In the search of the love you wantFor singles looking for a lifelong love

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In the previous article I wrote that marriage does not help to escape or solve personal problems.  One of the important tasks during the single-hood is to pay attention to personal and emotional difficulties that you may have been experiencing.  I gave examples of personal and emotional problems like not having a healthy self love, self esteem and confidence, not having a healthy approach to self care and having the unresolved hurt and pain from past relationships (boyfriends, marriage), and the most important of all, the experience of unresolved hurt, and pain from child- hood experiences relating to childhood nurturing.  

I would like to point out that the most important task before marrying is to pay attention to your past experiences, become aware of their effects on you and resolve them as much as possible before you settle down with your life partner.
Here I would point out another issue that has been the subject of interest to social scientists and that is mate selection. The question is why people choose their love partner the way they do.  One of the theories mostly discussed is that we choose partners who resemble our caretakers: father, mother, or anyone else who was an influential in the early years of our lives.  In related literature, many agree that each of us begins to form ideas of the "perfect" partner in early age. We begin to make a mental list of the qualities we most value in those closest and dearest to us. Dr. John Money believes that, by the time we are close to eight years old, we have very precise but unconscious idea of what our future dates and mate should look like.

Based on this view by the time we are in dating age our dating radar is programmed to detect those who match up to these unconscious images: physical, attitude and emotional.  Once we find a match we feel a powerful attraction to that person.

Here I am talking about the early experiences as our old memories which start even before birth to our early couple of years of life.  These memories become part of our unconscious and exert a very powerful influence on our behavior.  Dr. Harville Hendrix calls this part of our experience "old brain." He believes our old brain, which records emotional responses, creates an exact resume' of our future spouse.  Dr. Hendrix also believes that we marry someone with the same personality flaws as our parents, in hopes that we can somehow solve unresolved issues of our childhood.  For instance, a person (man or woman) who is coming from a home where care takers were not emotionally available, and did not recognize and appreciate the goodness of the child, may choose someone who is not particularly comfortable with emotional expression, the very thing that the person unconsciously desired.  But at the same time the person does not pay conscious attention to this  behavior of the person whom is dating and thinking "I love him/her and I am going to try my best until he/she recognizes how good I am and tells me he/she loves me more and more." The old brain also plays a positive role in forming the relationship. Its fundamental drives are essential to our well being and allow us to become loving people capable of nurturing and creating a healthy adult love relationship.   

So how do we become conscious in choosing our future lasting love partner? We need our old brain for survival but the problem with our unconscious drives of the old brain is that it does not have guidance. We need to get help from part of our brain that exerts will and make conscious choices. We need to take our rational brain that we use in other parts of our lives and bring them to bear on our love relationships. Once you create an alliance between the instinctual drives of our brain with the cognitive powers of our brain we begin to realize our unconscious goals and then we can gradually leave the uncontrolled instinctual reaction behind us.  

When you achieve this alliance in your using your brain power you experience that: Your behavior in choosing a partner makes sense to you. You have a greater sense of control in dating activity.  You embrace yourself as a whole person accepting that you, like anyone else, have negative character traits and accept responsibility for your weaknesses which in turn decreases your tendency to project your negatives onto your partner.  This in turn helps you create a more accurate image of the person you are dating.  You take responsibility to communicate your goals and life directions to your dating partner. Consequently, you will help yourself  choose your long life partner more realistically and create a conscious lasting relationship.

Till next month, I wish you a successful year in finding your lasting love.

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