How to find a life partner (or an investor or a cofounder)
I've said for a while now, that if I wasn't building Rupa (and so passionate about what we're doing in functional medicine), I'd be building a relationships company.
It's crazy to me that we are never taught anything about relationships. Who we spend our lives with is the most important decision we make in our lives. And yet, we are just tossed out into the world to figure it out by trial and error. TRIAL AND ERROR!!!!
For other "important" decisions --> what college we go to, what to major in, our first jobs, buying a car, etc., we spend hours (days, weeks, years) planning, researching, talking to experts, mulling it over, discussing it with friends and family, and more.
Yet when it comes to relationships, we are told we should "just know" when we found "the one". 🤯
We probably spend more time researching whether Charmin or Cottonelle will wipe our butts better than we do on "what really matters when choosing a life partner".
I've found that part of this problem comes from the fact that it's shameful to "research" or "study" relationships. Why would I read a book or go talk to someone about it when no one else around me is doing that? No one wants to be the person who has to "read a book" on relationships. We are supposed to just be "good at it".
That's nonsense, and this stigma is unhealthy. I want to change this narrative.
I spend a large chunk of my time thinking about and studying relationships. One, because I find it super interesting. And two, because it's important - not just for finding your life partner, but also for picking and choosing any person you want in your life - investors, teammates, co-founders, etc.
While doing this, I've built some frameworks that have helped me a lot. I'm going to start sharing them now (in this post and future ones), in hopes that it can be helpful to others! Let's start with one of the most fundamental ones.
The Relationship Bullseye. 🎯
The Relationship Bullseye grew out of a pattern that I noticed when I was on the dating apps.
Dating apps tended to show off our interests and personalities. (photo of me doing squats at an outdoor gym with an empty beer keg, funny quote I put as a caption: "kegs and legs", etc.) Therefore, I'd like, message, and go on dates with people who had similar interests and personalities.
Those dates rarely worked out though. I had a lot of fun, but something was missing. I couldn't figure out why though, bc we'd have a ton of the same interests, could talk for hours about nutrition, go paddleboarding, hiking, etc. and have a lot of fun together - but it just didn't feel right.
Then it hit me. What REALLY matters in a partner, is having shared values and character. NOT shared interests and personalities.
Hitting the Bullseye means finding someone who matches up with you from the inside out.
However (and here's the kicker and insight) the way we are meeting people and dating now is pushing us towards a more superficial match (interests and personalities) rather than true compatibility (values and character).
Here's why ➡️ when we're getting to know a complete stranger, the way we start learning about them is through their interests and personalities. It's much harder to distinguish their character and values.
We end up evaluating people off of attributes that really don't matter, just because they're visible and easy to understand. 🚨This is the danger zone!! 🚨 Just because someone likes going on hikes by the ocean too, doesn't mean he is going to be a great dad to my future kids!
Back in the day - before we were meeting people on dating apps, we would meet people through family, friends, our communities etc. All of these groups were more likely to have shared values -- so by default, our dating pool was filtered for similar values. (this is an oversimplification, of course, but you get the point)
Nowadays, we get to know people (mostly complete strangers) through dating apps, etc. which tend to filter people by interests and personalities.
To Summarize:
WHAT REALLY MATTERS.
What you need to match up on to be compatible:
Values: must be strongly similar.
Character: need to be similar.
Personalities: OK to be different!
Interests: Beneficial to be different! (you can learn from each other, pick up new hobbies etc!)
THE CONFLICTING ISSUE.
This is in DIRECT conflict with how we meet someone and get to know them: generally we meet via shared interests and bond over similar personalities. We rarely get deep enough in the first few dates to understand their character (are they kind, do they lie?) and values (how do they value precious resources - time, money, etc., how will they make difficult decisions, what drives them, etc.)
THE TAKEAWAY.
So, it turns out, to really find a good match, we need to go against what feels "natural" in the beginning of meeting someone (the "chemistry" of shared interests and similar personalities), and start to look for cues that showcase what really matters --> shared values and character.
By the way, this holds for any important relationship -- life partners, close friends, investors, teammates, cofounders, etc. Diversity on interests & commonality on core values.
How do you do you do that? Coming soon!
Love,
Tara
