Why Someone Is Attracted to Another Person

What Is Behind Romantic Projection in Jungian Psychology?

Aug 13, 2008 Megge Hill Fitz-Randolph

What attracts one person to another? Is it merely a case of romantic projection? Why do opposites attract and why, over time, does that special feeling turn sour?

Projection in romantic attraction works like any other projection only this time there is a charge that makes it almost impossible to resist. One understands from Jungian psychology that what draws a person into the projection are qualities present in the other but as yet uncultivated or unrecognized in oneself. An old saying goes, “If you don’t develop it, you’ll marry it.”

In the projection of attraction one is “hooked” but often falls on his or her own petard. Still, as in any other projection, as each learns to integrate their disowned qualities the projection is naturally withdrawn. The two people can face then each other as if for the first time.

Opposites Attract

A well accepted truism is that one is attracted to one's opposite. In any relationship over time this may become difficult terrain to navigate. In her essay Meeting Our Opposites in Husbands and Wives, Maggie Scarf discusses how the very qualities which once attracted both people become the qualities that carry the most conflict.

For example, a man once drawn to his wife’s warmth, generosity of spirit, easy sociability may over time find these qualities loud seeming, overly intrusive, and even shallow. The qualities have not changed, but the way the way the partner perceives them has.

Likewise, a woman once attracted to what seemed the strong, capable, and comforting presence of her partner grows to redefine these qualities as controlling, bullying and withholding. Again, the qualities have not changed but the perception of them has. (It should be noted that sometimes these qualities are being seen more realistically once the projection begins to drop. It is not always just a case of projection. Sometimes these are actual truths about the person's behavior. So it is wise to walk carefully here. (Another Suite article may be helpful.)

Accounting for Change in Perception

According to Scarf what occurs over time is a confusion about individual boundaries. The two people who once viewed themselves as exact opposites have become so entangled that their identities have begun to "fuse" beneath the surface. “Each of them,” writes Scarf, “carries and expresses for the other disavowed aspects of that other’s self – his or her inner being.”

Thus, an entire division of labor ensues with each partner carrying a part of but not the whole emotional repertoire of the other. There is a “parceling the parts out in a kind of ‘I’ll take this and you take that’ fashion,” says Scarf. Instead of two unique identies, you have one fused identity, often in conflict with itself. Mostly likely each is fighting over that part of him or herself that the other has claimed.

Greatest Source of Conflict

In order for each to live their full individual identity there must be at least an attempt to withdraw the projections. Each partner, however, has to face the question: whether or not this is a risk worth taking. Withdrawing the projections will almost inevitably change nature of the relationship. Either each will discover, as if for the first time, who the other truly is and love will flourish. Or, one or both partners will feel unable to continue without being buttressed by the old projections and the relationship will falter.

The Fatal Flaw

This idealized notion of love, which is a western concept almost entirely, (see Denis de Rougment's Love in the Western World) is one of entranced enmeshment. It is, says Scarf, “The prime cause of distress in close, committed relationships” and causes “a basic confusion about exactly what is going on inside one’s own head and what is going on inside the “other.”

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.

They’re in each other all along.

Rumi

Reference: Maggie Scarf. (1991). Meeting Our Opposites in Husbands and Wives. In Zweig, C. & Abrahms, J. Meeting the Shadow: The HIdden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature. New York: Putnam Sons.

The copyright of the article Why Someone Is Attracted to Another Person in Psychology is owned by Megge Hill Fitz-Randolph. Permission to republish Why Someone Is Attracted to Another Person in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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