OPPOSITES ATTRACT - Maximisers and Minimisers

Like magnets smacking together, positive and negative unable to resist each other, also in relationships. Opposites don’t always attract but they usually do as we seek out – laser-like and accurately – those who fill our empty spaces.

Harville Hendrix, author of Getting the Love You Need and other books, coined the terms maximiser and minimiser and so, in opposing and frustrating ways we attract our complement, our nemesis, our annoyer, our completion.

Maximisers are the organisers, the list-makers, the diary keepers. They are the ones who will leave nothing to chance, ensuring every minute of every day and every aspect or every event is accounted for. Some might call them manipulators or control freaks. They’re quick to give advice to others whether it’s welcome or not. However, they are the ones to be depended on for a project or event that requires many people or activities to be brought together. They can be reliable, traditional, controlling and/or impatient.

To the minimiser, all this looks like tiresome and pointless work – planning in a world and a future that’s got its own agenda, despite our best attempts to bend its unlimited will to our petty one.

Minimisers are not lazy, though they may see them as such. Their minds are fully occupied but not in the straight-line, plunging-through-the-chaos way of the maximiser but in a more fluid, loving-the-chaos way.

Unlike their nemesis, minimisers enjoy not having answers, not being certain and trusting in the unassailable truth of the universe and their intuition. Forgetting their notes for an important speech may be a tragedy for the maximiser and a wonderful opportunity for creativity and improvisation to the minimiser.

Maximisers like to give and receive advice but minimisers dislike advice from any source but their intuition and will resist telling others their thoughts.

So, once the gooey-in-love honeymoon period is over, the irksome characteristics of your opposite will arise. Your differences don’t mean that you shouldn’t be together. Rather your differences mean you should stay united for, whoever you’re with now, is who you should be with.

So, how do you reconcile the irreconcilable?

Firstly, recognise that any and all lovers will rub you up the wrong way, one way or another. How else are we to smooth our sharp edges?

Secondly, acknowledge who you are and what blows your hair back … and what drives your partner. Realise that no one has the whole answer, the one true way of doing things. Plans are appropriate sometimes, spontaneity at other times. Pushing is appropriate at times, trusting at other times.

Few people are 100% one way or the other but, whatever your tendency, try being the opposite sometimes.

If you’re the planner, the organiser, try sitting back for a moment, “accidentally” leave the grocery list or map at home and relax into the possibility that your life won’t end right now. In fact, it might exceed your plans. Never miss an opportunity to not give advice and see what happens. Whatever it is, the world will probably keep spinning.

If you’re the minimiser, take a risk and offer some advice, remembering that any reaction to it, good or bad, won’t wreck your relationship. Your maximising mate will appreciate that you stepped forward, however clumsily. Choose a day, at least a week ahead, and plan an event – book a restaurant, a holiday, buy a gift, organise some friends into it. It’s a risk for it’s your plan and not the universe’s – you can’t absolve responsibility to anyone else. However, your maximising partner will be grateful you took their burden for a moment, irrespective of how it turned out.

Like a key and a lock, we have to be different shapes to open the door to possibilities. They won’t happen unless we recognise our partner has to be different from us and we’ll benefit from experimenting with being who we’re not, on occasions.

Are you a minimiser or a maximiser? Here is an overview of both states and some questions to get you on the path of self-awareness and turning things around.
 
Maximiser:
Looks like - Has to be done ‘right now’, can be dramatic, pushy, inappropriate at times, dog with a bone attitude, mostly always the instigator.
Benefits: Things do get done, issues do get dealt with, focused, problem solver, reliable.
Costs: Alienates partner/others, anger, frosty connection, pushes partner/others away, serious about life, stressed.
 
Minimiser:
Looks like – Take their time, laid back, relaxed, less drama, things don’t get done quickly – if at all, rarely instigates.
Benefits: Doesn’t have to do much, let’s others take the lead, less responsibility, can do own thing more often, more relaxed about life, less serious.
Costs: Unreliable, things don’t get done, others tire of taking the lead and lack of initiative, let others down, their word is not believed.
 
Which one do you think you are?
 
For the maximiser:
 
What are the benefits of being this way?
 
What are the costs?
 
What is the impact of this on your relationship?
 
What positive aspects of the minimiser would help you form a new way of being with this?
 
How do you think you could implement these?
 
What sort of challenges do you think you will face?
 
How can you overcome them?
 
What would be the impact on your relationship if you could overcome them?
 
For the minimiser:
 
What are the benefits of being this way?
 
What are the costs?
 
What is the impact of this on your relationship?
What positive aspects of the maximiser would help you form a new way of being with this?
 
How do you think you could implement these?
 
What sort of challenges do you think you will face?
 
How can you overcome them?
 
What would be the impact on your relationship if you could overcome them?
 
For you both
When would you like to start doing putting this into action?

Namaste
​Anna Louise & Philip J Bradbury

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