If you’re going to have a new spouse or new family, what goals do you have? Opposites may attract, but birds of a feather flock together. While you may be attracted to someone who possesses a range of characteristics and qualities that you lack, and perhaps admire, your chances of lasting with someone are improved if you pick a partner who has similar characteristics, traits, and interests.

Birds of a Feather Flock Together

I used to scoff when I’d see that one actor had married another. I used to think, how incestuous. “We’re too good for the rest of the world, we need to just stay among ourselves.” So Ryan Adam marries Mandy Moore.. Mike Fisher marries Carrie Underwood. Tom Cruise marries Katie Holmes.

Now I understand why such individuals may have married whom they married. It’s a fast- paced and hectic world where couples sometimes get few chances in the day to converse with each other at length.

If you’re going to be a family with someone for 15, 30, 45 years or more, it makes sense to affiliate with someone who understands your occupation, predisposition, and passion. During my courting years, I would continually meet women who were teachers, nurses, social workers, and in other helping professionals. They were altruistic people with good jobs. You know what? They didn’t match up with me in any way.

It would have been helpful to meet someone who was also a speaker or an author. The darned thing was, at the time, I figured it didn’t make any difference. My mate would have her career, I would have mine, and we could learn from each other, even if we didn’t have that much in common career-wise. It doesn’t work well that way.

How about you? What are your choices for your next significant other? If you seek to attract someone with certain characteristics, it makes a lot of sense to be that kind of person yourself. If you want someone who’s warm, generous, and caring, first consider whether you are you warm, generous, and caring. So it is with every set of traits you can imagine. The closer you are to possessing the kinds of characteristics and traits you prefer in a partner, the greater are your chances of attracting a partner with whom you can have a long- term relationship.

Something in Common

Have you ever marveled at how some couples find each other, stay together for years, and seem to have all-consuming passion about the same order ambien online usa things. Whether it’s renowned philanthropists, male and female authors, or simply a husband and wife who run a bookstore together, have you thought about how well these people match up in terms of partner—related, career, and life goals? It would be interesting to see if a before and after study has been conducted questioning couples about their goals while they were engaged and after they were married for a few years. They probably matched up well before getting married and long after getting married.

Marriage Partner Goal Review

Whether you’re about to have new spouse or have been married for years, you have the ever—present opportunity to get more in sync with your partner by better understanding his/her goals.

Your goals need not be a one-to-one match, the mirror image of each other. You may word yours one way, your partner may word something in a somewhat different manner. The important notion is, “What are the common goal that you share?”

Never Too Late

A friend got married for the first time in his mid-forties. Why did he match up so well with his wife who, by the way, was in her forties? Both wanted to have a child. Both wanted to engage in worldwide travel. Both had ambitious plans about how much they wanted to earn, save, and invest, in partnership.

As it turns out, they’ve had a baby, have taken many trips to distant points around the globe, and have already made great progress in terms of their earnings, savings, and investing goals. They have many other mutual goals and as reticent as my friend was to get married, and as fearful as he was to do it in his mid-forties, it’s probable that they’ll be together for a long time. Why? Common goals!

Conversely, you may have oodles of chemistry with your significant other. You may enjoy every facet of being with him or her. However, if you don’t have common goals, your long-term chances for success as a couple are diminished. Long-term relationships are those in which the parties have strong common interests, i.e., strong common goals. The members of the partnership are able to approach these goals with some semblance of balance and relative simplicity, proceeding step-by-step, although not necessarily achieving the desired results in even measures.

When you boil everything down, as Robert Ringer said, the relationships that remain intact are value for value relationships, wherein one person receives great value, and the other receives great value in kind.