The only reason your partner isn’t already perfect may be your own perceptions, rather than his or her flaws. Once you learn how to control and reduce your anxiety instinct, you will increasingly accept what used to bug you about your partner (and yourself—bonus!). So “choosing your perfect partner” is really a matter of seeing your current partner in a different light. It was your similar levels of primal anxiety that created the chemistry that brought you together. Once you lower your anxiety/irritability, this will reduce the fight-or-flight instincts that might drive you apart.

The inevitability of chemistry and our mating instinct may seem like bad news. In fact, it’s great news: there is something you can do to control those forces within you. In order to rise above the ugly behaviors of our instincts, we humans have to train ourselves to spot when we attack or avoid parents, spouses, and children. Instead of becoming experts on how our spouse criticizes or avoids us, we need to become experts about ourselves.

Easier said than done, I know. Change starts with a new way of seeing your relationships and people differently. Modern neuroscience and the study of primates leaves little doubt that the human as a herd animal, whereas traditional psychology sees the human as an individual. That seems like a simple concept, but what makes it difficult is that it butts up against one of our favorite paradigms; we tend to believe that humans are individuals who act from free will at all times.

The pioneering neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp writes that our long, shared, evolutionary journey with other mammals explains the dramatic similarities of the great majority of our brain tissue with that of other mammals—especially the lower, instinctive parts of our brains that control our behavior just as much as it does other mammals. He writes:

“Even though our unique higher cortical abilities, especially when filtered through contemporary thoughts, may encourage us to pretend that we lack instincts—that we have no basic emotions—such opinions are not consistent with the available facts. Those illusions are created by our strangely human need to aspire to be more than we are—to feel closer to the angels than to other animals. But when our basic emotions are fully expressed, we have no doubt that powerful animal forces survive beneath our cultural veneer. It is this ancient animal heritage that makes us the intense, feeling creatures that we are.” (”Affective Neuroscience,” Panksepp p. 21)
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David Code is an Episcopal minister, family coach, writer, and founder of The Center for Staying Married & Raising Great Kids.

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