The template for romantic attraction is set long before the first date. Children internalize the relational dynamics of their earliest caregivers, and those dynamics become the unconscious blueprint for what love is supposed to look like. A child who experienced love as conditional learns to pursue conditional love in adulthood. A child who experienced love as unpredictable learns to find unpredictability exciting rather than alarming. These templates are not beliefs that can be corrected through awareness. They are embedded patterns of emotional response that operate automatically and that feel like personal taste rather than learned behavior.
Dr. David Steinbok helps patients from the Boynton Beach, Florida area examine these templates through psychodynamic therapy. His office in Boca Raton provides the setting for sustained relational work that goes beneath surface-level dating advice and into the foundational experiences that determine who feels like the right person, even when that person is consistently the wrong one.
