COMPATIBILITY & RELATIONAL PAIN

Benjamin Robinson | July 20, 2015 | Relationships

If you’re in the market for a spouse, you’re probably concerned about finding someone with whom you are compatible. And if you are married and having a difficult time, you just might be worried that you’ve married someone who is incompatible with your personality. The concept of compatibility is central to the process of selecting, connecting, and committing . . . and rightly so. Marriage is designed to be a lifelong partnership, and no one wants to be eternally yoked with an incompatible companion.

Compatibility is the capacity for harmonious, agreeable, and enjoyable interactions over an extended period of time. It is the state of those who 1) view the world through the same (or similar) experiential lens, 2) feel the world through the same (or similar) set of values, and 3) engage the world through the same (or similar) set of drives. Your level of compatibility with any other human being is determined by your experiences, values, and drives.

Your experiences have to do with where you’ve been . . . where you were born, what your family life was like, how you grew up, your social and financial situation, you challenges and how you overcame them . . . Your experiences (including the people and ideas that have influenced you) have impacted you in such profound ways that they have shaped your system of values . . .your perception of how the world is and what the world should be like.

Your value system determines your sense of what you should and should not do and what others should and should not do. Your value system creates your sense of right and wrong, proper and improper, forgivable and unforgivable, understandable and incomprehensible. These values in turn give rise to your drives.

Another word for your drives is your energy. While you will always spend your effort in the service of your values, your values will always be more numerous than your efforts. People say that if you truly value something you’ll do something about it, but that’s not realistic. No one has enough energy to do something about all of their values, and no one should assume that just because you’re not doing anything about something, you don’t really value it. On the other hand, your energy is what usually demonstrates the priorities among your values. While you can’t act on everything, you can act on something, and since your energy is a non-renewable resource, you intrinsically desire to spend it on the values that reside at the top of your list.

Your experiences, values, and drives create the realm of your understanding. If you were to meet another human being who shared the same set of experiences, system of values, and drives (or desires), you would be 100% compatible with that person because you would fully understand them. Unfortunately, the only person who fits that bill is . . . yourself. No couple is 100% compatible; we are all prisoners of our subjective experiences, which cause us to experience the world uniquely.

On the other hand, no couple is 100% incompatible either (although I’ve known couples who were close!). Since we are all human beings, we share a common set of experiences (being born, eating, pooping, dressing, sleeping, etc.), and this means that every couple has at least some degree of compatibility.

The level of the compatibility of any couple will always be in inverse proportion to the level of relational pain that their interactions will cause. If you are a highly compatible couple, you’ll experience the world in much the same ways, value much the same things, and desire many of the same things. The result is that you’ll have a high capacity for understanding toward one another which should result in a low level of relational pain. However, if your level of relational compatibility is low, you’ll experience the world in such divergent ways that your values and drives will come into constant conflict. The result will most likely be a high level of relational pain.

However, your level of compatibility is not the primary determining factor for the happiness of your marriage. Pain does not necessarily mean unhappiness. There are a lot of very painful things that lead to a high level of happiness. Any real athlete can tell you that the path toward success in their sport has been paved with the pain of their daily routine. They are willing (and even eager) to endure it because of the anticipation of the prize that their pain will afford them.

The real question is not whether or not your relationship will cause you relational pain; the real questions are, 1) how much pain can you tolerate, and 2) how far are you willing to stretch. Relationships don’t go bad because of incompatibility alone. Relationships go bad because one or both parties in the relationship are unwilling (or unable) to endure the pain necessary to make the relationship better.

Compatibility is important, but it is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. It can be generated through patience and adaptability, and these are the subject of my next entry.