Look for a partner who is compatible with your weakness

We tend to focus on finding someone who matches our strengths. Like, “I’m really empathic and good at communicating with people. I need to find someone who is good at numbers, organization, and dealing with the real world.” This is absolutely a good thing to consider. Find the yin to your yang. Someone with a complementary character who brings strengths that you don’t have as well developed, but who still has an understanding and appreciation for what you bring (the little dot inside each half of the yin-yang circle).

However, what I find that can make or break a relationship is finding out that your weaknesses are not compatible. You need to focus on finding someone with compatible weaknesses. Because when the sh*t hits the fan, that’s when you really need someone you can work with and who will be there for you. You need a partner that you can work with during your most trying times. Lots of people could be compatible when things are moving up. It’s a lot harder to find someone you can work together with when you are in the trough.

Highly sensitive, empathetic people have many strengths. We tend to be very conscientious, considerate, idealistic, and hard workers. We are naturally self-effacing, tending to consider the needs of others before our own. We are less prone to the usual vices people may suffer from – like gossiping, using people for our own personal gain, stealing, or lying.

However, a “weakness” (or you could look at it as our underbelly, or the yin side of our character) is that we get overwhelmed easily. We need lots of time alone, especially after being with a group of other people. We can tend to overthink situations and become paralyzed when trying to make a decision. None of this makes us a bad person. It is a natural and good part of our character. However, mainstream people will likely see this as a weakness. If your partner wants to go out all the time, they will see your need to spend evenings at home doing your own thing as a weakness, or at least an incompatibility.

Since our inherent traits are out of place in mainstream society, and tend to be looked down on and make us be seen as weird, we can often try very hard to suppress our true nature and try to pretend that we are like everyone else, or at least as close to that as we can manage.