A friend — we’ll call her Mary — comes to you for counsel. Mary is two years into a marriage, and she is unhappy. Her husband, Fred, who seemed like the perfect match during the dating years, has turned out to be — well, not so perfect.
“We don’t see eye-to-eye on anything,” she complains. “He likes to go out all the time. I’d rather be at home. He spends every penny we make, rather than saving up. Now, that’s just stupid. He’s a neat freak, which makes me crazy. Life is about more than just an organized sock drawer, right?”
As Mary paints her picture of an unhappily mated couple, you feel badly for her and nod empathically. But Mary wants more. She wants advice. Are their personality differences insurmountable, or should she sit tight and wait for better times? What should you tell her?
» “If you’re unhappy now, Mary, think how bad it will be later on, with kids and financial stress.”
» “Try to relax. Marriage is like a fine wine. It will mellow with age.”
» “As I told you at the time, dump Fred and find someone more like you.”
» “You’re on your own, honey. No one can predict the future.”
In fact, Mary’s question comes down to whether partners do better when they are similar or dissimilar in personality. Do a pair of extraverts get along better over time because they see the world in similar terms? Or do they just get on each other’s nerves? Do efficient and organized people do better when they marry each other? Or when they connect with more relaxed, go-with-the-flow type partners? Do highly emotional people, risk-takers and creative types do better flocking together? Or should they assume that opposites attract and seek out the plodders of this world — those who are cautious and consistent in their behavior?
The answer might have important implications for Mary. People having doubts about their marriage often look for predictive guidelines. When you can’t agree on almost anything, or when everything about your partner seems stupid, irritating or just off, does that tell you something about what’s coming? Maybe you just don’t fit. Maybe you’ll never fit.
It also might be important to a company trying to match-up couples on a date. The people at eHarmony, among others, have been looking back at old research and sponsoring new studies into the question of who goes with whom to make a happy marriage. They’re doing this because they believe that by understanding the statistical magic of good relationships, they can computer-match couples who have a high chance of being happy together.
Their findings contain good news for the company, which has bet millions of dollars on the idea that similar people make good partners. They’ve developed complex algorithms for matching similar partners, who fill out long questionnaires in the belief that eHarmony’s computers can set them up for success. The company has published data that says these algorithms produce significantly higher relationship success than you can expect from meeting people at work or in a bar.
In fact, their published figures state that, in 2007, of 100 of those who subscribed to the service, 30 to 40 found marital partners. Moreover, “the research indicates that couples who were matched by eHarmony, the Internet’s fastest-growing relationship service, and have married, are significantly happier than couples married for a similar length of time who met by other means.”
Of course, eHarmony’s good fortune may be bad news for Mary, who has become so painfully aware of how dissimilar she is from Fred.
Similarity in What?
While eHarmony doesn’t reveal the precise results of its research, it has spoken openly about the personality traits that serve as the basis for its couple matching. These are the “Big Five” — traits that are accepted by many psychology researchers as forming a comprehensive ingredients list for the human personality. Here is a rudimentary description of the Big Five:
» 1. Openness (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity and variety of experience.
» 2. Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easygoing/careless). A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behavior.
» 3. Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. shy/reserved). Energy, positive emotions, urgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others.
» 4. Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. cold/unkind). A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic toward others.
» 5. Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident). A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression or vulnerability.
When Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony teamed up with UCLA researchers Belinda Campos and Thomas Bradbury to review the existing research and do some of their own, they demonstrated that not only does Big Five similarity trump dissimilarity, over time it breeds even more similarity, in a process they call convergence. This is a good thing.
“Couples who became more alike in personality and emotional experience generally maintained their levels of marital satisfaction,” the researchers observed, “whereas those who became less alike in personality and emotional experience faced steep drops in marital satisfaction.”
How It Works
Similar personalities have similar emotional reactions, Gonzaga believes, and that builds a certain kind of confidence and connection in the relationship Say an event occurs that causes both partners to explode, resulting in conflict. A couple with dissimilar personalities might withdraw in confusion. But an emotionally similar couple “would (a) better understand each other’s emotional states (e.g., “she must be angry because I am”), (b) coordinate their responses during the conflict (e.g., both engage in the interaction rather than one disengaging) and (c) feel validated because they share the emotion of anger (e.g., “at least he is angry too, he must care about this”).”
