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Caroline Sacks wasn’t used to dating quiet guys, guys who liked meditation, yoga, and the Grateful Dead.
Sacks, a 29-year-old content creator who lives in Brooklyn, is more of a Bridgerton and Justin Bieber girl herself. In the past, she tended to date people who had the same interests and had similarly high energy. But those relationships didn’t pan out. So, rather than drop the Deadhead before their relationship really began, Sacks saw those differences as minor misalignments, something to be curious about instead of dismissing out of hand. Over the last six years, she’s been to several Dead and Company shows and she is now marrying the Deadhead. “If you met us separately, I really don’t think you would put us together in any way, shape or form,” Sacks tells Vox.
Modern romance is marked by many, often contradictory, truisms. Love is easy, but it also requires hard work, and yet feelings of frustration or annoyance are red flags. For long-term happiness, your interests and lifestyle must be consistent, yet we’re told opposites attract.
The truth is, believing you have plenty in common with your partner is more important than your actual similarities, experts say. And part of the fun of being with someone whose interests are very different from yours is finding the activities you do enjoy together. “Imagine that if you line up the 10,000 things that two people might have in common,” says Paul Eastwick, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis and author of Bonded By Evolution: The New Science of Love and Connection. “All you really need to craft a relationship that feels fulfilling is the ability to build around three or four of those things.”
Why we date similar people
People do typically form relationships with those of similar ethnicity, religion, education, and lifestyle behaviors; it’s known as homophily. Research has shown that the closer you are to a person, the more alike you probably are.
We naturally self-sort based on our interests, too; if you frequent a certain bar or join a local civic organization, you’ll meet people who share at least one thing in common with you. “When you think of how two people would meet if they have zero things in common, it’s hard to come up with a lot of scenarios,” William Chopik, an associate professor of social and personality psychology at Michigan State University, tells Vox. “People often meet through their mutual interests. They’ll meet at a run club, or at work, or at church maybe.”
And dating apps make screening for these similarities easier than ever; it’s not difficult to, say, write off hikers or keep your eyes peeled for fellow art enthusiasts. Although apps broaden the dating pool to include people outside of your usual social contexts, all it takes is a swipe to weed out potential matches based on your perceived dissimilarities. But that can be ill-advised, because what we think we want in a partner isn’t necessarily what we actually want. In a study, Eastwick found that the qualities people say they find attractive aren’t necessarily present in the people they end up with.
Having similar interests doesn’t mean you’re entirely compatible either. “In general, we say that two people are compatible when they can be together without constant friction,” Alessia Marchi, a couples counselor who has studied compatibility, tells Vox in an email. That means people mesh when their core values and big-picture goals — whether they want kids, their political leanings, how they find purpose and meaning — are aligned. Liking the same movies isn’t as important.
“In some cases, these differences can enrich the relationship, allowing partners to learn from each other and adding variety and value to their shared experience,” Marchi says.
Insisting that your soul mate possesses all your same interests means possibly missing out on a would-be good partner because they like camping and you don’t. “Maybe you overlook someone who’s 85 percent similar,” Chopik says. “You tried to get someone who’s 90 percent similar, but maybe the 85-percent person was perfectly fine or nicer or had other characteristics that they didn’t put in their Tinder profile.”
Perceived common ground matters more than actual similarity
Two people can be vastly different, but so long as they believe they have a lot in common, they have a higher likelihood of staying together, research has found. When you like someone, you might be more motivated to find common ground — something as simple as that you both enjoyed rock climbing that one time, or that you both like cooking stews in the winter. “If you are dramatically different than your partner, it might not matter if you don’t think that,” Chopik says. “If you have a crush or you seek out similarities, odds are you’ll find them.”
Actively focusing on your similarities instead of your differences could improve your relationship, too. In an as-yet-unpublished study, researchers found that after people considered their similarities with their partner, they thought about the person more positively. “Just reflecting and asking yourself, ‘What did we agree on? What did we have in common today?’” says one of the study’s authors, Annika From, a postdoctoral associate at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The specific areas of overlap aren’t of importance — what matters is that you find them. Rather than insisting on a partner who likes salsa dancing as much as you do, finding new hobbies together should be an “active construction process” that you build into your identity as a couple, Eastwick says. Salsa dancing might not be what you end up seriously bonding over anyway. Why limit yourself?
And you may discover similarities as you partake in new experiences together. Romantic relationships can help open doors to novel insights and events, which help expand your sense of self and identity. “If you think you don’t have things in common, maybe you do,” Chopik says. “You both went to this horrible art showing and you bonded over how much you hated the pretentious people.”
When differences add excitement
You don’t need to convince your partner of the joys of arcade games just because you like them; it’s perfectly healthy for each partner to have unique interests they partake in solo or with friends. And if it is important to you that your significant other shares your love of cooking, for instance, consider less obvious ways of including them, like tasking them to pick a recipe or a dessert pairing. Sacks, the content creator from Brooklyn, has gotten her fiance, who she described as a relatively unskilled chef, involved in the kitchen, and they whip up curries and protein bowls together.
Knowing someone finds you fascinating despite not sharing any of your interests can even be a turn-on. One study found that when participants perceive someone with different hobbies as being interested in them, that person becomes more attractive. When they express curiosity about your hobbies, you invite them into your world, exposing them to potentially fresh perspectives, knowledge, and skillsets. “It’s so exciting to have this chance to see the world through somebody else’s eyes, through somebody else’s vantage point,” Eastwick says.
For Sacks, that means listening to the Grateful Dead on road trips because it’s what her fiance loves and dragging him to violin cover band concerts when no one else will go with her. “You wouldn’t say that we would be a natural brand fit,” she says, “but I think it’s just a curiosity and excitement for one another that it doesn’t matter.”
