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Compatibility Is Overrated
Shmuley Boteach

I spend a lot of time counseling couples, both married and dating. If they are a troubled couple, the advice they usually seek is whether or not they should stay together. A month ago I sat with Harry and Denise. Married for four years, with a two-year-old daughter, they both looked miserable during our session. They were also unusually quiet, having long since passed the stage where they could muster the strength to argue. "The truth is," Denise told me with reddened eyes, "it's been a long time since Harry and I made each other happy. We're both really depressed. Maybe we should go our own separate ways, but there's our daughter to consider."

There's a single question I ask that serves as the sole criterion for whether or not a couple should stay together: do you still love each other? If there's any affection left, even if it's buried under a mountain of pain, the relationship is still viable. This is not to say that there aren't other important factors in a relationship. Children are extremely significant, as are, to a much lesser degree, considerations of finances and social pressures. But none of these constitute sufficient grounds for the couple staying together once they have ceased loving each other.

The unique thing about love is that it creates compatibility between two people who would otherwise have nothing in common. I'm one of those strange guys who don't believe that compatibility is important in relationships. In fact, compatibility is a myth. It is love that brings them together and creates compatibility.

My kids and I are utterly incompatible. I like writing essays, they hate doing their homework. I love smoking cigars, they run out of the room the moment I light up (on the rare occasions that my wife doesn't shoot the fire extinguisher at me first). I love watching football, while my little baby loves watching "Teletubbies." And I absolutely loath and detest Pokemon. But the kids love it.

And yet, the strange thing is that this thing called love can create compatibility between me and my kids. It has me crawling on the floor, with them hanging onto my back and pulling out the last black fibers of my hapless beard--and me actually enjoying it. It can cause me to sit and do their homework, amid the humiliation of not remembering a thing about multiplication and division tables. And it can even get me to speak in strange languages as I try and communicate with our one-year-old. But without love, my kids and I are utterly incompatible. We have nothing in common....

...I believe that all this modern emphasis on compatibility is designed to compensate for the dwindling attraction between the sexes. Men and women today are so overexposed to each other that all mystery has been lost. Guys and girls are no longer as curious about each other, as nature designed them to be....

...This is not to say that some elements of compatibility shouldn't be present in a relationship prior to the couple deciding to marry. It is to say that our understanding of compatibility shouldn't be trivialized. Having shared values, common beliefs, mutual respect, and a mutual direction in life is compatibility enough, even if you don't share the same appetite for sushi....