Max Littman, LCSW
September 9, 2024
A common part that often goes unnoticed unless named in sessions addressing mating issues is a part that evaluates whether a potential mate will fulfill the internal system’s various needs. These needs typically include intellectual, financial, physical, sexual, emotional, social, spiritual, and logistical dimensions. While only a small fraction of these needs can be truly met by any one partner (as discussed in Dick Schwartz’s You Are the One You Have Been Waiting For and Toni Herbine-Blank’s Intimacy from the Inside Out, which emphasize the Self as a primary caregiver to parts), people’s mate assessor parts are vital in finding someone (or multiple people in the case of polyamory) that can complement the Self as a primary caregiver. However, when the system is burdened, these mate assessor parts can become overactive and inadvertently cause more anguish to an already stressed system.
They can also have unrealistic standards and criticism of potential and active mates’ qualities and parts, obstructing access to one’s own Self energy and the Self energy of both a potential or active mate and their parts.
What are clues as to the presence and activation of a mate assessor part? Statements I hear regularly from clients in the mating pool include observations about potential or active mates’ physical features, personality traits, mental health, where they are on the continuum of introversion and extroversion, communication, careers, ambitions, sexual skills and preferences, willingness to be vulnerable, hobbies, values, beliefs, and so on. There is an assessing energetic quality when mating pool clients share these observations. When I inquire if it feels to them like a part is assessing a mate, I almost always receive confirmation. Then, as appropriate and with consent from the client and their system, we begin to get curious about and get to know the mating assessor part. In my experience, this befriending usually leads to a burden of not feeling good enough or being unlovable.
This tends to be true with clients regardless of demographics. However, in working with many gay and queer male clients, and in identifying and having life experiences as a gay cis male myself, I’ve found gay and queer male clients to have significantly pronounced and active mate assessor parts. I believe this tendency is part and parcel to the more fluid nature of mating in gay and queer male culture, especially in my local region of the California Bay Area, compared to other communities, particularly heterosexual and more conservative ones. Additionally, I believe gay and queer men receive more cultural and familial messaging of unlovability than our heterosexual peers, making us more vulnerable to internalizing that burden.
My hope in sharing my experiences and observations about mate assessor parts is that it will open up space for love to be revealed to the internal systems plagued with these personal, legacy, and cultural burdens associated with relationships.
May the love shine through,
Max
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide private practice mentorship, consultation, and therapist/practitioner part intensives.
