I've always held on to the belief that studies hold a huge amount of truth in them. I was once primed to take up a pre-med degree and par for the course was to get myself familiarized with studies which are medical in nature. Psychology was more of my thing because it was less exact science and more about the uncertainties of the human mind; to which I am not knocking on psychology, I like that field. It works for me, a person who would find it difficult to wrap my head around chemical bonds and what not. But where am I going with this, really? I just went into a relationship with someone - someone whom I hold very dearly even way before. Someone who, in a lot of respects, is the (I won't be using exact because it's overrated) opposite of me. And I have heard the overused line which goes something like: "opposites attract." Yes, that's true for the sciences, and chick flicks... and action flicks, come to think of it... as a girl would be inclined to a man who is unlike her, so does a hero who is inclined to shoot his nemesis in the head. But I digress, by a wide margin.
I won't quote the exact author of the study or even remember what the exact study was, but I once saw some findings that in some cases, opposites do attract; here's the catch, though: but not for long. You will get sick of your special other who's unlike you, you will get tired of that person who share different beliefs from you; which, to tell you honestly, scares me. I went into a relationship hoping to take a home run. I am not in the business to waste my time on some chick whom I might just spend at least a few months or so. I value my time, my feelings, and most importantly, my wallet very highly. But then again, this is merely a fear, and fears are irrational... but so is love.
They say that couples that do last are those from couples who are a lot like each other. Am I like the person whom I am in a relationship with? In some cases, yeah. But for a pessimist like me, a person who sees not what I have but what I lack, I see our differences more than the commonalities. Which you must therefore conclude that I should be blamed for thinking like this and adopting this set of beliefs. So at the end of the day, am I the one who has the problem?
According to my professor, in most cases, once the sample size of any research study it mimics normal distribution. The theory I have, is that if you gather the data of every successful relationship, you would see that, yes, the more alike you are with your special other, the more successful your relationship would be... BUT, normal distributions have outliers, for those who have yet to encounter what a normally distributed probability is... I linked it like a wikipedia page, do yourself a favor and read about it. But anyway, as I was saying... outliers, deviants, anomalies... yes, despite my pessimism on the matter, I hold on the idea of outliers; more specifically, on the probability that my relationship would be a success on an outlying chance. "Normal" has never been my calling card, and I am well aware that most experiences I've had are not well within at least 2 standard deviations of a continuous probability distribution.
oooh... I'm getting too math-y for my own liking. "Math literate" has never been my calling card either.
