4 Reasons Why It’s Helpful to Be Different Than Your Partner

By Cambria Root

Have you ever heard the saying “opposites attract?” Do you believe it? Do you see it in you and your spouse? We see people all the time in movies trying to find love by finding someone who shares all their same interests, or in other words, trying to find someone exactly like them. That might seem like the perfect way to go from the outside, and movies can totally make it work, but movies aren’t reality. 

If you really look deeper, you’ll realize that it can be very beneficial to have a partner who is different from you. Don't get me wrong, living with someone who is different from you can make some parts of life challenging, but in the long run, we would agree that we are very glad that we are so different. In fact, we often catch ourselves saying, “I’m so glad we’re different in this way,” because the cool thing is, we get to pull each other out of our shells and push each other to be better in the areas where we’re weak. 

There’s four reasons we’ve come up with as to why it is so helpful to be different than your partner:

1. We function better as a team

This seems like the perfect time for a sports analogy. In most sports there is a team, and in order to have a team, there needs to be different players. These players can’t all play the same position though, or else there would be no point to the game. You can’t have a football team where everyone’s the quarterback. You can’t have a baseball team where everyone’s the pitcher. You can’t have a soccer team where everyone’s the goalie. Just like you can’t have a marriage where two people are exactly the same. 

2. There can be less conflict

Have you ever had a friend or family member that is so similar to you that it’s hard to get along with them? All you end up doing is butting heads because you’re so similar. It’s almost like there’s a constant battle for who is going to be the alpha. I heard a man by the name of Bob Maddox explain it this way… if you hold your hands up, facing each other so they’re basically mirrored, and try to put them together, all that’s going to happen is your fingers are going to run into each other. However, if you rotate one hand slightly so it’s different from the other, your hands will be able to come together and interlock, without any finger clashing. 

3. We have different perspectives

If you and your spouse are different in several ways, odds are you will have different points of view as well. It can be challenging to come at problems from opposite angles, but it makes it so you can think about something that you probably wouldn’t realize before. For example, Noah comes at an issue very logically and straight forward, and I examine how my actions are going to make someone feel. To put it simply, Noah is very logical and I am emotional. But it makes it so I can influence Noah and allow him to be more gentle, and Noah can influence me and help her not be a pushover and only think about everyone else. We just come at life in a different way.  

4. We were created that way

From the beginning,  God created Adam and Eve to be different. Adam was created to take care of the earth (Genesis 2:15), and Eve was created to be his helper (Genesis 2:18). I know we assumed that Adam asked God for a helper, but once we re-read Genesis 2, we realized that it was actually God who decided that, “It is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Adam didn’t ask for a helper, but God knew that he needed one, even if Adam didn’t realize it at the time. God didn’t just hit copy & paste and make another Adam, he purposefully created someone who was not like Adam to be his perfect partner. And I just want to mention that both Adam and Eve were created before sin entered the world. They were literally the perfect couple. It just goes to show that God knows best and we don’t know everything. 

So next time you find yourself getting frustrated by something that your spouse is doing because it’s so different from the way you would’ve done it, stop…take a breath…and remind yourself of some of the reasons why it can be so helpful to be different from each other.