The myth of marriage compatibility …

If you’re looking for the right person to marry — the “perfect fit” to who you are — then you’re going to be disappointed and perpetually “looking,” kind of like this guy …

A fellow asked his friend why he never married. The friend replied, “Well, I guess I just never met the right woman; I guess I’ve been looking for the perfect girl.”

“Oh, come on now,” said the first guy. “Surely you have met at least one girl that you wanted to marry.”

“Yes, there was a girl … once. I guess she was the one perfect girl; the only perfect girl I really ever met. She was just the right everything. I really mean that she was the perfect girl for me.”

‘Well, why didn’t you marry her?” asked the fellow.

“Because she was looking for the perfect man.”

If you’re looking for someone to marry who is perfectly compatible with you, you’ve likely bought into the myth that such “compatibility” exists.

It doesn’t.

Many people think of “compatibility” as being some kind of ethereal thing that pre-exists in some person you haven’t met yet, and in order to have a “successful” marriage you have to find that person who is already compatible with you. But “compatibility” is not some pre-existing reality in some person out there you just haven’t met yet.

Compatibility in marriage must be created, then nurtured for a lifetime.

In the history of humanity, every possible mix of temperaments, characters, and personalities have been brought together, and none are created to be perfectly compatible with some while incompatible with others. What we have seen is that similar temperaments sometimes are a great match, while at other times are sources of conflict. And we’ve seen differing temperaments can sometimes be very compatible because they’re “counter-balances” for each other — and sometimes the cause of great dissension. In other words, EVERY couple will have some area of “incompatibility” with each other simply because they’re two entirely different human beings!

Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy noted, “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.”

Because compatibility is something created by a couple, whether they’re “compatible” largely depends on if they want to be! That means whether they’re willing to die to the “self life” to embrace the “shared life” of a collaborative marriage where a couple works together to create something that wouldn’t exist without both of them blended together.

A collaborative marriage doesn’t mean you’re alike, it means you’re together. Maria Walley, writing for Verily, picks up on this theme when interviewing Michael Fulwiler of The Gottman Institute, who explains:

“Unity [or collaboration] doesn’t mean you’re the same. It means you’re together.”

It’s the idea that how you’re together matters far more than what you’re doing together. It’s this “how” that determines whether the relationship is going to thrive.

“How a couple interacts is the single most fundamental aspect to creating a successful relationship,” Fulwiler says. “Meaning, it’s not who you are or what you do that will prolong or help you find the perfect mate. It’s how you speak to each other, how well you get along, and how you move through time together.”

And this how is driven by something far more powerful and longer-lasting than shared interests or personality. “Measures of personality don’t predict anything,” Gottman once explained to Psychology Today. “But how people interact does. Couples need to feel they are building something together that has meaning.” This means couples who truly interact well together see that their relationship has a more important purpose than to be agreeable — and that purpose and big-picture goal is something that they’re strongly invested in. That’s unity.

That’s collaboration.

Compatibility is something couples create by collaborating, and they do this for a lifetime.

Are you “looking” for someone perfectly compatible for you? Are you disappointed that you’re experiencing conflict with a spouse you thought you were perfectly compatible with? Then you’ll need to surrender the self life for a shared life of collaboration to develop a compatibility that can last a lifetime.

Scotty