I am working out this new theory in my mind about relationships. Some of the psychology out there today in regards to relationships suggests that we have a subconscious tendency to act like our same sex parent in the constucts of a marriage (or long-term partnership). Women will inadvertently try to recreate their mother's role in a marriage, and men will act like their fathers. Your parents provide the models for the biggest role in your life. If you think about it, in terms of "nature versus nurture", learning how to behave in a relationship towards the opposite sex is a huge part of our environment as a child. This remains true whether your parental unit stayed intact or not, and without a conscious effort to not act like your same sex parent (for instance, if you are aware enough to recognize the way your same sex parent acted and made a deliberate choice not to behave that way due to the consequences of those actions), one naturally slides into the role that the same sex parent modeled to them.
So supposing that it is true, that over time in a relationship, women tend to model the behavior of their mother and men model the behavior of their father, then my theory is in order to fully determine compatability with another person, you need to determine if that person's same sex parent would have gotten along with, or been able to meet the needs of, your same sex parent. Simply put, if you are a woman, you would want to introduce your mother to his father, and if you can assess that they would have made a good combination, you have a high chance of making it work between you.
A man learns how to love a woman from watching his father love women. In a stable marriage, he would learn how to treat his wife from how his father treats his mother. If the parental unit dissolved and his father loved a series of women, or perhaps none at all, a man learns from that as well. When he becomes mature, he can make the conscious decision to not act like his father, but without assessing this and making this choice, he subconsciously displays the learned behavior in relationship to how he treats a woman. So single women, I advise you to educate yourself about the father of the man you are seeing to determine what kind of relationship influence he provided, and also ask the man you are seeing how he felt about the way his father treated women, to determine if he has thought it through and made any decision about whether it was something to aspire to or not.
Whether we want them to or not, our parents set the relationship stage for us. If you want to determine how the play is going to turn out, analyze the role that each same sex parent played on that stage. Then choose your mate carefully with this in mind.
I picture asking my mother to dance with his father, and then watching to see if they laugh together.