I’m no stranger to the old adage “opposites attract” – looking back on some of my past relationships leaves me wondering exactly how I ever managed to date someone so dissimilar from myself. There’s a certain novelty to being in a relationship with someone who challenges your status quo, and sometimes, finding a yin to your yang really can balance you out.
While some differences can be worked through – religion, political beliefs, cultural norms – some are deal breakers, and in my experience, being in college can delay their appearance. One that is all too easily masked until you’re in the real world is personal initiative (or self-motivation, if you like).
It may initially sound counter-intuitive, but college provides a series of already-defined tasks that don’t necessarily require a tremendous level of personal initiative to progress through. But, what happens when that system is no longer in place, and you (and your partner) are left to your own devices to determine what comes next? What happens when you’re dedicating yourself to preparing for a successful career and your partner decides to postpone the job hunt, and suddenly displays a completely indifferent attitude toward beginning the post-collegiate life?
Well, if you’re anything like me, you assume that should you lend some support and encouragement, your somewhat overdeveloped sense of personal initiative will be catching.
In all likelihood, you will be wrong…and one of two things will happen:
1. You will smother and alienate your partner with unwanted information. Erika Lawrence, an associate professor of psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, recently conducted research regarding the support couples give one another. She found that “too much informational support — usually in the form of unwanted advice-giving — is the most detrimental” to a relationship – more so than not providing enough support. When you bombard your significant other with job postings or suggestions as to things he or she could do to “step up” an area of their life that is lacking in your opinion, you’re not doing anyone any favors…yourself included.
2. You will enable your partner to become dependent on you as an external source of motivation…which is fine, until you decide to stop being a full-time cheerleader and to invest that energy elsewhere. Psychology Today’s Jeremy Sherman recently pointed out that unlike humans, other mammals don’t require an external source of Vitamin C. Apparently, we have the genes required to self-produce Vitamin C, but they’re “damaged beyond functionality.” As our ancestors incorporated fruit into their diets (and in the process got Vitamin C), the dual sources of the vitamin resulted in what is coined “lazy gene theory.” Once fruit was readily available, our Vitamin C genes “had no effect on survival” and “just accumulated errors until they didn’t work…And now we’re addicted to this external source of C. Our dependency on it constrains and shapes our behavior.”
If their personal initiative was never there to begin with, what happens when you stop bending over backward and accept that it’s not your responsibility? If your over-involvement hasn’t already resulted in your partner’s resentment, you’ll begin to resent having to pony up motivation for two.
My (slightly embarrassing) case in point: I briefly dated a home-schooled, Frisbee-golfing waiter who worked at a Thai restaurant and was raised on a miniature donkey farm. He had no desire to go to college and completely lacked a direction in life – something that didn’t bother him in the slightest (and drove me up a wall). While it was thankfully a short-lived relationship, had I considered the fundamental difference in our ambitions and levels of self-motivation, I wouldn’t have given him the time of day.
Zero personal initiative combined with excessive personal initiative doesn’t “average out.”
