Do we relive the first time loves?

hmmm....I am not sure how to answer that...as my first love died, i tried for so long to find someone completely opposite...

i cant say that my husband looks like him...but maybe there is a certain resemblance. Im not really sure about it...I would need to think more on it...

 

Seeking out partners of the same type makes sense, if only because they are the type we like. Those who are meaningful to us can however also greatly shape our notion of the ideal mate.

Both being ISFJs however does not mean a lot; ISFJ is the most common personality type among females.

 

How come you INFJ's always go after the S dominate personalities?

Lucky them.

 

When I took psychology in high school I was told that we look for lovers who are much like our mothers(or fathers)

 

I think the first love is the standard that all others are judged by, in both good and bad ways. His death seven years ago is something that I still carry with me every day. I also think I tend to judge my life, or the quality of my life, based on the quality of our life together.

I am not interested in finding a replacement or a new love. I have dated but never seriously. Perhaps in my case, I am content with the depth of that love and I don't feel like I need to be with someone to feel complete.

 

uh-uh....not me AT ALL. No offense intended, I can't get close to "S"s usually---"N"s melt my soul

 

The fact that 2 of your loves both tested as ISFJ does not mean much, as that is the most common personality type of all for females.

Other similarities can be explained by them both being "your type" (meaning having qualities that attract you, not the same MBTI classification), but it is certainly possible for "your type" to be influenced or refined by qualities of those whom you loves or who fit "your type in the past.

In my college psychology class I was told that that theory is wrong, at least for the most part. Instead it is thought that we look for someone who fits our subconscious model of what a member of the preferred sex should be like. This model is mostly built in early childhood, but it can be modified somewhat at any age. It is not based on a single character, but an amalgamation of the members of the other sex whom one knows. If a heterosexual boy's only early female influence (including those seen in movies/TV, whether real life or cartoons, or described in stories he is told) was his mother, then your idea would be essentially correct. However, sisters, aunts, grandparents, and friends of the family also frequently play a large role in shaping this model.


(Another theory is that we are simply most attracted to the opposite sex version of ourselves, and the resemblance to relatives is just a coincidence. It is the case that most people find photographs of themselves very attractive after that have been digitally altered to appear to be of the opposite sex.)


I remember when I was 4 or 5 years old thinking about what my future wife should be like. This was right after watching Beauty and the Beast. I remember going to the dining room to play with some candle stands and thinking how wrong it was for the man to have blue eyes and the girl brown eyes. I remember picturing the ideal woman as having blue eyes and long hair like my sister, but the somewhat darker hair color and face shape like my mother had. (I did not think of it then, but my preference for INFJs could be seen as an an amalgamation of my INFP mom and ISFJ sister. Ignoring type though, her personality and interests were just more like mine than almost anyone else I knew.) I pictured a body type more average than either of them. (I guess this could have been an amalgamation of my mom and sister too, as my sister was quite thin at age 9, as opposed to fatter than mom as she has now been for quite some time.)

After I first fell in love I modified my ideal by making her skin fairer (not that it was very dark to begin with) and making her taller, like my beloved. The first girl I started to fall for after I finally expressed my feelings for my first love and was rejected actually fit my early model better, before those modifications. This almost-girlfriend was slightly more olive skinned, and the same height as my mom and sister instead of only a couple inches shorter than me. (I wasn't really ready to move yet though, and was not really sure if I wanted her more as a girlfriend or close friend. I tried to make contact with her too late, and she never responded. It seems that right before my first message, slightly more than 2 months after I last saw her 5 years ago yesterday, she met the man she married 2 years ago and with whom she had a son last February.)

Since then the girls I'm attracted to usually seem to either fit my first-love or almost-first-girlfriend mold, to varying degrees. Recently I've been most interested in 2 girls who strongly fit each mold, despite them both being Korean and not blue eyed. I've known the almost-first-girlfriend-mold girl a little longer, find her more physically attractive, have had much more meaningful conversations with her, and suspect that she likes me more. The first-love-mold girl has seemed to have a much greater effect on my emotions though, and it is much easier to imagine being romantic with her. After getting back in touch with and building a friendship with my actual first love recently though, I've begun to notice more personality similarities between her and the almost-first-girlfriend-mold girl. After meeting my first love in person again and finding I now love her only like a sister I found that my feelings for the girl of her mold seemed to disappear, making me think I may have just been transferring them to begin with. Its just as well, as it has been quite some time since I've seen any sign that she might be at all interested in me. I was rather depressed at the end of the semester when she was ignoring me, but I think I'm over her now. I did not know quite as much about the almost-girlfriend and never idolized her like my first love, so I think there is much less pressure on a relationship with the girl of her model and that a healthier, more honest, low pressure relationship. I'm thinking of asking her out soon, but I'll probably wait until I move back to school and have a bit more independence first rather than while I'm unemployed and living at home without my own car.

