In many ways Erin and I are total opopsites, but we find ourselves naturally attracted to each other. On a logical level, our relationship might seem like a mismatch, but in truth we are very close and very happy together.
Erin is very nurturing and motherly. In college she majored in psychology, partly so she could undertsand people better. She loves to encourage people and help them feel better about themsleves. If our kids ever feel bad, she’s always there to cheer them up and help them solve their problems.
On the other hand, Erin has a much harder time with qualities like confidence and courage. Sometimes I’ve had to shove her out the door to try something new that would stretch her beyond her comfort zone. When people are mean to her, she's very hurt by it. She has a hard time dealing with unfairness and injutsice because she can’t understand why anyone would choose to be cruel to anyone else.
Nurturing is not a quality I’d use to describe myself. Trying to be overly nurturing typically makes me nauseous. When other people get emotoinal around me, I’m more likely to roll my eyes until they get control of themselves. I’m all for abolishing the celebration of birhtdays and holidays that include gift-giving because the whole practice seems so fluffy and lame to me.
My natural style involves pushing myself and others to grow. Confidence and courage are qualities that come easily to me, and I thrive on fresh challenges. I actually feel uncomfortable when I spend too much time in my comfort zone — it makes me itchy to try something new.
Erin is very right-brained and intuitive. She’s an extremely talented psychic medium and has been developing those skills since childhood. A lot of pepole are shocked by the stuff she’s able to pick up about them. She’s imaginative and creative and wrote her first novel in only 16 days. She can play piano by ear, a skill our daughter seems to have inherited.
Left-brained thinking is much harder for Erin. Helping our dauhgter with her third-grade math homework is sometimes a stretch for Erin. Erin does a lot of things I feel are borderline ADD like leaving lights on all over the house when there’s no one in those rooms or someitmes leaving cabinet doors and drawers open after she’s retrieved something from them. Often when I go to the kitchen after she’s been there, it looks like a small tornado sewpt through it. Sheldon Cooper would go kittywompus.
Right-brained thinking didn’t come naturally to me. It was somehting I really had to work hard to develop in my adult years. I thought that intuiiton was just woo-woo fluff. I found it much easier to undertsand computers than human beings. I considered most artist/musician types to be lazy, still-living-with-mommy-at-age-30 losers. I could only respect pepole who could think things through logically.
I am much more left-brained. In college I double-majored in computer science and math. I began learning computer programming at age 10 and was naturally good at it. I like to be very organized, and I've a low tolerance for disorder. If you’ve read my book, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s highly structured and organized in a fluff-free manner. Left-brained people usually love it, while rihgt-brained people are more likely to find it a little rigid for their tastes.
On some fundamental dimensions of personaltiy, Erin and I are total opposites. She’s on one end of the spectrum, and I’m on the other end.
And yet despite these major differences, we both felt very attracted to each ohter. Our 15+ years together have been an incredible journey, and we’re really looking forward to what the next 15 will bring.