# Compatibility rules



## MEM2020 (Aug 23, 2009)

1. I believe that most of the unhappiness I see expressed on TAM comes from people choosing to pair up with a person they love and are incompatible with. 
2. Regardless of what these unhappy people SAY they believe, their actions show a deep faith in their ability to ‘nurture’ an incompatible partner down the path of compatibility.

So - what this really comes down to is a very core question - how powerful is nature? 

Go to YouTube and type: domesticated fox

The video is 9 minutes and 57 seconds and it shows how incredibly powerful nature is.

For folks who prefer to read:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/11/17842410/pet-tame-foxes-domestication-dogs-genetics


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

How powerful is nature?

Since we did not create ourselves, very, very powerful. 
We are essentially slaves to our biology.

Our biology demands that we have air, water, food, shelter, clothing.
Up until a few decades ago, we needed a certain temperature range to survive in.

We must have the correct atmosphere, with roughly ~19 to ~22 parts oxygen to live comfortably in.

We can only interbreed with our own species. 

We cannot yet create life in a test tube.

If we do create life, it will likely be done, not from scratch, but from some other starting point. 
Employing some other living thing to begin our venture.

Yes, someday we may be able to make life, just as we can create crystals.

Our brains are partially programmed by our genetics.
Survival of the fittest had a hand in this.

Mate choosing likely has a biological component.
We say this when/where two people seem to have good chemistry together.

Compatibility is the most important thing to consider when marrying another person.

Many things alter compatibility, such as one's culture, one's upbringing. These two impact one's values, sometimes core values.
Society and our environment, our parents, the village, all program us to some standard or standards.


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## sunsetmist (Jul 12, 2018)

Yup, it is easier to breed and train animals than humans. Genome Checks? Who knows? Maybe in the future, we can check genomes of possible partners for emotional ability? Seems sorta cold, but then I'm not exactly a patient lady and have a tendency to stick to tradition--hence divorce?


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

sunsetmist said:


> Yup, it is easier to breed and train animals than humans. Genome Checks? Who knows? Maybe in the future, we can check genomes of possible partners for emotional ability? Seems sorta cold, but then I'm not exactly a patient lady and have a tendency to stick to tradition--hence divorce?


The thing is....
And based on your remarks above:

We are here a short time.
We have no time to waste.

Many people, myself included, procrastinated too long, [having] compatibility woes.

When one says {I do}, sometimes it becomes {I must endure}.

As in, I gave my word. :|


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

Reason for marrying...

*Cause I love you....*

Wins almost every time.
It loses out [in the end] about half the time.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBtyI8eSECY


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## lifeistooshort (Mar 17, 2013)

I agree completely. I've learned from my marriage that love does not create compatibility.

Compatibility can create love.


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## sunsetmist (Jul 12, 2018)

SunCMars said:


> Reason for marrying...
> 
> *Cause I love you....*
> 
> ...



Eric Church - Hell On The Heart


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpUNCW-5sFk


sunsetmist said:


> Eric Church - Hell On The Heart


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

lifeistooshort said:


> I agree completely. I've learned from my marriage that love does not create compatibility.
> 
> Comparability can create love.


If not love, a comfortable, often passionate need for each others company. 

Enjoying each others company works wonders.

High strung people suffer the most in this life.
Another, equally high strung person would not 'likely' be compatible.

A calm, fun to be around person with similar ideas on how to live life would be ideal.


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## Vinnydee (Jan 4, 2016)

My wife and I have nothing in common other than love for each other. No shared interests. She is 4’ 11” and I am 6’ 240 lbs. I have a very high IQ and she barely made it through vocational school. I was the hot looking one and she was the plain one in our marriage and she still does not know why I chose her to marry. Other than enjoying being with, loving and caring for each other, we have nothing else in common, not even the bulk of what music, movies and TV shows we like. 

We are very happily married for 46+ years. Perhaps our success at marriage is due to my wife experiencing life and the world as she never dreamed she could. She has gotten smarter due to being with me and learning new things about not believing everything you hear and to do your own research before accepting something as fact simply because it sounds good or fits into your belief system. 

