Com·pat·i·bil·ity? What's That?

Com·pat·i·ble

[kuhm-pat-uh-buhl]

adjective

1. capable of existing or living together in harmony.

Hmmm. Ok, duh. What I really want to know is how do you know if you are really compatible with someone? I mean, you meet; there's attraction + chemestry, you laugh & have fun, you can't wait to see her again, she thinks your kid "fucking rocks", you break beds in the bedroom... then all of a sudden, you know, you're packing the U-Haul and planning a wedding.

You being me. [Of course]

But that doesn't mean you are compatible. Or that you're right for each other and should settle down. Or that you should even continue to casually date.

Don't get me wrong, I have never bought into the whole "ooooh, we were meant to be together" dogma, so what gives? I make it 42 years and suffer two failed marriages

[neither of which were my fault of course]

[Tongue entirely in cheek - for one out of two anyway]

before realizing compatibility is more than just "getting along"? Apparently a lot more. So I never asked myself. I never wondered what my ideal mate would 'look' like. I never questioned if it was personality, or lifestyle, or belief system that would hold you together long-term. One thing I did know,

I do know,

[and I don't know, I may have learned this, or the opposite of this (?) from a Beattle's song]

love is never enough.

But, and you're going to love this, it wasn't even the demise of my marriage to D1 that got me thinking about compatibility or what it really takes to make a relationship work long-term. All I knew after that disappointment was that I didn't want another serious romantic relationship. No way. No how.

At least not for a long time,

aka after Bird graduated from high school, + 100 years

and even then I will have played the field and dated several people before settling on The One.

There I go again."The One." * Scoff * Another bullshit fairy tale used to sell greeting cards if you ask me,

which of course you didn't since I'm talking to myself and don't suffer from multiple-personality disorder, at least that I know of

but okay, 'the one' in lower case as in 'the one' who makes me want to spend all of my time with her and no one else. Without need of a U-Hual or feeling personally impacted by Ref 74 passing.

So enough of this "Leo's are Loyal" and ofcourseIdon'thaveaproblemwithcommittment nonesense. You don't have to be a one woman, uh woman, until you meet the woman who you think you are compatible with.

[There's that word again]

But I digress. Really.

What made me take stock in all of this heavy-duty

"YesILikeYouButThatDoesn'tMeanWe'reCompatible"

business was a short story by Nicola Griffith called It Takes Two that I read a couple of days ago. This passage, in particular, spoke volumes to me, work of fiction, or not (which it is):

"There are hundreds of studies that show how powerful sex bonding can be, especially for women. If a woman has an orgasm in the presence of another person, her hormonal output for the next few days is sensitized to her lover: every time they walk in the room, her system floods with chemical messengers like oxytocin saying Friend! Friend! This is even with people you know, consciously, aren't good for you. You put that together with someone compatible, who fits-whether they really fit or just seem to fit- and it's a chemical bond with the potential to be human superglue" (Griffith, p. 31-32).

HELLO! DingDingDingDingDing!

But what does it all mean?

New paradigm needed, obviously.

But more than that. You'll never really know if you're compatible or not, until you have invested the time to find out, until you have lived as if She was The One.

And if it turns out that she isn't? Well, it certainly doesn't mean you failed. It means you just weren't compatible.

I like it. Because it means you I tried.

Reference

 (sorry, APA formatting habits die hard):

Giffith, N. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://nicolagriffith.com/ItTakesTwo_GRIFFITH.pdf