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Just Your Type

Create the Relationship You've Always Wanted Using Personality Type

By Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger

And is it any surprise that we are attracted to people who are different from us? Like Susan and Jeff, most of us are inexplicably drawn to people who are very different than we are. The qualities that we find charming or exciting during the magical courtship period become much less appealing when we discover that our partners are like that every day! Rather than understand, accept and appreciate our partners for who they are, we unwittingly turn the differences between us into the chief source of our frustration, irritation and dissatisfaction. Instead of celebrating our differences, we resist them; we try to make our partners more like us. And as we do, we chip away at the foundations of our relationships by constantly criticizing, complaining, blaming and dismissing our partners' characteristics and natural tendencies. Most couples engage in this undermining campaign in very subtle and indirect ways; they rarely address the problem honestly and openly. They just stop talking -- really talking. So the overwhelming reason relationships fail is poor communication. This is hardly news. But given the abundance of advice available to people today, it's still amazing and sad that we haven't yet learned how to communicate more effectively with our partners. Many have offered their pet theories about why people have such a hard time finding and sustaining satisfying relationships. Most offer simple, quick-fix approaches, not unlike the latest fad diet that promises a 20-pound weight loss in as many days. And some of these programs deliver, at least temporarily. But ultimately they fail, because they are based on bad science, fail to appreciate the way human beings really act, or both. A whole industry has been created around the notion that gender is to blame, that men and women are so inherently different that they don't even come from the same planet! Since they don't, won't and can't speak the same language, they can never be expected to understand each other, much less communicate well.