When you are seeking someone to marry, it’s important to determine if there is enough marriage compatibility. Marriage compatibility defines how much you have in common. In other words, how similar are you? Those with high marriage compatibility tend to have marriages that last longer.
Your potential spouse does not have to be your clone. You don’t have to like all the same things and have the same hobbies, but you should have some things in common.
A good friend of my mom’s married a man who appears to be the exact opposite of her. She is outgoing. He is introverted. She loves to travel and travels several times a year. He doesn’t like to travel so they take few trips together.
However, neither of them appear troubled by this apparent incompatibility. He doesn’t care if she takes vacations with her friends and she doesn’t complain that she wished she had a husband who travels with her.
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.” ~Leo Tolstoy
How Can You Judge If You Have High Marriage Compatibility
Some of the questions below come from a book called “Clean Love in Courtship” by Fr Lawrence G. Lovasik.
1. What does he like to do for fun? Can you see yourself enjoying at least some of those activities?
2. Are there any habits now that not only get on your nerves, but which you find extraordinarily difficult to overlook?
3. Does he get along with your family, and you, with his?
4. Have you both sufficient health for marriage?
5. What are his habits of life: cleanliness, orderliness, good manners, good grammar?
6. What are your attitudes toward food and exercise? Is he or she a picky eater, gluten-free, vegetarian?
7. Do you agree on the roles of wives and husbands in a marriage?
8. Have you the same religion and the same standards concerning its practice?
9. Do you agree on how to raise children, including whether the wife will stay at home when children are small?
10. Do you feel at ease with each other? Are your silences comfortable?
11. Can you tolerate her faults?
12. Do you believe he will make a good parent to your future children?
Try answering these questions alone and asking your potential spouse to answer some of them? It should make for an interesting exercise.
You don’t have to have everything in common to get married, but if you really have nothing in common at all, you should seriously consider whether you are meant for each other, or else you’re in for a very tough time.
What kinds of questions do you ask prospective spouses?
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This page was originally published in 2018 and updated in 2020.