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Japanese No, for most traits. A 2023 analysis of 199 studies and nearly 80,000 couples in Britain found that partners tend to be alike, most strongly in political and religious values and education. The Bible does not discuss the idea; its guidance on choosing a spouse concerns faith, “only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39).
What research says about opposites attracting
A 2023 study by Tanya Horwitz, Jared Balbona, Katie Paulich and Matthew Keller of the University of Colorado Boulder, published in Nature Human Behaviour, combined 480 partner correlations from 199 studies of married, engaged, cohabiting and co-parenting couples, covering 22 traits. A correlation above zero means that partners tend to be alike on a trait. The average correlations ran from 0.08 for extraversion, close to no relationship, to 0.58 for political values; religiosity came next at 0.56.
The researchers also examined 133 traits in up to 79,074 couples in the UK Biobank, a large British health study. Of the 118 traits that showed a statistically significant link between partners, 115 were positive and 3 were negative. The strongest negative link was for chronotype, whether a person is a “morning person” or an “evening person,” at −0.18. The authors wrote that, “Contrary to the maxim ‘opposites attract’,” the correlations found between partners are “overwhelmingly in the positive direction.”
Some of that resemblance may come after the wedding. The same paper notes that couples can grow more alike over time, a process researchers call convergence, which is separate from choosing a similar partner in the first place.
An earlier review asked what draws people to each other. R. Matthew Montoya, Robert Horton and Jeffrey Kirchner combined 460 results from 313 laboratory and field studies in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships in 2008. Both actual similarity and perceived similarity were linked to attraction, with correlations of .47 and .39. In existing relationships, though, actual similarity had no significant effect, while perceived similarity, how alike people believe they are, still predicted attraction.
Is “opposites attract” in the Bible?
No. Scripture does not discuss whether people of opposite temperaments make good couples. The nearest it comes to the subject is the difference between man and woman. In Genesis, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). The English Standard Version notes that “fit for” can be translated “corresponding to.” The Hebrew word, kenegdo, comes from neged, which Strong’s concordance defines as “a front, i.e. part opposite; specifically a counterpart, or mate.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the woman the man’s “counterpart, his equal, his nearest in all things” (Catechism 1605), and it speaks of the “difference and complementarity” of the sexes as “oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life” (Catechism 2333). These passages concern men and women as such, not the personalities of particular couples.
Does Amos 3:3 mean couples must agree?
The verse is sometimes quoted about couples, in the King James wording “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” The English Standard Version reads, “Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?” (Amos 3:3). It is the first in a series of questions about cause and effect: a lion roars when it has prey, a snare springs when it has caught something, a trumpet in a city makes people afraid. The series ends with the prophet’s point: “The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8). The passage is about why Amos speaks, not about marriage.
What does the Bible say about choosing a spouse?
It says more about faith and character than about temperament. Paul tells a widow that she “is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). His warning “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6:14) does not name marriage, but churches have often applied it to marriage. Proverbs values character over appearance: “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Proverbs 31:30). For married life, Paul tells believers to be “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).
Scripture tells little about the temperaments of the couples it describes. Aquila and his wife Priscilla, for example, were tentmakers who worked with Paul in Corinth and together “explained to him the way of God more accurately” when they heard the preacher Apollos (Acts 18:2–3, 26). The Bible does not say whether they were alike or different. Pairs sometimes offered as examples of opposites, such as David and Jonathan or Peter and Paul, were friends and fellow workers, not married couples.
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