ATTRACTION: WHAT DRIVES US TO CHOOSE OUR PARTNERS?

I managed, for the better part of nearly three decades, to disillusion myself into believing I was somehow invincible – or better yet, impenetrable by men. I was the young 20-something girl, who had self-imposed whiplash from single handedly emasculating a man at the mere utterance of a pick-up line. I was the one who left men in the dust created by my signature “sashay” as my stilettos clicked their way down a city sidewalk. I was the one could make the most testosterone-laden, weight-lifting, sports-addicted, alpha male go crying home to his mama cuddled up in the fetal position begging the question why. Yes, that was me. Known for leaving a man’s lip appropriately glued to the floor after sharing my know-it-all wisdom on how unkempt, unworthy, unfit and unsuitable he was. And this applied to ALL men – good or bad. None of them were good enough for me in my own little world.

I think the old adage goes, “What happens in the dark will eventually come to the light.” This includes my own ignorance of my rather absurd arrogance, which led me to believe that no man could ever knock me off my self-constructed, high-sitting pedestal. I was definitely in the dark – a darkness so thick and so deep a solar eclipse couldn’t get through it - or so I thought.

It’s funny how the mind plays its cruel little tricks on you. It actually has the power to lead a well-educated, upstanding, mostly-sane woman to believe she is impervious to love. It can even lead you to believe that a man is only suitable to love if he has good looks, perfect credit, a six-figure-or-more salary, no children, clean record, impeccable style and taste, unmatched etiquette, a house, a luxury car, a dog, the white picket fence, a partridge and a pear tree. In hindsight, or should I say blind sight, I must’ve passed up hundreds of actually “suitable” (whatever that means) men. I guess this “perfect man” I had created in my helium-filled head was to magically appear in shiny armor on the back of a white horse as the fairytale goes.

To my absolute shock, my fairytale man never came galloping up on his stallion ready to save me from all the ill-equipped men that ran rampant around me. It was as if reality took a Mike Tyson-style left hook to my overly inflated, unrealistic expectations. I was supposed to have my perfect husband, house on a hill, two-car garage and 2.5 children all by the ripe age of 25. And when 25 came and passed with no such fantasies realized, it felt like an 18-wheeler truck came barreling down over my dreams at lightening speed instantly crushing and collapsing the picture-perfect life I’d spent years plotting in my head.

If my knight in shining armor abandoning me was a Tyson-style left hook to my expectations, then the man that finally did come along was a Muhammad Ali-style, 13-round knock out. Never in my wildest imagination, even if said imagination were induced by massive amounts of PCP, angel dust, acid, crystal meth, heroin and cocaine, could I have expected to fall for the man I found. He was an unemployed, middle-aged, divorcee with three kids and a girlfriend. No one on planet Earth could have been further from my expectations. I would have sooner thought I would be dating a ficus tree over this man.

But, in my defense, it wasn’t just the I-can’t-believe-I’m-not-married-yet desperation setting in, or the cry of my ovaries begging for procreation or even the stinging pain I felt in my uterus every time I heard of yet another one of my friends’ engagements. It was his slippery smooth charm coupled with a deadly swagger that would have even a ridged, uptight, spinster woman with nine cats and a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas helpless against his advances.

This is a man who doesn’t have to rob a bank, because he could simply talk the teller into handing over the money. Then, he would take the same teller out for dinner with the money he just quietly convinced her to hand over. The most fervent, solemnly devoted nun would gladly give up her life-long vow of chastity to have a moment in his presence. He is a man, who slides in on an invisible carpet that somehow keeps his feet from touching ground thereby giving the effect that he simply glides when moving from one place to the next as the rest of us pound the pavement. This is a smoothness NO woman (or some men) can ignore including me.

It was a smoothness that melted over me like two ice cubes pressed against my forehead after completing the Iron Man competition on a scorching-hot summer day. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before I submitted to his silky words and perfectly groomed goatee. But, the inquisitive side of me wouldn’t so easily let me succumb to his smoothness without investigating the obviously pressing question: Why him? What draws us to one partner over another? What really motivates us?

