Sometimes we can know a great deal about someone and still feel nothing move inside us. At other times, a glance, a face, a gesture, or simply another person’s presence is enough to spark our interest.
Partner choice involves conscious and unconscious processes at the same time. We have ideas about whom we are looking for and which qualities matter to us, while rapid, intuitive and emotional responses also shape who captures our interest.
MyDestiny begins with this multilayered process of human choice.
Its professional perspective brings together psychodynamic thinking, research on partner choice, evolutionary psychology and biology, implicit learning and memory, social neuroscience, and cultural and anthropological approaches.
Conscious and unconscious choice
Some of our decisions are deliberate, while other processes operate rapidly, intuitively and unconsciously. In social situations we form impressions from faces, gaze, movement, voice and other people’s behavior, and these impressions can evoke emotional responses.
MyDestiny therefore gives space to spontaneous choice as well.
In the image-choice process, you first respond from your own perspective and then from the perspective of how you imagine your desired partner would choose. Together, these two choice processes offer a new perspective on how you function and which relational qualities attract you.
Our relational history is present in our choices
From a psychodynamic perspective, earlier emotional and relational experiences may continue to operate as internal relational patterns.[1][3]
They can contribute to how we perceive other people, what we expect from them, when we experience closeness or distance, and how we respond in an emerging relationship.
Contemporary psychodynamic models understand current relating as an interaction between a person’s enduring relational patterns, the characteristics of the other person, and the situation that develops between them.[3]
Every new relationship therefore brings together our own relational history, the other person’s history, and what is being created between us in the present.
What we retain as patterns of functioning
Memory preserves both stories and patterns of functioning.
Research on implicit memory and learning shows that earlier experiences may persist in expectations, automatic responses and learned ways of functioning.[2][3]
Relational experiences can therefore become visible in how we approach others, maintain distance, respond sensitively to particular situations, or experience someone as familiar very quickly.
Psychodynamic thinking and research on implicit learning meet at this point: both attend to the ways in which past experience can remain active in present responses.
Partner similarity and relational fit
One important area of partner-choice research is partner similarity, or assortative mating.
Research shows that partners may resemble one another across a range of social, demographic, attitudinal and psychological characteristics. A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis examined 480 partner correlations from 199 studies across 22 traits and also analysed 133 traits in nearly 80,000 UK Biobank couples. The degree of similarity differed substantially across traits and populations.[12]
Other large-scale research suggests that partner choice, shared social and environmental background, and changes occurring during a relationship can all contribute to observed similarity between partners.[13]
MyDestiny therefore approaches the meeting of two people as a multidimensional relational pattern.
The relationship between two people’s results is presented across five distinct relationship dimensions.
We perceive more of one another than we put into words
A substantial part of human communication is nonverbal.
Facial expression, gaze, posture, movement, tone of voice and speech rhythm continuously communicate information about how another person is present in an interaction.
Research on nonverbal communication examines how these signals participate in emotional and interpersonal regulation.[4]
Research on interpersonal synchrony also investigates how two people’s behavior and physiology may become coordinated during interaction. Different forms of synchrony have been associated with social connection, coordination of shared tasks and processes that support mutual understanding.[15]
Social perception: when another person’s actions activate processes in us
An important area of neuroscience investigates how the brain processes the actions of other people.
Classic mirror-neuron research identified neurons that respond both when specific actions are performed and when similar actions are observed.[5][6]
Research over the following three decades has developed a broader picture of a complex and flexible “mirror mechanism” involving motor, sensory and emotional systems.[14]
Embodied simulation is one influential framework for interpreting part of this research. Contemporary social neuroscience also investigates the contribution of memory, emotional responses, context and higher-level interpretive processes alongside sensorimotor mechanisms.[7][8][14]
For MyDestiny, an important idea from this field is that perceiving another person involves a combination of rapid bodily, emotional and interpretive processes.
The brain changes with experience
The human nervous system is plastic.
Through learning and experience, the functioning of neural networks changes, and relational experiences form part of our continuous learning throughout life.[2][9]
Modern neuropsychology approaches complex mental functions as dynamic and distributed functional systems.[9]
This perspective fits the lived complexity of relationships, in which emotions, memories, bodily responses, interpretations, expectations and the other person’s continuing responses are present at the same time.
Evolution and culture shape us together
Human partner choice has an evolutionary history, while every person grows up within a particular family, community and culture.
Biological dispositions, learning processes, personal experiences, family patterns, social environments and cultural norms continuously interact in shaping human behavior.[10][11]
In MyDestiny’s professional perspective, biological, psychological, relational and cultural levels are different viewpoints on the same complex human process.
What does this mean in MyDestiny?
MyDestiny is a proprietary image-choice based system for self-reflection and relationship exploration.
The user chooses from two perspectives:
- first from their own point of view;
- then from the perspective of how they imagine their desired partner would choose.
The two choice processes generate a personal result that offers written feedback across four areas of self-reflection.
When two people’s results meet, MyDestiny presents their relationship across five relationship dimensions.
The system is designed to offer a new perspective on:
- how you function in connection with others;
- which relational qualities attract you;
- how your own inner compass relates to what you seek in a partner;
- how the relational worlds of two people meet.
References
- Sandler, J. (1976). Countertransference and Role-Responsiveness. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 3, 43–47.
- Westen, D., & Gabbard, G. O. (2002). Developments in Cognitive Neuroscience: I. Conflict, Compromise, and Connectionism. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 50, 53–98.
- Westen, D., & Gabbard, G. O. (2002). Developments in Cognitive Neuroscience: II. Implications for Theories of Transference. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 50, 99–134.
- Pally, R. (2001). A Primary Role for Nonverbal Communication in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 21, 71–93.
- Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex. Brain, 119, 593–609.
- Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2004). The Mirror-Neuron System. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 169–192.
- Gallese, V., Eagle, M. N., & Migone, P. (2007). Intentional Attunement: Mirror Neurons and the Neural Underpinnings of Interpersonal Relations. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 55, 131–176.
- Vivona, J. M. (2009). Leaping from Brain to Mind: A Critique of Mirror Neuron Explanations of Countertransference. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 57, 525–550.
- Solms, M. (2000). Preliminaries for an Integration of Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience. Annual of Psychoanalysis, 28, 179–200.
- Bereczkei Tamás (1991). A génektől a kultúráig: Szociobiológia és társadalomtudomány.
- Bereczkei Tamás (2012). Rejtett indítékok a párkapcsolatban: Vonzalom, párválasztás, szexualitás.
- Horwitz, T. B., Balbona, J. V., Paulich, K. N., & Keller, M. C. (2023). Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of 22 traits and UK Biobank analysis of 133 traits. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 1568–1583. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01672-z
- Sjaarda, J., & Kutalik, Z. (2023). Partner choice, confounding and trait convergence all contribute to phenotypic partner similarity. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 776–789. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01500-w
- Bonini, L., Rotunno, C., Arcuri, E., & Gallese, V. (2022). Mirror neurons 30 years later: implications and applications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26, 767–781. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.06.003
- daSilva, E. B., & Wood, A. (2025). How and Why People Synchronize: An Integrated Perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 29, 159–187. DOI: 10.1177/10888683241252036