ehowton ◾ Values, Part IV (Reply)

Conversations surrounding values just keep popping up these days. Most recently during our fifth session of couples counseling (though I did not mention it in my post). The therapist asked if our values had changed over the last 10-years. I let her know that my top five have changed priority a handful of times (much like my treatise on Love Languages but that my wife's absolutely have (mostly from leaving religion). I don't know why I feel like the therapist is always trying to stump me, but I'm fairly well versed on values as well, and took to her whiteboard to illustrate the path from worldview to behavior and how our values are determined by our beliefs. Off the cuff I listed mine in no particular order as curiosity, joy, connection, and intimacy. My wife backed up this assertion then admitted hers had changed quite a bit in the intervening 10-years.

The therapist then asked if we thought an alignment of values was important to a successful relationship. Of course I decided to throw her a curveball, because why not at this point. I stared with how our values should absolutely change to reflect our growth, experience, maturity, and understanding of the world around us (she's nodding this entire time), then mentioned that an alignment of values was only half the equation - how we get there is fully the other half. If two people end up with opposing values but took the same methodical, logical path along the way, which side of the balance/counterbalance is less important than the journey we took and the process we used. To put it another way, when my wife and I were filling out questions on the online dating site OKCupid for the algorithm to match us, a lot of hers said, "YES" and a lot of mine said, "NO" but in the text box we'd written nearly identical reasons as to why we gave our answer. The polarity of the YES/NO was inconsequential at that point as it was obfuscated by the perspective of our respective thesis.

So yes, let's compare our values. But let's also compare how we reached them <3

^{Values, Pt. III}