However, after a while, you begin to get sick of watching a little mouse bash a dumb cat in the head with a frying pan. You begin to question why Tom puts up with such behavior when there’s another mouse who would treat him right. Perhaps even the chipmunk with the red nose from “Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers.” In the union of two contradictions, balance is always necessary, but in long-term relationships is equality possible?
Dating someone unlike you is alluring. We sew patterns in our lives like blankets, and they fill the spaces we skipped a stitch with their lips.
“I think we’re drawn to what we don’t have in ourselves, and we get it from somebody else,” Tia Preece said.
Our personalities are built upon by time and experience. By dating someone unlike ourselves, we have the possibility of expanding our lives and becoming a fuller, better person.
“When you learn something from someone, that’s hot,” Preece said.
In my life, I have always been drawn to people who were very religious or from a religious background and uncomfortable with sexuality. Of course, these relationships are always a challenge, but fun. Like Sudoku.
Perhaps the answer key in the concept of opposites attract is not finding someone who is totally your opposite but having different likes that fit well with one another. We don’t have sex with people who repel us, we have sex with people who complement us. According to Dr. William Ickes, people view similarity of likes as the highest quality of a long-term partner. That means it’s OK if you love football and your partner hates it, as long as you have other things to share with one another. If you feel crushed every time you open your mouth, you need to move on.
“Liking different things makes sure that the relationship doesn’t become toxic. It just takes a lot of commitment” said Jackie Degraff, a theater major. “Being able to come home and tell your partner about your individual experiences is important in any relationship. You may even spark some passion for your interests in them. On the other hand, your partner must be open-minded and present enough to listen.
“People who have studied attachment pretty much have learned that if two people are physically proximate and neither does bad things to the other, they can fall in love. They just have to be around each other enough,” Ickes said.
While falling in love with someone opposite is possible, it can be hard to manage for a college student.
“I avoid relationships. I don’t have time to date anyone who isn’t in theater,” Degraff said. Like many theater majors, Degraff spends most of her time practicing or performing and only goes home to her apartment to sleep. For other students with demanding majors, dating someone they would never be able to be around isn’t possible.
Sweet and sour, ying and yang. In the end, it’s not the differences that make a relationship, but the connection.
