The Yin to my Yang.

Some time ago, I was having a fun conversation with team members at my office when an interesting question came up. “What qualities do you look out for in your partner?” Harmless question, yes? However, I realized that many of the responses that came up (including mine) were rather “unfair” expectations and self-motivated requirements of a partner. I asked another different group of people to see what the responses would be, but they were not very different. Here’s what I learned from these conversations.

Many times, we desire to be with someone who passes our compatibility tests; the one who balances us out – you know, the Yin to our Yang. While desiring compatibility will never be wrong, we must ensure that we are not simply looking for people through whom we can glory in our flaws. Many of the responses that came up from those conversations sounded like”I want a calm man because I can be quite hot-tempered” or “I want a woman who is patient because I can be pretty wild” or even “I want a woman who can work magic in the kitchen because I’m a foodie (read as “glutton”, lol). The truth remains that it is wisdom to desire a person who is stronger in areas where you are weak and can help you be better in those areas. However, the motive should never be to glorify those weaknesses and use our partners as a cover-up for them.

Sometimes we look for people who will tolerate the things we know are flaws and should be worked on. Your partner is not a zoo-keeper and you are not a wild animal. So rather than merely looking for someone who can tame you in your wild moments, how about seeking to be a better person who does not need taming? The search for someone who completes you is not a worthy one. It is also rather selfish because it in a way seeks to use the other person for their strengths, and a relationship built on the foundation of selfishness has already scored a point in the potential to break down.

In God, we find completeness and wholeness and so placing the responsibility of your completeness in the hands of an equally flawed human being is exposing your heart to the risk of disappointment. We must seek to be better people and get a good grasp of our wholeness in God, such that when we have partners (who should be whole people in God too) it would be two whole people coming together and not halves coming to make a whole.

This is not to say that both parties must come perfect, but perfection will not come from any human partnership. The perfection we seek comes only from our perfect Father in whom we are complete and whole.

So, are you rude and seeking a gentle partner who can cope with your rudeness? You’re seeking the wrong thing. Seek instead to work at being polite. Get a partner who is gentle because gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit, and not as insurance for when your rudeness is brought to the fore.

Do not seek a partner who can manage money well because you are a spendthrift and you expect him to balance you out. Instead, work on your self-control and desire to be a better manager of finances. Yes, we must complement each other, but more importantly, we must seek to be better individuals, working on our inadequacies and flaws with the help of God’s spirit in us. I can not stress enough that the desire to have certain qualities in a partner is not the problem. In fact, it is a very legitimate desire. The motive behind this desire is what makes the difference. Are you seeking a good partner because goodness is a fruit of his spirit or because he is expected to be the balance to your bad?

Reason am!