How to choose a partner without making mistakes

Heart, reason or brain chemistry, what leads us to choose a certain partner? The flame of love, the cerebral substances that flood one with passion, the more or less final choice of a person… None of this can happen if one is not open and available for it to happen.

Why sometimes passion breaks out between opposite poles? What happens when, precisely, what was so attractive at the beginning of the relationship is later what exasperates us the most? What strange ingredients cause one couple to be chosen and not another?

Romanticism has conveyed an idea of love based on the presumption ofe that each person has another that is predestined somehow and that only finding that soulmate conjugal happiness can be achieved -automatically, moreover. Although that old aspiration continues to hold true, the reality is much more diverse and complex.

Who is going through a painful duel or who, perhaps due to previous experiences for example, actively blocks any approach, he will not give himself this opportunity nor will he probably recognize the opportunity if it presents itself. At the opposite extreme, someone too greedy for love or relationships is likely to make the wrong choice or to be confused with one’s own feelings or those of others. How to make the right choice?

Why it is easy to choose badly in love

Today it is said that Cupid is not responsible for us vibrating for a particular person but rather a set of biochemical reactions that start in the brain and are transmitted to the endocrine system.

In fact, falling in love generates a whole series of addictive chemical reactions very similar to those that come into play with drugs.

Once the most attractive person has been found, the nervous system kicks into gear and produces a discharge of phenylethylamine, a compound of the amphetamine family, linked to states of passion.

This amphetamine flood causes the brain to respond by secreting dopaminethe neurotransmitter that induces repeat behaviors that provide pleasure.

Dopamine and norepinephrine are responsible for the feeling of euphoria. (also from the dilation of the pupils and the acceleration of the tension).

Other hormones involved in falling in love are oxytocin (the hormone of trust and attachment), the serotonin (which generates a feeling of well-being) and cortisol, a hormone stress-producing body that contributes to the tension experienced in this state.

This hormonal cocktail explains why lovers can spend hours making love and chatting all night without feeling tired or sleepy.

One of the hormones that seems most active in the initial phase of falling in love is testosterone., the hormone of sexual desire par excellence. In fact, the discovery that the level of this male sex hormone it decreases in the man in love while it increases in the woman.

The researchers interpret this fact as the result of a natural evolution that tends to minimize differences between men and women to facilitate the meeting.

Scientists also warn that sex generates the secretion of vasopressin and oxytocin, generating attachment and, based on that, they recommend not sleeping with people you don’t want to fall in love with…

On the other hand, recent research has found that in states of falling in love, the brain area where rationality resides is inhibited and the critical sense (the frontal cortex), which makes it difficult to discover defects in the loved one.

This state of “temporary mental incapacity” lasts only a few months, after which time other neural circuits regain lost control. A year later, hormone levels have returned to complete normality.

How we choose a partner (according to psychology)

The Evolutionary Psychology claims that many of the traits that are valued when choosing a partner are indicators crucial issues in reproduction. In this sense, we are guided by…

The beauty. It would be considered an indicator of health and fertility.Attractive psychological traits. Kindness, cordiality, affection, creativity, intelligence or imagination… would be seen as signs that someone has enough ability to function successfully in the social sphere. In this way, the choice would ensure a constructive relationship aimed at obtaining offspring and transmitting the best genes to the children.The ideal couple concept. Other criteria that are at the base of the couple’s choices have to do with the idea that one has forged about what the ideal couple should be like. We desperately seek that ideal and we believe we are before it when brain chemistry is activated and the area of ​​the cerebral cortex is more inhibited, clouding the vision of the defects of the loved one.

Why patterns are repeated when choosing a partner

The idea you have about what a couple iswhat can be expected of her and how to relate to another person is tremendously influenced by family experiences.

We tend to be attracted to someone whose relationship we feel comfortable with. This effect occurs more easily when a form of communication and interaction is established with the person in question that is known or familiar to us.The way our parents related to each other, first of all, and other relatives or close acquaintancess (grandparents, uncles and other significant adults) is, in part, what has taught us to be who we are.There is a tendency to repeat the way of acting, of speaking (or shout, sometimes), to interpret the reactions of the other that has been learned and practiced in the family from which it comes.

