4 ms·

The best advice I can give is to date/marry/bond with someone as similar as possible to yourself. I know this is both sociopolitical anathema, and breaks the ru

by jl2718 6y ago

The best advice I can give is to date/marry/bond with someone as similar as possible to yourself. I know this is both sociopolitical anathema, and breaks the rules of attraction/neediness. The other option is a lifetime of frustration trying to understand why this person thinks/says/does every little thing. This is only fun when it’s inconsequential, and you both walk away, each thinking the other is so impressed that they want to be just like you. No. Prepare for anagnorisis. The opportunity for highly-similar pairing peaks in grad school. I believe this has more to do with graduate program success than the grad schooling itself. But you won’t take this advice. You will choose someone that makes you feel better about yourself, either because they need heroic superior you to fill some deficit in themselves, or because the relationship proves that in fact you are perfect with no such deficits. If you don’t recognize the full irony and impending disaster of that situation, I strongly advise reading any book on codependency.

bombcar 6y ago
A corollary of this is that third-party observers are often quite easily able to notice this, though advice is often ignored.
eplanit 6y ago
True wisdom here. Heed it, younger people!
rossdavidh 6y ago
My wife is quite different than I am, in many ways. She was an arts major who lived in a punk rock house that had shows with out of town bands in the basement. I was an Electrical Engineering major who listened to a lot of prog rock. None of our mutual friends expected us to hook up. We have been together over 20 years, and the fact that we are different means we are more often able to complement each others' skill sets (not least in the raising of our daughter). Just one data point, of course, but there you are.
- jl2718 6y ago
  You sound almost exactly alike. Music. School. Friends. These are all quite superficial, but it points to very similar patterns of thought and interest. You’ll see what I mean if you ever find yourself dating full strangers again.
  - rossdavidh 6y ago
    Prog rock and punk rock are, yes, both music. She was formerly an art major, I was in electrical engineering, although she was forced to drop out before I met her due to financial issues. So, obviously not complete opposites, but not "almost exactly alike".
brnt 6y ago
Do people like oneself exist? I have never met anyone with whom I agreed fully or shared everything. I can't imagine that one could, or that someone that smioar even exists. Maybe if you come from a small town and had all nonconformism beaten out of you? Even that sounds hard to imagine to me. The paradox of living with someone as I have experienced it is that the larger the apparent difference initially, the more the existence of differences and the necessity of being prepared to expect the unexpected is. Ultimately any romantic relationship ends over incompatibilities that cant or wont be overcome, and in my experience the more similar we were, the more certain people were about gaps being too wide to bridge. I'm married now with a foreign person, whom I met while in a third country, we've been together for over 7 years and while what you describe is always present and is sometimes tiring, the truth is that we also regularly discover how we have changed and 'infected' each other with habits and opinions. And that happens in any relationship: you grow towards each other, if you can and want to let it happen. I therefore think it may in fact be easier when you are different: there is nowhere to hide and you need and are obviously prepared to deal with difference. When you are similarish, you might delude yourself into forgetting you are in fact not.
- jl2718 6y ago
  You’re describing a fear of intimacy. It’s actually fear of rejection, or of self-rejection, like so many things. If you choose someone to avoid a faithful reflection of yourself, you won’t be upset at any dissonance. It does work though.
  - brnt 6y ago
    You say things without showing or proving them. They merely seem hollows words invented to fit a narrative constructed to achieve precisely what you accuse others of: making yourself feel comfortable with your imperfect choices.
    - jl2718 6y ago
      Sure. Regardless, it wasn’t a criticism. Your words seemed true and the situation common by my observation. There are some west Asian ‘third world’ cultures I have observed where marriage is not tied to any bond of intimacy or cohabitation, and now I see that as the direction of modern society as well. I’m not ready to make a value judgement on that. Maybe after a few lifetimes trying different pairing strategies.
staticman2 6y ago
Wouldn't you naturally learn how to model how your mate thinks over time? Does it really doom you to a lifetime lacking understanding of how they think?
- jl2718 6y ago
  You would think so, but no, you are only observing and predicting behavior. But life is infinitely nuanced. And even if you could, what help is that when those thoughts have power over you, and you have none over them? It will never feel okay.
bluefirebrand 6y ago
This is so close to being the right advice imo. Personally I don't think it matters a ton if you have similar interests or careers or think about things in a similar way. What matters most is that you want the same things out of life and out of a relationship. All of those similarities don't matter one bit if one person wants kids and the other doesn't. Or one person wants to own a lot of property and the other would like to spend every spare cent travelling. Your partner does not have to be someone you share every hobby with or do everything together with, or agree on everything with. They do have to be someone you can build a life with.
- jl2718 6y ago
  Those are examples of fundamental differences in thought patterns, interests, and preferences. And you are right, but a lot of that gets baked into more superficial similarities like education. But, for instance, the statement, “I want kids” can be a massively different statement from rational versus emotional reasoning. I notice I’m sounding like Myers-Briggs, and I hadn’t thought about the validity of that.

