My husband and I both love dramas.
We’re foodies and enjoy a delicious dinner at a fabulous restaurant.
Our favorite vacations are spent at the beach.
From crafts to rehabbing an entire house, DIY is the way we roll.
We enjoy spending a quiet night reading our favorite books, although I love fiction and he likes non-fiction best.
We share a love of music and art.
The phrase opposites attract doesn’t really mean much to us, because quite frankly, we’re kinda like two peas in a pod.
So many famous love stories are built on the premise of opposites attracting. A couple that once violently hated each other will—of course—fall into each other’s arms by the end of the story. Whether it’s classics like Pride and Prejudice, Nicholas Spark’s The Notebook, or the romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, you know it’s going to happen. Clashing personalities come to understand each other, the poor guys falls for the rich girl, the bookstore mogul ends up in love with the independent bookstore owner. And it sure makes for great entertainment to watch the sparks fly!
But there are those of us who don’t find someone with opposite traits that attractive. Who instead find love with a person who has a similar personality or many of the same interests. Interestingly, last year news outlets reported that an analysis of eHarmony’s data showed that long-term relationships grew out of similarity instead opposite attraction.
Although more compatible couples may clash less, I have noticed one not-so-noticeable pitfall that can plague us like-minded mates: too much comfort.
Get Out of the Zone
The comfort zone, that is!
As a couple that is highly like-minded, this is our strength. However, there are times we need to be stretched.
We don’t often push each other out of our comfort zones because our comfort zones can be the same for each of us. So there are times that we have to purpose to step out of what we find comfortable.
For example, we can get in a cycle of not being hospitable and reaching out to have people over because we’re both a bit introverted and like staying home. Because we enjoy those cozy nights reading or watching Alias on Netflix so much! Nothing is wrong with that, of course, but there are times we can get stuck in rut. When we don’t push our limits to try something new. When we can’t see pass our blind spots.
But have been times God has given us insight into these ruts and we’ve pushed beyond them. When we’ve gone to a concert (that we didn’t like) with co-workers in order to make connections with them. Or we’ve had guests over last minute for dinner and scrambled to make it work and had an evening of soul-nourishing conversation. When we’ve volunteered to take a meal to a family with a new baby at church we hardly knew because we knew God wanted us to do it. Or maybe when we made cookies and knocked on our new neighbor’s doors in order to deliver them and introduce ourselves. When we explored if foster care was for us (it wasn’t). Or more recently, when we’ve decided to look into the requirements for volunteering at a local homeless shelter for women and their children.
Being like-minded has been our marriage’s strength and has created closeness and companionship. We love doing things together! But as we’ve purposed to move out of some of our comfort zones, we’ve also experienced joy and growth in ways we haven’t anticipated.
Maybe we’ll even pick out a comedy for our next movie night?
