Married Life
One of These Things is Not Like the Other
Happiness expert Sophie Keller wrote this great piece over at Huffington Post about whether you and your partner are “Incompatible, or Refreshingly Different”
“My husband loves the middle of a quiche and I love the outside. He hates exercise, I love it. He knows everything there is about music, I know very little. Does that mean that we are incompatible or refreshingly different?
The fact that you may enjoy different ways of doing things to your partner really doesn’t matter, so long as you feel close. You will find that if you feel close to your partner, you will decide that you are compatible and in those moments that you feel less close, you will probably feel incompatible. How close you feel will depend on your mood.
No doubt, when my husband is in a good mood, he thinks I’m really loyal. In a bad mood, he probably thinks I’m stubborn. When I am in a good mood, my husband is an optimistic person. When I am in a bad mood, I can easily think he is unrealistic. In a bad mood, my husband probably thinks I am opinionated and in a good mood, he might think I’m expressive.”
Den and I are about as different as two people can be. And Sophie is absolutely right: Depending on my mood, the time of day and presumably whether Mercury is retrograde to Saturn or some such nonsense, I feel very differently about my husband.
He’s realistic, and then negative.
Loyal, and then stubborn.
Practical, but then nagging.
Sometimes, when I’m in a good mood I can’t possibly see how we could ever not get along, the two of us. It’s like a magic balance that we strike. Then when it’s all going bad I wonder how on earth I ever manage to put up with him.
Not that this is one-sided, it cuts both ways. I know he thinks my little quirks are cute – until they’re downright annoying. My naive optimism is no doubt refreshing, until then he suddenly thinks I’m a complete flake. I’m charmingly scatterbrained when he’s in a good mood, I’m downright messy and disorganised when he’s not.
The trick with being opposites is to constantly seek that balance between you. But it’s not always going to work out.
At least, when everything else goes to hell, we know that at our core we both want the same things from life, and morally speaking we are on exactly the same page. Everything else is just semantics and keeps us guessing, if nothing else.
Are you and your partner identical twins or so different it sometimes blows your mind?
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Writer, dating columnist, wife, coffee addict, foodie, fashionista... Melburnian through and through. Muser, dancer, blogger, tweeter. Likes to get her head on telly now and again. Sleeper, dreamer, a sucker for romance. And of course... a cheap date.
Discussion
4 comments for “One of These Things is Not Like the Other”
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About half and half.. most people think we are complete opposites, but deep down, we are more alike than anyone knows.
But what struck me about your post, the comment that in a good mood, differences are appealing. She puts me in a good mood more often than not
Ullamco rem placeat
thanks for Rana Ahmed this blog
zain