This article was written Markham Heid and provided by our partners at Men’s Health.
Ever meet a guy’s mother…and feel like you look uncomfortably similar to her? Turns out, it’s pretty common for a dude to date his mom’s doppelganger. Researchers in Finland recruited 70 men and women and compared the face of each person’s spouse to the participant’s opposite-sex parent. The disturbing results: While the women’s husbands looked nothing like their fathers, the men were likely to end up with women who “significantly†resembled their moms, says Urszula Marcinkowska, Ph.D., an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Turku.
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That’s the bad news. The silver lining? There’s nothing unnatural about men being attracted to women who resemble their mothers, says Marcinkowska. ?Here’s why: Evolution and natural selection have pre-programmed people to seek out partners who come from their same species group. And since men’s earliest and closest contact is with their mothers, they becomes the template dudes seek out, says Marcinkowska. Fathers—no matter how dedicated and present—simply don’t leave the same type of imprint on their daughter’s mate preferences.? (For more on the bizarre science of attraction, check out 18 research-backed ways to boost your sex appeal.)
But be warned: The mother-son connection doesn’t stop at looks. While Sigmund Freud’s idea of an “Oedipus complex†has been largely discarded by psychologists, a man’s relationship with his mother will play a big part in how well he connects with women later in life, says Michael Kimmel, Ph.D., a SUNY sociologist and author of Guyland.
The best foundation for healthy romantic attachments is a close and affectionate mother-son bond, says Kimmel. But if a guy had a rough relationship with a mother who was distant or neglectful, he may unconsciously seek out similar women as romantic partners, says William Pollack, Ph.D., an expert on men and young men at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School. Why? Because you’re trying to “fix†that broken mother-son relationship. “But that hardly ever works out,†says Pollack, who is also a member of the Men’s Health advisory board.