Does your partner want to go out on Friday nights when you prefer to curl up at home with a movie?
Does your neat-freak boyfriend always want to clean up your cluttered office?
Does your wife want to plan trips six months in advance while you're a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of person?
The truth is, opposites attract. People who are different from each other in fundamental ways often catch each other's attention. We are attracted to the very qualities we wish we had ourselves. A shy person looks for a mate who is outgoing and gregarious to provide a social circle, and the outgoing person may need to be with someone who won't compete with him for attention. It seems like the perfect match—that is, until those very differences that originally attracted us start to drive us crazy.
But these differences don't have to drive couples apart. Renee Baron, a marriage and family therapist with more than twenty-five years of experience, uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicatorâ„¢ to provide a practical program for learning to appreciate our differences, rather than fight over them. The MBTIâ„¢ is the most widely used personality indicator in the world. By discovering your innate personality preferences and those of your partner, you can stop having the same fights over and over again and start appreciating the gifts each of you offers to the relationship.