The Household COO

After getting typed again for my Myers-Briggs personality, I discovered an interesting site that you can use to determine to suitability of your companion to yourself based on the Jung-Myers-Briggs personality type.

So if you’re married and curious or single and wondering, you might want to check it out:

Jung Marriage Test

Unfortunately, it’s not free, though.  It costs $5 to check your compatibility.  Then again, what’s $5 to a lifetime of happiness, no? 

It’s also worth noting that if you’re already in a relationship, you can still encourage longevity in your relationship by understanding your partner’s personality type and learning how best to communicate with each other.  When my cousin typed me and the hubby, she also gave me a sheet that suggests how best to speak to someone of my hubby’s personality type. 

A further understanding of the Myers-Briggs Personality Types demonstrates the root of many of our fights - a lack of understanding of how the other thinks and communicates. 

After reading PL’s post on “On Love After Three Years“, I was inspired to write my story.

On Love After One and  a Half Years

When we first met, we barely noticed each other. He thought I was rude and I saw another non-climber that I wasn’t interested in. Our circles collided ever so briefly only because we had one common friend - one of his drinking buddies, one of my climbing buddies.

We met on and off for a year with little more than a polite “hello” and “goodbye”. We were acquaintances more than friends until the fateful night when we were thrown into each other’s company by accident or perhaps by our mutual friend’s cunning. The three of us talked our way into the night and I discovered an entertaining conversationalist. He was not at all like I had assumed and I am sure I was also not quite what he had expected.

In retrospect, he was a perfect match for the old me – the hopeful, idealistic teenager – a person I was convinced I could never be again. The person he met was carefree and uncontrolled - a vagrant, drifting rock climber that made it her sole purpose in life not to care about anyone or anything. A friend once told me that that had been a period of my life where I was trying to relive the years of a missed “teenage rebellion”.

Always the well-behaved daughter, I never knew what it was like to let my hair down, to go wild, to throw all responsibility to the winds and to let people dislike me. It was always about straight A’s, my reputation, the perfect daughter and what other people would think. To be finally free of the brand that marked everything that I never wanted to be was a heady and intoxicating feeling. Drunk and hell-bent on being reckless, I chased the bohemian lifestyle, promising myself that I would never again be controlled as I was, and that meant never letting anyone matter to me. This was me, warts and all, and it was this or the high road.

Personally, I felt that it was a phase of my life I went through because I was lost. A culmination of experiences led me onto the road to nowhere. I didn’t know where I was going or what I wanted out of life. I was purposeless and life was meaningless.  Yet I was forced to continue the drudgery of life with haunted eyes. I shunned all the people who might have cared for me because relationships were a complex matter I didn’t want to deal with. In a strange paradoxical way, I enjoyed the monotony of my uncomplicated life even as I was intensely bored of it.

I would walk into relationships looking for the back door until I grew tired of the games. I decided that isolation was better than the stress of putting on the shackles of a relationship so that I could find a way to be emancipated again. I told myself that I could do without the company of a man and so I lived until the loneliness became too much to bear and I yearned for companionship in spite of myself.

On the suggestion of a friend I decided to try a fling – a concept that I had never believed in because I felt that it hurt people. Whether fate intended it that way or not, it had been the moment when I decided to entertain a casual relationship that I met him again on that fateful night. Everything I knew about him told me that this man was “for keeps”, he was the wrong material for a fling, but I went ahead with the relationship intending to end it well before the six month mark.

When I look back, I often wonder why he didn’t walk away. I was, as the character Meredith from Grey’s Anatomy described it, broken and damaged. I think that is why I find the series so captivating – not because it is set in a hospital but because of the manner in which they explore human relationships. It is because the character Christina reminds me of the “me” I had been when I first started dating my husband.

But I digress… I asked him once what was it he saw in me that prompted him to give “us” a chance and his reply was, “I saw a flower but I didn’t know whether it was blooming or dying and I wanted to see which it was.” To this day, I think he believes that he saw a flower that was blooming. The truth is the flower was dying but he brought a watering can and sunlight.

It hasn’t always been a garden of sweet smelling roses. Some days it feels like we have a one-way ticket headed for a disaster. I often wonder how I could marry a person who makes me so mad until the blood in my veins is broiling. Then I remember what a friend once told me – that “the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference”. That he can make me feel such powerful emotions, albeit negative ones, is not a sign that we are over. The day it is over is the day that I feel nothing.

