Attachment is the most definitive form of imprinting, also called the "Oedipus," by Freud, attachment is the unconscious, passionate desire and dependence on the opposite sex parent in our youth. It is "turned on" only in the right conditions - where it is safe to do so, reliable to do so, and needed by the baby. In adult life, the same holds true or we will not even choose the right person for ourselves, let alone, say or do the right things to screen for or display in getting together with them.

There are several attachment styles that academics talk about, however, in Romantic Dynamics, we see attachment as a one-way deal in which we benefit from and latch onto our opposite-sex parent, eventually looking unconsciously for the specific virtues and vices of that parent. This, then, becomes the early model for how we choose a mate.

This is often confusing for us in that imprinting phenomenae are both random, and specific at the same time. For our purposes, we will say that it is desire toward the opposite sex parent, in which we unconsciously have an instinct turn on, which filters the people we meet, to disqualify some of them for romance because they either lack the virtues we most enjoyed in our opposite sex parent, or else has some of the vices they had, which nontheless brought us together in the first place.