• The media, be that news, books, films, the internet, television
• Traumatic events in your own life or the lives of those close to you
• Positive, affirming events in your own life or the lives of those close to you
Now take this further. Consider what messages all of these have passed on to you. What definitions, expectations and presuppositions have you learned about the kind of relationship you should want, and so what kind of partner to pick? It may help to complete the following sentence: ‘I learnt from ____ that the best relationship is ____ and so I should choose a partner who ____’, and to complete that sentence at least ten times to get a range of differing messages. Then, see if there are any patterns, any surprises, any wake-up calls. Most crucially, how have these life lessons affected the partner choices you’ve made up to now?
Love maps
For more insight let’s turn to sexologist John Money, who calls these lessons ‘love maps’ – templates of how we see ideal partnership and how we see our ideal partner. Money suggests that we gain love maps instinctively and early – often between the ages of about five and eight – as if we’re picking up an accent in our native language. So we don’t question, perhaps hardly even notice, the internal image we’re building of relationships, the specifications we’re drawing up about the kind of partner we want – often down to race, height, build and manner. When we find someone fitting that map, we’re compelled. Yes, we may know on a logical level that an alternative mate may be just as good for us; but somehow this person just feels right.
Navigating one’s way through the highways and byways of the heart can take concentration, courage and an accurate road map.
Very often, the person feels right because they remind us of someone who felt right earlier in life or because we believe that with them we can reclaim the ‘right’ life events. One way of describing this would be ‘transference’; we ‘transfer’ affection from someone who was important to us in the past to someone important to us now – or to someone we want to be important to us in the future. A tone of voice, a sideways glance, a certain strength, a certain gentleness – all of a sudden, typically without knowing why, we feel we’re safe. No matter that we don’t know this person and they don’t know us; we feel inevitably drawn in.
It makes absolute sense to gravitate to the people most like the ones who have made us happy in life, and much of the time that’s a wonderful strategy. But get expectations confused, and it can go wrong. We can end up assuming a prospective partner will deliver the same kind of wonderful experiences that our parents (or our best school friend, or our very first ‘crush’) gave us. But partners don’t necessarily deliver, because they’re not that person and this isn’t the past – realizing this and accepting it is a key lesson of partner choice. Professor Sue Johnson tells how when she met her husband almost the first words he said to her were, ‘I am not going to live up to your expectations’. In the face of such insight how could she do anything other than marry the man?
Think back to when you were very young – say just starting school. Now identify three figures – perhaps parents, teachers, siblings – or events – successes, wins, triumphs – that at that period in your life made you feel deeply valid and loved. You’ll not only consciously look for a partner who holds out the promise of replicating those feelings but also be unconsciously drawn to any potential partner who holds out that promise. Good idea, with just one caveat. You may also be drawn to any partner you believe can deliver, even if they can’t. So try before you buy.
Bad experiences
There’s an added twist and it’s this. Sometimes we get drawn to partners not because they could give us something wonderful but because they could give us something terrible – in the hope that they may also give us the chance to overcome that terror. So we may choose someone who reminds us how withdrawn our father was or how dominating our mother was, someone who creates demanding situations that remind us of exam failure in school or the time we got made redundant from work. We find all this painful but familiar, troubling but known; we aim, this time, to resolve, to cope, to survive.
And it often comes good. Often, we get to turn things round, to cope with challenges in later life in a way we didn’t in earlier life because we are now older and wiser. And the fact that we cope not only gives us victory here and now, but helps to resolve the previous sense of failure. The Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai wrote that ‘people use each other as a healing for their pain’ – but in this case we are actively choosing each other for the pain, in hopes of getting the healing as part of the package.
Again, think back to your early life. Which people or events made you feel unloved or taught you hard lessons about what it means to relate to others? Do these memories link to your adult partners and the experiences you have had with them? What does that tell you about your partner-search strategies?
There is also, of course, the impact of life events so traumatic that they create a deep vulnerability in us, so we end wary, grief-stricken, furious or in some way simply too wounded to make good partnership decisions. We may be confused about what love means, unable to recognize it when it happens, unresourced to take it when offered or give it when needed. The obvious – and publicized – traumas are bullying, abuse and violence, but other seemingly less serious occurrences can wound us too. If our world rocks on its axis – perhaps from a house move, a hospital stay, an absent parent – we can end up thinking love will let us down. If as a child the only way we got any attention was when we were punished for bad behaviour, we may end up prone to tantrums in our relationships. The shock has not only broken our spirit, but dented our capacity to make good partner decisions.
Moving on
All the above works both ways. For our partners too the ‘past is prologue’, as Shakespeare wrote, and what happened in a partner’s life before the scenes they write with us affects not only who they are but also who they are when with us. Partners steer their course by their own love maps, make their own transferences, have their own stream of negative or traumatic characters and episodes from their own lives. So they may choose us because our ways of being wonderful remind them of wonderful people and events in their past, or because our ways of being difficult remind them of difficult people and events in their past. They too may need to align their expectations, to work through the difference between their hallucination and the reality that is us – and to cope when we deliver the pain that they unconsciously wanted to resolve through being with us. If a partner seems to be reacting in a way that says more about their history than about the present reality of our relationship, it’s worthwhile paying close attention.
It is not all bad news. Though it’s tempting to believe that everything that comes to us from the past is detrimental, it’s not so. Normal, kind, human love from those around us – whether given in childhood or in adulthood – not only provides us with solid ground for loving but goes a long way to redress any harm that comes our way. And while single intense experiences of betrayal can wound us, similar experiences of happiness, acceptance, success and security can emotionally vaccinate us against mistakes. For most of us, past bad experiences are not a car crash on the relationship road, but simply a bump on the way.
Plus, we don’t have to bring the past with us into the present. We can keep the bits that seem more helpful and most healthy; the others we can throw overboard. To which end, you may want to look back at all the lessons you’ve ever learned about love. Which messages are horribly outdated and need to be junked? Which are irrelevant to you now you’re a grown-up? Which messages are so idealistic or perfectionist that no one has the slightest chance of matching up to them, and by continuing to try to match up, you are simply feeding your guilt monkey? Which were taught to you by people whose experience is not yours, whose word you no longer believe, or whose life you have no intention of living? Which lessons did you learn through events that were so painful that you need to cull them from your memory bank?