The latter explains, tragically indeed, that those who have experienced a situation of parental violence during childhood tend, much to their regret, to come to repeat this type of relationship with your own partner for a simple reason: he doesn’t know how to do it any other way, he doesn’t know the keys to a caring and positive relationship.

Mistakes when choosing a partner

The meeting between two people is conditioned by their own needs. One usually sees in the other what, in reality, one expects to see.

If you dream of being daring or impetuous, the chemistry of desire is probably ignited by meeting someone who is especially outgoing and a bit cheeky. It is unavoidable, in part, Project on the other person the deepest desires and fears.

Because you end up hating what you initially admired?

On the one hand we tend to feel attracted to what satisfies our own most intimate affective and emotional needs; but, on the other, that same lack is responsible that few similar situations have been experienced and that there is no feeling of security in that area.

Feeling attracted to people very different from us. A person who cannot tolerate disorder or ambiguity, for example, may initially be attracted to someone who is very meticulous and strict, only to later become irritated by her rigidity.Falling in love with someone independent after a suffocating relationship. Someone may be running away from a relationship that has been very stifling and, by contrast, falling in love with someone who is very independent and in great need of personal space. After a while, she may be surprised at the intensity of the jealousy she feels and that it is turning her into a living reflection of her “hated” previous partner.Looking for someone peaceful to counter past conflictual relationships. There are those who, after having experienced very conflictive family or couple relationships, fall in love with someone who is completely different: understanding, tender, peaceful… Months later they can despair due to boredom and lack of stimuli.

How are solid couples, equal or complementary?

Not everything is harmony in a relationship of equals. Two strong personalities, could get involved in power struggles giving rise to different versions of the usual to see who can do more or I attack, you answer; I answer, you attack.

At the other extreme we find couples with radically different members. Perhaps the beginning of the relationship was marked by this attempt to compensation for their great differencesor both have magnified the couple’s ability to change -and to do it, moreover, in the direction that each one wanted-.

This is one of the most complicated situations, which often leads to subtle power struggles which each one faces with their own weapons.

The extreme point is reached when it is discovered that the conflict is simply a tie that unites them.. In the absence of it, on the other hand, this type of couple often ends up lacking the satisfaction and well-being that only the mortar made of complicity and common goals can give.

easier is that couples made up of very similar personalities and with few contrasts end up settling in too much each other, especially if the personal space of each is also very small.

Living in a bubble built just for two has its undoubted joys but also risks. The danger is that, over time, both will discover that so much symbiosis he has stolen their passion, pushing them towards an impoverishing dependence or personal stagnation.

It is also possible that a relationship of these characteristics enters into crisis when one of the two evolves or changes minimally.

For a more lasting couple…

Living as a couple is more complicated to live alone, but take on that challenge and live it creatively It opens up extraordinary possibilities.

Frictions, disagreements, misunderstandings reveal our chiaroscuro, they force us to get out of ourselves, to be tolerant, to learn to negotiateto assume that everything is much more relative than we tend to believe.

Accepting and learning to love our differences helps to abandon sterile power struggles and to delve into that basic mutual aid relationship who, as individuals, also it helps us to go further and be happier.

For a couple to last and can contribute to the evolution of its members These aspects should not be neglected:

Personal responsibility. We cannot expect our partner to cover our needs or expect them to give us the happiness that we do not have alone. Nor can it resolve for us conflicts that we are not capable of facing. Each spouse is solely responsible for their own well-being, which, later, they can share or enhance.Interlocutors, not contenders. The goal is not to merge into a single body and mind, but to share and enjoy two different realities that meet.Take advantage of disagreements and friction as clues that guide in the knowledge of oneself. It’s helpful to ask yourself, “What could it be about me that makes me so irritated in this situation?” Or: “Why is it so hard for me to accept your mother or father as they are?”Don’t be afraid of commitmentthat is, the determination to work together to overcome difficult times and learn from each other.Together but not mixed. We all need a personal space to develop our own hobbies, maintain unshared friendships or enjoy moments of…