Once you get over the "yecch" factor, there's a cold sting of reality that hits even closer to home.

 

According to relationship coach and clinical sexologist Sandra Reishus -- author of the books OH, NO! I've Become My Mother and OH, NO! He's Just Like My Father -- there is someone whom we model all of our romantic relationships after…

 

Our parents.

 

That's right -- Mommy and Daddy dearest. When we date, according to Reishus, we are searching for the partner who most reminds us of our folks. That contention holds true for those raised by single parents, adoptees and those raised by their extended family. Whoever your closest authority figures were would impact your choices.

 

"It's either Mom, Dad or a combination of the two," Reishus asserts. "No exceptions."

 

She says it's completely unavoidable -- programmed into our hard drive ever since we occupied a womb with a view.

 

"Our parents are the ones that were our role models growing up," Reishus explains. "So we learned how to engage in relationships from them.

 

"Remember, this is the only window we have out into the world when we are growing up. We couldn't just skip from family to family and see how different families did it because we only had just one.

 

"So we looked through this window and we said, 'OK, men act like this and women act like that, so that's what it means to be in a relationship. This is how they treated each other. This is how they treated other people… so in that way it is programmed in."

 

Reishus says our potential paramours don't necessarily have to look like our parents, and that the resemblance doesn't have to be physical.

 

"What's interesting when we're picking partners is that the person in front of us can look nothing like the person before or a Mom or a Dad," she contends.

 

"But if you dig a little deeper, it's there. There are certainly going to be traits that we see from our parents that we kind of gravitate to in people that we date."

 

And even though we may date several people throughout our lifetime before settling down with our (hopefully) soul mate, Reishus asserts that each of our choices will offer certain parental traits in their character that we'll be searching for.

 

"The people that go from relationship to relationship do not pick someone different every time, the way you think they would," she says. "They keep going back to those certain traits, even though the person maybe has a totally different education background, standing in the community, likes, dislikes, it's still under there.

 

"It's the qualities in the other person that get to the brain and say, 'Oh, yes, this is familiar. I know this,' which then can lead to the physical attraction. It just happens in seconds."

 

Reishus also maintains that the sex and sexuality of the person doesn't factor into which of your parents figure into the attraction.

 

"It really depends on what unfinished business they have from the past," says Reishus.

 

"If the unfinished business is with their Mom, then they're going to find somebody and be attracted to someone who they think they can work that out with.

 

"We're all wounded in childhood in some way. So we figure that if we find someone who is the same type as the parents that gave us that wound and we can get that person to recognize us, appreciate us, love us, then we prove our parents wrong."