The people we’re drawn to may tell us something about what we learned about love long before we ever started dating.
Most of us don’t walk into a first date thinking about our childhood. We’re wondering whether we find the person attractive. Whether conversation flows. Whether they’re funny or interesting. Whether we want them to touch us—or whether we’d like to see them again.
And yet, we don’t arrive at that date as blank slates. We bring a lifetime of experiences about love and relationships with us.
We Learn Relationships Before We Understand Them
Long before we begin dating, we’re learning what relationships feel like.
We learn whether people are emotionally available or difficult to reach. Whether affection is freely given or something we have to earn. Whether conflict can be repaired. Whether our feelings matter. Whether closeness feels safe, unpredictable, overwhelming, comforting—or some complicated combination of these.
Much of this learning happens before we have words for it. Those experiences can become part of the internal map we carry into adult relationships.
Attraction Isn’t Entirely Conscious
We like to imagine that we choose partners based primarily on the qualities we consciously value: kindness, intelligence, humor, attractiveness, shared interests, emotional maturity.
Of course those things matter. But another process may also be happening beneath our awareness.
Something about a person's emotional style, availability, energy, confidence, vulnerability, distance, or way of responding to us may resonate with experiences we've had before. We may experience that resonance simply as attraction.
We May Be Drawn Toward Old Relational Questions
Sometimes the people who strongly attract us seem to activate unfinished questions from earlier relationships.
Will you choose me?
Will you stay?
Can I finally get close to someone who is difficult to reach?
Can I be fully myself and still be loved?
As you think about the people you've felt most strongly drawn to, you might ask yourself: Is there a question like one of these that seems to keep showing up in my relationships?
We’re usually not consciously asking these questions on a date. Yet some version of them may be operating underneath the surface. This can help explain why certain people feel disproportionately compelling while others who seem perfectly attractive “on paper” leave us relatively unmoved.
This Doesn’t Mean Our Childhood Determines Our Love Life
Our early experiences influence us, but they don’t write an unchangeable script. As adults, we can become increasingly aware of what attracts us, what activates us, and what kinds of relationships allow us to become more fully ourselves.
That awareness gives us more information when attraction appears. Instead of only asking, Do I feel chemistry?, we can become curious about other questions.
What exactly am I responding to in this person? How do I experience myself around them? What happens when they move toward me or away from me? What feels familiar here?
Attraction Can Become a Source of Self-Knowledge
One of the things I find most interesting about dating is that attraction can teach us something about ourselves. The people who excite us, frustrate us, intrigue us, or seem almost impossible to forget may reveal parts of our relational history that we haven't completely understood.
One way I sometimes help people explore this is through a tool I call Attraction Templates. It can help us identify and make sense of patterns in who we're attracted to—and why. If you'd like to explore this further, I explain Attraction Templates and how to begin identifying your own here.
That doesn’t make attraction a problem to solve. It makes attraction something worth becoming curious about.
Because understanding who we’re attracted to—and why can eventually tell us something much larger: how we learned to love, what we’re still looking for, and perhaps what we’re ready to experience differently.
If you find yourself repeatedly drawn toward similar people or relationship dynamics, understanding what may be shaping your attraction can be an important part of changing those patterns. I offer Dating Therapy to help you explore your attraction patterns, understand the relational experiences that may be influencing them, and become more conscious about the relationships you choose to pursue.