Key points

It’s hard to truly know yourself or think about your future, without appreciation of your innate temperament.

Partners often experience anxiety from opposite triggers; what lowers it in one, raises it in the other.

“Opposites attract” is a myth. We’re drawn to people with moderate differences in temperament.

The subtext of temperamental clashes: “You have to be more like me, feel like me, think like me!”

It’s hard in stressful times to truly know ourselves, apart from habits, transitory feelings, and reactions to other people. Emotional pain and relationship discord result from losing touch with the core self. When that happens, we're likely to try, in vain, to regulate our emotions by controlling other people.

If you or your partner ever felt needy, enmeshed, manipulate

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