by Demola Rewaju
The Background
Gbesoye and Teejay have dated for five years and decided to get married. Everyone was surprised initially but their conviction was so strong that their friends quickly rallied behind them as they moved closer to the wedding that was only a few months away. No two people could be more opposite in character than these two: Gbesoye was a core introvert whose best form of socialising was watching movies at home. Teejay on the other hand had won the most popular male award back on campus about three or four times. He was a party animal who believed that he had a right to announce his existence to any gathering he came into whereas Gbesoye would sneak into a party in the midst of her friends who would have spent weeks convincing her to attend.
The attraction between both of them was fast and chemistry was very much visible to everyone – despite their dissimilar personalities, both felt that they could complement each other successfully but the moment Gbesoye started spending more time in Teejay’s house, she started to develop cold feet as she found herself becoming increasingly like another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that Teejay needed to make his life complete.
Opposites Attract…
Opposites attract: magnets are the proof. The north pole attracts the south pole in two magnets, repels the north and vice versa. If only humans were magnets, that would be a perfect fit but even magnets do not join together without visible markings much as their opposite poles attract each other. If the goal of marriage is to create a bond that is seamless, a fusion that makes it hard to identify personal patterns of both couples except by close family and friends, then opposites are never a perfect match.
Granted that some opposites have married and managed to work it out. In that case, one would assert that both were not so opposite ab initio, only seeming to be. This issue takes us all the way back to compatibility as a better predicate of marriage than chemistry. Compatibility is an alignment of similarities, it is attraction based on how alike a couple are while chemistry pays little attention to similarities and often works better with those who have disparate natures. Chemistry is the tension that arises when two people of opposite sexes meet each other and seeing what each one lacks in the other, they tend to fall in love.
Opposites attract: magnets are the proof. The north pole attracts the south pole in two magnets, repels the north and vice versa. If only humans were magnets, that would be a perfect fit but even magnets do not join together without visible markings much as their opposite poles attract each other.
Opposites Attack
Using the above example, Gbesoye’s problem was that Teejay was not only the full blown extrovert that she would like to be sometimes but was also very much unlike her in terms of personal hygiene and maintaining a tidy environment. She would come to his apartment every weekend to meet all the dishes he used for a week, dirty clothes all over his two bedroom apartment, DVDs strewn all over the sitting room rug and every other imaginable thing out of place. What she’d initially put down to campus living was now obviously a comfortable pattern for Teejay. Much as she tried to bring some organisation into his life, she was already beginning to see in her future a permanent life of picking up after her future husband and the kids.
Teejay didn’t mind her efforts to tidy up the place, he appreciated it in fact. What he resented was the way she made him feel like a 5 year old boy with his mother every time she came around. The television in the sitting room was where he put his wristwatches normally but she always put it on the stool beside his bed in the room. The pile of emergency shirts and jeans he casually hung on the door of his room and sometimes the settee in the living room, he had to fish out from the laundry basket every time she left. She was very fussy about so much else: he couldn’t understand why she couldn’t lie down with him on the rug to watch the new DVD he bought because he knew she would like it, preferring instead to perch on the settee and almost always noting every piece of dirt to pick it up while gisting with him. After picking up a speck here and another there, she would eventually take a broom a sweep the rug again for the umpteenth time on a one day visit.
It was her lack of spontaneity that he found most unromantic: he had to let her know if they’d been invited to a party several weeks in advance and when she refused to go and hangout with his close friend Chidi who returned from South Africa one weekend, he started wondering if this was the life he really wanted.
The Issues (Just a tip of it actually)
Both partners would start to feel choked in after a while. Gbesoye would start to resent the fact that she was expected to clean the house all by herself because she’s the one who can’t tolerate a dirty environment, Teejay would start to feel intruded on. One or both persons would feel increasingly used by other while the other would feel like they always have to take the initiative at all times.
One partner’s extroverted nature means he can invite his gang of friends to watch the match at his house, consume the other’s cooking and leave a trail of empty bottles in the living room while the other partner’s introverted nature means she can ignore the door in his absence as his neighbours knock ceaselessly to try and gain access to watch Super Story in his house.
A Resolution
The only time a relationship of opposite characters work in a long-term relationship is when they have a very strong point of compatibility such as commitment to a cause for instance or a shared core value or trait. For a short-term relationship, opposites can help each other if both are willing to learn from each other. If Gbesoye is willing to let Teejay teach her how to have fun without wondering who’s watching or Teejay is able to learn how to keep his house tidy by learning from Gbesoye, they would both be better for it. this however would only work if the areas of differences are few.
Humans sometimes gravitate towards those who are vastly different from them but for lifelong relationships such as marriage, it is better to seek out those who are most like oneself. Unless two people grew up in the same house as siblings and then decided to get married, even people with similar personalities usually have enough individual differences to guarantee occasional clashes. Opposites attract to attack but only birds of a feather flock together.
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Demola Rewaju blogs from www.demolarewajudaily.com
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.
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