Same? Or different?

What is it that can take total strangers, people who have never seen each other, who have never spoken, feel as if they've known each other their entire lives? Is it fate? Destiny, perhaps?

Or is it something both simpler and much more profound?

Instead of an invisible fate, an ethereal destiny, could it simply be two lonely hearts, longing for contact; for interaction? Two personalities, two lives, so similar, and yet so different, that even while they clash, they merge?

Could it actually be that what makes them different, so completely dissimilar, actually unites them?

It's been said that in people, just as in chemistry, like seeks like. Is that truly the case? If it is, why is it that so many relationships, where the two involved are so similar as to appear as one entity in two bodies, are the ones that fall apart? Could it not be that, rather than seeking what is the same, we truly seek what is different? Not only different, but almost opposite?

The relationships that seem to last, to have staying power, seem to be the ones where the two are not so similar as to look like one entity in two bodies, but that it seems two separate bodies make a whole. Could it be that people seek not who is like them so much as they seek someone who completes them?

Don't get me wrong here. There can be no relationship where the two are not, on their own, complete individuals. And yet in their completeness, there must also be a lack thereof. Because true happiness is not born solo, it is not born, save in extremely rare instances, to be fully realized in a person alone. As the author Louis L'Amour wrote in his novel The Lonesome Gods, “Happiness is born a twin.”

Yes, the individuals are complete. Yes, they can stand alone. But are they not stronger together?

If you have two individuals together, and they're identical, you have nothing new. You have a single entity comprised of two entities, but nothing has changed. If in all important and visible ways they are identical, you have something that is easily destroyed. Because where one is strong, both are strong. Although that brings its own problems, it is not the most dangerous aspect of this relationship. The worst aspect is that where one is weak, so is the other.

And there can be no growth, no movement. Because if they're the same, there is nowhere to go. They will continue to do the same things together, and they will continue to be identical. Ultimately, the relationship stagnates and dies.

The truth is, I think, that people don't want someone who is truly the same. They don't want someone completely different, but they don't want to be in a relationship with a mark 2 version of themselves.

There have to be some similarities. Some shared beliefs. Some shared interests. Without those, there can be no common ground. And without common ground there is nowhere to stand; nowhere to build. But there must also be differences.

There must be differences because no person, man or woman, can be strong at all times. It's impossible. But, when you are in a relationship with someone who is as different as they are alike, you find that there is no real weakness; at least, not in the relationship itself. Because when one of you is weak, the other is strong.

And when the two are different, rather than the same, you mesh in a true way. Your similarities link you together, creating a bond like iron. And your differences are what act as a motive force on the relationship. It's the differences that force you to move, to grow, to become more than either of you were capable of on your own.

And when you are with someone who is not just another version of you, your rough edges rub and grind against their rough edges. And this polishing act wears away the rough edges, weaknesses that perhaps neither of you were even aware of, and, all unrealized,

The end result may not be perfect, because perfection is only something to be strived for, but it will be a single entity stronger than the sum of its parts. This is the rare instance when one and one add up to one.

So what is it that draws two strangers together? Two people who may only have seen each other in picture, and may only have spoken through the phone or through the computer? Why is it that these people can finally meet each other and be stunned not by the realization that they don't know each other at all, but that they seem to have known each other all their lives?

Could it be the recognition that they've found someone- maybe not the one, but someone- who is similar, and yet dissimilar, enough to possibly complete them?