Yin and Yang
How to Find the Perfect Person to Marry (Yin and Yang Part 2)
I just got married. I’m a super white guy from Massachusetts and my wife is a super Latina mami from Venezuela. I can’t speak a lick of Spanish. She says “jellow” instead of “yellow.” The only thing we seemingly have in common is that we both enjoy salsa dancing (and surprisingly, I like it more than she does.)
With these vast differences, why does this relationship seem to work so well?
I chose my little Latina cutie very carefully. And when I was standing in front of her at our wedding saying “I do,” it felt like the clearest decision I have ever made. Getting such clarity came after a lot of trial and error (also called dating.) It took asking a lot of married people what it took to have a successful marriage. It took me observing successful couples and their behaviors. And more importantly, it came after understanding myself deeply.
Growing up with parents who are together also helps. You get firsthand observational data of a marriage that is working. You can analyze the factors that keep these two people from ripping each other’s heads off. You notice, firstly, that they communicate. They don’t scream at each other. At least not often. As a kid, my parents never handled a dispute in front of us. They usually didn’t have disputes other than over little meaningless pithy things.
What I discovered over time is that they were communicating behind the scenes. I don’t ever see couples in good relationships communicating. That’s because it is almost always done in private. However, you can feel the result of their communication through the way they treat each other in public. Tenuous relationships that don’t settle disputes privately explode on each other in front of others. Quality relationships have their problems resolved before they show up.
The result of this communication is a deep understanding of one another. Not only could I sense my parents’ deep understanding of one another, I also noticed from watching my parents just how different they are. My mom, God love her, is this high-energy, ditsy, extremely fun woman who has a million friends and will make a million more. My dad, on the other hand, is a very serious, high-IQ, analytical mind who might get one text a year from a person he considers a friend. He avoids almost any situation that will make himself look stupid. My mom offbeat line dances. They share nearly zero personality traits.
However, they are not totally different. Underlying their stark personality differences are their shared values. They don’t disagree with each other on big picture things. They both are Fox News Conservatives. They don’t have incredibly different views on how much money they should spend. They raised my sister and I in a very consistent manner. Neither one of us could go to Mom or Dad and get a yes when the other said no. They are both secular with a slight attachment to the Catholic roots they were raised in. They were both raised by middle class families in the suburbs of Worcester, Massachusetts. My mom had two sisters. My dad had two brothers.
Despite being completely different people, they couldn’t possibly have more similar values.
From observing them, I came up with the framework in my mid-teenage years that I used to find my wife. The framework is this:
Find someone with an opposite personality but the same values as you.
This pattern of different people with the same values was a pattern I found almost without fail in successful marriages. And, when I saw divorcees who displayed the Selection Issue, I noticed that their ex was someone too much like them, had different fundamental values, or a combination of the two.
This idea is not completely original to me. It is encompassed in the ancient Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang. We have all heard of Yin and Yang, but we might not understand it’s meaning. The idea behind Yin and Yang is that, in nature, opposite forces are often complementary. And that these opposite forces can create a balance for themselves.
There are predators and there is prey. There is summer and winter. There is day and night.
The Yin and Yang symbol brings deep clarity to this idea.
There are two things worth noting with this famous symbol. First, it’s obvious that each of the two halves take up an equal amount of space. The white is no more than the black and vice versa.
Second, and more subtle, is that inside the white half there is a black dot and inside the black half there is a white dot. Each half contains a mark of the other. In the night sky, there is a bright moon. Some summer days are nearly as cold as winter. In the world we inhabit, there is no black and there is no light. There is always a balance.
And this is what we should seek in a partner: balance. We should find our opposite. Ideally, an opposite such that if they were to leave a little mark of their personality on us, we would greatly improve.
My dad would probably be a hermit if it weren’t for my hypersocial mother to make friends for him. And my mom wouldn’t have much money at all if it weren’t for my dad’s ability to earn and invest.
The same is true in my relationship with my wife. I’m a hard person. I tell the truth, even when it hurts. My wife is soft and has cried in a heated debate with me. But she makes me a little softer in the way I broach topics. I tell the truth, even when it hurts, but I try to limit the hurt by choosing my words carefully and introducing the topic with empathy. I make her harder in the way she can handle conversations. She no longer cries in debates. She will argue with me now and won’t back down when I press her on something we disagree with.
This is just one of the ways we leave a mark on each other. I could give you more examples, but I think you understand the point.
Although I was able to find someone that checks the boxes necessary to make me a better person, I didn’t go out with a checklist on my personality traits and their advantageous counterparts. I knew my traits. When I went on dates, I would try to feel if the puzzle pieces of her and my personality fit together. I don’t think you have to approach finding your person analytically. I think you need intention, but not some clinical screening of each potential candidate. You need to find the types of personalities that make your life harder and the types of personalities that complement your behavior.
If you’re a lonely homebody, an outgoing extrovert will get you out of your shell. If you’re an emotional overthinker, an analytical pragmatist will help you make decisions faster. If you’re a slob, good luck, because I think you deserve to be perpetually alone.
If you want to solve the hardest part of marriage, the Selection Issue, you need to find the person who balances you. And you need to know in what ways you’re unbalanced. You should find that when you’re around the person you’re considering marrying, you are a better person in their presence. You are a version of yourself that you always wished you could be.
If this happens, you have found the right person. If not, and if you’re worse, then you need to keep looking.
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