How we choose a mate is a decisive test of our concept of love and marriage. At the moment of choosing, we put into operation all that we have thought, expected, and feared. The choice of a wrong partner can be regarded as the first step toward marital discord, or as the last step in a misguided approach toward the other sex. Many people make no step at all. To choose or not to choose-that is the question which plagues them eternally.
The act of choosing is not only highly important, but also extremely significant, psychologically and scientifically. Like a flash of lightning, it suddenly illuminates the whole situation and sheds its glaring light on the forces which produced the bolt. But the analogy of lightning explains even more about the process of choosing.
Interpersonal Communication without Awareness
The moment we decide in favor of someone, we conclude a number of interactions which preceded this final step from both sides. In one instant, two persons who meet for the first time can communicate to each other untold impressions, opinions, and promises, and come to an understanding without either of them becoming aware of his participation in the game. They talk with their eyes, expressing admiration, suspicion, disdain. Little movements of the hands, facial gestures, unimportant words, and the tone of the voice, the gait, and the whole appearance reveal the entire personality and its reaction to the other one. Whatever goes on between two human beings is reciprocal and promoted by both, although it may look as if one of them started the motion and hence is responsible for the action. Such a conclusion, however, is a mistake based on inadequacy of observation. Our inaccurate eyes misinterpret the lightning bolt as striking from one direction alone, although we know today that it is a rapid consequence of discharges of electricity from both poles simultaneously.
We know more about each other than we realize. Our conscious impressions are but a small part of our actual knowledge which is based on what we used to call intuition, premonition, or, less flamboyantly, a hunch. An analogy with the eye may clarify this mechanism: Only a small central part of the retina (the tissue of the eye which enables vision) permits sharp distinction of shape and color, while the larger multifold surrounding section of the retina serves to give vague impressions of the location and the movement of objects. Therefore, the picture which we encompass with our sight is much wider, richer, and deeper than that which we can focus by sharp attention. This is true of other senses as well. With the ear we recognize one tone without being aware that its qualities are derived from overtones which we cannot directly perceive. This example is necessary to understand that acceptance or rejection of another person is based on much knowledge and agreement which entirely escapes our own conscious observation. Without realizing these psychological mechanisms in the process of mating, we cannot comprehend the essential problems involved.
Mating Serves Secret Personal Anticipations
The secret aims and expectations of a person guide him like a compass. Involuntarily, he responds only to those stimulations which fit into his plans and recognizes only those opportunities that confirm his expectations. A girl who wants to get married invariably chooses a man who provides her with what she demands. Her demands, however, are not necessarily limited to the common-sense requirements which the average American girl is taught to exact from her future husband. Although the conscious expression of these marital desires may vary-one girl looking for companionship, another for social and financial betterment or security, the third for fun and excitement-they all want cooperation, understanding, consideration, devotion, and faithfulness. Very few of them, however, choose a husband at all capable of maintaining those qualities.
And yet the selection is never fortuitous. There are deep personal demands which influence the final decision; and, unbelievable as it may sound, everyone gets from his mate just the treatment that he unconsciously expected in the beginning. The demands which are gratified when we suddenly or gradually accept one person as our right mate are not conventional-not those of common sense. We feel attracted when we have met somebody who offers us through his personality an opportunity to realize our personal pattern, who responds to our outlook and conceptions of life that permits us to continue or to revive plans which we have carried since childhood. We even play a very important part in evoking and stimulating in the other person precisely the behavior which we expect and need. In other company the same partner might behave altogether differently.