“You Say Tomato, I Say Tomahto”

Just Your Type : Create the Relationship You've Always Wanted Using the Secrets of Personality Type
by Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron-Tieger

Chapter 1

Susan and Jeff thought they were perfect for each other. They met in college, enjoyed some of the same interests, came from similar backgrounds, and married after both had had time to establish their careers. Although they knew they were different in many ways, they felt a powerful attraction that they attributed to those very differences. Jeff was enthusiastic, outgoing, and creative; Susan was gentle, down-to-earth, and responsible. Each balanced the other's weaknesses, and together they complemented each other's strengths. But a few months after they were married, their bliss began to fade, replaced by a low-grade, constant tension. Susan's traditional nature surfaced. She was a conservative person at heart and wanted a stable, predictable life. Hardworking, quiet, and extremely diligent with all her commitments, she planned carefully for the future, saved their money to buy nice things, and was eager to settle down and raise a family in the town where she'd grown up. But Jeff was the quintessential Renaissance man - constantly reinventing himself and talking about his many creative ideas. A natural entrepreneur who kept busy developing new ventures - often on a shoestring - Jeff was outgoing, flexible, insightful about people, and curious about new experiences. Far from wanting to settle down, he longed to travel the globe with Susan, learning as much as he could about other cultures.

What was initially a strong attraction between Susan and Jeff was slowly becoming an inescapable source of frustration. Susan tried to get Jeff to commit to buying a house in their community, and Jeff tried to get Susan to consider borrowing a friend's camper so they could at least spend some time traveling and exploring the country. Instead of feeling supported and encouraged for his ideas and curiosity, Jeff felt undermined, criticized, and stifled. Try as she might, Susan couldn't help but see the practical problems with most of his ideas. Because she couldn't get Jeff to commit to a definite plan, Susan grew increasingly worried about their future and their financial stability.

Although they tried to talk about their frustrations, their inability to reach each other only led to more frustration and defensiveness. Feeling hurt and unsupported, Susan withdrew, while Jeff vacillated between trying to cajole her into giving it one more try and storming off to spend time with his friends. After three years of bickering, retreating, and building walls between them, they decided they were just too incompatible and joined the estimated 53 percent of marriages that end in divorce.

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What might have happened if Susan and Jeff had had a better, more constructive way of communicating with each other? What if they had not only understood their differences but also viewed them positively and as a source of richness? And what if instead of trying to change each other, they had reveled in their individuality and worked together to establish common ground? Maybe they could have avoided some of the pain they both felt and saved their marriage. Perhaps.

Although not all couples are as seemingly mismatched as Susan and Jeff, many are. According to our latest research - an extensive couples survey project comprising a scientific survey and in-depth interviews - more than 40 percent of couples report experiencing regular relationship difficulties that range from vague dissatisfaction and frustration to outright misery. Most couples sincerely want things to be better between them, but because they don't even understand the problems, they can't figure out how to fix them. Why are so many people so dissatisfied? Why is it so difficult to make a relationship work? After all, doesn't “love conquer all”?

Obviously, there are many reasons relationships fail, but an important one is that most people enter into relationships when they're young and inexperienced and simply don't know much about themselves, let alone their partners. When you add to this the enormous pressure put on young people to “settle down” (and get married) by well-meaning parents, friends, religious institutions, and media, it's not surprising that so many jump into marriage assuming this is the way it's supposed to be. And despite the fact that the life expectancy today far outpaces that of only a couple of generations ago - when being married for life meant maybe twenty years - we still have the expectation that we'll live happily ever after with our one true love, even though that could be as long as sixty years. That's a long time, even for a great marriage!

And is it any surprise that we are attracted to people who are different from us? Like Susan and Jeff, most of us are inexplicably drawn to people who are very different than we are. The qualities that we find charming or exciting during the magical courtship period become much less appealing when we discover that our partners are like that every day! Rather than understand, accept, and appreciate our partners for who they are, we unwittingly turn the differences between us into the chief source of our frustration, irritation, and dissatisfaction. Instead of celebrating our differences, we resist them; we try to make our partners more like us. And as we do, we chip away at the foundations of our relationships by constantly criticizing, complaining, blaming, and dismissing our partners' characteristics and natural tendencies. Most couples engage in this undermining campaign in very subtle and indirect ways; they rarely address the problem honestly and openly. They just stop talking - really talking. So the overwhelming reason relationships fail is poor communication.

This is hardly news. But given the abundance of advice available to people today, it's still amazing and sad that we haven't yet learned how to communicate more effectively with our partners. Many have offered their pet theories about why people have such a hard time finding and sustaining satisfying relationships. Most offer simple, quick-fix approaches, not unlike the latest fad diet that promises a twenty-pound weight loss in as many days. And some of these programs deliver, at least temporarily. But ultimately they fail, because they are based on bad science, fail to appreciate the way human beings really act, or both. A whole industry has been created around the notion that gender is to blame: men and women are so inherently different that they don't even come from the same planet! Since they don't, won't, and can't speak the same language, they can never be expected to understand each other, much less communicate well.

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Copyright © 2000 by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger

About the Author

Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger have been married for many years, and are internationally recognized experts in the application of Personality Type. Their other books include the bestselling Do What You Are, Nurture by Nature, and, most recently, The Art of SpeedReading People. They live in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger have been married for many years, and are internationally recognized experts in the application of Personality Type. Their other books include the bestselling Do What You Are, Nurture by Nature, and, most recently, The Art of SpeedReading People. They live in West Hartford, Connecticut.