“I think I fell in love with Ryan* the day he told a joke that sounded just like the jokes my dad used to tell,” June* told me. “He’s not like my dad in any other way. I already knew I liked him a lot, but that reminder of my father just flipped the switch.”

Jackson*, on the other hand, had the opposite experience with his wife, Maria*. “She was so different from anyone I’d ever known,” he said. “I mean, she was a university professor, but she wasn’t driven to publish or prove herself. My parents were partners in large law firms. They worked 24/7 and pushed us kids to be superstars. Maria just liked teaching, and she wrote because she was fascinated by the material. She didn’t care about tenure, or best-seller status, or anything like that. I loved her for that.”

As my Psychology Today colleague Karen Stollznow explains in her post “Do Opposites Really Attract,” recent studies have shown that most of us are drawn to others who are similar to us in a variety of ways, from religious and spiritual beliefs to political ideology, diet, drinking and smoking habits, and, according to one study, even the amount of time we spend on the computer. It makes sense that we are also drawn to people who share our core values and beliefs.

But sometimes we like someone who is different from us, or from the family we grew up in. For instance, a woman who has spent her whole life being “good” may be drawn to a man who drinks, gambles, and has random sex with many different women. Or a man who longs to settle down may be drawn to an airline........

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