Does our personality type affect who we are romantically attracted to? How does it affect who our friends are, and who we work with best? These are the questions which we address in this section of The Personality Page. Statistics show that individuals who are most happy within their marriages are those who have the highest levels of inner peace and those who have the most optimistic outlook on life in general.
We do not address people's emotional standing here when discussing relationship issues, which is another important aspect of relationship dynamics. Opposites Attract That old concept and expression "opposites attract" has been batted around for centuries. And in fact, it's very true when it comes to love relationships.
We are naturally attracted to individuals who are different from ourselves - and therefore somewhat exciting. But it's not just the exciting differences which attract us to our opposites, it is also a natural quest for completion.
We naturally are drawn towards individuals who have strengths which we are missing. It predicts that OSOs and SSOs will be attracted to each other while experiencing feelings of relational compatibility. The resulting bond of opposite yet balanced self-orientations may not be happily connected, but it will likely endure hardships and be resistant to change. By definition, people who are codependent severe OSOs are prone to focus on the love, respect and care of others, while dismissing, devaluing or being afraid of seeking the same from others.
Conversely, people who are pathological narcissists severe SSOs are disposed to satiating their own love, respect and care needs, while devaluing, ignoring or neglecting those same needs in their romantic partners. As opposite but balanced personality types, they almost always experience immediate and intense feelings of romantic chemistry. In total, there are 11 values on the continuum of self, representing the full range of self-orientation possibilities.
Continuum of self values increase or decrease in a series of single digits. Examples of each continuum of self value can be viewed at humanmagnetsyndrome. The middle value is zero, which represents an equal balance of love, respect and care given and taken in a relationship.
The positive or negative designation does not imply that one self-orientation is better than the other but merely that they are on opposite sides. The farther the values pairing moves away from zero on the continuum of self, the less mutuality and reciprocity are evident in the relationship.
Conversely, lower pairings on the continuum of self represent an increased mutual exchange of love, respect and care. The former represents a dysfunctional relationship, while the latter represents a healthy relationship.
According to the continuum of self theory, romantic relationships remain viable or endure because the matching opposite self-orientations create a sense of relational equilibrium. If one partner becomes healthier, as evidenced by a shift in his or her lowered continuum of self value, then tacit and direct pressure is placed on the other partner to respond with similar positive movement and growth.
If the partner of the healthier individual does not want or is unable to change and grow, then stress is placed on the relationship. The stress will either lead to a breakdown of the relationship or create pressure for the healthier partner to regress to former levels of dysfunction.
Failure to maintain a balanced inverse bond may result in the failure of the relationship. It should be noted that family systems theory influenced the conceptualization of the continuum of self theory. Corresponding zero values do not signify an absence of self-orientation. Instead, they represent an exact balance of love, respect and care being given and received.
Although having a zero value would be ideal, in reality, the vast majority of people fall somewhere on one side or the other of the continuum of self.
The lower inversely matched couples are able to ebb and flow because of the reciprocal and mutual nature of their well-matched self-orientations continuum of self values. They are able to ask for what they need — and even disagree with each other — without experiencing resentment or conflict. However, higher inversely matched couples create a dysfunctional relationship.
With polar opposite higher continuum of self values, the two are unlikely to reconcile their vast differences in self-orientation. In particular, the person who is a pathological narcissist is an unlikely candidate for any substantive personality change. It is even possible, albeit not usual, for a person to move from one side of the continuum to the other. In the case of a switch in self-orientation from SSO to OSO, for example , the person usually begins with a lower positive or negative continuum of self value.
In addition, this person has likely participated in some form of long-term or regular mental health service. With motivation, emotional fortitude and good counseling, most OSOs and SSOs are capable of learning to practice a mutually satisfying level of give-and-take in the areas of love, respect and care. Relationship stability is achieved when the negative and positive continuum of self values of each partner equal a zero sum.
In other words, zero-sum relationships occur when two partners have an exactly opposite self-orientation. Note that the zero-sum relationship describes the quantitative state of a relationship, not the qualitative state. It is just balanced. Sandy -2 is a mother and wife who enjoys her role as a busy stay-at-home mom.
She stays busy caring for her family and serving in several volunteer positions. With the support of Sandy, Dan works long hours to build his status and reputation in the family business. Although Dan likes the attention that being in the public eye brings him, he still makes himself available for the personal and emotional needs of others, especially when it comes to his family.
If Dan needs help, Sandy steps up in any way she can to help him. Ken harbors deep resentment toward Allison because he has to work multiple jobs to make ends meet for the family.
Although Ken is highly bonded to his children, his work schedule keeps him away from many of the quality moments with them. When they got married, Allison unilaterally decided to quit her successful accounting career because she wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. Lower values pairings illustrate healthier relationships that are characterized by higher levels of mutuality in the exchange of love, respect and care.
Higher continuum of self values pairings demonstrate less healthy relationships that are characterized by a lopsided exchange of love, respect and care, with more going to the SSO and less to the OSO.
Relationship experts have written books based on this assumption. Whether people really find opposites more attractive has been the subject of many scientific studies. Researchers have investigated what combination makes for better romantic partners — those who are similar, different, or opposite? Scientists call these three possibilities the homogamy hypothesis, the heterogamy hypothesis and the complementarity hypothesis, respectively.
The clear winner is homogamy. Since the s, social scientists have conducted over studies to determine whether similarity in terms of attitudes , personality traits , outside interests , values and other characteristics leads to attraction.
They found an irrefutable association between being similar to and being interested in the other person. In other words, there is clear and convincing evidence that birds of a feather flock together.
For human beings, the attractiveness of similarity is so strong that it is found across cultures. Because similarity is associated with attraction, it makes sense that individuals in committed relationships tend to be alike in many ways.
Sometimes this is called assortative mating , although this term is more often used to describe the ways in which people with similar levels of educational attainment, financial means and physical appearance tend to pair up. Both the homogamy hypothesis and the complementarity hypothesis could be true. So is there scientific support that opposites might attract at least some of the time? Love stories often include people finding partners who seem to have traits that they lack, like a good girl falling for a bad boy.
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