Are you in the Perfect Relationship
How happy and compatible are you and your partner?
Find out how perfect your relationship is and how truly happy and compatible you and your partner are, by playing the ‘Happiness Game’.
Also, find helpful suggestions to ‘adjust’ your relationship to live your happiest life together.
How Compatible are you
We humans are all individuals who like slightly different things. The most important foundation for any relationship, in addition to physical attraction, is to be as compatible as possible, whilst also finding joy in your partner’s happiness.
Compatibility isn’t just about making each other laugh or being kind. It’s about sharing similar interests, traits and views on life, on subjects including family, finances, ethics and lifestyle. Having similar attitudes to simple everyday activities, like household chores and tidiness, enjoying the same TV programmes, or having the same culinary tastes, all make for an enjoyable relaxed home life.
However, being compatible doesn’t automatically mean you’re happy. It's important to ensure that both you and your partner are equally happy.
Whilst it's ideal to be both compatible and happy 100% of the time, it’s not realistic for most couples, so it's about being as close to this goal as possible. If a couple is less than 50% compatible or happy, the relationship is likely to face challenges, as one partner will spend a lot of time doing things they don’t really enjoy and therefore will not be truly happy, as will become apparent below.
The Ultimate relationship is not one where you do exactly what you want 100% of the time - That’s called living on your own!
Play the ‘Happiness Game’
This simple game can help you gauge the happiness and compatibility in your relationship and establish if your relationship is equal, in terms of you being happy yourself, and making sure your partner is equally happy.
Sit down with your partner and list at least 10 of the most relevant activities in your life that you do most days. The list is personal to you, but some suggestions are:
Household Chores - Who does them, are they fairly distributed and do both partners put the same effort in? Nobody enjoys doing chores, but who in the relationship is most happy with the arrangement in place?
Cooking – Is the cooking split fairly, or is one person always having to cook? If one person loves to cook every day, you are probably both happy with the arrangement.
TV Programmes – Who controls the remote and gets to say what you watch, or do you love watching the same programmes?
Going Out - Do you visit your favourite places or does your partner always want to go to their favourite hangouts?
Support and Attention - Are you giving or receiving the personal support and attention that makes you or your partner happy?
Personal Time – Do you give each other the same amount of time to do things you love separately? Such as practising yoga, playing golf, or binge-watching YouTube.
Timing and Promptness – Does one of you always have to wait for the other person because they are late? Or do you want to go to bed at different times and this causes friction and tiredness?
For each of the chosen activities, simply ‘tick’ whether:
You are the most happy
Your partner is the most happy
You are both equally happy
Neither of you are happy
Total up your score and see if you're both as happy as each other and where you stand on the happiness scale.
This will also give you an indication of how compatible you truly are.
Here are some examples and results:
Example 1 – Very happy and compatible
Let's say out of the 10 activities, you both enjoy 8 of them. Out of the remaining 2 activities, you enjoy one, and your partner enjoys the other.
Your Happiness score: 90% - You are happy with 9/10 activities.
Your Partner’s Happiness score: 90% - They are also happy with 9/10 activities.
So, you are both equally happy with 90% of the activities, but for 10% of the activities, your partner enjoys them more than you. This is where it is important that you enjoy seeing your partner happy, so you don’t mind compromising for that 10%.
Compatible score: 80% - You both enjoy 8/10 activities.
Result: The perfect happy and compatible couple that are equally suited and content with life.
Example 2 – Both happy most of the time, but not very compatible
Let's say out of the 10 activities, you both enjoy 4 of them. Out of the remaining 6 activities, you enjoy three, and your partner enjoys three.
Your Happiness score: 70% - You are happy with 7/10 activities.
Your Partner's Happiness score: 70% - They are also happy with 7/10 activities.
So, you are both equally happy with 70% of the activities, but for 30% of the activities, your partner enjoys them more than you.
Compatible score: 40% - You both enjoy just 4/10 activities.
Result: You are happy most of the time, but you're not very compatible, but your partner feels exactly the same. So the relationship should work, you just have to be tolerance of each other and realise you both are as happy as each other.
Example 3 – Your partner is happier than you and you’re not very compatible
Relationship problems can arise when one partner is not feeling happy, especially if the other partner seems happy and content with life.
Let's say out of the 10 activities, you both enjoy 4 of them. Out of the remaining 6 activities, you enjoy one, and your partner enjoys five.
Your Happiness score: 50% - You are happy with 5/10 activities.
Your Partner's Happiness score: 90% - They are happy with 9/10 activities.
So, you are only happy half the time, whilst your partner is happy most of the time.
Compatible score: 40% - You both enjoy 4/10 activities.
Result: Although your compatibility score is the same as example 2 above, you are only happy half the time, whilst your partner is happy most of the time. This is going to cause friction in the relationship. You need to start talking and have open and honest discussions about your feelings and everyday issues in the relationship and see where you can make adjustments so you are both equally happy.
Making Relationship ‘Adjustments’
This game is very black-and-white and simplistic. As we know, relationships are complex so we have to work hard at them, talk to each other all the time and discuss everyday issues.
It also assumes that something you enjoy, your partner doesn't. But there’s always a sliding scale of how much you like or dislike something. So you need to take this into account as well.
However, although it is designed to be a bit of fun, it might open a discussion if it shows that one of you isn’t quite as happy as the other. It certainly might save on some expensive therapy costs!
It is also interesting to do the test separately and compare the outcome. You will usually find the happiest person will think you are both equally happy!
It is also so important to give each time and space to do your own hobbies and interests, whether that’s going to the gym, playing poker with your mates, or seeing a close friend. As long as you're both doing your own activities on an equal level, then that’s fair.
Also, very often over time, you will both start to enjoy what the other person likes and you become even more compatible and therefore happier.
The key is to always be honest and truthful. Don’t say you do like something if you don’t, as the whole process fails as the other person will think you are happy when you're not.