The opposite can also be true. A longtime friend of ours, Candace, got a call from the police to say her teenager had been arrested for putting graffiti on a city park wall. Candace’s personality was cautious and law-abiding — low in “openness,” to put it in Big Five terms. She was angry, afraid and humiliated. But when she turned to Carl, her spouse, he responded, “He’s a kid. What did you expect? We raised a kid who expresses himself, thank God.” Carl is high in openness. Understandably, this provided little comfort to Candace. “This is serious. How can he just not get it?” she asked us later on the phone. Different personalities producing different emotional reactions to the same event, producing couple unhappiness.
Similarity, it seems, is the magic ingredient in relationships.
How Well It Works
OK, but can Mary reliably use this idea of similar personality styles as a reality check or at least a road sign pointing toward the future of her existing marriage? Here, the story takes a new turn.
Not long after eHarmony published its initial findings, Michelle Shiota of Arizona State University teamed up with Robert Levenson, noted life-stage researcher from UC Berkeley, to take the question one step further. They decided to test what happens to similar and dissimilar couples later in the marriage. EHarmony had looked mostly at young and relatively newly married couples. But Shiota and Levenson wondered if things might be different down the road. As life pressures build up, might complimentary styles and strengths make a marriage stronger? Or, given long enough, could similarity get boring?
The answer to both questions, surprisingly, is yes, although they pertain to different life stages. This newer research suggests that, while young couples do better when their personalities look alike, as they reach middle-age and middle-marriage, these same similarities begin to be a problem. Shiota and Levenson suggest this may be because, while early married life is about exploring the world together, middle-marriage is about kids, money, jobs and other stressors of life. Suddenly, if you are better at handling our social life, and I am better at finances, we can get twice as much done. Getting it done is what mid-life and mid-marriage is often about, and so we are happier. If we both like being in charge of the bills, on the other hand, we may fight over that, while our social life goes in the drink.
Then, later in the marriage, during retirement, when life’s pressures begin to recede, couples wake up from their trance of parenting and productivity. They see each other with new eyes, and sometimes — if what they see is too familiar — it’s not so interesting anymore. It’s at this point, the researchers speculate, that the variance in the couples’ personalities provides much-needed spice. So in retirement-age couples, too, people who differ in the Big Five dimensions of personality are more likely to be happy in the relationship.
This might be bad news for eHarmony, as couples reach midlife and early relationship satisfaction gives way to unhappiness. Mary, on the other hand, can relax. All those problems caused by personality differences will drop away once they settled into raising kids and dealing with the issues of midlife. And their sunset years — well, they’ll pretty much be nirvana.
Which highlights the question. Really, should you end your marriage or hang in there based upon your similarity/dissimilarity in the Big Five?
Here’s what I think. Factored in with other important relationship criteria, they could be a valuable piece of the puzzle. But before you sign up for an extensive package of personality testing, or hire a divorce attorney, here are few other research findings to consider:
» How you handle conflict is a more important consideration than almost any other in assessing the likelihood of success or divorce in marriage. Learning how to fight well can save a failing marriage, or deepen an emotionally shallow one.
» A truly unwavering commitment to having a satisfying relationship can sometimes turn the ship around, even if it’s headed for the reefs.
» Most partners in troubled relationships locate the trouble in their partners’ personalities: selfish, angry, controlling, etc. Finding new ways of seeing your partner, while challenging, can breathe life into a dying relationship.
» It’s often the storm of mutually triggered emotional reactivity that blows up a relationship, rather than something inherent in the individual personalities. Discovering the cycle, and seeing how two innocent people can blindly stir up chaos and conflict, is likely to pave the way to a happy relationship, no matter how the Big Five personality factors match up.
This is good news for both you and Mary. Because it puts Mary at the helm of her own ship, and gets you off the hook for the advice.
— Russell Collins, Psy.D., is a Santa Barbara psychotherapist and divorce mediator. Click here for more information.
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