Does anyone recognize this line?

It’s not out of a psychology book.

It’s my favorite sentence out of Ayn Rand’s book, Atlas Shrugged.

I’ll bet there are some of you who, like me, spent many, many adolescent hours reading Rand’s novels.

But it’s this line that struck me at age 13 and that I’ve remembered ever since!

Ayn Rand was no psychologist (nor was she a paragon of maturity in her own personal life), but she was inadvertently making the clearest possible statement of the relationship theory of matched differentiation.

“You Are Who You Sleep With”

Your choice of partner says a great deal about who YOU are

Matched differentiation is one of the pivotal rules of relationship dynamics; it says that: People match themselves with partners at their same level of maturity.

You may immediately protest. We can all name couples who appear to be dramatically mismatched in maturity levels.

What about that stable, hyper-competent man and his ditzy, childish wife?

Or the steady, long-suffering woman patiently enduring round after round of her partner’s alcohol-fueled crises and infidelities?

But the rule of thumb is: Look beneath the surface appearances for the underlying dynamics.

This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine has a piece about Norris Church Mailer, Norman Mailer’s sixth (!!!) and last wife.

They met at a party. He was 52 years old and a world-famous author; she was 26 and working in a pickle factory.

They were immediately attracted to one another, and they wound up going home together after the party.

The next morning, Norris penned Norman a passionate love poem … which Norman returned to her after editing it in red pencil. And so began their 33-year relationship.

People’s reactions to their romance were predictable:

Mailer was playing Pygmalion; she was fortune-hunting, social climbing or both.

The wise, secure, worldly, sophisticated man was trading off his maturity in exchange for her sweet, innocent young charms and adoration, right? Surely, this is the common, and cynical, understanding of such arrangements, yes?

And yet. I believe I see matched differentiation.

How “mature,” really, is a world-renowned author who feels the need to copy-edit his young lover’s personal poem to him? I could make the case that her naive gushing and his petty controlling are rather well-matched in terms of maturity. What do you think?

And then there were his multiple infidelities … as Norris calculates, “a small army of women …”

Apparently,

He just couldn’t resist someone who told him what a great man he was.

The theory of matched differentiation says that when Norman Mailer paired himself with an unsophisticated little 26-year-old, he was in fact choosing very precisely. He was choosing someone at his same level of maturity.

What do you think?

We’ll keep talking about this!

Cupid and Psyche at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Good Music for a Good Cause: UFO’s album, Unity Creates Strength, benefits Chile and Haiti.

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From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (April 8, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (April 8, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
“You Are Who You Sleep With” (Part Two) | Always Learning (April 9, 2010)

From Psych Central's website:
“You Are Who You Sleep With” (Part Four) | Always Learning (April 12, 2010)

    Last reviewed: 8 Apr 2010