What does incompatibility in a relationship mean?
It refers to a situation where you would not get along with the other person, no matter how much you love them or how long you have known them. Your values, worldviews, and intrinsic behaviors make it impossible for you to build a healthy relationship together.
SIGNS:
Lack of Attraction
For the long-lasting success of a relationship, we must like and feel attracted to the person we are with. Lack of attraction makes you feel as if you got the less valuable end of the bargain, and sooner or later, you would want to get out of the arrangement.
Moreover, not being attracted to the other person creates an undeniable urge to change them or make them more likable to you, which is a recipe for disaster. Compatibility does not promise the absence of differences, but it promises a partnership where both partners learn and grows together.
Lack of attraction takes away that companionship, and you end up just trying to change the other person instead of accepting them for who they are and then building a life and growing together from there.
Value Mismatch
Our values determine our behaviors, and a significant gap in values translates into misaligned behavior that often leads to fights. For example, you like to budget your expenses, and your partner always overspends, sometimes even more than they earn. If you two do not try to understand the other person’s point of view and adjust to their needs, the relationship will breed resentment sooner or later.
It is okay if one or two values do not match, but if you are with someone completely opposite to you, you are signing up for incompatibility.
It is better to be with someone you share your values with or be ready to constantly spend most of your time trying to keep up with the misalignment in behaviors. Reality check? It will become too much and hugely unromantic, and you will want to leave.
Example Time!:
I had a friend in college, and we cared deeply about one another. We used to live close by and hang out together almost always. However, there was a clear mismatch which we realized in retrospect:
He was someone who loved to talk about politics, was happy earning decently in a job, did not care much about his health and investments, and lived life in a flow. He loves who he is and would want it any other way.
However, I am the complete opposite. I barely know anything about politics, want to achieve extraordinary feats in life, have already planned my retirement with a detailed investment portfolio at 24 years old, and taking care of my mental and physical health is one of my top priorities.
No matter how much we cared for or loved one another, we could never understand each other. We had to put too much effort into doing that. And I realized that although I will always be there for him, it is a waste of time to develop a close friendship with this person because we are so different. There is no point trying to fit square pegs in round holes.
Here’s Jordan Peterson’s perspective on the same:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NBysuAK30g
Different templates to deal with conflict
Differences are inevitable in any relationship but how you deal with those differences is critical to the success of your relationship. For example, anxious people direct their emotions outward by yelling, screaming, and the like. Someone avoidant would instead take a step back and avoid interactions.
Such differences in how you deal with arguments can create added emotional tension in the relationship and worsen the situation. Suppose such a style persists without communicating peacefully to find common ground. In that case, you will always be wrapped up in fights without the chance to sit down and resolve the differences causing the conflict.
PASSING NOTE:
There is no perfect relationship, and the success of every relationship requires time and effort. However, when you put in that effort, you must not feel like you are compromising; rather, it must feel like you are feeding a partnership that is your home to return to after a long, tiring day!
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Thanks for reading.
Check out my other pieces on relationships and life here: Bhanu Singhal
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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