Why do we choose a particular person to be our partner? What draws us to one person and not another? And why is it worth persisting with this one person? Why not just trade them in when things become difficult?
You marry your twin
This surprising and illuminating idea is gaining much favour among couple researchers around the world. The theory begins by pointing out that attraction is largely an unconscious thing. We don’t know why we are drawn to this person, but we feel it nonetheless. The reason is that we are on romance autopilot, and we are drawn to hidden traits, as much as obvious ones. So people who differ on the surface but are very similar deep down, will be inexorably drawn into couple relationships.
Think about your own partner. You will be aware of your differences but your similarities will, for the most part, be unconscious. You may be actively denying having the traits which your partner has, both virtues and vices. The possibility is strong, though, that these aspects are equally in your make-up too. (This has a neat circular logic to it. The theory actually predicts that you will disagree with it in your own case – though you may see it operating in other couples!)
Let’s examine this ‘twinness’ more closely
In a couple relationship, we often have a strong investment in seeing our partner as totally different from us. Couples will joke about how different they are: ‘I leave the money to her’; ‘He’s the one with the brains’; ‘She’s so emotional’; ‘He’s irresponsible, impulsive – I can’t let him out of my sight’. Also, when things are going badly, these differences are given even more airplay: ‘He’s impossible!’. The truth is, nonetheless, that like attracts like. We have trouble living with our partner because we have trouble living with ourself!
How does this come about? It goes something like this. As we grow through childhood, much of our personality development is regrettably not positive, but rather the shutting down of certain faculties. For instance our clear brains, great intuition, concentration, spontaneity and warmth may have proved to be too risky and at odds with what the adults around us could handle. The child-raising process of the modern world means shutting down many of our natural talents and our qualities are literally ‘given a bad name’; we are told we are a nuisance, demanding, uncooperative, bad-tempered, cautious, clingy and so on.
We emerge as adults who, in distinctive ways, have shut down aspects of our capacity to think, feel and act. For instance you probably were a better artist, singer, dancer and comedian, at the age of four, than at twenty-four. (It’s interesting that someone who is less ‘shut down’ than is the norm, and who is expressive and vibrant, we describe as having ‘lots of personality’. We all have lots of personality but in most of us this has become hidden and repressed.
We begin searching for a partner, usually at an age when we are just at our most damaged! As we seek out the right partner for us, we are seeking, largely unconsciously, to balance ourselves, by locating someone who is still activated in the areas in which we have shut down.
Why not test this out
Think of what qualities attract you most in a partner. Outgoingness? Humour? Gentleness? Commitment to strong values, emotional honesty, physical health, energy, creativity, sensuousness? Chances are you would say that you are not developed in these areas, and that is why they appeal to you in another person. ‘Wow,’ you think, ‘this person would really make me feel complete!’
When we find the person of our dreams, we tell our friends: ‘She’s so full of life,’ ‘He’s caring, and organized, and I feel really safe around him’. As if the partner provides what is missing in us. For instance, if we are a rather fragile person, and our ability to protect ourselves is squashed away down inside us, then we will be attracted to someone who seems strong and protective. So this might become a dependent situation, but it also might not, because they may help us to activate our own strength and self-protection and so become a more whole person.
The beautiful secret
This is the beautiful secret behind all kinds of interpersonal attraction, including the heroes we admire, as well as our friends. We are attracted to people because they have activated certain qualities, which we also possess but in an unawakened state. If you hold someone in great admiration, this is because you have the capacity to be like that person too, and this creates the yearning which we call admiration. If this potential wasn’t also dormant in you, you would not even notice the qualities of the other person, they simply would not register. (An old Sufi joke says that when a pickpocket meets a saint, all he notices are his pockets.)
If you admire a great painting, that’s because down in side you is the potential to make that painting too. It might take a hundred years, but you would know when you got there. When we are drawn to a quality in our loved one, we also need to realize that we can eventually activate that potential in ourselves.
This applies to criticisms, too
When we criticize a fault in our partner, we need to look at how we too have exactly the same fault, though perhaps expressed in other ways.
This is also the reason why we are so intolerant of certain faults in others – the intense irritations that we sometimes feel about certain behaviour. The more we repress in ourself, the more intolerant we are of others.
A practical step: taking back your criticisms
The amazing thing about marrying your twin is that when we dislike or want to criticize a fault in our partner, we must look at how this fault is shown up in us too. For instance, we may feel they are mean with their affection but discover that we are mean with our time, or with money.
Whenever you are critical of your partner, first decide what name you would give to their behaviour. Then see if you can find an instance when you show the same fault – usually in a different aspect of life. Then work on changing that in your behaviour, and see what happens in theirs. Expect the unexpected!
From How Love Works, © Steve and Shaaron Biddulph 2000, published in the UK by Thorsons.
Photographs © Cygnus Books 21-Jun-2005
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