I recently posted about the hoax of incompatibility, and it went a bit viral.

Honestly, I was surprised.

The idea that your partner cannot reasonably be everything to you and meet every need is not revolutionary (see Esther Perel for modern discourse on this and David Schnarch for an earlier take).

"I will love you if you are exactly like me and meet my needs in the way that I prescribe or else I will deem you emotionally immature" is not a viable proposition for long term committed love. This stance might work in shorter more transient relationships where the stakes to walking away are low.

But if a lifelong commitment is what you're after, this attitude won't get you far.

The part of my post that most rankled folks is the framing of depth seeking (drive for insight and self-knowledge) as a difference that MOST partners will experience in their relationship.

So I polled my audience to find out how many of you experience a difference in depth seeking in your relationship, with your partner having a different level of interest in "going deep."

Guess what...90% of you are not the same as your partner on this quality. Ninety percent!

But I wasn't surprised. These sorts of major differences come with the territory in long term love.

Why You Should Expect Difference

Let's break it down.

First, you and your partner may start off different. Often when couples meet, they find each other's differences intriguing, stimulating, or soothing. Your partner's steady vibes were a plus when you met. Their free spirited laissez faire approach was compelling. Only over time do the downstream side effects of those differences start to seem like a problem.

Second, and I cannot emphasize this enough...people do change! Your preferences, the way your traits are expressed, your style of communicating, even your values...all these change over the course of a lifetime. The idea that you can proactively select a partner who does not have qualities that majorly irritate you at the bare minimum is just not real life.

And third, you and your partner might actually be SIMILAR on a trait but manifest it differently. Many of you shared with me that you and your partner are both deep thinkers with a strong drive for insight. And even with that similarity, differences in philosophy, neurology, and personality mean that you live out this similarity in very different ways. And that difference in how the trait shows up then creates...guess what, the perception that you are different, and tension around that difference.

Lasting love, the kind you long for, is not made up of perfect synchronicity. It's the friction surrounding ease. The partially met needs. Of good enough, and sometimes barely that, but then when you pull back you see it actually was pretty beautiful.

You don't have to want the kind of commitment that goes beyond a grocery list of requirements. You can choose people who fulfill those needs right now, and when they no longer do, you can find someone who will, until they don't.

But if you want that ride into the sunset, grow old on the porch, love you till I die kind of love, your best bet is to stop seeing your partner through the lens of compatibility and start seeing them as a messy, complex, full human (just like you).

🫶🏻

Dr. Marina