Olive Theory and the reason behind relationships and their failure

So first you may ask, what is this olive theory, for all the people who haven’t watched how I met your mother and hence don’t understand the reference, first do watch the show its amazing and if you liked friends you’ll love it, secondly, it’s just a built up on the folk wisdom that is opposites attract, for example if your partner disliked olives but you really liked them, then you’ll be compatible under the olive theory.

But something that doesn’t make sense, is that why do opposites really attract, like, shouldn’t they repel. It was something that always really fascinated me and yet it seemed to be a bit outlandish and even then, completely true, I mean from an evolutionary point of view I get it like the “will” of a person will look for someone to nullify or compensate for the weakness, to find their other half as to speak, short people often fall in love with tall people, and more passive men with more assertive women.

I mean I can see it as a theory that makes sense but the practical repercussions are too many to ignore like, you may have seen a tall guy with short a girl vice versa, or an introvert with an extrovert and people with quite opposite personalities together. Now you might say that we shouldn’t shame them or what is the actual harm in that like, aren’t they deserving of love too.

Obviously, they are, I am not shaming or discrediting any qualities, but you should understand that if you take love out of the equation, as a representation of a break-up or even a pause or influx of different feelings it becomes a hellish scenario, as they share quite little to nothing in common and the simple fact that they wouldn’t have been friends if not for the love is in itself a testament to it.

Cause the fact according to me is that the relationships aren’t even broken by lethargic-ness or even disliking ones qualities but when it is shown that the other partner isn’t even acknowledging or honoring your point of view, something so fundamental to them has been disregarded. The sensation of being unheard is what chokes relationships , and not the presence of differences or the absence of similarities . We could stand a partner who votes another way than we do or who is no longer as young as they once were, or who has annoying friends. What we can’t stand is when our unique way of looking at existence seems as a matter of irrelevance, because that makes us unseen. It’s better to be single than unseen; after all, the unseen is alone anyway

Before I start to elaborate on sustainability of relationships, there is a question that needs answering too,

“Why so serious? why are you making such a fuss about love and, why not leave it at ‘it is just mystical to us. Why such urgency, anguish and exertion?”.

So those are a lot of questions piled into one, So the answer to all of them is quite simply put, Because the ultimate aim of all love-affairs… is actually more important than all other aims in one’s life; and therefore, it is quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which one pursues it.

And Back to Sustainability, this is where things get tricky as the human brain might be complex but the matters of the heart are infinitely more tough to understand. To visualise it better, would you date a rockstar or a common nine-to-five-er, apart from the attraction of this example, to be consistently engaged in a relationship tends to be the key of sustainability. This further shows that 2 compatible people would be more likely to become distant as things get stale faster.

It was then pointed out, that thus so the solution should be balance. Cause having certain similar interests or common activities should negate the effect of dissimilarities, as long as they share the same sort of Fundamental belief systems. It makes a lot of sense, as if neither black nor white then grey should be the obvious answer (I apologize for the bad analogy).

But my final point is that compatibility isn’t similar and shouldn’t even be corelated with common interest grounds or even belief systems. This might be really a tough pill to swallow cause people tend to belief in the exact opposite of this. The reason I hold this belief is cause mostly belief systems or even common interests are quite frankly not a judge of ones personality as the reason they are selected may differ widely or might have never been a voluntary choice in the first place,

for example 2 people like Rachel (a character from friends) but one likes her for her humor and the other mainly likes her for her looks, they might share a common interest and fandom even but from deeper insights it becomes clear that the personalities are dissimilar. Since its isn’t possible always to find such deep-rooted insights It’s best to treat common interests as tailwind or a gamble at the least. Now the approach of a safer gamble, similar belief systems this is actually quite better as the odds of it turning bad reduce significantly as no matter the similarities and dissimilarities due to a common base de-escalation of issues happens much better; Additionally, it even strengths the bond and the belief system itself (may induce radicality into it as well, but we won’t talk about that)

Truly Compatibility is quite complex to judge as for the many hidden feelings people harbor are just quite a lot to take into account and it gets creepy as well. In my opinion, It’s entirely possible that one would remain with someone who doesn’t share most of our interests - so long as they happen to accept, and signal an understanding of, how much these interests matter to us and share a bit of empathy to our dreams. And so that it doesn’t feel like this article doesn’t have any point I’d like to leave you with this, Never try finding a partner using the check list method or the pros and cons list way (himym deep cut) as sometimes the wine compliments the cheese.

Thanks a lot for sticking out till the end, it really matters to me and I really gained a lot of insight from writing this article so if you want to contribute / edit / discuss on it you know where to find me.