`Marriage is the arena in which we work out the emotional baggage of our childhoods," says Liz Early of Accord, the Catholic marriage counselling service. "The subconscious is wise and knows what it needs to do in order for the individual to develop and mature. It is the subconscious mind, not the conscious mind, that chooses a marriage partner."

If you are in the market for a mate, you may consciously believe that it is your beloved's charm, looks and sense of humour that attract you, when your subconscious mind is actually hungering for characteristics you may be loath to recognise. No matter how different we feel a marriage partner is from our parents on the surface, deep down we marry someone who will help us reproduce the problems and tensions of our family of origin.

"We marry what we feel comfortable with - what is familiar," says Early. In other words, one way or another we always marry Mammy or Daddy.

This doesn't mean that - in Freudian fashion - women seek out men who are carbon copies of their fathers, while men marry imitations of their mothers. It is the quality of the most problematic parent that one's subconscious seeks in a mate. So a man may marry a woman like his father, and a woman marry a man like her mother. For example, a man whose childhood was dominated by his emotionally distant and perfectionistic father may choose a demanding wife whom he places on a pedestal. In his book, Myself, My Partner, Dr Tony Humphreys explains that "your past relationships, particularly those in childhood, are critical in determining the nature of the relationship that you establish with your present-day partner. You are likely to be intimately involved with a person who resembles the parent who most made living an emotionally unsafe experience for you . . . But now as an adult, unlike the child who is always a victim of home and other circumstances, you have a chance to redeem yourself from the blocking effects of your parents' relationship with you."

Dr Humphreys, who is a consultant clinical psychologist in private practice, says that his wife, Helen Ruddle, also a psychologist, is in many ways like his mother, who was an invalid whose needs were paramount to her son's. Ruddle, who Humphrey's describes as a woman well able to ask what she needs, enabled Humphreys to learn to cope with meeting a woman's demands while also fulfilling his own needs. Once the couple realised that this dynamic was at work, Humphreys and Ruddle were able to build a flourishing marriage.

"No matter what they may think, everybody marries their mother or father," Humphreys insists. "There are a very few, exceptionally worked-out people who do not - but they are rare."

Myself, My Partner by Dr Tony Humphreys is published by MacMillan £6.99.