I understand what the article is saying, but it feels over complicated and oversimplistic at the same time, there are no light bubs going off for me., although parts of it chime about what I understand about myself.
For me the "comfort zone" (which is very much the wrong term) part of it is that I only know how to relate emotionally to people who act/think/feel in the same way as I learned to, or was around when I was growing up. Those who act in a different way (either "more healthily" - whatever that means, or dysfunctional in a different way) I cannot make a connection with because I can't understand them on any deep level and they can't understand me: we may get physically attracted, but nothing emotional occurs because we cannot communciate at all emotionally.
It is not simply more "comfortable" for me to relate to people who relate/think/feel/understand the world in a way I have been exposed to, it is more that these are the only people it is possible for me to connect to. Essentially, emotionally, anyone else is alien species.
My "pool" of people available for emotional attraction is limited, and limited to certain types, I do not choose to stay in an unhealthy "comfort zone", the choice was
a) make emotional connections within this pool
b) make no emotional connections or
c) learn how these other species view the world in order to explore connecting with them.
I didn't know "c" existed until very recently, because I had no idea that people viewed and experienced the world on such a fundamentally different level than "we" (my pool) did.
So I think the bunkum about being "subconciously" fooled into thinking that by being attracted to someone who is flawed in the same way my parents were flawed I can fix unresolved issues from my childhood or being attracted to people who exhibit things that I have squashed or subsumed (e.g. childhood desire for nose-picking in public) is just that, bunkum. But that's just my opinion.
people are often also attracted to people who had similar childhoods in terms of schooling, geography, family size, housing, religion, "notions of class", education, wealth and other "commonalities", would seem to be more about common languages and understanding, than anything else?