Why Everyone Should Date Their Opposite, Then Let Them Go

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They say that opposites attract and that you should date someone who has different interests and beliefs than you if you want to grow as a person. When you date your opposite, you learn to see the world in new ways.

You question your own beliefs or you strengthen them. You learn new things and you try new foods and you see new places. You fight too. You fight a lot. Your communication styles don’t match up, so you have to learn how to fight effectively with another person. You grew up in very different families, so you perceive and show love differently.

At times you won’t feel loved at all by this person. And maybe in the end you will be right, and they won’t love you the way you wanted them to. It starts off as mysterious and exciting. You try to adapt and learn and keep up with this person who challenges you in so many ways.

Eventually, you will fall in love and you will have one more thing in common: they love you too. One of you will start to think about your future together. The other one won’t. The other person doesn’t think about the future with you because they don’t want to think about a future, not with you and not with anyone else. They are emotionally closed off and selfish.

They want to focus on their career and their own future. You’re a romantic. You can’t imagine your life without the person you love. As the romantic you will try even harder to adapt, even harder to fit the mold your beloved has created for whoever they date. You can’t do it though.
You slowly learn that you will never be the person they want, and you will learn that no one will ever make them happy unless they manage to fit perfectly into this mold. They will pull away. You will hold on.

You will fight some more. One of you will fight harder than the other. And one day you will start to see that they will never be able to give you the love you need because they do not want to try. They see no need for them to change a single thing they do, and they are not going to start changing or trying for you.

It will end. Either you will walk away exhausted or they will leave you. It will hurt. It will hurt in a way that you cannot understand, because even though you know how different you are from each other, and even though you knew that it would probably never last, and even though you never really felt loved by this person, you tried.

You tried harder than you ever have, constantly bending and adjusting for this person. Your self-esteem will be drastically lowered during this relationship, and you will only see how true this is once you are far enough away from them to think again.

And after all of this, you will heal. You will heal much faster than you expected. You will learn what you want and what you don’t want. You will know going forward what differences will make or break a relationship. You will grow. So date your opposite, but prepare yourself for pain.

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