Who's Right For Anyone Anyway?

You know, I had 6 relationships before I finally settled down with Colin. The shortest lasted 4 months. But looking back I wondered what the hell I was doing with him.

Or the other 5.

My mum said I fell in love too easily.

Now I know I THOUGHT it was love. Now I know I was desperately looking for someone special, robbed myself of good judgement as a result, and ended up dating the wrong people.

You see, bad hunches and naivette aside, I believe compatibility plays a huge and important role in determining a successful relationship. That and hard work.

"Opposites Attract"? Sure, but 33 years old and a little wiser now, I think two people of different personalities can have a lovely future together BUT only as long as their fundamental value systems are similar.

I have a friend who is highly organized and structured in her ways. And she was dating a guy who operated very organically. She had a very difficult childhood so she also had an incredible will to strive and achieve milestones by certain deadlines. Meanwhile, he was laidback, had never really fought too hard to get anything, loved to go with the flow, and found her ways too claustrophobic.

They loved each other but arguments were a common experience because they would interpret each other's words and actions differently. To the detriment of their relationship usually.

For them "Opposites Did Not Attract For Long". While for me (Miss Dark, Save the World Missionary, Professional Brooder) and Colin (Mr. Smiley, Switched-On-24/7, Positive Pereira), it was a risk I took that paid off.

I know it sounds clinical and cold but what I mean by risk is this: my past 5-6 boyfriends were generally tall, deep thinkers, and reclusive - slightly dark in nature. Colin is short (sorry, Hun), extremely sociable and hates negative attitudes (or what I call super-realism). So when we were about to plunge into a relationship, I really wasn't sure it would work out.

I made a choice figuring that since I had had 6 Aborted Missions in the past, there really wasn't much to lose by "zagging." Today I can safely say that while there are obvious differences in character traits, I actually enjoy these superficial differences because Colin inspires me to be more sociable and positive about things. Meanwhile, what comforts me and continues to fuel the relationship is how we place similar emphasis on God, have similar goals in terms of starting a family, share similar beliefs about money and styles of managing our Finances.

Cold, hard values!

On this one successful experience alone (because I married the guy, of course), I have a theory that my friend needs to date someone structured like herself. Someone who has similar values so that she won't need to take charge all the time, "chase" him to discuss important issues, or disagree so much on life.

Colin is ENFJ (Extrovert-Intuitive-Feeling-Judging) while I am an INFP (Introvert-Intuitive-Feeling-Perceiving).What the-? These are personality types according to the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. If you are interested in discovering who you are deep down inside, check out the test at www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

Compatibility. Don't underestimate it :)