Leslie Cane Articles

I often hear from folks who feel as if they are married to their polar opposite. This doesn’t come as a surprise to them. In fact, many will freely tell you that the differences between themselves and their spouse was what attracted them in the first place. When they were dating, their differences were what made their relationship special. But, when they are married, their differences are what make their marriage problematic sometimes.

For example, someone might say, “when I met my husband, I fell head over heals in love with him. Truly. It was as if I’d been struck by lightning. It was intoxicating. I am a dependable, slightly boring introvert. I never make waves. I have a sense of humor, but mostly, I’m a quiet person who likes to curl up with a good book and be a homebody. I am not putting myself down when I say this, but it’s all true. My husband is very extraverted and he does not like to sit still. He loves to travel. He loves to do things on the fly. He hates to plan. He can be rebellious. I adored this about him when we first met, but my mother warned me that we weren’t really all that similar.  She told me that our relationship was doomed. But we dated all through college. I was well aware of the fact that we were opposites, but I loved it because my husband brought me out of my shell and I forced him to calm down. At the same time, deep down, we are not so different. We both love our families. We both love history. We both try to be good people. But now that we have been married for nearly ten years, our differences have started to chip away at me. My personality is naturally suited toward parenting and we have three kids. It drives me crazy that my husband hates to plan family things. When you have kids, they need structure. Also, financially, you need a plan. I find my husband very irresponsible about finances and this has become very annoying to me.  I see my sense of responsibility as an asset, but my husband thinks that I am a nag. He hates that I never want to go anywhere. It’s true. I’m perfectly content with being a homebody, especially with kids. Lately, he’s started to say things like ‘well maybe we’re not so well-matched after all.’ So I think that he may want a separation or divorce. This makes me very sad because I do still love him. My heart does still skip a beat when I look at him. But I worry that our differences are truly going to be the end of us. Can people stay married when they are opposites?”

What Martial Experts Say About Opposites: I did a little research for this topic in order to respond to this question. Plus, I was a bit curious about the answer, since I consider myself and my own husband to be opposites. (And although we are reconciled now, we did separate for a while.) What I found in the research is that experts do agree that the couples who have the most stable and lasting marriages tend to have similar backgrounds and values. In other words, happy marriages feature couples that share economic, social, and religious backgrounds. Couples who are close together in age also tend to be more compatible. According to therapists, it is helpful to share core values. So for example, if your faith is extremely important to you, but you have a spouse who does not support you in this, there could be a problem, since you’d be constantly denying something that is vital to you.

At the same time, if you and your spouse agree on what is truly important but just have different personalities and comfort levels, experts say that this can work (and can actually add some spice) so long as the couple is tolerant and understanding of these differences. For example, an introverted morning person (me) and an extraverted night owl (my husband) have successfully made our marriage work because we negotiate the little differences in our personalities along the way. We handle issues differently, since our personalities are quite opposite. However, we both share a deep commitment to our family and we share a handful of hobbies (even though our approach to them is different.)

Negotiating The Sticking Points: Here is something that has worked for us, although we didn’t begin doing this until after our separation. When big issues crop up (like finances,) we let the experts handle it. For example, like you, I am very conservative with money, while my husband tends to be more lax. These differences were creating conflict, since I want to save and he wants to spend. We fought about this and it was just deteriorating our marriage, so we worked together to pick a financial advisor and we agreed that we’d follow his advice. That way, no one is the bad guy and we don’t need to fight about this.

We also sometimes have conflict about extended family, since my husband is much more social. He tends to want to have lots of people around, even on vacations, while I like for it to be just the two of us. In situations like this, we compromise. One year, we’ll rent a house on the beach with others. The next year, it’s my turn and I love nothing more than a cabin for only two. When we do the more quiet vacations, I make a point to go out for a fun night or two. And when we do the “fun” vacations, my husband makes a point to have a low key night of two so that we both feel like we’ve “won” some of the time.

I hope that this article has helped. My opinion on this from my research and my own experience is that yes, opposites can stay happily married – so long as they share (or at least respect) core values.  They also have to be willing to negotiate where they differ. When this is done correctly, it can actually enhance your marriage.

As I alluded to, my husband is very different from myself and we did separate for a while.  Our differences might have contributed to this somewhat, but there were other issues at play.  After working very hard on our marriage, we’ve actually made our differences work for us.  Because of this, I do believe that opposites can be happy.  You can read more about our separation and reconciliation on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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