Significant Other

Instead, I am saying that people tend to marry a person who looks like the parent or sibling of the opposite sex. Our actual behaviour is summed up by a popular song of the 1920s. I want a girl Just like the girl That married dear old Dad… The reason we tend to resemble our mates is that many of us are looking for someone who reminds us of our parent or sibling of the opposite sex, who in turn resembles us. As children, we already begin to develop our search image of a future sex partner, and that image is heavily influenced by the people of the opposite sex whom we see most often. For most of us that is our mother (or father) and sister (or brother), plus close childhood friends. At this point, you are probably turning to your spouse or Significant Other, pulling out your tape measure, and discovering a gross mismatch between your and his (or her) ear lobes. Or perhaps you have pulled out a photo of your mother or sister, and you detect not the faintest resemblance when you hold it beside your spouse. You may be about to throw away this book as patent nonsense ...»