This one should be fun to look at as Verlynda and I personally sit on opposite sides of the field on this issue! But, as it turns out, there may even be some hope for folks like us!

It’s a classic scenario: you’ve got a free evening and one of you wants to go and hang out with friends and the other would rather curl up on the couch and watch Netflix. Or one of you is having the time of their life at a party and the other is secretly gritting their teeth through the entire thing.

When you have a marriage where one of you is introverted and one of you is extroverted it can seem like you’re on opposite wavelengths when it comes to how you spend your time, where your energy comes from, and how you make decisions and talk about important issues. If this is you, you may well be wondering if your differences along this dimension are going to impact your marriage.

Can Introverts and Extroverts Get Along?

I’m happy to say: yes! We can.

What I loved about the research on this episode is that it confirms what we suspected but it also has some very useful insights both for those who marry similar personality types AND those who marry other personality types.

A 2007 study[i] showed that similarity in the big 5 personality traits— those are the 5 traits researchers have identified as being the most fundamental part of our personalities, of which introversion/extroversion is one— predicted higher relationship quality. However, emotional similarity, which means experiencing and expressing similar emotions, was a strong mediating variable in this link.

So even if couples differ in personality, for example one is introverted and one is extroverted, they can still function well as a couple by being similar on an emotional level. This emotional similarity helps partners react to events in similar ways and feel understood by their spouse. That emotional connection is a deeper and more important predictor of happiness than similarity on a personality level.

So are introvert-extrovert marriages common? Generally, folks do not choose spouses with similar personality types. If you look at the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator (in which introversion-extroversion is one of the four dimensions), it is most common for couples to share two of the four parts and differ on the other two[ii]. We’ve looked before at whether opposites attract, and while it’s not a simple yes or no answer, there’s certainly plenty of evidence that very different people can have thriving, passionate marriage.

A small study based around that idea showed that differences in personality types were not linked to marital difficulty, and being opposites on introversion/extroversion specifically, did not predict any specific problems in marriage. Another study[iii] supported this finding — differences along the introversion/extroversion scale don’t negatively impact marriage quality in any noticeable way.

So it does look like introverts and extroverts can get along just fine. However, there was one interesting caveat. Moffit & Eisen[iv] found that levels of neuroticism and emotional instability for wives — but not husbands — were significantly linked to the degree to which the couple was apart on an introversion/extroversion scale.

So having one spouse who is highly introverted and one who is highly extroverted could lead to emotional instability for the wife. The mediating factor in this effect is thought to be communication: highly divergent couples showed lower rates of intimate communication and agreement, which may be the cause of the emotional strain the wives were experiencing.

Again: even if there is a big difference, it’s not a death blow to the marriage. Rather, it just requires that you step up your communication game.

What Makes for A Happy Introvert-Extrovert Marriage?

So here’s an interesting study[v] of 365 couples who reported they had happy marriages. They looked at the common characteristics of marriages where one spouse w...