Within the framework of like marrying like, however, some characteristics appear to be quite opposite in each spouse. Since the fulfillment of needs is at the heart of such mate selection, one will find that some needs in couples are complementary whereas some are contradictory.
It is in the area of complementary characteristics and needs that the concept “opposites attract” is seen to be somewhat accurate. The most important complementary needs involve dominance and submissiveness. If a person has a need to dominate, he will tend to marry and be gratified by a person who needs to be submissive.
If a man marries a woman who has the need to be dominant and he is submissive, there may be some conflict if the social expectations of society call for the male to be dominant and the female to be submissive. In spite of social pressures, many couples may choose to go against the expectation.
If one has a need to nurture others, such as giving sympathy, love, protection, and indulgence, he would be happy with a partner who has the need to be nurtured. (Most people, fortunately, are capable of both. That’s healthier.) A person who needs to admire and praise others would enjoy being married to a person who needs to receive respect and admiration. If the needs of one spouse change years later, the relationship could be disrupted. Complementary needs help determine how two people treat each other. It is important to keep in mind the distinction between complement and contradiction. Unfortunately, some couples label any difference between themselves as complementary.
Complementary needs fit so well together that no compromise is required. However, contradictory needs require a compromise on some middle ground, but not usually on a happy medium. For example, if one is extremely thrifty and the other is a big spender, the needs will clash head-on. If one enjoys social contacts and the other is a recluse, conflict is almost inevitable.
In our American culture, people choose a partner whomthey expect to be gratifying to them. It is interesting to note that both engaged and married couples see things in each other that cannot be found through testing. What an individualsees in another person is what pleases him. “What would ever attract himto that girl?” we ask, because we cannot see in her the things he sees. A couple’s choice of each other is based upon a set of relationships pleasing to themselves, which they attribute to one another. Have you ever experienced this in your relationships?
As people date and are attracted to one another, basic needs are met. Much of a couple’s relationship is based upon the meeting of those needs. This means that there are literally thousands of people of the opposite sexwho could fulfill those needs if the person has appropriate status qualities. Being held in esteemin someone else’s eye confirms our worth in our own eyes. The need to fall in love and to have someone else fall in love with us does not require a particular person.
The first step is having those basic needs met. Then the details of “personality meshing” can be filled in imaginatively. This personality meshing probably determines the future of the relationship established by a couple. Couples who marry for healthy reasons and those who marry for unhealthy reasons have basically the same motivating forces propelling themtoward marriage, but their intensity varies.
Most individuals are attracted to one another by dependency needs. We all have these needs, no matter how healthy we are. Healthy dependency needs reflect a desire to experience completion. With unhealthy dependency needs, there is a desire for completion and for possession.
Self-esteem and its potential for enhancement propel people toward marriage. Everyone wants to receive affirmation of worth and value fromanother person. Some have the excessive need for their spouses to make themfeel worthy, good, attractive, wanted, desired, and so on. Gradually the excessive need can exact a strain upon the relationship.
The normal desire for affirmation, however, is also a strong attracting and maintaining force of marriage. The desire of increased self-esteemand dependency needs both build commitment, which has been called the glue of marriage. That glue is in the process of setting when a couple arrives for premarital instruction.
Two therapists who have specialized in premarital preparation pass along this insight:
Our assumption that marriage is neither accidental nor dichotomous has been influenced by our clinical practice with the hundreds of couples we have seen both in marital counseling and in premarital counseling. In thinking about these couples and the manner in which they chose each other, we have discovered that the couples were apparently performing a task and involved in a process. It has struck us that many couples were involved in the task of finding some way to initiate growth. The growth could be in many areas. Perhaps it was in becoming more outgoing, more self-confident, more intimate, or some other dimension of their personality that they felt needed expansion.
The mate they chose, therefore, from the millions of individuals available was exactly the person who could provide themwith the kind of growth they needed. Some women, for example, seek out a particular man who can teach themto be tough, just as some men seek out a woman who can teach themto be soft. It almost seems to us that couples in some way find each other and choose each other on the basis of their potential to induce change. It is as if couples are in a strange way performing the task of therapy. Perhaps we could say that marriage is an amateur attempt at psychotherapy.
All of this is a way of saying that we believe that marriage is purposeful and that couples choose each other on the basis of the ability of the other person to help theminitiate growth. We think that couples are involved in a task of healing. It is as if many individuals at the point of dating and moving to marriage find themselves to be incomplete in some way. Their search for a mate is not haphazard, but rather based on some kind of deeply intuitive homing device that relentlessly and purposely pursues exactly the kind of person who will provide themwith the stimulation for the growth they are seeking.
Wonderful article