You're Not My Type / Incompatibility

By Liku Layuk Allo - April 23, 2022

Human beings are a made up of coalescence of biological, psychological, and social forces. In this sense, each of us is formed somewhere along a behavioral spectrum that generally determines who we are, what we are like, what our thing is, what makes us tick, and so on.

Nobody wants to commit very long to nonsensical things. It may provide good laughs and entertainment, but we wont dedicate our lives to it. Relationships especially marriage, is going through life as a couple. I am not married yet, but I know it's about going places, achieving goals, and raising a family together, right? It is not about endless drifting in a sea of sand. That's why it is important for couples to align their goals. They discuss it while they are dating and hopefully it gets somewhere. So if one partner wants to go to Somalia and spend his/her life taking care of starving children, while the other one wants to be a banker in New York, then obviously, someone has to compromise on their dreams, right? I guess it needs to have something more than just love, sex, and rock n' roll.

Having all gone through many things, we often have arrived at a moment where the chemistry is either short-lived, or simply dies away the moment it began. Something is just not clicking with the other person. We can't put our finger on it. We can't name it, exactly. There is a missing piece. We might even say, this person is just not my type. We think we are out to find love partners who will make us happy, but honestly.. we're not? We are out to find partners who will feel familiar, and that may be a very different thing; familiarity may be bound up with particular kinds of life experiences. This explains why sometimes we meet someone and we can recognize that they are really wonderful and amazing, but we must confess that there is something missing in this person, and we struggle with the vocabulary to explain it. Have you ever feel this way?

On the other hand, sometimes we're meeting a person, who's maybe not that exciting, or not sexy, a bit boring, but really what we mean is that we've detected something in this person that they will not be able to make us suffer in the way that we need to suffer in order to feel that love is real. 

I have been on both the giving and the receiving end of the "you're not my type" feeling. I would consider both are the same. It's messy for both parties. On the giving end, there is a lot of guilt for not loving this seemingly adequate and interesting person in the way they probably deserve. On the receiving end, we cant help but feel that this person is quite simply not telling us the truth, that they are hiding something from us, that they just don't want to reveal what they are really thinking about us. 

Here's an old story. There was a time when I met someone and I thought he was charming and interesting. People says we looked good together. I said, we looked good together. Everything seems so-called perfect then I've realized something was off when me and this person talked regularly. This realization was so obvious that it actually annoys me that I still hoped for something and have let my self-esteem drop. After some months ignoring "flags" and maintaining communication, I finally opened the curtain of my "true"-self to this person and it hasn't been immediately and wholeheartedly embraced by him. And I've stumbled upon a straightforward conclusion that maybe.. I am just not his type. Actually it might be true, and it also might be not. 

There's another scenario that this person is actually like me, but maybe, this person's specific disposition towards life doesn't match with my specific disposition towards life. That we are.. I dont know.. Different in really deep ways that would key the future in our relationship? I also asked myself, is this all that I have to look forward to in my life? Maybe this person is actually doing me a favor. He is saving me a bucket of time and a bundle of trouble. He is probably seeing what I am not seeing, which is merely the observation that we are incompatible. I mean, Lord Almighty, it's so not personal. 

When we were together, I thought we will have fun. But fun is different from happiness. It is one of its important components, but not the heart of it. And I prefer to be happy, by "compromising" with my partner. 

Anyways. So, when you run into the similar scenario, don't easily jump to the thinkable "not your type" statement, it's important to remember that it can be really, really, really isn't personal. We are really not their type. They are not holding onto some special knowledge about what is wrong with us just to spite us, nor are they repressing their affection for us. And by the way, most of these personality differences are totally superficial. They don't say very much about the quality of us or them. It's not representative of a characterological (does this word exits??) flaw. It hurts when we are rejected, and it also hurts to reject someone (very important to remember). But actually what you really need is much much deeper than what you want. We are talking about compatibility. It's a very important word. You may been dreaming to have someone as charming as Brad Pitt, but in reality it is highly possible that one day you can find happiness in other person who is not a Brad Pitt. It depends on how you are connected with each other, and how you perceive life as a pair. There are tons of elements that is too long to be discussed here, but my point is.. whenever you are in this kind of scenario when you thought you met your Brad Pitt but it is not happening; walk it off and move forward powerfully and gracefully. The universe will spit us out as quickly as it spat us up, so its best we start taking command of our lives and get about the business of living.

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