Relationship – Sexual Imprinting

Whether or not you’re intentionally trying to date a man who reminds you of your dad, certain biological factors play a role in how we pick our future partners. Here’s how to make wise dating choices...

“We marry our parents”, the old saying goes. While this expression considers the theories of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung’s respective Oedipus and Electra complexes, which try to explain the sexual attraction to a partner who resembles our mother or father, sexual imprinting provides a deeper analysis of this phenomenon in our relationships.

Sexual imprinting is a process of observation and taking in of our caregivers’ behaviour during the critical stages of our childhoods. The lasting impressions gained have an influence in our sexual preferences, where later on in life we may begin to seek or search for characteristics in a potential romantic or sexual partner, what we saw our parents or guardians display.

This phenomenon takes into consideration the physical attributes of a parent and there are several studies that have been made to prove this — from zebra finches who choose partners with the same beak colour as their imprinted parent, to women who choose partners with similar facial features as their fathers.

“It’s how your brain has encoded what it recognises as normal and familiar. If ‘tall and handsome’ is associated with goodness from your experience as a child, you may see someone who’s tall and handsome as someone who’ll be a good father figure for your children. This comes from the attachments that we make with our caregivers. They normalise what sexuality and partnership is about,” explains Hlengiwe Zwane, clinical psychologist at J.D.D Psych Consulting.

WHAT SCIENCE SAYS

Clinical psychologist Siphokazi Qotyana–Mjoli says the Oedipus complex, which is a psychosexual stage of development where a child develops feelings towards his or her opposite-sex parent, and the Electra complex, which is when a girl child competes with her mother for her father’s attention, lay a foundation for future relationships.

“The two complexes are

approaches in psychology developed to help explain human behaviour specifically in the context of relationships” she says. Sexual imprinting is influenced by many other factors, including experience, environment and the nature and quality of relationships with our parents or guardians.

It has to do with a very subconscious attraction to a particular type of person, says counselling psychologist and Imago therapist, Carol Dixon, of Imago Africa. “We believe children start their imprinting process in the uterus, where little babies are used to hearing tones of voices and picking up the emotional factors that affect the woman’s body. Once they’re born, they’re are sensitised to all the sensory information made available to them – be it visual, auditory, tactile and even smell. They begin to imprint that and what they’re experiencing is what it feels like to be safe, secure, loved and special. They’re also imprinting what it feels like when that love is not available — be it in the form of rejection or harm,” Dixon says, adding that all this is imprinted into the baby’s unconscious awareness of relationships, which begins to play out in the teenage years. “We’re attracted to the familiar, regardless of merit,” Dixon adds.

Imago relationship therapy believes that a person’s brain constructs an image of characteristics from their primary caregivers, including the best and worst attributes. It explains why the traits of a future partner often reflect our parents’ traits. This is seen as the brain’s unconscious drive to repair damage done in childhood or to revisit needs not met, by finding a partner that compensates for our caregivers’ failures.

DADDY ISSUES

Often women who’ve had bad experiences with their fathers are heard saying they want to settle down with a man who’s the complete opposite of their father, and yet end up with someone who’s exactly like their dad. Clinical psychologist Dr Dimakatso Maboea says the choices we make, including that of a life partner, are both conscious and subconscious. “We either gravitate to what we know from our childhood or the opposite, based on our conscious and subconscious choices. You may want a guy with a six-pack, but your subconscious will also make its choice for you. If you were raised by a raging alcoholic dad, you may choose to marry a pastor, someone who doesn’t touch alcohol. That’s an unprocessed trauma that is making a subconscious choice,” Dr Maboea explains.

She continues: “Someone may gravitate towards a partner with an addiction problem because that’s familiar to them. The daughter of an alcoholic dad may unknowingly marry a good man who’s a workaholic. In a room of a thousand people, two children of alcoholic parents will find each other. So sometimes your choice isn’t identical to your upbringing, but the choice you make is based on your psyche trying to heal itself by choosing a situation that will recreate your childhood or teenage-hood.”

Elaborating more on this, clinical psychologist Sibusiso Nhlapo, of Nhlapo Psych Consulting, says it’s not uncommon for women with histories of a difficult childhood, be it emotional deprivation, physical or emotional trauma or persistent adverse experiences, to become needy and emotionally vulnerable in romantic relationships.

“This vulnerability places such women at risk of being romantically linked with equally ‘wounded’ men whom they will initially experience as loving, available, dependable and validating, only to find that this initial conscious assessment of these men is shallow,” Nhlapo explains.

He adds: “Some of these women will struggle to quit the relationship as they continue to hold onto false hope that the men will change. They’ll believe that the negative experiences they have with such men will pass, and they’ll return back to their ‘honeymoon phase’. This will continue until such time that the woman recognises that the man is in fact like her father and will never change.”

SEEK HELP

This is why therapy is so important, as it makes you aware of such issues, Dr Maboea says, adding that the trick with counselling is not to wait until there’s a crisis. “Go to therapy to assess how your childhood has shaped you, how your traumatic history influences your behaviour and the choices you make. When your trauma is treated, or when you know which emotional needs were not met from your childhood, you choose differently. You choose consciously because you know what choice your conscious mind is making, and you’re conscious about the choice that your subconscious mind is making,” Dr Maboea asserts. Our parental relationships and the quality of those relationships are then very important. However, Nhlapo stresses that, “a father-daughter relationship is as important, if not more important, than a father-son relationship, especially given the fact that the world we live in favours men over women.” He says, “A father can instil a sense of self-worth, confidence and self-assurance in his daughter that can help her make better life choices.”

Actor and activist for present fatherhood, Zane Meas, explains in his book, Daddy Come Home: Rediscover The Importance of Fatherhood, that a mother’s initial role is to nurture, and a father’s role is to teach us who we are.

To conclude, Dr Maboea says it’s important to note that due to sexual imprinting, we will choose a partner based on what we know to be best and worst of our parents.No parent, no matter how good, can meet all your emotional needs. This is why it’s important to explore the emotional effects of our fathering and mothering experiences, says Dr Maboea. “This is so that when you choose your partner, you are aware of what the parental experience has left you with – looking at how it has empowered you and how it has limited or wounded you,” she says. ■

We either gravitate to what we know from our childhood or the opposite based on our conscious and subconscious choices.