Do opposites attract or do birds of a feather flock together?
Results show that couples were highly similar on attitudes and values; however, they had little or no above-chance similarity on personality-related domains such as attachment, extraversion, conscientiousness and positive or negative emotions. There is …
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my view on this is oppisites do attract, but it’s generally puppy love, and kind of like a step out of your “box”. Unless you are very understanding and really enjoy opposite viewpoints to the Nth degree, it won’t work long term, and that would take both sides being understanding which doesn’t make you very opposing ;P
At one time I believed opposites attract, but after 11 yrs of mariage that’s changed. I believe your up bringing makes a big difference. Currently I am on a rollercoster with my husband. The last five years have been rough, the sad part about it is I really did not realize how bad it was until the last year. We were ready to break up and actually not sure if we are going to make it. In the last year I have found Porn, extremly graphic photographs on his pc, and I even found a facebook he had with his friends and some of his relatives, I found pictures of sites, a picture of our daughter, and when it came to a picture of his wife, oh well just a question mark
It depends on the people, THAT’S what I believe. Love being so illogical, unpredictable, unjustifiable, and varied, bonds and connections seem to shape a love and defy all ‘logics’ they wouldn’t make two people work. Love does not have rules. For some reason we are beginning to set rules.
So your relationship sucks.
Too bad.
The next person over may be having an entirely different experience. Not all opposite attract-relationships suck as bad as Charlene’s, and opposites-attract don’t always hold a ‘puppy love’ endearment. I am living proof that cancels out anything Samantha thought she was saying was ‘fact.’
Yet, I’ve also experienced that ‘alikes’ attract, but do not last. I’ve heard far too many people say, “I ended up not being with him/her because we were too alike. The same thing, over and over, and that alone made me sick. It’s like we were just two really good roommates.”
So you can see that statistics are never guaranteed. Common similarities in alignment and interests don’t always help stabilization or keep partners close in some relationships. As a living proof of that, they also never taught me any growth, or had any as a relationship. The development just stopped, and we weren’t building anything. The superficial predictability and restlessness were a few of the blockades. Kept feeling unfulfilled and quite frankly restrained. Our bond was very technical, not in the last bit romantic. Some people can merge romance and relationship sustainment in one. Some people can fall in love and just have both, but it depends ON THESE PEOPLE.
Similarities can be quite fickle and yes, superficial. Being with someone so alike can even validate that you’re obviously fine being on your own instead of standing next to your double. People who do have those similarities get on each other’s nerves quickly just as much as opposites do, which is why I depend on the internal similarities instead of the outer. People can be driven away regardless of stability or instability. Everyone’s experiences are forever different and divided, but since I am a living statistic to know what I’m talking about and so are the people I personally know, I have some fact to that “no, it’s not more stable than opposites and their extremities.”
For instance, I can be very talkative and outgoing. My ‘partner’ was very talkative and outgoing, and that put me on halt. Sometimes our traits did overpower the other’s to where we were almost battling for dominance of personality like, “Okay, shut up and let me talk too.” It either grew annoying, turned me off, or just caused me to have some brief feeling of disinterest and detachment from him. I seem to feel more comfortable with someone who was the opposite of my talkative nature, because it gave me the upper hand and confidence to talk to them, and surely, they did listen and comment when necessary. While we were together, for some reason, I began feeling like even though there was generally nothing wrong with us, something was just…off.
Like I said, similarities don’t commonly branch into more or expand you (what expands a relationship is love), and with those who I am similar towards, I eventually find them unexciting and incompatible in time, a sour taste of annoyance and bore, a roll of the eyes with a, ‘I’ve seen it all before, this relationship isn’t doing anything for me, and usually that shouldn’t matter, since the only person who should be doing a thing for me should be myself. The problem is I’m falling out of whatever infatuation I was in along with the interest to be into them. I’m seeing them more like a sacred friend I want to cherish for ever and ever, but not a lover I want to wake up to every morning,’ attitude. I lost interest, and loving feelings. I started to see said people as friends, or that our similarities didn’t make me feel like an independent, unique individual in the our romance anyway. Though what I mainly felt, that with all our similarities and ties and bonds, there was a gap that I couldn’t define. I actually indirectly and directly know a good chunk of people who ended up feeling like that. Or, they end up being together just fine and never having these thoughts at all. It’s in the case that, when something new comes into the picture, something that offers much more, you begin to drift. The excitment dries up and the thrill is gone, and you’re either just ‘content’ with them or irritated and bored.
For me, I was just content with him, but I was thirsting for something more, and something DIFFERENT. When we weren’t together, I was obsessed with him. You can become romantically obsessed with someone because you don’t have them, or because they don’t look your way. Loving from afar is grand in this way. Actually having them however, becomes a different experience.
Funny thing is I always last with my opposites—it’s just always something else that breaks us apart, something on the outside of the relationship trying to break in, but it was never something on the inside of it. Of course there were conflicts, we all have conflicts, no matter how alike or different we are, but those weren’t were our division lines were drawn. For some reason, those relationships—the ones that form because we’re different people or think differently–end up being the most sacred to me. Possibly because I’m a person who’s always been in internal struggle, and need those types to broaden my mentality when I fall. I bond just fine with people who are just like me, and the bonds are just sacred, but it’s different, and it depends on exactly how we’re alike. So, depending on how we’re alike and how we’re different, someone who is just like me frequently contain me in my comfort zone and hand feed me. At some point, I need to be out of my comfort zone—and it’s a new breath of air when I am. It helps a lot, especially to have someone beside you who you can always learn more from day after day. Though again, it depends on what you’re different or alike in. We all can find some common ground to compromise on with people—we’re not different species of creatures, and even if we were, there’s always a shred of something to make us open our eyes to reach other. When I say that I automatically visualize a portait of an alien and a human boy touching fingers, heh—their fascination with one another ends up in them finding, possibly something, to relate to within each other, no matter how far apart their worlds are.
You can’t literally define and clarify a relationship’s status or love bars based off technicals, poll results, and science-theorizing. It depends on what’s “opposite” to begin with. This theory of opposites works for some people, and for some it doesn’t, but I honestly doesn’t see how opposites can’t last because of their opposite differences and etc. The only true, deep-rooted reason for them to truly pull away, would be the loss of connection between them, and how strong the bond is between those two people to begin with. When the emotional ties are there, the ‘opposites’ between them aren’t steel walls. It should be how much they’re in love with each other, willing to be together, and work for each other in the first place. It should be how much it’s worth, or how deeply precious their love is. If all the opposite variations become a trench for the relationship, then the trench can either be demolished because of their bond or the trench can demolish the relationship and sacrifice that bond, but the bonds would never fade. So it depends on the people, not technicalities. If you’re trying to base a love off all the technicals then you’re on some mushrooms.
IT DEPENDS ON YOUR COMMUNICATION.
Another reason why some opposites-attract do last, is because of how they can adapt and learn from the other, which results in meeting each other half way in the relationship, or even fully. You learn a lot from someone different from you more than you do from someone who is the same. You also bring out things in each other you didn’t even know you had.
They can melt opposites into a common understanding, and bond this way best. I have bonded with people the strongest in that way all the time, especially in friendships.