Partner selection is less conscious than most people believe. Attraction is shaped by familiarity, and familiarity is shaped by early experience. A person whose earliest model of love involved volatility will often feel drawn to volatile partners, not because they enjoy the chaos but because the chaos registers as love. A person whose earliest model of love involved emotional absence will often find emotionally present partners boring or suffocating. These preferences are not rational, and they do not respond to rational correction. Telling yourself to choose differently does not work when the choosing is happening beneath the level of conscious decision-making.
Dr. David Steinbok helps adults from the Delray Beach, Florida area understand the unconscious criteria they are using to select partners. An unhealthy relationship patterns therapist does not coach patients on what to look for in a partner. The work is deeper than that. It involves understanding why certain people feel compelling and others do not, and how that sense of compelling is connected to relational experiences that predate the patient's adult life.
