Meg Jay

The stories we tell about ourselves become facets of our identity

Personal stories about relationships are much trickier. Without résumés to organize our experiences with friends and lovers, or interviews that require us to reflect, our most intimate self-defining memories can be pieced together in strange, even painful, ways.

The power of these untold personal stories is that, like for Cathy, they can loop silently in our minds without anyone, sometimes even ourselves, knowing about them.

These stories originated in old conversations and experiences and, so, they change only through new conversations and new experiences.

The Big Five refers to five factors that describe how people interact with the world: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism

Consider that where we are on the Big Five is about 50 percent inherited. This means that you came into this world with roughly half of who you are already in place, because of genes, prenatal influences, and other biological factors.

Sometimes the only thing wrong with another person is that he or she is a poor match for your own personality.

They were fooled into thinking they were compatible because they had many plain-sight commonalities.

To a person who runs high in Neuroticism, differences are seen in a negative light. Anxiety and judgments about these differences then lead to criticism and contempt, two leading relationship killers.

Let’s say you and Matt break up. What happens if that perfect match does not exist?