meshing

I found this article on CNN.COM and found it MUCH more entertaining than the election coverage. It was kind of long, so here are the pieces I especially enjoyed.

"When looking for love, make sure their faults mesh well with yours"

It's a good and bad thing to be considered an expert in love. I don't think there's any point in pretending that you get to be an expert by meeting your soul mate early on, going through a few meaningful ups and downs, marrying in a cloud of good taste or even in a meteor shower of funk and crunk, and then dying, 50 or 60 years later, having had a faithful and fulfilling love life. We don't call those people experts. We call them lucky.

Make sure spouse has the 'right' faults

Here's the heart and the head of it: Know yourself, know the other, and face the truth about yourselves.

What 'know yourself' means

Here's what I noticed after 25 years of being a psychotherapist and 55 years of being a person: There is just about no point in complaining about another person. Not because other people aren't annoying. (My God, there are people who've been put on this earth just to make me roll my eyes and mutter disapprovingly. In my family, as a matter of fact, "other people" is the standard explanation for almost all misfortune.) But because -- especially in intimate relationships -- the complaint about Him or Her will, unfortunately and inevitably, wind its way around to You...

At first, one loves the faults because they are part of the whole adorable love package. She is a sweet and tenderhearted creature, and her inability to ask for a raise, hail a cab, or defend herself from her unpleasant mother are all part of her sweetness.

Of course, someday when you're standing in the rain with your armful of packages and ask her to flag that cab across the street and she says, winsomely, "Oh, darling, I just couldn't -- it's so ... aggressive" -- it will be less adorable.

He is determined and unswerving, which is great; he is also hardheaded and heedless. As much as you like the former, you better be comfortable with the latter as well. Understanding why is worthwhile, and usually involves a quick review of parents.

Whether or not they had a wonderful marriage you hope to emulate or a disaster you hope to avoid, it's helpful to know which parent you identified with and which parent's part you want to play. (Don't even bother trying to escape both of them entirely; to do that, you'd have to be born into another species.)

I think the biggest mistake I've seen in clients and friends and myself is acting on half an understanding: "I don't want to marry my selfish father; look how unhappy he made my sweet mother," sounds like a reasonable, even psychologically astute position, and an awful lot of people (including me) marry their nice mothers (or their nice fathers; bullies come in both genders) and think they've protected themselves. All I can say is: Not so fast, Shorty.

Consider: Marrying your sweet parent may mean that you end up playing the bully's role (someone's got to handle the rough stuff). Alternatively, marrying your dear and gentle dad may mean that you get someone with not just Dad's gentleness but his passivity, avoidance of conflict, and fear of public disapproval as well. The man who comforts you quietly after a battle with your mother is a good father -- do you have any idea what he was like as a husband?...

So know yourself and know your family. For me that means knowing that, as much as I appreciated my mother's sweetness and practical ways, I need a slightly reckless lion more than I need a sensible lamb in my life. (In the dictionary, right next to a number of hard-charging mammals -- including the weasel, famous for attacking animals larger than itself for no reason -- you will see my husband's picture.) So, finally, I married a lion, and although I never pictured myself being the person hanging on to the "oh shit" bar on the passenger side, saying, "For God's sake, honey, slow down!" I do prefer that to being the person who says, regularly, "It's okay, honey, if you're scared, we can turn around."

What 'knowing the other person' means

When you look at another person's behavior (and please, do look at what he does, not just how he explains what he does. A man with a good and different explanation for each of the five times he's stood you up is a really good...explainer. Did you want to marry a world-class explainer?), the question will arise: Is it character or circumstance? Did he do what he did because of who he is, at his core, or was he pushed to that behavior by circumstance?

Guess what? Pretty much, after 18, it's character, every time