Your wife or girlfriend is likely to share many characteristics with the first woman you ever loved: your mother. In Finland, researchers solicited the assistance of 70 men and women to compare the faces of each participant’s spouse and opposite-sex parent. The following are the heinous consequences: While the women’s husbands looked nothing like their fathers, the men were more likely to wind up with women who “significantly” resembled their mothers, according to Urszula Marcinkowska, Ph.D., an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Turku. The awful news is as follows. Is there a bright side? Marcinkowska thinks that liking women who resemble your mother is natural. Here’s why: Evolution and natural selection have pre-programmed you to seek for partners from the same species group. According to Marcinkowska, because your mother is your first and closest touch, she becomes the prototype you desire. Marcinkowska goes on to say that fathers, no matter how dedicated and present they are, do not have the same impact on their daughters’ partner preferences. But be cautious: the mother-son tie extends beyond looks. While psychologists have traditionally dismissed Sigmund Freud’s concept of a “Oedipus complex,” according to Michael Kimmel, Ph.D., a SUNY sociologist and author of Guyland, your relationship with your mother will have a substantial impact on how efficiently you connect with women later in life. Kimmel feels that the best foundation for deep love attachments is a close and affectionate mother-son relationship. If you had a problematic relationship with a distant or inattentive mother, you may unknowingly seek out similar women as love partners, according to William Pollack, Ph.D., a men and young men expert at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School. Why? Because you’re attempting to “fix” the broken mother-son relationship. “However, that almost never works out,” Pollack explains. His advice is to look for connections between your failed love relationships and your mother’s relationship. Are there any similarities? If that’s the case, Pollack, a member of the Men’s Health Advisory Board, feels it’s time to start looking for a different kind of woman—one who isn’t your dear old mother.
