At this step, both partners have experienced desire, Sexual Attraction, dated, formed a friendship, been through some difficult stresses and the emotions they cause, in the Emotional Attraction Phase, and hopefully found that they have compatible personality styles on the Social Personality System. They are "best friends" or "soulmates."

They have even gone so far as to work on their own character maturity and virtue, to ready themselves for a full attempt at seeing if they are able to form a long term, committed relationship.

Now, in Step 8, we must learn of the strengths and weaknesses in each other's character, and find a second kind of compatibility, not in personality styles, but in the character virtues composed from the common traits we share, and the relationship skills we must have, in order to be the most successful team of partners we can be.

This is the step where we also get such individualized preferences in another person that it could only fit in the step of courtship where we are in the higher brain, where we are most unique as individuals. We had no choice over the parents we were given, and so the randomness of that fact needs to be accounted for. We all experience "attachment" to our opposite sex parent, with all their virtues and vices, in a way which influences who we get intellectually attracted to in adult life. We also go through "identification" with the same-sex parent for a head start on our virtues and vices, absorbing them from that parent in childhood, and reworking them to suit our personal identity before adulthood, in the teen years and young adulthood. This influences what we "telegraph" to others as an intellectual attractor for THEM.

You can learn much more about this step in the whole series of deep lessons on it, at the main site articles of "Who We Are."

At this point in the "higher brain," the most unique, individualized part of the mind, we must bring in an element of such randomness, what makes us, us as individuals. It is the particular parents we had, and their influence on our identity and eventual choices in a mate. Attachment and Identification will influence what we learn from our parents, both in terms of our identity as adults, and in our preferences in choice of a mate.

In addition, there are both Four Commonalities of Commitment that we must learn, in which the more similarity we have, the more likely we will make lasting partners at reaching success together toward goals. These are Intelligence, Maturity, shared Beliefs about life, and shared Life's Goals. If you have more than two of these very in common with your partner, that goes a long way toward keeping you together.

There are also Four Skills of Commitment which "stack" upon each other, and without which we cannot last as lifelong partners. These are also called "the 4 C's": Curiosity, Communication, Compromise, and Collaboration, which cannot be built and used except in that order, and which parallels one's maturity of character. The highest skill to build in a committed relationship is Collaboration.

As a way of striking the highest efficiency at assessing our relationships and finding the highest compatible partner, we may COMBINE the Four Commonalities of Commitment with the Four Skills of Partnership or Commitment, to make 16 "Cardinal Virtues" of a lasting, committed romantic relationships. While there are innumerable character virtues for people to grow at, these 16 character virtues happen to be the most potent and individualized ones for striking a perfect balance between the 4 things we must have in common, and the 4 skills that make us good partners.

In Romantic Dynamics, we call a good match of these 16 virtues, "Two-factor Authentication," for the two factors of "common traits" and "partnership skills" (the "4 C's".) The traits need to be "in common," meaning that we have similar intelligence, similar maturity level, similar beliefs and preferences, and similar life's goals.  The four Skills need to be as free of narcissism and as constructive and "win/win" as possible, too.

We solidify the uniqueness of our identities with the random inheritance of the traits of the particular same sex parent we happened to have (Identification), and the type of partner we learned to desire by way of character features in our opposite sex parent (Attachment), to reach ONE Master Virtue that we possess, and ONE Master Virtue that we seek in a partner, as the unique individual that we are.

Those who discover this one Virtue in themselves, and one in their partner, are especially lucky, blessed and persistent as far as romance goes.

This technology need not only be exclusive to romance, but to any kind of collaborative effort between two people, even if the environment is a difficult one.

We will need to steady ourselves with this knowledge, for the reason that it can be unsettling to go this far into investing in a courtship, only to find that there is some "non-starter," some incompatibility between us that can actually bring down all that we have shared.

However, we need to remember that we are human and imperfect, that even if you discover some major incompatibility in your character as a couple, one can still decide that they simply want "to make the relationship work." Doing so, you are agreeing to a whole lot more work than would be needed with a more compatible person. However, if you are willing to do work, then you are just willing to do work, to find the highest happiness you can with what you have to work with.

When we have reached the middle of the commitment and partnering phase, or the Intellectual Attraction Phase of courtship, where success and harmony have maximized the value of being successful partners. We now know, "Who I Am" as an individual, as well as "Who We Are" as partners.

What must come next is the actual testing for what happens when we actually go forward to take charge of living our dreams and accomplishing our most dearly held, personal life's goals, in Step 9, "Where We Are Going."

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