally distant or cold woman. He is unconsciously searching for a woman who reminds him of his mother so that he can reclaim what he was denied as a child, in a form that seems as if he is actually getting it from his mother since his wife reminds him of her. Unconsciously, the debt owed to him by his mother is transferred to his wife. Ironically, he picks the most unlikely candidate to give him emotional warmth and closeness since he’s attracted to somebody distant and cold. But she is “like” his mother, and he now has a second chance to make up for what he missed most in childhood. He loves his bride because he hopes and imagines that she will fulfill his emotional needs, and thereby, he will be healed and become a whole person and then live a happy and content life.

Marital problems usually first begin when there is a realization that a partner is unable or unwilling to give that which is most needed and desired. It is as if the partner is not honoring their commitment to meet these deep psychological needs and heal his childhood wounds. The problem in understanding what is really going on is that this complicated psychological process is unconscious for most people, and this disappointment is experienced as confusing and undefined feelings. As a result, on a personal level, disappointment, anger, and depression often set in. A partner’s little daily behavior becomes symbolically irritating; over time, an individual can begin to perceive their partner as an “enemy.”

However, things can turn out very differently if marriage is seen as an opportunity for personal growth. Through emotional and intellectual growth and maturity, you can understand at some level of consciousness that each person enters marriage with a hidden agenda. We want to get from our partner all the positive emotional experiences we didn’t get as children. We want to heal our childhood wounds and remove the pain we still feel as adults. For this to happen, your husband or wife has to become more than he or she already is. For example, a naturally emotionally distant wife must change her nature and become warm and communicative to her husband, who needs emotional closeness. In turn, he must go beyond himself to give his wife what she needs. Marriage provides the opportunity for tremendous emotional and spiritual growth. This great “medicine” can only happen within the marital context. Both individuals in the marriage have the opportunity to grow and heal. When this happens, the result is a happy and satisfying marriage.

You can help actualize this beautiful potential for growth and wholeness by making your unconscious needs conscious, i.e., by identifying your core emotional values and needs. Marital bliss is created when both partners make a concerted effort, as a team, to provide each other with emotional and psychological nurturing and healing.

When a couple is experiencing marital difficulties, rather than making a partner into an “enemy,” it should be viewed as “an opportunity for personal growth and a clear signal to work hard on establishing marital peace and harmony. With effort over time, success will come.