I think I've met (or trying to meet) 5000 to 10000 women over my lifetime. I've been on 100 dates at least. While I was in relationships, I tried my best and hardest and tried to get it down to a science when the breakup would come as to why that is the case.

Oh, and learning to be playful by unleashing my inner silly goose.

For relationships, what works for me:

* Similar personalities. I can now intuitively see people who have a similar HEXACO to me in 2 minutes. Note, not everyone that has a similar HEXACO to me I can see, but a subset of them. I've never been wrong (I only did this twice). I'm high in openness, and it's easy to see other people high in openness. Then seeing how the other dimensions fall out is quite predictable.

* Same coping style

* Secure attachment style

* Ability to be reasonable, pragmatic and emotionally intelligent in ways that I characterize those terms

> I can now intuitively see people who have a similar HEXACO to me in 2 minutes.

Is that a good thing in a partner? I can see the case for similar openness, but with extraversion and emotionality, for eg., in my experience you probably want someone on the opposite side of the scale to balance things out and have complementary strengths and weaknesses that make life easier for the both of you.

Fair question, I am not sure if there’s a general answer. I simply know what works for me. I can imagine that in some cultures, it doesn’t matter much as the idea of what love is and what a relationship is, is culturally really different. The simple example I think of is being married out by your parents. I know nothing about how that works or what the emotions involved are. And I can imagine there are quite a few cultures that I am clueless about.

I feel that people are different enough in ways that the HEXACO doesn’t capture. It’s just much easier to communicate with someone, because you think in a very similar way. So far, I have seen different strengths and weaknesses come about. We both are have a subclinical case of ADHD so being with each other is basically body doubling all the time which removes a lot of the annoyance that ADHD has. So oftentimes it’s not a 1 + 1 = 2 thing because there’s also an interaction effect as psychologist would say.

I am not saying this is a generalized theory by the way. I simply know it works for me. I have been in a few short relationships (of a few months) and 4 that were a year or longer. Women that think like me are way more suited as romantic partners and it’s not even close.

Bonus point: I don’t have to do the whole “men are like this and women are like that” dance that many people in my social circle explicitly seem to do. Because my dance is “she is like me and I am like her”. I would get much closer to predicting how she is when I ask myself “what would I do?” as opposed to “what would a general woman do?” Of course, in some cases sex and gender differences are there.

Or weird stuff like “women are more emotional and men are more logical”. It doesn’t apply. We can both hold each other to a standard that we both find reasonable and fully understandable. I expect my wife to be logical and emotional. She expects the same from me. I seem to have more of a bias towards logic and she does to emotions (well… more accurately, towards vibes and vibe-based living) but it’s often enough that I see she’s the more logical one or I am, at that moment, the more emotionally in tune.

It took a long time to find her and a lot of relationships and a lot of women to meet (and then to think how many women I secretly/silently rejected, at least 100K). The biggest hurdle to overcome is fear of rejection. I didn’t set out to be in a lot of relationships, but I do break up when I clearly see it’s not working.

> Bonus point: I don’t have to do the whole “men are like this and women are like that” dance that many people in my social circle explicitly seem to do. Because my dance is “she is like me and I am like her”.

That does sound appealing when put like that.

My experience has been with the counterbalancing kind of relationships I mentioned (maybe I subconsciously seek them out that way), with about 50% overlap in personality or interests and 50% divergence. And many of the memories I cherish from them have been from them introducing me to new little worlds, social environments, and experiences that I wouldn't have sought out or even given a thought to, on my own.

But there were also times when I wished we were more similar, when some experiences (that I was excited about) would have been great to share, and were diminished or even skipped out on because they weren't as into it. So seeking out more overlap seems at least worth trying out.

Thank you for giving a thoughtful and well-considered reply, by the way.