Opposites Attract, But Then What?

Navigating a relationship with someone who is very different from me

I often joke that I am about as opposite as is possible to be from my polyamorous partner Nathaniel — except for the ways that we are exactly alike, that is. Nat and I are a bit like the Yin and Yang symbol (the taijitu) in that we complement each other and have a dot of the other within us, but for the most part, we are metaphorical night and day.

We may be deeply drawn to and attracted to each other, but we also have had to learn how to adjust in order to be with someone who goes about life and relationship so differently than is natural to us. It’s caused a fair amount of problems in our 4 years together, but it’s also taught us a lot about how to make opposites attract actually work, at least for us.

Nat still lives in the same small town where he grew up, while I’ve lived all over the country and traveled outside the US quite a bit. I even lived in a Muslim country for a couple of years in my early childhood. Nat may not have gotten to venture too far from his point of origin, but we both love to read, and he’s expanded his horizons through that. For a small town boy, he knows a lot about the world.

We both like sci-fi and offbeat characters and that was one of the earliest things that we connected around. Almost immediately, he got me reading Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard series and I got him started on Neil Gaiman, who he was already slightly familiar with because Gaiman had written a couple of Dr. Who episodes, and Nat is a big fan.

In those first months, we didn’t yet understand how very different we were from each other, but we still really wanted to experience and enjoy something that the other one was into, and that impulse was very helpful as we started to learn that it was more than just a country mouse/city mouse thing that was in play for us around our differences.

Nat knows more about popular culture and music of all kinds than just about anyone I know, and that was another area where we connected. He has very eclectic taste and although I couldn’t ever get him to truly enjoy Joni Mitchell, one of my old school favorite artists, or that one really catchy song from The Weekend, he did get me listening to contemporary Alt music and even a little bit from country artists like Miranda Lambert and Cody Jinks. The punk stuff never really landed for me, but that’s OK.

We still play a kind of game where we try to find new music that we think the other one would like and send it to each other. We also like to find interesting or unusual covers of songs and share those also. If you don’t know what Post Modern Jukebox is, go check it out on YouTube for a wealth of contemporary music reimagined in classic styles like New Orleans jazz or 40s big band. It’s fabulous!

At the beginning of our relationship, we lived about an hour away from each other, but only got to see each other about once a month because we are both married to other people. Now we live on the other side of the country and so having things to send each other is another way that we keep our relationship going, although we played this game even when we lived nearer. Sometimes we send each other funny memes and clips as well. This one gave him a good laugh!

But the real differences between me and Nat aren’t in our upbringing or our tastes in music. He’s a very quiet and somewhat reserved extrovert, and I’m a very social introvert. Nathanial is very involved in his community and is seemingly always on the go. He gets energized by being around other people, even if he isn’t all that gregarious with people he doesn’t know well. I like to talk to people and be in social situations, but I need a lot of time alone to recharge myself afterward. I love to go out, but at heart, I’m a homebody. He’s very independent and I’m very relationship-oriented. I wear my heart on my sleeve. He shows his by what he does more than what he says. This is where we’ve gotten into trouble in the past by expecting that the other person is more like us.

We show how we care in different ways and we want and expect slightly different things around the relationship, but ultimately, we both want to be together so, despite the distance and despite the differences, we’ve had to try to work it out. And for the most part, we have because we keep at it. Not that long ago we had a misunderstanding that led to some upset, but we talked it through and were both honest about what was going on for each of us. We figured out a way that we could perhaps avoid this type of misunderstanding in the future, and we moved on. It wasn’t a fun moment, but I do feel like it moved the needle some in better understanding each other and that counts for a lot. Every year it gets a little bit better.

We’ve both had to allow for someone who doesn’t go about life or relationship in the way that we are used to or prefer, and it hasn’t always been easy, but in many ways, that’s what this relationship is all about in the first place — an opportunity to better understand the other side of the taijitu. Our Yin and Yang fit very symbiotically together and work together well when we allow for our differences and celebrate our connection that is both alike and also entirely opposite.

Sometimes I wish he was a bit more like me just because it would make a lot of things a bit easier, but I don’t really want him to be different than he is because then he wouldn’t be the person that I love. As Father John Misty, one of our favorite Alt artists says,

“I’ll never try to change you As if I could, and if I were to, what’s the part that I’d miss most?”

In our case, opposites really do attract. It’s not always been a smooth ride, but it’s always been one that is very worthwhile.