It’s a simple principle, and yet so often overlooked or underestimated. Compatibility in a relationship isn’t just about being able to have a good time with someone. Of course it’s important to laugh together and enjoy each other’s company — to share interests and hobbies and values.

But compatibility is about so much more than similarities. Arguably, it’s more important to find someone who’s different from you in certain key ways. Because personal growth depends on being challenged, and you will not be pushed by someone who’s exactly like you.

If you want to grow, don’t date your twin.

It’s easy to be seduced by your mirror image — someone who validates your every whim, who agrees with you on every major issue, and who wants to spend every hour of the day just as you do. It’s reassuring to be strikingly similar to another human, but when you choose a mate who’s just like you, you’re destined to remain stagnant.

Parallels are comforting. They are warm and fuzzy and easy to mistake as loving. But they are not the seeds of growth. Sameness won’t expose you to new things, or teach you all that much about life. The strongest couples aren’t made up of people who have identical views, personalities, or backgrounds. They’re comprised of people who offset each other and challenge each other daily to reach new levels of understanding and to experience new things.

Don’t date a “yes man” or “yes woman” — the people who laugh their faces off at everything you say, and who follow your lead blindly every day. Date the person you literally can’t stand on occasion because their opinions drive you mad or their way of seeing the world seems incomparable to you. Force yourself to try to see things from their perspective — to learn how their experience of the world has shaped their views and made them harbor whatever beliefs they hold dear.

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