Human Love Differs Tremendously From

Human love differs tremendously from the bonding that occurs between pair-bonded animals, mainly because of the complexity of the human mind. We share many fundamental similarities such as a natural preference for mates based on physical attraction and other attributes, but human love also depends substantially on intellectual, psychological, and philosophical ideas and values that do not exist elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Likewise, the human psyche is so much more complex that human love exhibits dynamic patterns that are likely unique to human beings.

Personal Psychology and Initial Attraction

In our individual psychological development, all of us form memories, and attachments, and both positive and negative associations related to our parents' style of parenting and to the interpersonal styles that characterize our relationships within our families of origin. In addition to being either positive or negative associations, these attachments and associations also operate on conscious and unconscious levels. When we become old enough to begin courting and pair-bonding, we are drawn to other individuals partly based on the degree to which they represent some of the same characteristics to which we have become accustomed during our psychological evolution. On the conscious level, for example, a person often seeks out potential partners who exhibit some of the same positive qualities that were modeled by his or her opposite-gender parent. However, human love is often complicated by the fact that we also have an unconscious attraction to recreate or repeat the interpersonal dynamics to which we became accustomed in our families of origin, even when our conscious memories and sentiments about those aspects of our family-of-origin relationships are very negative.

This phenomenon typically manifests itself in the uncanny ability of human beings to find potential mates who represent all of the same negative attributes that we resent in our parents on a conscious level. For example, a young woman might have sad conscious memories of being continually disappointed by a father who was insufficiently available in her childhood because of the amount of travel required by his occupation. Despite the fact that she may have a conscious desire to find a partner who fulfills her needs, she may actually choose male partners whose lifestyle and personalities ensure that they will be as unavailable as her father was in her formative years. Similarly, a young man may have strong negative feelings about his mother for being too critical of him and for being unsupportive of his life choices throughout their relationship. On a conscious level, he hopes to find a female partner who accepts him for who he is and who is not a critical person. However, on a subconscious level, he may be drawn specifically to the types of personalities in women who display every indication that they are highly judgmental and critical and rigid in their expectations, and who represent all of the same problems that he resents consciously in his mother. In both cases, the individual associates love with aspects of earlier foundational relationships.

In principle, psychologists refer to this phenomenon as re-enactment of foundational conflicts in the family of origin that have never been properly resolved in the psyche of the individual. As a result, many people end up choosing life partners who allow them to recreate or re-enact precisely the same psychological and interpersonal dynamics as those they experienced within their own families. Naturally, where the family of origin was healthy and loving, that tendency is beneficial because it motivates the individual to seek out and form bonds with others who tend to approach relationships healthily and lovingly. However, where the family of origin is unhealthy and dysfunctional, the individual has a strong tendency to seek out potential partners who are inclined to unhealthy and unloving interpersonal relationships. In some respects, this is thought to be caused by an unconscious desire to "fix" everything that was wrong in the family of origin; in other respects, it is a function of the fact that the individual has come to associate specific behaviors (including extremely negative behaviors) with "love." That phenomenon explains why some people who were physically or emotionally abused in their families as children sometimes choose mates who are abusive in the exact same ways within their spousal relationship.