Host: What is the seventh key value for compatibility?

Gloria MacDonald: The seventh key trait for compatibility is what we call Care-Giving. Lots of times this is thought of as being something thats exclusive to women and its truly not at all. It seems like its that maternal, mothering quality and it is to an extent but again its not exclusive to mothers by a long shot.

So some of the questions you have to ask yourself to kind of understand where you are on this care-giving quality is, for example, let us say, you have an aging parent, are you the kind of person who really wants to take care of that aging parent at home and you are only going to feel good if you are giving them the best care, are you the kind of person who says, You know what, this is just not for me. I really need to put this parent in the hands of trained professionals?

Now clearly, we are talking about times when its exaggerated and the person has to be with the trained professional, but I am not talking about that. I am talking about just in general. Another thing you might look at in your life is, are you a pet lover? People who are high on care-giving tend to be not always but one of the things they could be is huge pet lovers. They just love nurturing another being, another living thing. Maybe they are all absolutely fanatic about gardening. Again, nurturing the growth and care-giving for a garden, for a plant, for a flower and getting a great sense of fulfillment and joy out of seeing the fruits of their work, the fruits of their nurturing, whether thats with children, there are lots of wonderful, wonderful parents who are not high on this care-giving.

It doesnt mean that you are a bad parent. It just means you are not the one who is dying to stay home all day long with a new born baby and cuddle or with a toddler and beyond the floor playing with them all the time. You have other ways that you are good at parenting, but this close nurturing, care-giving is not your strength. Maybe you are much more interested in educating the child and giving them a sense of responsibility. Again, one is not better, one is not worse, one is not right and one is not wrong. Its just different. But, in a family situation again, take for example, family holidays, the person who is high on care-giving will want to spend all their time with the family, they will want to be creating wonderful, nurturing meals together, they will want to have brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles around generally speaking because, it is important to them to create that bond. The person who is low on care giving wouldnt want to be spending their entire Thanksgiving holiday with the entire family. So, this can create huge problems when it comes to creating a family together or a partnership together. How are you going to deal with these family situations?

Very often, we find that if one person is a huge pet lover and the other person isnt, those two people truly can not relate to one another. You know you have got the person who loves having, maybe they have two big dogs in the house and the dogs have free rein of the house and they sleep in the bedroom, they sleep on the bed, the person who just is not that pet lover and is low on this care giving scale is really going to feel like this does not work for me at all. (A) They probably arent too wild about two big dogs, but maybe they could live with the two big dogs, but certainly not sleeping on the bed with them.

So this is a huge thing and it really is a value. Again, when these values conflict, it makes a full lifetime of a wonderful relationship, really challenging.