From an article 'do opposites attract?' for me this direct question isn't as relevant as the other info it provides... Here's some exerts I thought most relevant and eye opening to ourselves and our romantic choices...
Hudson and Fraley took their investigation an intriguing step further. Given that attachment fundamentally shapes how people function in romantic relationships, they wanted to test whether adult attachment style influences the association between partner similarity and relationship satisfaction. (The participants also completed an attachment questionnaire.)
Attachment develops from the relationship between infants and their caregiver, with particular respect to responsiveness and availability. The effects of early attachment are far-reaching, establishing how we perceive ourselves and others as we grow into adults. In broad terms, individuals who experience loving and consistent early caregiving developsecure attachment, while those who receive harsh and/or inconsistent treatment from their early caregivers develop insecure attachment.
****Insecure attachment breaks down into two types:
Those who are high on attachmentavoidance believe that others will not respond to their needs, and correspondingly have a negative view of others. They tend to avoid intimacy, and are ill at ease when they feel their partner is too close.Those who are high on attachment anxietyare preoccupied with how available others are, and have a negative view of themselves. They seek out intimacy and contact with others, and can often be cloying or “needy” in their relationships.
(Securely attached people are low on attachment avoidance and anxiety, and demonstrate higher levels of adjustment in their relationships.)
The results were striking. Highly avoidantpeople seemed to be most satisfied with their relationships when the personalities of the partners were moderately similar. The researchers interpret this finding as possibly reflecting a level of “counter-dependence” with which avoidant people are comfortable. Put another way, an optimal balance of similarities and differences may help avoidant people keep intimacy at bay.
But for highly anxious people, it was a different story. They experience greater levels of relationship satisfaction with partners who are either highly similar or dissimilar to them. Hudson and Fraley speculate that similarity offers anxious people the feeling of “oneness” that they crave with their significant others, while dissimilarity may encourage “reliant dependence” on their partners. For the anxiously attached, having a dissimilar partner may be a way to compensate for one's own shortcoming, say the researchers.
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http://psychologytoday.com/blog/head-games/201412/do-opposites-really-attract-its-complicated?utm_source=FacebookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPost
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