Another friend once said something along these lines, “true happiness comes when you accept suffering,” although I think he stole this wise adage from Buddha. I guess in order to know the times when you are truly happy, you need to be aware of all the times when you are deeply unhappy because the presence of a negative helps us to recognise the positive. Yes, in an uncanny way, it is like saying good cannot survive without evil.

What was true of me, which I think is true of many people is that we go through this world living like we don’t deserve happiness and so we shun it every time it comes knocking on our door. I guess I was lucky that it came banging on my door this time around.

Something interesting I received a long time ago and thought it wise to keep. Funny thing is, I completely forgot all about it when I was busy choosing my life partner. After reading through it again, I think the advice Heller provides is very sound and practical. If you’re thinking about getting married, these are some great questions you should be asking yourself.

5 Golden Rules For Finding Your Life Partner
by Rabbi Dov Heller, M.A.

A relationship coach lays out his 5 golden rules for evaluating the prospects of long-term success. When it comes to making the decision about choosing a life partner, no one wants to make a mistake. Yet, with a divorce rate of close to 50 percent, it appears that many are making serious mistakes in their approach to finding Mr/Ms Right!

If you ask most couples who are engaged why they’re getting married, they’ll say: “We’re in love.” I believe this is the #1 mistake people make when they date.

Choosing a life partner should never be based on love (alone). Though this may sound not politically correct, there’s a profound truth here. Love (alone) is not the basis for getting married. Rather, love is the result of a good marriage. When the other ingredients are right, then the love will come. Let me say it again: You can’t build a lifetime relationship on love
alone. You need a lot more.

Here are five questions you must ask yourself if you’re serious about finding and keeping a life partner.

QUESTION #1: Do we share a common life purpose?

Why is this so important? Let me put it this way: If you’re married for 20 or 30 years, that’s a long time to live with someone. What do you plan to do with each other all that time? Travel, eat and jog together? You need to share something deeper and more meaningful. You need a
common life purpose. Two things can happen in a marriage. You can grow together, or you can grow apart. Fifty percent of the people out there are growing apart. To make a marriage work, you need to know what you want out of life - bottom line - and marry someone who wants
the same thing.

QUESTION #2: Do I feel safe expressing my feelings and thoughts with this person?

This question goes to the core of the quality of your relationship. Feeling safe means you can communicate openly with this person. The basis of having good communication is trust i.e. trust that I won’t get “punished” or hurt for expressing my honest thoughts and feelings. A colleague of mine defines an abusive person as someone with whom you feel afraid to express your thoughts and feelings. Be honest with yourself on this one. Make sure you feel motionally safe with the person you plan to marry.

QUESTION #3: Is he/she a mensch?

A mensch is someone who is a refined and sensitive person. How can you test? Here are some suggestions: Do they work on personal growth on a regular basis? Are they serious about improving themselves? A teacher of mine defines a good person as “someone who is always
striving to be good and do the right thing.” So ask about your significant other: What do they do with their time? Is this person materialistic? Usually a materialistic person is not someone whose top priority is character refinement. There are essentially two types of people in the
world: People who are dedicated to personal growth and people who are dedicated to seeking comfort. Someone whose goal in life is to be comfortable will put personal comfort ahead of doing the right thing. You need to know that before walking down the aisle.

QUESTION #4: How does he/she treat other people?

The one most important thing that makes any relationship work is the ability to give. By giving, we mean the ability to give another person pleasure. Ask: Is this someone who enjoys giving pleasure to others or are they wrapped up themselves and self-absorbed? To measure this,
think about the following:

1) How do they treat people whom they do not have to be nice to, such as a waiters, bus boy, taxi driver etc?
2) How do they treat parents and siblings?
3) Do they have gratitude and appreciation?
4) Do they show respect?

If they don’t have gratitude for the people who have given them everything, you cannot expect that they’ll have gratitude for you - who can’t do nearly as much for them! Do they gossip and speak badly about others? Someone who gossips cannot be someone who loves others. You can be sure that someone who treats others poorly will eventually treat you poorly as well.

QUESTION #5: Is there anything I’m hoping to change about this person after
we’re married?

Too many people make the mistake of marrying someone with the intention of trying to “improve” them after they’re married. As a colleague of mine puts it, “You can probably expect someone to change after marriage…for the worse!” If you cannot fully accept this person the way they are now, then you are not ready to marry them.

In conclusion, dating doesn’t have to be difficult and treacherous. The key is to try leading a little more with your head and less with your heart. It pays to be as objective as possible when you are dating, to be sure to ask questions that will help you get to the key issues.

Falling in love is a great feeling but when you wake up with a ring on your finger, you don’t want to find yourself in trouble because you didn’t do your homework.