How To Choose A Life Partner Wisely

Love. It’s the most beautiful feeling ever. But finding someone who will love you for who you are and someone who you can love for who they are can be exceptionally challenging, to say the least.

“Be with those who bring out the best in you, not the stress in you.” – Anonymous

Being with the right life partner is crucial for a healthy and lasting relationship and happy life. It is a high stake decision that requires time, effort, patience, and a strong understanding of what you from your romantic partner. But with 7.7 billion people walking on the earth, finding the right life partner can be a daunting task.

Although the whole idea of being in love with the right person may sound very romantic, actually choosing a life partner can be rather confusing. Should you follow the old tried-and-tested approaches? Should you trust your instincts? Should you be stupid in love and blindly follow romantic tropes depicted in Hollywood movies? Or should you trust your brain to choose a life partner wisely?

How can you choose your life partner and build a lasting relationship?

How Do You Choose Who You Love? 

“Find a partner who can bear all your weak points and still not use them against you.” – Tshepo Koos Maluleke

Romance novels and movies would have us believe that destiny and our instincts will show us the way to our ‘soulmate’. We will meet a loving person who will understand us, heal our hearts and soul, and support us in our journey of life. But most of us know, ‘real’ relationships are rarely like that.

Of course, our partners may love and support us, but in the real world, relationships are riddled with complications, compromises, compatibility issues and sometimes ego. So how true is the idea that our instincts will guide us to the love we deserve?

Although I am not someone to deny the power of instincts and destiny, I do believe finding true love takes a lot more than that. True love is an instinct. We often feel romantic attraction to people who make us feel better about ourselves, people who make us happy, people who help us grow and evolve into someone we could have never imagined.

We fall in love with someone who has a positive and romantic vibe. Someone who takes care of us. Someone who is kind and warm. However, instincts can often lead to a catastrophe.

What begins as a loving, caring relationship can often lead to complacency at best, and abuse at worst. Love can make us blind as we tend to ignore all the flaws of the person we are attracted to during the initial days of courtship. As the relationship progresses and the blind attraction wanes, those negligible ‘flaws’ turn into serious deal-breakers.

Read: The Honest Truth About Finding The Right Partner That Most People Fail To Understand

Looking For The Right Person

“She always thought she needed someone to love when all she really needed to do was love the world and let love find her in its time and in its way.” – Kate McGahan

Can instincts of love be a better determinant of choosing the right life partner than age-old traditions of arranged marriage? Can we become absolutely confident that our hearts will guide us to a happy and lasting relationship?

Instincts are important. I agree. But taking important life decisions based solely on instincts can cost you dearly. Yes, relationships are hard work. No relationship is perfect. No one is perfect.

But what happens when you meet the person of your dreams after you get married to the person you were blindly attracted to initially? Would you think you should have waited a bit longer before making such a lifelong commitment? Should you have looked harder for that ‘right person’?

This is what the main problem is with the entire concept of ‘soul mate’. It gives us false hope. It tempts us. It makes us search for that elusive person with more determination than necessary. 

Understand Yourself To Know What You Want

We give the idea of a ‘soul mate’ more attention than it deserves. What does deserve our attention is the power of our mind to analyze and judge someone based on their behavior and personality.

Psychoanalysis can help us understand why we feel attracted to certain individuals even though they might not be the best option when choosing our life partner. 

Why do we often end up with failed relationships? Psychoanalysis suggests that we don’t always look for the ‘right person’, someone who is caring and loving and has all the ideal traits. Often, we feel attracted to people who feel familiar to us. People who love us the way we know. The way we have been loved since our childhood. {1}

As adults, we look for the same patterns in our relationships that we experienced as children. And this can mean serious trouble for you if you had a troubled childhood filled with neglect and abuse.

“In choosing a partner, always pick the optimist.” – Tony Lema

In love, we do not seek happiness, we only seek reassuring familiarity. In our adult relationships, we strive hard to re-experience the same feelings and emotions that we experienced in our childhood. And it is not always restricted to love, affection and care. Whether your parents were loving and caring or over possessive and restrictive or downright abusive and aggressive, you will subconsciously look for a partner who will recreate the same experiences and emotions you have known as a child.

