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Does Familiarity Breed Contempt Or Contentment?

I’ve often heard singles say that they just want to find someone that they are comfortable with, someone with whom they might feel familiar.

But, does comfort and familiarity always lead to successful relationships? Very often it can lead to disaster.

A few years back I met a very lovely lady who seemed to have wonderful qualities. Within a short time, however, I learned about her model for men. You see, her father had thoroughly abused her as a child and young adult.  So, when it came time to find a mate, quite unexplainably, she picked a man just like her father. Why would she do that you might wonder? Because, irrespective of how illogical this might seem, there was a certain amount of “comfort” in knowing what she would get. It was the familiarity that brought her to accept her mate, perhaps even to desire it. Maybe, it’s the case of the devil that you know verse the devil that you don’t know. When I came into her life, I really had no chance. I just didn’t know it. Because she was so used to this kind of person and behavior, she projected on to me what she had received from her father and husband. In her mind it wasn’t if I would abuse her, it was just a question of when. And, because her distorted idea of comfort with this type of man was so pronounced and set, she really couldn’t accept any other kind of person.

I’ve met other women who were “daddy’s little girl.” What’s wrong, you might ask, with finding a man, like your father, who will protect and cherish you and try and bring you joy and happiness? There’s nothing wrong with this as long as it is tempered with the development of self reliance, of learning to be responsible for one’s own actions, and dealing with reality. But, if a well meaning parent overly indulged his daughter, never let her make her own decisions, protected her from all risks, perhaps she will inevitably grow up expecting to meet a man, just like her father, who will give her everything she wants, on demand, without any personal responsibility. We’ve all known men who have stepped into that role, mostly with dire consequences.

I’ve also known men who had overbearing mothers who never let their sons out of their sight or allowed them to make their own decisions. Men like this often try to replicate the personal style of their mother, opting for women, just like their mothers, who will make most of the decisions and carve out the direction of the relationship.

Sometimes we pick familiar partners to act out a scene or role that wasn’t able to take place with a parent. So, when a young girl’s father walks out abruptly on her and her mother, she may very well, subconsciously, seek an older man to replay the loss of the relationship with her father.  Finding a man that reminds her of her father might make her quite happy……maybe?!

I’ve often found myself quite comfortable when I met someone who might have come from a similar background, or the same religion, or the same area of the country, or had similar life experiences. This is natural and sometimes magnetic. It can be very surprising how quickly one can feel close to such an individual. There’s nothing wrong with this at all. Often, it can be most desirable. But, we need to remain conscious of the fact that there are far greater areas of importance that need to be experienced and learned before deciding that someone is right for us.  

What good is it to have memories about similar childhood scenes if someone grows up with a different set of values and priorities? Some people today still prefer someone with the same religious beliefs. That might be beneficial on some level, but how much weight does it have if you find yourself becoming continually bored with the other person.

Curiously, in a 2007 study by Michael I. Norton and his colleagues from the Harvard Business School, the research showed that even though people felt that learning more about someone (becoming more familiar), more information, on average, actually led to less liking. Bottom line: Lacking information about someone leads to liking, whereas familiarity, the acquiring of more information, actually leads to less liking and can breed contempt. The key area is dissimilarity. The more time one spends with another, the more likely one will discover areas of dissimilarity, which the studies showed inevitably leads in most cases to disliking the person.

It’s an age old argument about how important familiarity is to a relationship. I’ve heard one person say that opposites attract, but likes stay together. Whatever side of the argument you take, I’m afraid it’s a lot more complicated than that. We are all unique in our own way, so it stands to reason that no one formula will work for all of us. It’s rational to think that the best time for a relationship is when you first meet each other. You’ve idealized the other person, very much because you really don’t know them very well. But, with the passage of time and the accumulation of experiences, you are bound to learn some things about your potential partner that doesn’t agree with you. It’s ultimately the importance of some of these differences in a fair, mature and reasonable relationship, and how the participants deal with them that will eventually determine its chance for success. In the best relationships partners willingly blend differences with familiarity and content themselves with what they have created.