We see it all of the time. Two people who seem completely opposite from one another fall in love and end up together. There are those couples who are physically very different—one is quite short and the other quite tall. Or, one might be the veritable social butterfly who is extremely extroverted while his or her partner thrives on being quiet and at home alone with just the two of them.
I recognize that parenthood is a journey filled with responsibility and challenges far greater than political quibbling. I also realize, that in the end, the political choices of our child are not up to us, but up to that squirming little fetus, who is currently making me puke and want to eat jars and jars of caramel ice cream topping. And yet, I am worried about what we will teach our child about conflict and resolution though our political wranglings. Will our child grow up to be polarized? Afraid of confrontation? Apathetic? Or will our child learn to build consensus and disagree with respect and love?
![Do Opposites Really Attract? [VIDEO]](http://images.tangomag.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/node-full/image_embedded_video/oppositesattract.jpg "Do Opposites Really Attract?")
One woman wants to know if opposites really do attract.
The whole Salsa thing started with my wife's friend, Autumn. Autumn is a Salsa-dancing junkie. She Salsas the way most of us brush our teeth, which is to say, pretty frequently. Recently, Autumn got Tara all fired up about how much fun Salsa dancing is, how sexy it is. Soon, Tara wanted us to go, despite the fact that I cannot dance, that I do not understand dancing. Dancing, I am the title character in a short film called "White Man in Terrible, Self-Conscious Pain." My wife, by contrast, doesn't do self-consciousness. Which I admire, no end. Preferably from the couch, in my own house.
Words may fail us when attempting to explain away the intense carnal pull you feel for some but not others. a group of Brazilian researchers certainly think this may be the case and claim their latest work will prove this theory even more so. Professor Maria da Graça Bicalho, head of the Immunogenetics and Histocompatibility Laboratory at the University of Parana, Brazil, says people who have contrasting histocompatibility complexes often end up marrying and having more children than those who don't. Histocompatibility complexes, in layman's terms, are a bundle of dense genes that aid in immunity, reproduction and autoimmunity. Like pheromones, differing histocompatibility complexes (which shows itself through body odor), can be added to the list of never ending theories for those illogical pangs of attraction.
Are you still compatible?
My husband loves to play the stock market. Sometimes, his strategy pays off. But he often loses big, too. Even before the October 2008 stock market crash, his investments had lost a third of their values from their peak. He still believes he's going to make a comeback. I'm not so sure about that. But I also don't really care. And that is the beauty of our money system.
What I know now, but didn't then, is this: it's not enough for a couple to share sizzling chemistry; or a passion for growing heirloom tomatoes; or simply the determination that this one is The One, dammit. Other values must match up: values that never seem to matter when you've just taken up residence in the love shack.
