i recently talked with Brock and we discussed this idea of how we 'project our past events with the opposite sex on others. A little or lot of what Carl Jung called animus and anima projection. Sometimes, if not much of the time we can do this unconsciously not recognizing the full impact of our need to identify with our opposite pole. There is a need to integrate the positive and negative even if for instance there may be positive/positive and negative/negative associations as well. Interesting subject... and interesting to identify in our interactions. We may have blind spots that others can quite easily see that we head into without lites on to see where we are going.
Each man has a feminine side of himself it is called the anima and each women has a masculine side to herself and it is called the animus. It seems there can be quite an identification with this aspect of ourselves in the opposite sex and it can get us in trouble if we project to much onto some person of the opposite sex-- that may be a lot of let overs from past encounters with the opposite sex. We may see someone totally different then they see themselves and they come along to 'break the spell'. However there are couple of added features i would like to describe in this face off. One is that some people play it for all they can get and then break the spell harshly when the other party seems no longer needed or when something else comes along that fulfills these projections better.
Another way to look at it is that perhaps in same sex interests a woman may identify with another woman's animus and the other women identifies with the anima in her partner. This would play out in a similar way with men.
http://www.lessons4living.com/anima_and_animus.htm
