My mother specifically seeked a mate who was not like her father except in sex and nationality (and the nationality had been a circumstance, not a requirement).
When Dad did something that she claimed her father would also have done, she’d grumble “gender masculine, number singular”… but thing is, a lot of those are things Gramps would never have done! For example: “my husband did not leave the kitchen perfectly clean after he finished cooking! He wasn’t planning on cleaning it until we were done eating! Gender masculine, number singular!” Uh… the closest Gramps came to cooking was heading to the bar and asking for half a dozen fried shrimp :dubious:
Others well, yeah, they were common. “My husband is watching something on TV and I had to call his name three times before he heard me! Gender masculine, number singular!” - only, that’s something common to such a large fraction of humanity that you may as well claim they were alike in having the same number of limbs.
Most of the women I’ve been involved with are more like my Dad than my Mom, but not spectacularly like either one of them. I didn’t have any serious case of the hots for my Mom growing up and then… what’s the shrinkword? suppress? sublimate? … it into attraction for someone similar to her, nor did I overcompensate and run around seeking her polar opposite or anything.
I think there’s a ridiculous amount of adult chauvinism built into Freudian & affiliated theories: I remember being a kid, I remember being a kid with sexual inclinations and interests, and when I was a kid I wasn’t remotely interested in adult women, I was all about the girls who were my own age. I admittedly don’t remember infancy but I doubt that I had a strong sexual hankering for my mom although she was pretty cute when she was in her 20s. I doubt that these psychoanalysts and psychotheorists remember their infancy all that well either, nor do I readily believe they interviewed a random sample of infants, and the things they claim to have “uncovered” about childhood and infancy and sexuality from working with adults don’t seem supported by anything akin to empirical evidence.
Well, I know nobody wants to marry their mommies or daddies, and go to great lengths to pick the opposite.
I was originally wondering about my gay friend, and gay men in general. In the course of their psychological development, separating from their mothers in puberty after the Oedipal stage, do they still seek out that mother-bond (unconsciously)? Do they stay fixated on their mothers for life (unconsciously)? What about their fathers? what part do their fathers play in their search for mates (such as it is)?