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If S/He Doesn’t Love You Back, It Could Be Because of Her/His Mother: How Attachment Styles Influence Our Romantic Partner Preference

Our early social experience seems to impact our romantic relationship — possibly even without our full awareness

Mark Chu
7 min readJul 24, 2021
Lonely and rejected
Photo by Verne Ho on Unsplash

Since the dawn of human history, the majority of people, if not all, have been burnt by the pain of unrequited love. From Eponine in Les Miserables, Professor Snape in Harry Potter, to the original story of The Little Mermaid (which definitely will break your heart 100 times), these stories give us a glimpse of the hellish desperation and endless agony: why don’t you love me? Why am I not good enough? Please love me…

Unfortunately, more often than not, the plea is not reciprocated; you just can’t force love. But why? We always believe if we work hard enough, we can get anything we want. Why not love?

Psychologists have been working hard on trying to answer this question, and we do have some ideas. Here we’ll focus on the developmental factor: attachment.

Harry Harlow and his monkey business

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Mark Chu
Mark Chu

Written by Mark Chu

I’m a professor of psychology at a small university in southern New Mexico. I like playing musical instruments, basketball, and writing stories.

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