One of the strangest things about relationships is that we're not free to feel attracted to just anyone. We tend to have very strong psychological types that we can't deviate from.
All of us carry inside us very specific inner shopping lists, defining what the people we can love need to be like as characters.
You might think these shopping lists would be focused around lovely requirements. Like that our potential lovers would need to be kind, understanding, friendly and from our age and social group. But the shopping lists are in fact often a lot wierder and darker.
We may end up neglecting all sorts of potential candidates, dismissing them as boring or yucky or somehow just wrong and heading straight to people whose characteristics are pretty akward and not conducive to our happiness.
For example, we may only be able to fall in love with people who are much less clever or responsible than we are. Or who are really unreliable, who are selfish and self-absorbed, or sarcastic and mean. It can be very puzzling to those around us and to ourselves.
Why on earth can't we settle down with people who are good for us? That's because what we're looking for in love isn't necessarily someone who is nice, pure and simple but someone who feels familiar.
And a lot of us learned about love in childhood, at the hands of people who were, in a variety of ways, trouble for us and who continue unconsciously to guide our love types.
Our earliest caregivers give us templates of what it is to love and be loved which can cause havoc with our chances of happiness.
The trickiness in our love types tend to go in one of three ways. Let's imagine dad was cold or violent or abusive, or mom was belittling, unavailable or controlling.
It was horrible, yet that ends up being what we look for in love. Why would we ever repeat something that was deeply uncomfortable?
