Apr 27, 2008

Book Summary: Gifts Differing: Part 5 Type and Marriage

Among 375 couples married between 1910 and 1950:

Alike on all preferences: 9%
Alike on three: 35%
Alike on two: 33%
Alike on one: 19%
Alike on none: 4%

The most frequent similarity was on SN, which suggests that seeing the things the same way, ...

Among the couples who were different on all preferences, nearly all the husbands were thinkers.

Understanding, appreciation, and respect make a lifelong marriage possible and good.

Even the best of qualities tend to have inconvenient side effects, which may annoy those who do not see the reason for them, but the side effects are trivial in comparison with the good qualities from which they spring.

When I was a child we had a neighbor who complained a great deal about her husband's faults. One day my mother asked her what she would really like to have changed in him. It took her some time to find an answer. Finally she said, "You know, there's that deep scar on his cheek. It doesn't bother me, but it bothers him."

Likeness on TF should be hardest to achieve because there are more feeling women than thinking women in our culture, and more thinking men than feeling men...

they can acknowledge that each is justifiably and interestingly different from the other---and be amused. Their amusement may be warm or detached, wry or tender, according to their types, but it will help in working out the situation and keeping intact each partner's dignity and the precious fabric of their marriage.
-- Gifts Differing

Absolutely no experience, so only quote what's interesting to me.

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