Lately, I’ve had two things converge on my life of interest. I’ve been making some major discoveries about who I am and what I absorbed in my upbringing the other thing is I’m doing tons of marriage counseling. I started seeing this pattern that I’m sure isn’t 100% true but I think is a general observation that applies to most cases.

 

We are drawn to the person we marry for several reasons. 1)Usually we find them physically attractive 2) there is something about their personality that attracts me and that something is going to take some explanation.

 

3) Whatever parent you are the most like in your personality you will marry someone like your other parent. That happens for several reasons. The first is you think that feels normal. You lived in that environment of how your parents related to each other for years and absorbed  this is how to relate to others. So then you are drawn to someone that will relate to you in a way that feels "normal." For example, I’m wired much like my mom and I just realized in a strange way I married a girl with a nature and personality much like my dad. Gayle and I used to relate very much like my mom and dad did. Dad was a wise, quiet, strong willed man. He would stuff his feelings and then occasionally blow up. Mom would push him to that point and I did the same thing. We used to sing an old song growing up, "I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad." Turns out I want to marry someone like the parent that is least like me! Ponder that awhile. 

 

This is why a person can grow up in a home where a parent was an addict or abusive and then go out and marry the same kind of person. Even after divorcing the first partner they often will marry the same kind of person again. It is imperative to do some hard work on ourselves and identify this pattern so we can learn from our parents strengths and weaknesses relationally or we will be destined to duplicate them.