She needed a dominant personality to get her out of her comfort zone and make her believe she is more than she thought she was. I helped her discover how pretty she actually is when I picked out her clothes, makeup and hairstyle for the first few years of our marriage. Men and women started to turn their heads to stare at her after I showed her what she really was and not what her strict parents thought she should be, plain and not doing anything to attract sexual attention. I developed her self confidence after being beaten down by an alcoholic abusive father whom she could never do anything right for. She was a virgin at 19 who never once masturbated or had an orgasm. She never even saw a penis either in real life or in the media. She was beaten down and made to feel plain and dumb. She was afraid to do more than kiss until she met me.

Basically my wife is grateful for giving her a lifestyle and self confidence she never thought she could have. Most of all my wife is grateful for my acceptance of her late discovered bisexuality and being OK with her girlfriend having her own room in our home so she could live with us part time. I only guided my wife for the first few years we were married. I did not insist on anything, just suggested and watched as she discovered her own style of clothes, hair and makeup different than my tastes, but better than what she was brought up to look like.

I spend my days in my man cave doing all the things I like to do like post online, play my keyboard, use my amateur radios and more. She enjoys watching TV and keeping our home beautiful. She goes out as much as 3 nights a week with her girlfriends to play cards, MahJong and Bingo. I go to club meetings in which she has zero interest.

I have read that having common interest can lead to boredom down the marriage road since you both have nothing new to add. When my wife and I talk she tells me all about what she did during the week and I tell her what I did. We are not talking about things we both know and therefore nothing new. 

All I know is that we really have a wonderful marriage despite no common interest other than each other. Perhaps the most important ingredient to a happy marriage is the ability to compromise without feeling upset/angry about doing so. Basically make decisions that are good for the marriage more than any one individual. Not saying you cannot be an individual but marriage is a group thing where you sometimes have to sacrifice your individuality for the greater good of the marriage. These days too many people want to be married, but still live like individuals exclusively. Usually does not work out well. Obviously since we do not have a lot of interests in common, we are exercising our individual needs and wants that we cannot provide for each other. Our attitude is to put the marriage and then each other before all else. We think before we leap. We ask if this is going to be good for our marriage or risk it unduly. My wife did not date women or be with them unless I took part because she saw danger in that. Easy to fall in love with someone you are having regular sex with no matter what rules you may follow. When emotions come into play, we humans tend to make bad choices.

What do I get out of our marriage you may ask? I get a woman who loves me. A woman who allowed us to relocated many times to further my career which in turn made our life easier and less stressful due to no money worries. A woman who shows her love for me every day and wants to take care of me to make sure I live as long as possible. I got a loving partner who I call the boss now because she has blossomed into a self confident and smart women whose friends look up to her for advice. I never wanted a slave for a wife. My wife was naturally submissive and it took me a long time to break her of that. She still is afraid to make some decisions, but she is getting better all the time and in our house, my wife is always right.


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## MEM2020 (Aug 23, 2009)

I found the fox domestication project interesting because the foxes were bred for a single trait, friendliness to humans. 

The foxes in the video seem similar to cats in behavior. Much more so than dogs. 





SunCMars said:


> How powerful is nature?
> 
> Since we did not create ourselves, very, very powerful.
> We are essentially slaves to our biology.
> ...


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## 269370 (Dec 17, 2016)

What do you guys (and girls) mean by compatibility?
Sexual compatibility? Attraction? Personality? Interests? You don’t need to be ‘compatible’ in all areas to succeed. But raw attraction is a big one.

Yes, biology/nature is much more powerful in the end than anything else (like rational thought). I think i have been going on about it forever. We live our lives as if rational thought always prevails; it does, in little things and everyday live, but only up to a point. The true force is nature and our biology (millions of years of evolution). We can’t change our nature.


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## Diana7 (Apr 19, 2016)

I think that compatibility is over rated. Not even sure what it means in relation to a relationship. 

