Relationship: Couple therapist reveals how opposites actually attract

Couple therapist reveals
Do opposites attract?

Once and for all: no! Even though …

We wander through life like confused bar magnets in search of love. Until we finally feel the attraction we’ve been waiting for all this time and have found our life person – or at least the person for the next few weeks. It is logical that we would like to understand the laws of this attraction. The adage “opposites attract” and the contradictory “like attracts like” preoccupy every generation anew. If we knew that we could comfortably engage with someone who is so different from ourselves, we would actually feel safer.

The more similarities, the stronger the bond?

The question of what is true is not only asked by teenagers. Even serious scientists keep pursuing it. That’s why we know that we prefer to enter into relationships with people who are from our area, who are of a similar age, similarly educated, similarly attractive, come from our social class and have similar interests as we do. We love the familiar, it gives us support and security. If both can exclaim: “It’s crazy, I’ve read all of Stefanie Stahl’s guidebooks too!” That doesn’t mean anything, but our need for soul mates is still satisfied. And, of course, life is easier when both are into vintage cars and enjoy going to the theater than when just one of them doesn’t want to set foot in some old dirt car and finds everything but binge-watching Netflix series boring. The more threads that bind us together, the stronger the bond between us. And the fewer arguments there are about the Bauhaus style in the living room or the ridiculously expensive Bordeaux in the shopping trolley.

However, our choice of partner is also determined by something else, which the clever couple therapist Jürg Willi put in the sentence: “Opposites of the same attract.” We also unconsciously recognize in the other how he or she masters life. We’ve all been hurt, rejected, and devalued in our lives, and learned to deal with it. When we experience someone who has found other solutions to the problems that we also have, then that enriches us. We are unconsciously drawn to it, also and precisely because we experience something in the other person that we do not dare to do, something that we lack . Anyone who has feared conflicts in their family has either learned to avoid conflicts or to conduct them in this way until the conflict is resolved. Opposite solutions to the same problem.

Part of the reason we believe opposites attract is because they immediately catch our eye. A very large one next to a very small one is more conspicuous than two of the same size. The other reason is that couples polarize. Due to the more you, the more I dynamic in partnerships, opposites arise. To maintain stability in a relationship, one will withdraw when faced with violent reactions from the other, and the other’s reaction will in turn become more violent because she is being avoided. The more one dominates, the more reserved the other becomes. A development of which we only see the end result: a loud guy and his silent partner. And it has already been shown to us again: opposites attract. But that’s just not true. They only arise where we least expect it: in love relationships in which like and like have joined.

Bridget