What Traits Should You Look For In A Partner? - Dr Shannon Curry - #908

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Getting married is just choosing one person's faults over another. Is that right?

**Shannon Curry** (0:06)
Did I say that?

**Chris Williamson** (0:07)
You said that.

**Shannon Curry** (0:08)
I know that is from somebody who works with the Godmans, but yeah, essentially, the grass is always greener on the other side. So I find that incredibly freeing as soon as we realize that we are going to be living with somebody who has a lot of faults, and can we tolerate those faults, and can they tolerate ours, then you are starting on solid ground.

**Chris Williamson** (0:30)
It's an interesting thing. You're looking at a familiar type of discomfort, and the deal that you're really trading it for is not familiar discomfort for unfamiliar comfort, but familiar discomfort for unfamiliar discomfort.

**Shannon Curry** (0:45)
Exactly. That's very well said. Give me an example.

**Chris Williamson** (0:51)
You have a partner that is not quite as tender as you might like, they're not as loving. You're staring at the night sky and you really wish they would say something high-flown and thoughtful, but they start singing a song that they heard yesterday or playing a tune or something like that, or they make a joke. You think, I just really want somebody that's so deep and is there. Then you decide to switch for another partner and you're at a party, and your previous partner would have been really involved in the conversation. It would have given you something that you could have bonded over. But at the new party with the new partner, this partner needs your attention all of the time and they don't really allow you to connect. You have certain elements of discomfort traded for other elements of discomfort. One person is phenomenal to watch movies with because they don't interrupt and they just like to sit there and be calm. But the next person that you bring along is really interesting and engaging when you have conversations about stuff that fires you up, and you end up making these trades.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.

**Shannon Curry** (1:57)
There are only trade-offs. Although I do believe that Tai Toshiro, a psychologist and researcher, came up or really identified three key qualities that can make it easier. If a person has these three key qualities, really this sets the groundwork for having an easier time managing these set of problems because there's so much good there to make up for it. And those things aren't necessarily what we usually shoot for. They're more solid. And it makes sense. If you're trying to be with somebody for years and years, and you're going to be living with them every day in all of their idiosyncrasies.
Can you say that word for me?

**Chris Williamson** (2:46)
Idiosyncrasies.

**Shannon Curry** (2:48)
Idiosyncrasies.

**Chris Williamson** (2:49)
I think so.

**Shannon Curry** (2:50)
It's one extra syllable I keep putting in there. So idiosyncrasies. Essentially, you want somebody who's solid and who is consistently reminding you of what a decent, wonderful human being they are so that those idiosyncrasies fall away and aren't the central focus. Whereas if somebody is really cool or good looking or witty, that might help a little bit. But if they are self-absorbed or unkind, then whatever other issues you traded off for are going to be really glaring and staring at you in the face.

**Chris Williamson** (3:27)
Dig into that a little bit more for me. What did he find?

**Shannon Curry** (3:30)
So Taito Shirou, he actually looked at, first of all, he realized that people who stayed together, for the most part, the large proportion of them are chronically unhappy. And there's a small minority who are actually, they stay married long term and they report a high level of satisfaction, not only in their partnership, but in their sex lives. And it can actually increase with age. And so out of that small minority, he wanted to know, are there any correlates? Are there inequalities? He looked at personality, he looked at race, he looked at age, he looked at all sorts of demographics of how they came together. And there were actually three core personality traits that he found represented more than others. And those were conscientiousness, number one. Flexibility, number two. Really low neuroticism is what we call it. So it's not a neurotic person. This person's pretty easygoing, flexible. And then the third is low to moderate adventurousness. And I always say to my clients on this, cause I'm constantly advising my clients on this, this doesn't mean they don't want to hike or travel. Everybody likes to hike and travel. Or I mean, I don't really like to hike, but everybody has some adventurousness in the traditional sense. But if you think of those of us who are constantly looking at new shiny things, that's high adventurousness. And high adventurousness might mean that you are constantly starting new projects or running a business and you constantly have new ideas. It can also mean that you're constantly attracted to new, exciting people. Doesn't mean you're going to cheat. It just means that you are somebody whose focus is constantly wandering and it can be very difficult to get your focus and attention, which diminishes intimacy and connection at home. So you can understand why you'd actually want somebody who is really just easygoing, the rock. They focus on their family. They constantly understand what's important.