While there are many, many theories on mate attraction, science offers at the very least a biological, evolutionary explanation, which can give us some understanding of how we choose our partners. If anything, research can help us understand how two (or more) people can be drawn together despite not being an obvious match.

Human sexuality is far too complex to be reduced to one absolute answer for why we’re drawn to the people we choose, but it seems that both nature and nurture play significant roles in helping us determine how to choose our partners.

Major Histocompatibility Complex

One popular biological theory is the function of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Our immune systems are equipped with the ability to naturally discriminate between self and anything non-self, which is how it is able to kill invaders instead of healthy parts of our bodies, and the MHC plays a central role in this detection. However, the MHC not only detects uninvited guests, it also determines partners who are dissimilar from ourselves.

Interestingly enough, MHC is detected through body odor with studies demonstrating that menstruating women, who are not on hormonal contraceptives, prefer men with a MHC genotype that is different from their own. The now famous University of Bern (Switzerland) “sweaty t-shirt” study, which included a sample of 49 women who smelled sweaty t-shirts of unidentified men, found that the participating women preferred the scent of men who were the most genetically different from them. Even more interesting is that the women in the study indicated the body odor that they were most attracted to was reminiscent of their current or past partners. Other studies have found that body odor correlated with facial attractiveness, where the participants were more attracted to the faces belonging to body scent they preferred.

Why would we want dissimilar partners? Well, there are several reasons for this biological preference. The first (and possibly most obvious) is to avoid possible inbreeding. Studies actually show that when individuals, whose MHCs are too similar, procreate, the chances of miscarriage increase significantly. Other reasons include genetically superior offspring who are better able to fight off diseases since couples with DNA that is too similar may pass on similar diseases from both sides of their families to their children. In other words, couples with dissimilar DNA have a better chance of producing children who will not carry on familial diseases.

The preference for a genetically dissimilar partner is also found to result in the production of children who have higher levels of genetic, physical and mental health. People who come from genetically dissimilar parents are also found to be more symmetrical. In particular, symmetrical men are found to be more muscular, attractive, socially dominant and physically active. These are traits often found to be more attractive to females according to sexual selection theory. It comes at no surprise that these symmetrical men also have a higher number of sex partners, easier access to sex with their intimate partners and a greater ability to give their female partners orgasms.

It isn’t just biological; it’s psychological.

While we may be biologically wired to keep from having sex with family members, we may seek out our partners because of those family members. According to Dr. Harville Hendrix, author of “Getting the Love You Want,” our primitive brains desire to reconcile any of our past issues we may have had with our parents during childhood, and we do this by choosing mates that have similar character traits to our parents. Scary right? The whole karmic warning “be careful what you do, because your kids will end up with someone just like you” thing is a little more realistic than we thought.

This desire to reconcile or resolve past issues is due to what Dr. Hendrix calls the old brain. In medical terms, the “old brain” refers to the limbic system, a part of the brain located at its base and responsible for our primordial instincts and emotions such as thirst, hunger, fear, sex, dominance and anger. This old brain, according to the good doctor, perpetually stays in the here and now not aware of the concept of time or that a past, present and future exists. This is why and how we can easily recall the emotions of a past relationship issue or trauma when in the heat of an argument. Due to this “emotion memory” we never really forget or get over past issues particularly those from our childhood.

In his book, Hendrix explains that our limbic system, or old brain, is desperately trying to re-create the environment of our childhood in efforts to resolve those old issues that we endured during that time. As a result, we are driven towards and attracted to people that remind us of our parents, which is the old brain’s way of re-establishing the same type of parent-child relationship we had in the past.

Attraction isn’t as simple as you think.

The moral of this story: Attraction is a complex process that involves far more unconscious input than we may ever really know. So, it should come to little surprise when we choose people we least expect. While the thought of marrying your mom or dad may make you want to jump into oncoming traffic, you may need to take another look at your current and past partners, because they may be more reminiscent of your parent than you think. And the next time you find yourself inhaling the sweaty t-shirt of your partner, you now know it’s just a biological drive. So, don’t feel bad.

#attraction #sex #sexualselection #love #mates #partners #limbicsystem #MHC