Do MBTI Golden Pairs Exist? The 9 Soulmate Factors
Do soulmates exist? Some people think so and they tie it to the MBTI (myers briggs) golden pairs- two personality types that were just meant to fit together. While I have used and promoted MBTI golden pairs in the past, I’ve recently taken a more critical view of the whole idea of golden pairs as soulmates. I don’t want people to get the idea that once you find someone with the right MBTI type, everything will be easy. I also don’t want people to get the idea that TypeMatch is as simplistic as just personality Tinder. Of course, compatibility is much more complex and deep than just personality type. Below are 9 of the soul mate factors for a truly compatible relationship.
1. Your Myers Briggs Personality Type
This wouldn’t be TypeMatch without talking about MBTI (Myers Briggs) personality type. You aren’t just your MBTI type, but this four letter code allows us to express simply the lense through which we view the world. MBTI is extremely useful for compatibility because we can find someone who views the world through a similar or different lens depending on our preferences. The idea of MBTI golden pairs is that the two personality types complement each other perfectly. They naturally understand each other and teach each other to grow. It is controversial, however, just what those types are that are the golden pairs. Whether you believe in using MBTI type for compatibility matching or not, understanding each other’s MBTI type is extremely useful in a relationship. If we understand how our partner views the world, we can be less critical of our differences and work together towards common goals.
Want to know more? Here is a compatibility chart for the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types.
2. Your Culture, Language, and Gender
Other factors we need to take into account for relationship compatibility are the culture in which you were raised and live and your gender. Personality types manifest differently within the genders and also within different cultures. To some people, it may be important that their partner come from the same culture as them. Even if it’s not important to your view of your identity, culture impacts how we view and approach romantic relationships.
3. Your Big 5 Personality Factor Scores
The Big 5 factors are another measure of personality traits that are useful for compatibility and soulmate relationship building. Specifically, it measures the five factors of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. For these, the most important for the success of a relationship are openness and conscientiousness. Although it is said that opposites attract, that is not the case for these personality traits. Couples have less conflict and feel more attracted to those who score relatively close to them (though not the same) in the five factors.
To know where you measure on the scale of these traits, take our free Big 5 quiz!
Once you know your scores, find out your Big 5 personality compatibility.
4. Your Experience, Past Traumas, & Attachment Style
Personality accounts largely for our nature, but we cannot ignore the nurture side of who we are. Your personal experience, traumas, and subsequent attachment styles play a large role in relationship compatibility preferences (who you’re drawn to) and also the health and success of a relationship. While experience and trauma are not something that we can quantify on our dating app (nor do we want to), attachment style gives us a good look into how you approach relationships and what triggers you may have. There are four main attachment styles- secure (accounting for about 50% of the population), and then the three insecure types (accounting for the other 50%) of dismissive, anxious, and fearful avoidant. Understanding our attachment styles gives individuals and couples the tools and vocabulary to talk about their needs in a relationship and to move towards healthy and secure communication and attachment. Thus, it is a critical factor to a soulmate-level relationship.
5. Your Maturity Level & Age
While age is not exactly equal to maturity level, the two tend to go hand in hand. Maturity level and development within our personality types have a great impact on the types of people we are attracted to and how we handle conflict in relationships. Depending on your level of development, you may be attracted to different types of people in your youth than you are later on. This is because you are working on different aspects of yourself. Perhaps you are growing more into the true you, a more complete version of yourself, and so you grow apart from others. Growing together through shared goals is another factor in soulmate-level relationship building. In the future, TypeMatch plans to integrate Spiral Dynamics to qualify where in their development journey a particular person is and help them find people on a similar trajectory of growth.
6. Your Intelligence
Intelligence is also not determined by personality type and is another factor that many look for in a match. Some even rate intelligence as the most important factor when looking for their ideal partner. While TypeMatch does not include an IQ test, users do have an opportunity through their profile and in the chat to show their intelligence. So, we encourage and incentivise users to fill out their profiles entirely because it allows people to make decisions about who to match with based on more complete info.
7. Your Values, Religion, & Political Beliefs
For some people, family is the most important thing in the world. Others don’t consider themselves to be family-oriented and prefer to focus on other relationships in their lives, their passions, or exploring the world. Obviously, conflicting values and priorities can cause continual trouble in romantic relationships. Likewise, for some, their faith is important to them and they want a partner who shares those beliefs. In MBTI, high Fi (introverted feeling) users- namely INFP, ISFP, ENFP, ISFP hold their individual values very close to their identity and especially need relationships where others match those values. Furthermore, whether politics are important to a person or not, they are important for the long-term success of their relationship. Obviously, people with opposite political views can maintain friendships but a fundamentally different political view isn’t best for a long-term romantic relationship no matter how open the two sides are to hearing each other out.
8. Your Lifestyle & Personal Interests
Lifestyle and interests are also important to consider since common habits and interests bring you closer and allow you to spend more time together. If one person is into healthy eating and going to the gym while the other doesn’t, it may not be a deal-breaker but it’s less that they are sharing and working together towards common goals and shared values. It’s good for you and your partner to have some different interests that you do alone. This time apart is actually just as important to maintain in a relationship and prevents you from becoming codependent. However, showing an interest in your partner’s interests is a great way to express your love for them.
9. Work
Finally, we cannot discount a major factor in long, healthy, soulmate level relationships- work. You can appear to be perfect but the stars won’t align until you do the work, both in the relationship and for yourself. Relationships have a way of showing us the areas that we still need to work on for ourselves. We can choose to ignore those messages and stubbornly dig our heels in but we are just digging ourselves into a hole of misery. Until you do the work, it will be the same conflicts coming up over and over. This is not to say that all relationships can be “fixed” with the proper work. Sometimes, the work is walking away from what doesn’t suit you to show love to yourself and allow yourself to grow. Whether you stay or leave, relationships will make you work.
Our mission is to help people to build healthy relationships through self-understanding. That’s why we are currently working on building resources for people in relationships or looking for relationships to understand themselves and their partners. We can only communicate our needs effectively when we know how to name them. Further, understanding our partner’s differences allows us to fully appreciate them. If you’re interested in searching for a partner based on deeper level understanding, try the TypeMatch app.
