Do you have to have something in common?

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This.

I think people do need to have something in common but it will not necessarily be interests or personality types. And it does not also need to be something that is visible to people outside the relationship. I agree that having shared values and ideas about how to treat people (and also how the world works in general) is the ultimate form of having something in common. But this will not necessarily be visible too people outside the relationship. So many people use a person's political choices, religion or job as a proxy for their values but it isn't. People can even look at personality types and use those as a proxy for values, thinking the extrovert and the introvert can't have anything in common because they interact with the world so differently. Two people in a relationship can have very similar values but others won't realize this because they'll just make assumptions about their values based on voting/religious attendance/etc. and wrongly conclude there is nothing in common.

Actually, I think it does. You can each relate to the feelings of exclusion the other one has.

"Something in common" doesn't mean you have to share something tangible, just, "something." Otherwise, what do you do together, what do you talk about? People can be adaptive creatives and take on new hobbies, engage in activities just because it makes their partner happy, and listen to talk just because their partner is the one sharing it, but you do have to start somewhere.

Now, if the entire relationship is based on liking rpgs, that isn't going to sustain, either, because shared hobbies may not always be shared hobbies, and since you can't spend 24/7 in an rpg, at some point you will have to talk about something else.. You use that as a starting point, not the end all, end all. So I disagree with the brother that ends friendships when the shared interests interests end; friendships can and should develop connections that go beyond the activity, and sustain beyond it. Knowing how that works will be an important skill to transfer into a romantic relationship.

If there is no common thread at all, odds are you fell in lust, not love.

Kind of a side note, my mother once said, when I was talking about a guy with some really large differences in background and life views from mime, that two people don't have to the be same to make a relationship work, but, since marriage is hard enough, the less things you have to negotiate over, the easier it will be.

i sort of disagree that a couple needs to have very much background or personality or values in common. if you looked hard enough, i'm sure you can find something, but in general i don't think it is an absolute requirement - as long you are both openminded enough to accept each other's differences.


husband's background = NT (though social phobic for a while), christian reformed, sexually conservative (he felt we were married in the eyes of god from the first time we had sex. it explains why he called me after our first night together), strongly political, stable and functional family background

hyperlexian's background = aspie, atheist, sexually promiscuous (did not even believe in the importance of marriage), apolitical, family background of abuse/neglect/alcoholism/drug abuse/dysfunction


yes, we have argued a lot because there is so much we don't agree on. we broke up 8 times before we got married, and we still don't agree about many important things, though we don't have angry roof-raising arguments very often anymore. but we are still absolutely and achingly in love. perhaps the uncertainty and disagreements keep us from becoming complacent.

right now, and for the last couple of years, we have been debating about whether to own a house. we still cannot agree about it. the summit meetings have finally produced a potential multi-year compromise, although it has not yet been ratified. it may take a few more years of discussion to get the agreement in place.

Yes, you have to have something in common. Otherwise, it's not a relationship based on anything but lust.

The best relationships come out of friendships, but the key to those are that both parties find each other attractive. Otherwise you get friendzoned.

Since I really doubt either of you said "Wow, absolutely nothing in common with me - that's who I want to spend my life with", what was the factor that closed the gap? Chemistry?

lulz! he refused to give up and even proposed 3 times before i finally agreed. we had an all-consuming need to be together somehow. for him, that meant marriage, and marriage scared me. over the years we have continually reinvented our marital arrangements in different ways, and also performed different roles within the marriage.

extreme flexibility and willingness to change are the biggest factors so far. for example, he used to lie to me a lot. i helped him change so that now he tells the truth, but i had to learn to accept some very hard truths.

having a child together definitely cemented things. perhaps that it is the ultimate thing to have in common? it makes me cringe to even write that, because kids are never supposed to be something that helps a marriage! but the number 1 most important thing in both of our lives is our child, so that means we would never do anything to jeopardize her well-being.

but we also have a healthy individual lives and a pair-bond in addition to being a collective family. we made sure that our marriage can survive our child eventually growing up and moving away. we have lots in common now, but it took a long time to get here.

Hmmm... might have been a better question for him perhaps then . That sort of direction I guess is just something I can't fathom. I've had some perhaps ridiculously strong crushes in my life when I got to know a girl and saw what kind of internal energy she was packing but - that's been maybe a whole four or five in my life, even there I felt like I would have been intruding and ultimately doing nothing more than causing a hassle if they weren't interested, sometimes they weren't , sometimes they were, sometimes they'd had boyfriends for five years already and simply weren't on the market. Regardless I'd perhaps try my luck in terms of letting them know my intent, if no reciprocity was there I moved on whether or not my emotions were ready to.