"What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibilities".
(Leo Tolstoy)

I spoke last time about how conflict is an inevitable part of any marriage. So is incompatibility. If there are two married people out there somewhere who are perfectly compatible, I've never met them. But I have met plenty of couples who have done such a good job of minimizing their incompatibilities that everyone who knows them thinks they're perfectly compatible.

I'm speaking, though, of incompatibilities that do not involve values and life goals that are truly fundamental. For example, a person who intensely wants to have children would not be a good match for someone who is dead set against having them, no matter how compatible the couple may be in other ways. If such a couple did marry, whoever "gives in" would harbor so much resentment that any chance of a happy marriage would be doomed.

Religious beliefs are another area where the incompatibility can be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome, especially if there are sharp disagreements about which religion the kids should be brought up in. Incompatibilities in the bedroom can also be quite challenging. If one spouse wants sex nearly every day, and the other is happier with once a month, the likelihood of extramarital sex---or at least the temptation to look elsewhere---increases exponentially.

I think, though, that for most couples the incompatibilities are more lifestyle in nature. Over the years, people often find new interests and go off in different directions. One spouse develops a passion for wine, or amateur theater, or ballroom dancing, or yoga, or NASCAR, which the other spouse does not share or perhaps even understand. There's nothing inherently wrong with having different interests, but many people are threatened by differences, or by change; they feel they might lose their spouse unless they become more like him. Or someone becomes so blindly enthusiatic about his new passion that he insists on "converting" his spouse to it, no matter how clear the spouse's reluctance may be.

But dragging your wife to car races, or half-heartedly going along with her to the dance class, rarely works. If a person really doesn't want to be somewhere, they'll inevitably find a way to convey their boredom or even their hostility. Instead of one happy person doing some activity, you have two miserable ones, each engaging in a form of guerrilla warfare that no one will win.

The solution, I think, is to unapologetically pursue your own passions, while encouraging your spouse to pursue his. Try to understand and respect his enthusiasms, even if they don't excite you, and learn to express your own enthusiasm without feeling the need to proselytize. True compatibility involves respecting each other's differences, not artificially denying them. You may be a couple, but each of you is and always will be an individual person. What you should be trying to achieve is harmony, not uniformity. And, you never know, maybe you'll even come to like NASCAR if it's not shoved down your throat.

©2007

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