I’ve been thinking a lot lately about similarities and differences (among all the other thoughts that skitter through my headmeat like a monstrous pack of rabid and probably insane baby opossums through the course of days). What makes a good combination of personalities? Is there a perfect (or perhaps ideal is the better word) mix? Clearly you need similarities, or there’s no touchpoint for connection; on the other hand, too much commonality would seem to rather quickly build some sort of contempt (you ever spend enough time hanging out with your honest self, you’ll see this really fucking quickly).

My relationships — as much as I despise forced-binary groupings, here I go — can be divided into two camps: long-term, where that mix of personalities was reasonably close, and short-term (like, a couple of weeks, if they were really unlucky), where I immediately found and fixated on — well, if not flaws, the differences that I saw that I didn’t like.

Ah, fuck it — let’s call a spade a hoe: they were flaws.

In my head, at least, my current situation falls into the former of the two categories, only moreso. As I was telling someone the other day, for maybe the first time in my life, I’m not finding the differences irritating or hard to cope with, but beautiful pieces of the bigger whole, necessary parts of her that make her the person that I love so much.

I think to some degree those differences are necessary, to create a sort of tension. Not the kind that creates wedges and arguments and fights, but rather the tension (I was about to write “if I may”, but fuck you, it’s my page and I’ll write what I waaaaaaahnt) of the literary variety, required to propel the storyline forward, to instill growth in the protagonists, to make the goddamn thing readable.

There’s nothing sadder than a talented writer with no tension. Oh, wait — aren’t those poets?

But I digress…

Take the relationship between yin and yang. Stealing from Wikipedia (which is likely stolen from elsewhere, so it’s okay, citation nazis):

In Ancient Chinese philosophy, yin and yang (/jɪn/ and /jɑːŋ, jæŋ/; Chinese: 陰陽yīnyáng pronounced [ín jǎŋ], lit. “dark-light”, “negative-positive”) is a Chinese philosophical concept that describes how obviously opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

One the one hand, they are opposites — in meaning and visually. Twilight zone images, dualities in motion. On the other, though, they have so many similarities — same color schemes, same shapes, both moving in the same inferred direction. And they complement and connect to each other seamlessly. The two don’t cancel each other out as much as they drive the other forward, spotlighting the beauty and individuality of the other.

So what’s the perfect or ideal mix of personalities to create the laboratory-perfect conditions from which a lasting relationship can grow and flourish? Jesus, Karen — if I knew that, you think I’d publish it here, for free? Get the fuck outta here. I’d be on the road making fucking bank with that knowledge. Go watch another Brené Brown video.

But combined with my experience of the past — and all the things my idiot self better have picked up and embedded in my half-chewed brain — I really think that I might have stumbled across it.

Now, we just have to have a conversation about which of us is which universal force… Look for that soon on a pay-per-view near you.