Why Are You Attracted to People Who Already Have a Partner?

Why do you feel fascinated by people who already have a partner? And why, on other occasions, does a third component in the love relationship not bother us? Sigmund Freud explains it to us.

Sigmund Freud had already talked about these issues in a short treatise on love life in 1910. From his point of view, it is a choice in which the other perceives himself more like an object that as a subject, therefore, more like something to possess

Desires towards women who are already in a relationship are, for Freud, a kind of necessary condition to love, in which the presence of a third character is essential: in fact, it is an offended third party to claim a right of property and possession. Therefore, in a similar case, instead of being moved by love, we are moved by the desire to exhibit our superiority on the other.

This is a primitive need that we can trace back to the antagonism derived from the ES (that entity that “represents the voice of nature in the soul of man”, which contains instinctive impulses of an erotic nature, aggressive and self-destructive drives) and obsession in childhood by the mother – father – son trio.

In fact, the child, in the oedipal phase, experiences hateful emotions towards the father With the father perceived as a “possessor of the mother”, the child tries to conquer the mother in all ways without success. For this reason, this child, as an adult, will feel attracted to women who already have a partner, by virtue of the desire to free himself from that first great failure, becoming the first and only in the heart of the loved one.

Freud, in his article, refers to a mainly male figure, but his theory is also applicable to the world female to be read from the perspective of the father’s possession and contrast with the mother.

Freud also touches on another quite interesting aspect: the interest that one feels towards people characterized by a questionable reputation This would also be a kind of essential prerequisite to love, this time, however, caused by the difference between the maternal figure, intrinsically characterized by great integrity and purity, and a woman of dubious fame or questionable morality. It must be said that, for Freud, what is divided in the conscious is united in the unconscious, so a rapprochement between the mother and the woman of dubious morals seems conceivable, between purity and transgression But how does the young man achieve this combination?

He realizes a similar approach after having understood that his mother, like all people in the world, is also a being characterized by sexual impulses and fantasies, an observation that makes disappear the old ideals of angelic purity, which always had attributed them.

Therefore, the maternal figure is not so distant from women “with lax morals”, and this reactivates the Oedipal complex if it is not well concluded. This is what will lead him, later, to look for women very sexual or for a provocative and subversive behavior

What is Freud’s opinion regarding the acceptance of the presence of a third individual in the relationship?

From his point of view, not all men feel that desire for exclusivity with their woman and, in fact, they would not feel any discomfort due to the presence of a third element (in some cases, they would even like it). This could be interpreted as a acceptance of the oedipal family triangle and, sometimes, like an obsession with this situation.

In this sense, according to Freud, the value of women would be underestimated as if it were just a tool to recreate that first triangle situation or as if its value returned only to that third element, without which it would be neither seductive nor intriguing.

It is evident that the brief Freudian text can be a source of inspiration for many considerations on the topic in question and on the relationship with mothers and fathers.