Three Scales and a Bucket

Once, on one of our road trips after college, Housemate and I came up with a model for evaluating compatibility.  We determined that this compatibility test worked not only for significant others but also for inner-circle lifelong friends.  We have noodled with the model since then and have considered whether additional scales are necessary, but so far we've stuck with the three-scales-and-a-bucket model for now.  I've drawn it on bar napkins innumerable times since then.  You'd be surprised how helpful it can be sometimes.   

We determined there were three independent scales of compatibility, on which you can rate the way you "click" with another person from one to ten.  These are intellectual compatibility, aesthetic/sensual compatibility, and emotional compatibility.  The determining questions for each scale are not necessarily the ones that first occur to you.  In other words, it is possible for a person to be fantastically smart but not someone you're intellectually compatible with.  The better question is, is this person a good guide into the world in which they are intellectually delighted and capable?  Can they take you there, and will they follow you with curiousity and interest and intelligence into the world that you find interesting and challenging?  This is intellectual compatibility.  Please rate, one to ten.

Aesthetic/sensual compatibility is a big one.  For lovers, obviously, it is about attraction -- does he smell good, do you tingle wondering if he's going to touch you?  But remember, this compatibility test is not just about romance.  It can be about inner circle friends as well.  The question is, do you like the aesthetic choices this person makes?  Do you like the way she arranges her space, the sounds and smells and flavors of her life?  Would you want to hang out in her apartment while she was away, listen to her music?  One to ten, please.

Emotional compatibility is a hard one to explain.  We realized we needed it, though, when we looked at folks who we knew to be at the top of the scale in intellectual compatibility and aesthetic/sensual compatibility, yet who didn't feel particularly good to be around.  I know some people cramp me, they make me worry and wonder and feel awkward and clumsy.  I'm not funny around them.  I stifle the comments that pop into my head.  For whatever reason, some people are easy to be yourself around, and some aren't.  This is what we mean by emotional compatibility.  My observation is that it's an independent variable from the other two -- there are people I feel great around despite low ratings on the other two scales.  Jot your number down here.

The buckets arose when we got talking about religion.  It's a flawed metaphor, as you'll see.  Basically, we identified three separate buckets, although one bucket is really more like an ice tray, because there are divisions within it that do not mix.  Basically, one bucket is the athiests.  The ice tray/bucket is the believers whose faith is both central to their life and exclusive -- e.g. a believer who must be with other believers of the same faith, else try to convert them.  And the middle bucket is everyone else -- the agnostics, as well as those who have found a faith that works for them but can see the wisdom and the path to peace that a different spiritual practice (or none) provides to others.  For compatibility purposes, you're probably not going to get to inner-circle closeness with someone who dwells in a different spiritual bucket. 

Now to scoring:  our hypothesis is that the top-level relationships, lifelong friends and good romantic relationships, consist of those folks who are swimming around in the same bucket as you are, and who score at least a 24 on the three scales.  No one score should fall below a six, or this aspect will make you crazy. 

[We've wondered several times whether there should be a fourth scale for logistics: morning people vs. night people; planners vs. open-ended people; busy rush rush pack-it-all in-ers and languid loosey-gooses.  It's an open question, I think, but so far we've decided not to add it to the model.  Let me know if you think we should, or if there's another scale we've forgotten.]         

Comments

[collin]

speaking as a night person, i'd definitely cast my vote for a fourth scale, although perhaps it's one of those meta questions--it's usually a pretty good indicator for me re friendship that the other person is sensitive to those kinds of logistical issues.

for me, a logistical scale is pretty crucial. i'm a lifelong night person, but was in an accident a couple of months ago, one that necessitated me catching rides with morning people, and it wore me down quickly, spun me into depression, and probably knocked my scores in the other scales down a couple of notches for most of my friends. i'm capable of dealing with people all along the spectrum of high-to-low maintenance, but usually only if they're conscious/honest about where they fall. i can't abide folks who are high maintenance and think that they're low, for example. i'm great with details on a short-term basis, but can only focus if i have an end in site. people who expect ongoing detail orientation exasperate me to no end...

all of which is far more than i'm sure you wanted to know. consider my vote cast...

[ML]

I'm for having the bucket-contents as a fourth scale: spiritual compatibility. Otherwise, it seems tacked on, an afterthought. But it's really the prime glue or deal-breaker - at least as important as the others.

[mad]

Yes, this is so dead-on, though I agree with the buckets-as-scale proposal as well. The logistics scale seems necessary as well, but could be described also as "lifestyle choices," I think. With five scales, and a six-point minimum on each required for the deepest relationships, we're looking at a minimum of 30 to make the inner circle. But somehow that seems a low threshhold. 35, perhaps (average of 7 apiece)?

[Scheherazade]

To be clear, the "no score below a 6" is a floor in any one arena -- not meant to be the average on all the scales. But if someone was a 9 on two scales, you could deal with a 6 on the third and still count them as inner-circle. I think if any one scale is below a 6 they'll never make it to inner circle. But above 6 doesn't get you there on its own -- I think you need average score of 8 on all scales.

I don't understand how to measure "spiritual compatibility." Especially since athiesm seems to me to be a binary choice.

[mad]

Speaking as a Jew-who-doesn't-really-believe-in-God dating a Catholic-who-doesn't-really-believe-in-religion, I'd say that spiritual compatibility means that your views about religion and God and the place of those concepts in your life are compatible, if not identical. But spirituality and religion aren't necessarily coextensive -- I've known many people whose religion defines them but who seem to have little awareness of the spiritual side of life.

[PG]

I wonder whether you really need a separate atheism bucket -- someone who was such a hardcore atheist that I (agnostic) wouldn't be able to be best friends with her would fall into the same "there is only one Truth and I have it" category as someone who was such a hardcore Wiccan that I couldn't date him. I suppose that the atheist and the Wiccan wouldn't get along either, but then atheism just is one of the ice tray spaces. There are the people for whom a particular belief or lack thereof is utterly central, and then there are the rest of us.
Though the Rawlsian question is whether there are other beliefs, like in Marxism or stuff like that, that can take the place of religion and make one equally incompatible with non-believers.