by jl2718 6y ago

bombcar 6y ago

A corollary of this is that third-party observers are often quite easily able to notice this, though advice is often ignored.

eplanit 6y ago

True wisdom here. Heed it, younger people!

rossdavidh 6y ago

My wife is quite different than I am, in many ways. She was an arts major who lived in a punk rock house that had shows with out of town bands in the basement. I was an Electrical Engineering major who listened to a lot of prog rock. None of our mutual friends expected us to hook up. We have been together over 20 years, and the fact that we are different means we are more often able to complement each others' skill sets (not least in the raising of our daughter). Just one data point, of course, but there you are.

jl2718 6y ago
You sound almost exactly alike. Music. School. Friends. These are all quite superficial, but it points to very similar patterns of thought and interest. You’ll see what I mean if you ever find yourself dating full strangers again.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  Prog rock and punk rock are, yes, both music. She was formerly an art major, I was in electrical engineering, although she was forced to drop out before I met her due to financial issues. So, obviously not complete opposites, but not "almost exactly alike".

brnt 6y ago

Do people like oneself exist? I have never met anyone with whom I agreed fully or shared everything. I can't imagine that one could, or that someone that smioar even exists. Maybe if you come from a small town and had all nonconformism beaten out of you? Even that sounds hard to imagine to me. The paradox of living with someone as I have experienced it is that the larger the apparent difference initially, the more the existence of differences and the necessity of being prepared to expect the unexpected is. Ultimately any romantic relationship ends over incompatibilities that cant or wont be overcome, and in my experience the more similar we were, the more certain people were about gaps being too wide to bridge. I'm married now with a foreign person, whom I met while in a third country, we've been together for over 7 years and while what you describe is always present and is sometimes tiring, the truth is that we also regularly discover how we have changed and 'infected' each other with habits and opinions. And that happens in any relationship: you grow towards each other, if you can and want to let it happen. I therefore think it may in fact be easier when you are different: there is nowhere to hide and you need and are obviously prepared to deal with difference. When you are similarish, you might delude yourself into forgetting you are in fact not.

jl2718 6y ago
You’re describing a fear of intimacy. It’s actually fear of rejection, or of self-rejection, like so many things. If you choose someone to avoid a faithful reflection of yourself, you won’t be upset at any dissonance. It does work though.
- brnt 6y ago
  You say things without showing or proving them. They merely seem hollows words invented to fit a narrative constructed to achieve precisely what you accuse others of: making yourself feel comfortable with your imperfect choices.
  - jl2718 6y ago
    Sure. Regardless, it wasn’t a criticism. Your words seemed true and the situation common by my observation. There are some west Asian ‘third world’ cultures I have observed where marriage is not tied to any bond of intimacy or cohabitation, and now I see that as the direction of modern society as well. I’m not ready to make a value judgement on that. Maybe after a few lifetimes trying different pairing strategies.

staticman2 6y ago

Wouldn't you naturally learn how to model how your mate thinks over time? Does it really doom you to a lifetime lacking understanding of how they think?

jl2718 6y ago
You would think so, but no, you are only observing and predicting behavior. But life is infinitely nuanced. And even if you could, what help is that when those thoughts have power over you, and you have none over them? It will never feel okay.

bluefirebrand 6y ago

This is so close to being the right advice imo. Personally I don't think it matters a ton if you have similar interests or careers or think about things in a similar way. What matters most is that you want the same things out of life and out of a relationship. All of those similarities don't matter one bit if one person wants kids and the other doesn't. Or one person wants to own a lot of property and the other would like to spend every spare cent travelling. Your partner does not have to be someone you share every hobby with or do everything together with, or agree on everything with. They do have to be someone you can build a life with.

jl2718 6y ago
Those are examples of fundamental differences in thought patterns, interests, and preferences. And you are right, but a lot of that gets baked into more superficial similarities like education. But, for instance, the statement, “I want kids” can be a massively different statement from rational versus emotional reasoning. I notice I’m sounding like Myers-Briggs, and I hadn’t thought about the validity of that.