Ironically, if you had narcissistic and manipulative parents who made you feel insecure and develop low self-esteem, you will feel attracted to a narcissistic romantic partner as an adult instead of someone who is loving and makes you feel confident and secure. For some absurd reason, you will not feel comfortable with someone who is reliable, understanding, mature and balanced as this person will feel alien to you.

In psychoanalysis, this process of seeking familiar romantic partners as mature adults is known as ‘anaclitic object choice’.

Read: What’s Most Important When Choosing A Life Partner

Object Choice Of Love

“A partner is someone who makes you more than you are, simply by being by your side.” – Albert Kim

According to psychoanalytic theory, anaclitic object-choice refers to the selection of a romantic partner who resembles a parental figure. {2} It is the choosing of a love object who will offer similar support, comfort, and assistance that you received from your parents during your childhood.

A woman may select a man, as a romantic and sexual partner, who not only resembles but also cares, protects, and feeds her like her father. The idea was introduced by Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, in 1914. Most people who choose mates based on anaclitic object choices are guided by the belief that their partner will meet their narcissistic needs like their parents originally did. This is why many adults choose father or mother-figures as romantic partners. 

This goes to show that there are various factors which control our preferences, attractions and likes when it comes to love and partners.

Your instincts which guide you to your ‘right partner’ originate from complex and semi-conscious experiences that developed during your early childhood.

However, this does not necessarily mean our attractions are based on deformed instincts. We may genuinely look for an intelligent, caring and charming partner to build a healthy relationship. But we definitely have tendencies to look for someone who may be distant, busy and treat us with disdain.

On the contrary, if you had abusive parents, you may be too traumatized by the experience. Hence, if anyone shares even some of the personality traits & habits of your abusive parent, no matter how positive and caring they are, you will find them repulsive.

How To Choose A Partner Wisely?

“One does not seek love,’ she told him,
‘it should find you all on it’s own”
-Barbara Lieberman, The Treasure of Ravenwood

Although there are many different ways you can go about looking for an ideal romantic partner carefully, a great place to start is to ask yourself:

“What type of a person am I NOT looking for?”

Understanding what kind of a person you find repulsive can help guide you into finding what you are actually looking for in a partner. So sit down, relax, and note down all the qualities that turn you off. Write down even the smallest details that can be a deal-breaker for you. You are allowed to be picky and add anything that you find offensive and negative.

You need to pause whenever a particular trait comes to your mind and think about which aspects of your past have contributed to making this particular trait unacceptable (or even acceptable). This process will enable you to associate your mind with your past that are affecting your present choices and may even influence your future. It will give you a better understanding of your subconscious and innermost self. 

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” – C.G. Jung

Once you realize what dictates your attraction and what type of person you feel attracted to, you will better know who you should choose as your life partner. Recognising your attraction patterns and your past associations will help you steer your conscious mind, and maybe even your instincts, to a new direction where you can build a healthy and happy relationship that is not governed by your childhood experiences. 

Read: 11 Mistakes Stopping You From Finding The One (and What To Do About It)  

Self Awareness Is The Key To Relationship Success

“Self awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad.” – Debbie Ford

Being self-aware can help you a great deal to find the right partner, someone you need instead of someone you think you want.

With self-awareness comes emotional intelligence which will help you take the right steps towards building a successful relationship with a compatible, understanding, caring, and loving partner, regardless of your childhood trauma, memories and experiences.

You will not only become aware of your own weaknesses, strengths, assumptions, beliefs, and preferences, but you will also realize how all these things influence your attraction.

When you become aware of your own inner self, you rely less on instincts and more on analytical judgment and calculations.

The truth is, finding the right person depends on finding the right balance between relying on your emotions, instincts, analytical thinking, and even traditions.

Your past experiences can actually help to guide you towards your ideal mate once you become aware of yourself.

Let your past liberate you from your old self and empower you to build a happier and fulfilling life in the future.

“Hope for love, pray for love, wish for love, dream for love…but don’t put your life on hold waiting for love.” – Mandy Hale

Reference:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2689376/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/psychoanalytic-theory