The Four Commonalities of Commitment are the most common four things that two people must share, in order for a partnership toward specific life's goals to go well. They are akin to a compatibility in intellectual attraction in a committed relationship. They will also seem common-sense to you as necessary for people to not be working at cross-purposes toward a goal.
However, you will find that each of them has a basis in some major part of our basic psychological workings in the area of character maturity and virtue that are necessary for a committed relationship.
In Romantic Dynamics, we often talk about different kinds of "compatibility," in terms of other areas of courtship, such as the emotional attraction of friendship. (We don't need a "compatibility" for sexual attraction, since the only requirement is that there be a polarity between masculinity and femininity in each partner, with knowledge and encouragement of the features in our partner that we ourselves don't have in gender instincts.) With emotional attraction and friendship, there will be
With emotional attraction and friendship, there will be differing styles of emotion and self-esteem. For example, Warriors and Magicians have ample confidence, while Kings, Queens and Lovers do not. They are dominant in the other type of self-esteem - well-being - that Warriors and Magicians, lack, themselves. These four personalities of the Social Personality System also tend to have opposite complementary intellectual styles in some of them being more analytical and left-brained, while others are more creative, and right-brained. As a result, there can be emotional and intellectual "compatibility" among friends, which draws from being "different" or "complementary opposites" of each other that lead to a more whole, complete best-friendship, naturally drawing two people together in emotional attraction.
However, in intellectual attraction and partnership, the phase of the day is, "Like attracts like." People with similarities have "compatibility" in the sense of "birds of a feather, flock together." The reason behind this has to do with the notion of pursuing goals together. Where friendship needs diversity and differences to be most powerful, the goals we strive for need a single-minded approach of agreement on the goal. This will be part of what we call, "Character Compatibility" of Step 8 of human courtship - "Who We Are" (as a couple.)
While these four may seem common-sense to anyone as agreed-upon features in partners, they are both universal to people, and specific to the idea of success in getting to goals. They use the needed "working parts" of psychology to get to goals. And among the most powerful combinations of our psychological features is to pair these 4 "commonalities" with the 4 "skills of commitment," to make what we call, "Two-factor Authentication" of your mate - sixteen combinations of skills and similarities.
When people lack one or more of these 4 commonalities, it not only impairs their ability to function as a team toward shared goals, but also can feel to them like they "don't speak the same language" or "don't come from the same culture." Such mismatched traits as intelligence, beliefs, goals and maturity can feel to the two people like they "just don't get each other," and it can serve you well to test these four areas whenever you feel that way about a date, boyfriend or girlfriend, before moving upward into the intellectual attraction phase of courtship, and partnership where the stakes are high for you.
People usually can't "work on" or change their "commonalities," since they usually have to do with an inherent trait of a person - intelligence level, tastes and preferences, beliefs and the like. Why would you want to even try to change such things? They are a part of who you are. And so among the most powerful combinations of relationship ideas for a full, "intellectual compatibility" between couples on a team comes when we combine the 4 Commonalities of Commitment with the 4 Skills of Commitment. The former we usually can't or don't want to change about ourselves, and the latter, we actually can work on and build, the more mature we are.
So, let's look at the things that generally contribute to "Who We Are" as a couple, (which is step 8 of human courtship - "Compatible Character.")
The Four Commonalities of Commitment
Commonality of Intelligence ➳
Keep in mind that when we refer to intellectual style" in Romantic Dynamics, that has to do with how we process data in the form of analytical, historical, "left-brained" information versus creative, artistic, future-oriented, "right-brained" information. Intelligence is something a bit different. Whether left-brained, or right-brained, or hopefully both as a "style" of the intellect, intelligence in our model refers more to the sheer amount, efficiency, and fire-power" of both of the styles of intellect. Which may depend on a balance of both left- and right-brained processing, and the AMOUNT of power in both. It's how smart you are, as in IQ. And the highest IQ will have both left- and right-brained processing.
Commonality of Maturity ➳
This social habit is more than just ‘zoning out,” since it involves utterly losing touch with one’s sense of personhood for a time, to separate the experience of trauma, attack or anxiety on that personhood, a bit like getting up and leaving a room in which there is an argument going on, only the room is you.
Commonality of Beliefs and Values ➳
This social habit is more than just ‘zoning out,” since it involves utterly losing touch with one’s sense of personhood for a time, to separate the experience of trauma, attack or anxiety on that personhood, a bit like getting up and leaving a room in which there is an argument going on, only the room is you.
Commonality of Shared Goals ➳
This social habit is more than just ‘zoning out,” since it involves utterly losing touch with one’s sense of personhood for a time, to separate the experience of trauma, attack or anxiety on that personhood, a bit like getting up and leaving a room in which there is an argument going on, only the room is you.