“Birds of a feather flock together,” the popular adage goes. It suggests people in a relationship who are similar to each other personality-wise are likely to be happier and stick together, while having different personalities might lead to less happiness or relationship longevity.
But a new study challenges that assumption. Instead, it suggests that your own personality is the most important factor in your relationship satisfaction, and that your partner’s personality is much less relevant.
Which personality traits matter?
For their study, researchers in Germany drew from a large longitudinal study that followed people born in the early 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s to see how their romantic relationship health fared. Participants who were still together after nine years of observation were included, resulting in 972 individual participants in long-term heterosexual couples. (There were too few non-heterosexual couples to include them in the analysis.)
Initially, both members of the couple filled out a questionnaire to measure their personality traits—specifically, how extroverted (outgoing and energetic), conscientious (efficient and organized), neurotic (sensitive and nervous), agreeable (friendly and compassionate), and open to experience (inventive and curious) they were. Then, each year over the course of the study, the participants reported how satisfied they were in their relationship, allowing the researchers to get an aggregate sense of how they were doing over time (rather than looking at just one point in time, as many past studies had done).
Analyzing the data, the researchers first considered whether there were differences in personality for women and men and whether partners were similar or different from each other personality-wise. They found that women tended to score higher for each trait than men, and that there was little overlap between the two partners in terms of personality—except around the trait of conscientiousness, which had a small tendency to align. This meant that partners didn’t necessarily have to have matching personalities to be in a long-term relationship (i.e., “birds of a feather flock together”), nor were they necessarily different from each other (i.e., “opposites attract”).
Second, the researchers found that long-term partners were similarly satisfied and that their satisfaction levels remained pretty stable over time. This makes some sense, as one might assume that people in the same relationship would see it similarly, for good and for bad.
But, when looking at how people’s own personality traits related to their satisfaction, the researchers had some intriguing findings. People who were more neurotic from the beginning were significantly less happy in their long-term relationship—no matter the personality traits of their partner. This suggests that being more neurotic is particularly hard on longer-term relationships.
“Since individuals with high scores in Neuroticism are characterized as more impulsive, anxious, and vulnerable, the effect on relationship satisfaction is plausible,” write the authors. This is likely explained by “cognitive (e.g., hostile attributions or perceived insecurity), emotional (e.g., fear of love withdrawal), and behavioral processes (e.g., passive-aggressive behavior).”
On the other hand, a conscientious partner tended to be more satisfied in their relationship, no matter their partner’s personality. This makes some sense, say the authors, as “Conscientiousness in general is associated with a sense of responsibility, orderliness, and thoughtfulness” and having a stable, long-term relationship with predictable types of routines and interactions might draw upon a conscientious person’s particular tendencies, making it more satisfying for them.
Contrary to expectations based on prior research, though, being more agreeable didn’t seem to matter when it came to feeling satisfied in a relationship over the long haul. However, write the authors, it’s possible that people may act more agreeable in the early stages of a relationship when trying to create connection and stability, but that it becomes less important over time.
Similarly, the authors seemed surprised that more extraverted women (but not men) were unhappier with their relationships, since past research didn’t show that connection. They speculate that this could be due to extraverted women having less time to pursue their social needs over the course of a long relationship, perhaps because of the demands of child rearing or other responsibilities that typically fall more heavily on women than men.
Though one could imagine a scenario where openness to experience affects relationship satisfaction—e.g., the desire for more novelty and challenge might make a stable, unchanging relationship seem dull—this personality trait was not linked to relationship satisfaction in the couples studied here.
Couples don’t need to have similar personalities to be happy
Perhaps most surprisingly, how satisfied one partner was didn’t seem to be affected by the personality of the other partner. This, say the authors, mirrors results from prior research.
“Long-term relationship satisfaction is primarily influenced by one’s own traits (Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion for women), while partner effects and gender differences are negligible,” write the authors.
This could be surprising to people in unhappy relationships, who might otherwise think personality flaws in their partner are probably to blame for whatever’s wrong between them. Instead, these findings suggest that the onus is on our own personality (among other things) when it comes to relationship success—not something everyone will necessarily find easy to accept.
On the good news front, recent research suggests personalities are more changeable than we might think. We can also nudge our personalities in more positive directions, if we so choose. That means we all have the power to become less neurotic if it’s getting in the way of our happiness, and to become more conscientiousness if it will make us more satisfied in love. Perhaps, this study will give at least some of us more incentive to try.
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