Standing at a party, drink in hand, you survey the room, looking for the perfect girl.

So, obviously, you instantly shun anyone without your mother's jawline, eyes or exact facial proportions.

Sound familiar?

It might to Tamás Bereczkei, the Hungarian researcher who published a study in September that posits that we look for facial similarities between our parents and any potential paramours.

Bereczkei in the study mapped the faces of 312 Hungarian adults from 52 families.

His team found a man's wife and mother tended to have similar lips, width of mouth and length and width of jaw.

For women, the crucial facial characteristics shared by fathers and lovers were distance between mouth and eyebrows.

Other crucial facial characteristics face height and distance between the eyes and the size of a man's nose.

We seek out those who look like our parents because we understand that our faces -- and theirs -- represent evolution that works. The unknown scares us.

But the known should, too.

As Bereczkei helpfully points out, too strong a focus on facial similarities can start to seem like an argument for incest.

So with all due respect to Dr. Bereczkei (and my mother), I'm not actively seeking 5-foot-6 Jewish women with chestnut brown hair and a penchant for children's mystery novels.

And I'm certainly not calculating the distance between the nose and mouth of would-be girlfriends, so I can later file my findings away and then furtively compare them to the catalogued measurements of my mother.

So back to that party.

I'm not necessarily going to strike up a conversation with the Jewess who asks me if I've read the 41st Nancy Drew (The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes, my mother assures me).

But I might talk to the girl who looks at my Decemberists shirt (the green one, with the antlers) and asks me how many times I've seen them live.

When we look for love, we don't look for our parents.

We look for ourselves.

Yes, my ex-girlfriend fits a certain mold.

She is an indie rock urbanite with chestnut brown hair who has a tendency to worship America's reigning Wonder Woman -- Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Yes, that's my mother. But yes, that's also me.

If our relationships resemble the things we love about our parents, it's because, like it or not, our pasts inform our present selves.

I'm a Mets fan because my father and grandfather support that scrappy team from New York's forgotten borough.

I get weekly emails from the Feminist Majority Foundation because my mother and grandmothers instilled in me the core belief inequality is never OK.

But I need Dr. Bereczkei to know I'm looking for someone who matches up with me because I'm me, not because the distance between my eyes and dimples mirrors that beguiling characteristic of her father's.

And I'm not looking for my mother. My mother's already found her perfect match: a kind Long Islander who designs Web sites and moonlights as a volunteer fireman.

When, years down the road, I find mine, she might very well own The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes in mint condition.

She might still rave about the time she saw Rilo Kiley at Terminal 5.

And yes, Dr. Bereczkei, the distance between her ears and chin might match my mom's, but I hope we'll have more in common than that.

Alex Weisler is a sophomore majoring in journalism and international politics, and is a Daily Collegian municipal government reporter. His e-mail address is acw5084@psu.edu.