So have there been any first meetings that, in hindsight, should have told you to turn and flee? Have there been any first meetings that, in hindsight, you should have taken as the starting point for something important? No regrets – the past is over – but maybe such meetings can be a touchstone as you go forward.
Three elements
If face-to-face compatibility’s confirmed and what we want is a simple liaison, we need demand very little more than passion and opportunity. If we are seeking something deeper, the criteria are more complex; below the intensity and the delight, there’s a need for a deeper compatibility. As Joanne Woodward apparently said of her five-decade marriage to Paul Newman, ‘Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades. But to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day . . . that’s a real treat.’ So, can we get – can we give – that kind of treat, whether through laughter or otherwise, with our partner?
If we can, we’re likely looking at connection across three elements: values, life goals and personality traits:
• Values: what makes our existence most worthwhile: safety, excitement, social recognition, happiness, self-respect, status.
• Life goals: the achievements we crave during a lifetime: career success, financial security, travel, adventure, marriage, children.
• Personality: a combination of character and temperament: honesty, mental acuity, kindness, generosity, bravery, commitment to hard work.
There’s a numbers problem here. I’ve just enumerated a longish list of examples to cover all three elements, but I could have devoted an entire chapter (or indeed a whole book) to each. For, while a full tally of a partner’s hobbies is typically achievable on the fingers of one hand, the possible subcategories of these three deeper levels might number more than the hairs on one’s head. Far too many elements to keep count of, let alone keep in mind as a benchmark for partner choice. Better to explore these issues more broadly to reveal what’s really important.
Three questions
The next exercise lets you attempt this broader exploration. It has as its starting point a somewhat morbid topic, but it’s useful to help you reflect. Imagine you are on your deathbed. You are looking back on a good life. You’ve experienced what you were meant to experience, done what you were meant to do, are ending as you are meant to end. Now ask yourself these questions:
He wondered how long it would take his partner to join him at the summit, given that they’d set off in different directions to begin with.
1. What three values made your life most worthwhile? (Think benefits such as safety, happiness, etc.)
2. Which three goals have you achieved in your life that you are most satisfied with and proud of? (Think aims such as career success, adventure, etc.)
3. What three personality traits do you most want other people to praise you for when you have gone? (Think descriptors such as honesty, generosity, etc.)
Answer these three questions, get your nine answers, and you’ll have a top-line list of what is deeply important in your life and thus what needs to be deeply important to your partner in his or her life. If one of your key values is status, you’ll want a partner to rate that too. If your dream is to parent an entire football team of offspring, your ideal partner will be one who shares that goal – forgive the pun. If it matters to you to work hard, you’ll need a partner willing to pull all-nighters alongside you, or at the least give you a genuinely appreciative hug when you finally come to bed at 6 a.m.
Proofs of love
Nine words are a great start, a good snapshot. Problem is, almost always we’ll choose words that – while meaningful – are also abstract, indefinite, lacking detail. Example: almost everyone who does this exercise mentions the word ‘love’. But what particular flavour of love is that – and what if it’s not to a prospective partner’s taste? What if our idea of ‘love’ consists of huge amounts of free time apart, and theirs is 24/7 gazing into each other’s eyes? What if we agree with St Paul that ‘love is patient, love is kind’, while our partner is more of the Woody Allen school of thought that says ‘love is suffering’.
Fanfares please for counsellor Gary Chapman’s bestselling book The Five Love Languages, which makes just this point. He suggests we each have our own vocabulary of ways we feel cared for, as does our beloved – but discrepancy between our respective visions creates relationship booby traps. Chapman’s list of five languages is as follows: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, physical touch – though there are surely more one could creatively add to the list. And it’s pretty clear where the traps might lie. If our partner’s top love-language is gifts and ours is words of affirmation, then however many delightful presents they bring home, we’ll still feel unappreciated if they don’t say those three little words. If our top criterion is quality time spent together, while our partner defines love as acts of service, then however many romantic weekends we surprise them with, they won’t be satisfied if we don’t occasionally take the rubbish out.
What are your proofs of love? Define them as concretely as you can. Then list just as concretely the ‘proofs’ of all your deathbed answers. What do you mean by ‘safety’ – is that financial, practical or emotional? What are you thinking of when you talk about ‘career success’ – promotion, work satisfaction or appreciation from your team? What do you have in mind when you talk of ‘generosity’ – is that giving of your time, your money, your energy? Think through these deeper meanings so that, when the time’s right, you can explain them to a partner and teach them how to be good for you.
Sameness
It’s clear that we need a partner to accept, appreciate and approve of these elements of us. But do we need them to copy, to match exactly, to be a ‘bird of a feather’ that ‘flock[s] together’? Here we call on the insights of psychiatrist Hellmuth Kaiser, who in the 1940s, while watching identical twins ice-skate in perfect harmony, suddenly realized that the audience’s rapt fascination was due more to the synchronicity of the siblings than to their technical skill. We human beings like sameness. It makes us feel secure; babies even a few minutes old gurgle with glee when adults mirror their movements. It makes us feel validated; imitation is flattering, so strengthens our good feeling about ourselves.
This good feeling’s reciprocal, a virtuous circle; if we worship a partner because we’re alike, they’ll probably worship us back. Which is why most dating systems, from online to matchmaking, pair clients based on likeness. And certainly when it comes to values and life goals, this approach is quite correct. Pair with someone who’s taking the same track in life and we’ll be content; if we’re on opposite tracks we’ll either move apart at speed, or play tug-of-war. Love, as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry famously wrote, consists ‘not in two people looking at each other, but two people looking outwards in the same direction’.
With personality it’s slightly more complicated, the research is more contradictory and it’s possible opposites really do attract. Yes, same-personality partners may make good buddies. But there may not be enough spark for interest, let alone romance, not enough complementarity for day-to-day teamwork, let alone home-building, child-rearing and balancing all the spinning plates of a practical life together. As an example, in Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s novel about girls growing up in Civil War America, Jo March makes a fast friend of Laurie, the boy next door. Their bond is close and strong, but when Laurie falls in love with Jo, she is sensible enough to realize that their similarly masculine attitudes and hot-tempered personalities mean they could never make a good match. Instead, she moves to New York and there meets academic Friedrich Bhaer, whose tender character complements rather than copies her own; under his guidance she fulfils her potential, while Laurie ends up equally happily married to more feminine, less tempestuous Amy March. The lesson Alcott offers us – and one which relationship-advice books have repeated down the ages – is that we should choose a mate with similar values and goals, but with a different personality.