 

I don't, because we didn't work out. I look more for the love feeling itself ... and that can be brought on by any kind of person.


I definitely have a type (not mbti) I'm instantly attracted to though ... and I've been attracted to that type as early as age 3.

I don't know my father. And I adore my mother, but ... no.

 

I don't think i relive the first love. I think instead, i'm rethinking earlier models. I was attracted to early crushes/interests for superficial reasons (youth, you know). And i just recently realized that those i was attracted to were not and would never be great or good fits. So, i'll atm trying to rework my thinking about this subject. I'm thinking more along the lines of who would be the best fit rather than who fits my unrealistic ideal

 

Yes, I would say that was true.
I've noticed that with personality types too, particularly in my family. My brother in law has the same personality as my father and has similar features.
My older sister's boyfriend has a similar personality to my father and similar features, despite being part of a different ethnic group.

 

I cant lie. Sometimes i find myself reliving experiances from past lovers... It mqkes me really deperssed and i miss the real deal... Although it is true that people tend to fall for the same types generally because they just get along easier and they already know how to effectively communicate or whatnot..... And i probably wouldnt tell your wife about this thread by the way. Just sayin

 

I'm sorry about your first love, my first childhood love died as well at the age of six... Very sad day. Anyways from then on i've been dating blonde hair men even though I find myself attracted to those dark men. Go figure.

 

The older I get, and the more opportunities I have to grow with my experiences in love, the harder it is for me to identify if the thing I felt for my first 'love' was in fact love or some deep form of infatuation. I think it's just easy to look back and idealize your first love because that type of love would've occurred in a more carefree, idealistic point in your life (usually adolescence). I'm completely generalizing here, but I believe that the nature of the problems we faced as younger couples aren't nearly the same as the problems we face at a more mature point in our romantic lives.

That being said, I don't know which one of my loves were really my first real loves. I had two long-term relationships in my life. When I was 15/16, I was with a boy for two years. From 19-23, I was with another guy for almost four years. And in between all that, I had a few dating adventures and very short-term relationships (one of which was with my first crush in elementary school, although that one hardly counts beyond the fact I ended up losing my virginity to him). I don't know which of them I'm going to return to and relive. Possibly my longest relationship? Or my first relationship? Or maybe even my first crush? I don't know. All of them were very positive experiences and I learned a lot from each love. I think only time is going to give me the framework to really decide which of these was my first... but that, if anything, shows that you really don't know what you have until its gone. Or more likely, you probably idealize what you've lost because it's an opportunity that never gained fruition.

Either way, time will tell.

 

I've been truthfully avoiding this thread, because my first loves were really dysfunctional situations. I think though, when I look back, I have always gone for guys and girls who were taller than me. The guy who was my first love, looked a great deal similar to my current boyfriend, and the girl who was my first love, oddly enough, looked a fair bit like me. I think in some ways, I need to get more comfortable with these concepts to feel ready to really examine as to the reasons why I have been drawn to these types, appearance wise. I know there's a lot to it.

 

I can't say that my two real relationships were very good ones to judge anything off of. The dynamics were very different, and both were probably infatuation. I was 16 for my first relationship, and I think it was a really bad case of puppy-love. It definitely wasn't a long-lasting love, but up until the end of the relationship (about a year) things went swimingly and I learned a great deal of what kind of work goes in to a relationship. I'm pretty sure my second real relationship was more of "in love with the idea" rather than the person. I'm sure someday it will be a funny story to look back on, and definitely not something I'll be looking to relive. I've had a number of interests and let a number of them go, but I can't really hash out any "reliving" patterns.

This is a question I think I'll be better prepared to answer a number of years from now. However, it's very interesting to read everyone's experiences!

 

I don't think my varying exes all LOOKED alike my any means, but I can say that my childhood sweetheart really did set the tone for me; she was a tomboy, rogue-ish, aggressive and adventurous and willing to dig in the dirt for gemstones or fish around in leech-infested ponds for frogs and turtles. Personality types of GFs following her have varied a bit, but they all had similar qualities that I essentially look for, I guess.

Nowadays, though, that may be changing... maybe out of angst at being as old as I am an still unmarried. I don't quite trust in my own self-analysis on this.