Do Opposites Always Attract?

Relationships - they are everywhere around us. Best friends; deeply in love couples; doting parents and kids; bosses and their men Fridays, teachers and star students; As I grew up, one question I have often asked myself is that for a relationship to tick – is it essential that the two parties need to be as similar as possible; or is it that opposites always attract.

There have been numerous examples in my own life. I have known the best of friends who are as different as chalk and cheese – different principles and ideologies; different likes/dislikes; different tastes in various subjects like art, music, movies, theatre, politics; different food preferences; they are simply not on the same wavelength. But still, they often seem to complement each other so perfectly that they hardly need a third dimension on any aspect.

And there is the other school of thought – Birds of a feather flock together; Individuals who choose to adopt this belief are almost like two sides of the same coin. They have similar tastes, likes/dislikes, characteristics, beliefs, opinions, preferences, et al. They want to do similar things all the time - the ones who believe that it is so much easier for people with similar attributes to carry on a relationship smoothly.

If we think through a possible rationale for like-minded people to be attracted to each other, it could be because they are least prone to any conflicts and are almost hassle-free - you hardly need to convince anything to your own mirror image.

However, my personal experience has been that even those who fiercely believe in like minds getting together, discreetly wish that a devil’s advocate existed in reality to bring forward different perspectives - after all, what is the fun if you do not have someone near you who can give a reality-check on your way of life. What I have also seen is that the choice to adopt either of the tendencies mentioned above are, by and large, dependent on the circumstances that one goes through at various points of time.

I am yet to figure out myself what works best for me – or whether is it possible, or even necessary, to distinctly skew towards either of these approaches; nevertheless, in most cases, a co-existence of both these tendencies appear almost inevitable!!