Every girl I go out with becomes my mother in the end. Sometimes I hear my mother calling, but I don’t need her as a friend.
How the hell does that work? Does he administer test to groups of people and only consider dating people from that pool? Does he hand potential dates a form and ask them to fill it out? Does he mix in the test questions as part of casual conversation?
Just to clarify, you don’t have get lives and me confused/mixed up, do you?
FWIW, I’m pretty easygoing and relaxed, pretty much an Oscar Madison type. My wife is motivated, has an eye for detail, and is somewhat perfectionistic, a lower-grade Martha Stewart. We are not matched very well, but manage the differences. Were the differences much more pronounced, though, or were I not willing to try to be Mr. Clean to the best of my limited ability, it wouldn’t work well.
I’d advise looking twice at partners who have perfectionistic tendencies, poor stress management, and tend to see the glass half-empty. They can be challenging to live with.
You’ve just described both my brother and his wife. Every time Mom gets mad at her, she says “ah, but she puts up with my son!” Every time she gets mad at him, she says “ah, but my daughter in law is the one who puts up with him most!” I’m convinced it must be very tiresome to be them.
I don’t know, I have both unconsciously (when I was younger) and consciously (when I was older) refrained from dating people who were like my mother in a particular way: with a strong personality that is very vocally opinionated and sure of her(him)self, and impatient with others’ not going along with her (him). There’s one person I was really good friends with for years, and everyone always wondered why we didn’t ever even try to date. (I think he might have wondered too.) That was why.
It worked out really well for me. Strong personalities are fine in my friends, but in close intimate relationships I tend to get bludgeoned into things by a strong personality and then feel resentful – because that’s how I was programmed by my mom. My husband isn’t a pushover, and he does have strong opinions about many things, but he is also very easygoing and patient in most things, which is so much easier for me to get along with.
(My good friend married someone else, and they are very happy together. His wife does well with strong personalities, whereas my husband is sufficiently easygoing that he would probably drive her crazy!)
So no, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea to think about these kinds of things in intimate relationships. Now, if it’s hampering your friendships too, that’s something else, because your friendships shouldn’t necessarily be controlled by things that you would think of in a romantic/marriage situation.