Finding a Compatible Partner

Put them through the stress test

Sustaining a relationship is hard, extremely hard. Your life and relationships will go through inevitable ups and downs. You would want to know beforehand if the person who can be your potential romantic partner handles those stressful situations well and if the two of you can work together as a team.

There are many ways to do that:

Escape Rooms
Sudden changes in your plans
You had to cancel last minute due to emergency
You spilled coffee by mistake on the table at the restaurant

The idea is to test how the other person acts to these unexpected occurrences: do they react or respond?

I was dating a guy, and for a particular time, I was short on cash because I was saving for my business I told him that we would not be able to take the planned trip. I expected it to become a huge deal, but to my surprise, he reacted very calmly and said that spending time together, with or without the trip, is more important to him. (he won extra points in my scorecard!)And I, on the other hand, thought of interesting stuff we could do together without requiring a lot of money.

The main things for you to observe are:

Do the two of you respond by trying to find a solution and come together as a team?
And, how well do you perform as a team? Is there a balance of power?

Disagree with them

The actual test of a relationship is not in how similar you are but in how you deal with the differences.

John Gottman, the leading researcher on marriage, can predict the probability of a divorce with 94% accuracy only by observing the couple for five to ten minutes. He shares that his technique is to pay attention to how the couple fight. He knows their marriage will end if a couple does not fight well. He lists four behaviors that are typical in marriages that end up in divorce (he uses the metaphor ‘the four horsemen of the apocalypse’ to list these):

These points mentioned below have been picked up from his blog.

CRITICISM

Criticizing your partner differs from offering a critique or voicing a complaint. The latter two are about specific issues, whereas the former is an ad hominem attack. It is an attack on your partner at the core of their character. In effect, you are dismantling their whole being when you criticize. The important thing is to learn the difference between expressing a complaint and criticizing:

Complaint: “I was scared when you ran late and didn’t call me. I thought we agreed to do that for each other.”
Criticism: “You never think about how your behavior affects other people. I don’t believe you are that forgetful; you’re just selfish. It bothers me that you don’t think of others! You never think of me!”

If you find that you and your partner are critical of each other, don’t assume your relationship will fail. The problem with criticism is that when it becomes pervasive, it paves the way for the other, far deadlier horsemen to follow.

CONTEMPT

Contempt goes far beyond criticism. While criticism attacks your partner’s character, contempt assumes a position of moral superiority over them:

“You’re ‘tired?’ Cry me a river. I’ve been with the kids all day, running around like mad to keep this house going, and all you do when you come home from work is flop down on that sofa like a child and play those idiotic video games. I don’t have time to deal with another kid. Could you be any more pathetic?”

Most importantly, contempt is the single greatest predictor of divorce. It must be eliminated.

DEFENSIVENESS

When we feel unjustly accused, we fish for excuses and play the innocent victim so that our partner will back off.

Unfortunately, this strategy is rarely successful. Instead, our excuses just to tell our partner that we don’t take their concerns seriously and that we won’t take responsibility for our mistakes:

Question: “Did you call Betty and Ralph to let them know that we’re not coming tonight as you promised this morning?”
Defensive response: “I was just too darn busy today. You know just how busy my schedule was. Why didn’t you just do it?”

This partner not only responds defensively, but they reverse blame in an attempt to make it the other partner’s fault. Instead, a non-defensive response can express acceptance of responsibility, admission of fault, and understanding of your partner’s perspective:

“Oops, I forgot. I should have asked you this morning to do it because I knew my day would be packed. That’s my fault. Let me call them right now.”

Although it is perfectly understandable to defend yourself if you’re stressed out and feeling attacked, this approach will not have the desired effect.

STONEWALLING

Stonewalling occurs when the listener withdraws from the interaction, shuts down, and stops responding to their partner. Rather than confronting the issues with their partner, people who stonewall can make evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, acting busy, or engaging in obsessive or distracting behaviors.

If you feel like you’re stonewalling during a conflict, stop the discussion and ask your partner to take a break:

“Alright, I’m feeling too angry to keep talking about this. Can we please take a break and return to it briefly? It’ll be easier to work through this after I’ve calmed down.”

Then take 20 minutes to do something alone that soothes you — read a book or magazine, take a walk, go for a run, really, do anything that helps to stop feeling flooded — and then return to the conversation once you feel ready.

The original article can be found here.

Go with them on Gottman’s Eight Dates

One of the most interesting revelations of Gottman’s marriage research is that only eight areas lead to almost 99 percent of marriage problems. Differences in these domains are inevitable since any two partners have grown up as different individuals, and their early experiences in life formed their belief systems.

The smartest thing to do is to have an honest conversation about your views in these domains so that