We are very different in so many ways yet very happily married. Its just there or it isn't. 

We even grew up on the opposite side of the world. He studied till he was about 26, getting his PhD. I worked full time from 18, married at 19, bought my first home at 20, had my first child at 21 and second at 24, and was a very busy wife and mum. 
He is clever in the sciences and maths, me in the humanities and he admits that I have far more common sense than he does. 
He is very logical and I am very intuitive. I am a strong person and he is very laid back and easy going.


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## 269370 (Dec 17, 2016)

Diana7 said:


> I think that compatibility is over rated. Not even sure what it means in relation to a relationship.
> 
> We are very different in so many ways yet very happily married. Its just there or it isn't.
> 
> ...




Ying and yang. In certain things compatibility matters, in others it doesn’t. Actually I’m generally not very attracted to people who are similar to me. Opposites attract, as a saying goes. In some areas, I need someone to be the opposite. I need someone to be grounded and balanced, to keep me on my toes because I myself am too much of a romantic, lost in fantasies, dreams and thoughts. Passionate and obsessed with one thing and next week, it could be something totally different I would be obsessing about. I could never be with someone remotely like me. I need someone down to earth to survive.


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## ConanHub (Aug 9, 2013)

My thingy fits in her thingy. Compatible.

Humor aside, I generally agree about compatibility.


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## john117 (May 20, 2013)

Allow me to disagree. 

We had every incompatible feature one could think of. ADHD versus OCD. A dreamer vs a paranoid. Soft Sciences vs hard sciences. Dirt poor to very wealthy. Nothing in common but a love of art, education, statistics, and cheap but good all you can eat Asian buffets . 

We made it work for 25 years, thru good and bad times, and when things broke down, it wasn't compatibility that killed it. 

It was indifference.


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## uhtred (Jun 22, 2016)

Being compatible doesn't imply being the same. To me it means that you are happy with your partners' behaviors and they with yours. It can be all sorts of things, sex is the one discussed most but there are many others:

Food: If one wants fancy French dinners, and the other "hearty chow", 

Travel: One might like sitting in a beach resort with a drink with a paper umbrella, the other might like ice climbing in the Alps.

Money: Money may be of central importance to one, and mean almost nothing to the others.

Dogs, cats, etc. 

Kids: this is even more important that sex....


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## Married but Happy (Aug 13, 2013)

Love alone is certainly not enough - differences will erode it or tear it apart. Compatibility alone can make for a great friendship. You need both for a happy, lasting relationship, plus a strong dose of commitment to avoid indifference.

Compatibility, to me, means: very similar values; similar, but complementary personality types (e.g., INTJ + INFJ); shared life goals (e.g., children, career, leisure); similar beliefs or attitudes (e.g., religion, politics); at least a few shared interests (e.g., art, sports, TV shows, fitness, cooking, gardening, etc.); libido and sexual range; skills in communication and negotiating through differences; and so on. If you're not compatible in some ways, the differences aren't areas of conflict. Add love and passion for each other to this, and it's hard to go wrong. 

Most relationships start with attraction and passion. If compatibility exists, moving forward is easy. Sometimes, compatibility can be built, if the differences aren't fundamental traits of personality and belief.


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## MEM2020 (Aug 23, 2009)

Absolutely agree with this. 

M2 is more organized and conscientious than I am. I earn more money. Both are grateful for the others strengths.

It is helpful that we like a lot of the same hobbies. 





uhtred said:


> Being compatible doesn't imply being the same. To me it means that you are happy with your partners' behaviors and they with yours. It can be all sorts of things, sex is the one discussed most but there are many others:
> 
> Food: If one wants fancy French dinners, and the other "hearty chow",
> 
> ...


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## MEM2020 (Aug 23, 2009)

Life,

In hindsight I realize how lucky I was. I had no idea what I was doing when I paired up with M2. 




lifeistooshort said:


> I agree completely. I've learned from my marriage that love does not create compatibility.
> 
> Compatibility can create love.


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