Couples Compatible In These 5 Areas Are More Likely To Stay Together
Have you found the one for you?
It takes more than just love to make a relationship last. Compatibility is, more often than not, far more important — and you can find out the compatibility in your own relationship with this love compatibility test.
Who and what are you attracted to in life? There are many factors that come into play. Sometimes, we are attracted to the physical. When you find someone physically attractive, you may believe you’ve fallen in love. In reality, you are likely in lust. And that's not true love.
The same is true for pheromones. Pheromones can explain a chemical attraction but do little to sustain a long-term, committed monogamous relationship. In other words, the attraction is a great start but that is not what builds relationships to long-term grown-up love.
Wouldn't it be great if there were a compatibility test to help you figure it all out?
I know you’ve heard the expression, "Opposites attract" — and they often do. People are frequently drawn to things in others that are interesting because they are different than themselves. It’s unique, it’s diverse, it’s exotic. Differences, however, can be great at the beginning of a relationship, providing new territory to explore, but in the long term, without the knowledge to manage those differences, they can be the ruin of the relationship.
The opposite is also true. Sometimes, we are attracted to the familiar. People marry their parents sometimes, figuratively speaking. We like the familiar.
When we meet someone who reminds us of a parent we loved, we may believe we’ve found true love. It feels like the love we experienced as a child and young adult, and we want more of that. This can provide challenges later on because as we mature, we learn we do not want to be parented in our significant relationship — we want an equal. Being scolded or protected feels familiar, but sometimes can be stifling.
Familiarity can also attract when we are working through a problem or needing to discover a certain karmic lesson.
Have you ever known someone involved in serial relationships where the core of each partner is, in essence, the same person?
People are destined to experience repeat unhealthy relationship patterns when they fail to learn the lesson they are supposed to get from each subsequent relationship. It can feel like the movie, Ground Hog’s Day — living the same day over and over again only with different people.
A final possibility is when we are challenged by trauma, whenever it occurred, if we haven’t learned to reclaim our lives, we may believe we deserve unhappiness and so we subconsciously choose individuals who will create unhappiness and pain in our lives.
In all my work with couples, I have found the best love compatibility quiz to be the one that measures your need-strength compatibility in the five basic human needs outlined by Dr. William Glasser in Choice Theory psychology and created in Chapter Five of my book, Secrets of Happy Couples.
We are all born with the basic human needs of:
- Survival
- Connection (love and belonging)
- Significance (power)
- Freedom
- Enjoyment (fun)
Every human has all five, but the strength of each is different in each person. Putting all the need strengths together creates your personal need strength profile that you would need in a relationship.
Profiles can be incompatible, completely compatible or anywhere in between based on what’s most important to you.
Couples who pass this love compatibility test and are aligned on these 5 things wind up staying together forever:
1. Survival
You are most compatible when you have similar amounts of survival. When one person is high and the other is low in survival, the high survival person is a saver, worries a lot and plans for the future.
The low survival person is a spender, thrives on risk-taking and lives for the moment. Can you see how conflict can be prominent when your survival scores don’t line up?
2. Connection
Similarly, it is best when your connection, freedom, and enjoyment needs have similar strengths. A person with a high connection need craves quality time, loves intimacy, and avoids conflict.
A person lower in connection craves time alone, avoids intimacy and does not shy away from conflict.
3. Freedom
With a high freedom need, a person is fiercely independent, breaks rules particularly the ones that don’t make sense and craves time alone.
A person with a lower freedom need can be more dependent, wants to adhere to rules and doesn’t like being alone.
4. Enjoyment
A person with a high need for enjoyment typically has a good sense of humor, quick wit and loves their free time off to do what they enjoy.
A person with a lower need for enjoyment approaches life more seriously. They tend to not have any fun, creative pastimes, or value-free time.
5. Significance
Unless you and your partner have figured out how to create significance without competing with one another, you are most compatible if your strengths with this need are dissimilar.
A compatible combination occurs if one of you has high significance and the other low. One is in the spotlight while the other is content to be a supporting player. One wants to lead, the other follows.
One wants to win, while the other is content to have the other win.
Everyone wants to be in a healthy relationship but there is no combination of needs that is absolutely indicative of problems in relationships.
As long as you learn about the different need strengths and negotiate win/win situations with your partners where both of you are able to get what you need within, as well as outside, your significant relationship, you can overcome any challenging combination.
Kim Olver is a licensed counselor, certified coach, speaker and award-winning, bestselling author. Over the years, she has taught thousands of people in Glasser's Choice Theory concepts.