Marcia Yudkin

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Love Molds™ Analysis #26

In today’s guest post, a friend of Love Molds™ gets into the down and dirty of why three of her love affairs didn’t work out and one did.  As always, we’ll insert our type profiles for convenient reference into her narrative and add a few comments after her self-analysis. Names and some details – but not the emotional dynamics – have been changed. 

Read on for our guest poster’s illuminating insights. Love Molds™ categories explain compatibility, attraction and conflict better than horoscopes, love languages or personality types.

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Not counting high school crushes, my first boyfriend happened the summer before I – a Forever One – went to college. Yoni was definitely an Empath.

Empath:  Fluent in the language of feelings, motivated to protect loved ones.  Generous with money and time, loves to nurture relationships with people and animals.  Believes the way to someone’s heart is to listen to and appreciate them.  Attracted to perceived neediness and can get bewildered when rejected. 

Most compatible with: Innocent Babe

Least compatible with: Rebel

I was a counselor-in-training at a summer camp in the Poconos, and one night the oldest campers and the staff were being shown a Holocaust documentary.  I’d read the Diary of Anne Frank as well as Night by Elie Wiesel, but the graphic newsreels showing Allied forces liberating Auschwitz were far more grisly than anything my imagination had conjured up. I ran out of the rec hall and sobbed against a tree. 

A quiet “Shh” sounded behind me and soft pats on my shoulder calmed me down enough to turn around.  It was Yoni – short for Yonatan, a shaggy-haired counselor I’d hardly ever spoken with. His brown eyes were moist with concern, and he simply held out his arms for a gentle hug.  “Let’s walk,” he said.  We walked together often for the rest of the summer.

On the other night that sticks in memory, Yoni was murmuring endearments while nibbling first on my ear, then along my chin and down my neck toward the opening of my blouse.  “What?” he asked, sensing correctly that I didn’t want him to go further.  “What’s wrong?” I stammered something that made no sense, but he intuited the self-consciousness I had about my body.  “Listen, you’re beautiful.  You have a glow other girls don’t have. You’re beautiful,” he said again and again until I nodded. Being with Yoni felt like being bathed in healing energy. I received, received, received.

In the fall, I took the train to New York City, where he was majoring in Urban Studies at Columbia.  There a different Yoni came out when we were walking toward a pizza place just off campus for dinner.  Feeling good by his side, I smiled at a bum we were passing, which made the man in tatters veer toward us.  Yoni yanked me hard the other way and scolded, “No, no, no!  Don’t ever look anyone in the eye here on the street.  It’s dangerous.” Of course, he was showing concern by teaching me a survival rule for his high-crime metropolis.  Still, his sudden hard-edged attitude took me aback.

Weeks later, he visited me in Providence, where I hadn’t quite settled in yet as a freshman at Brown.  The imagined sensibilities of my cool classmates overpowered my own. Yoni’s voice now struck me as whiny, and the nerdy haircut that he attributed to an overzealous barber made me embarrassed to introduce him to my new friends. After his visit, I let more and more time elapse between our exchanges of letters, which eventually stopped. I didn’t miss him. I had enjoyed the comfort of his caring, but his Empath nature didn’t actually match well with my Forever One Love Mold™.

Forever One:  A prolific daydreamer who prefers to be the chooser in love, while believing in soulmates and happily-ever-after bonds. May appear to be self-sufficient, bossy or cynical on the outside, but is affectionate and devoted in private. Unlikely to cheat on a partner.  Easily hurt, with a long recovery time.

Most compatible with: Mute

Least compatible with: Clown

Two years after breaking up with Yoni, I’d gathered a niche of study-hard-chill-out-together buddies at school. In classes, one intellectual discovery after another led me to philosophy. A friendly guy named Ted initiated a ritual of strolling together into a basement soda shop after our Theory of Knowledge class.  Tall and rangy, with patrician good looks – he had a “III” after his last name – Ted had a way of looking at me intently while asking how I interpreted John Locke. I melted. 

Over time, our conversations wandered to topics other than what we can know.  Summers, Ted worked on a construction crew in Washington, DC.  “Fundamentally they’re good people, my coworkers,” Ted confided, “but they whistle at women walking by on the sidewalk and call out, well, I don’t need to tell you what.  ‘You know, she has a mind, too,’ I tell them, and they swat me down.  ‘College boy, hah.’”  His mouth curled up on one side.

“He’s perfect,” I breathed to my roommate Cassandra.  But other than an occasional nudge hand to hand to emphasize a philosophical point, he made no move to shift our after-class tête-a-têtes to a physical level.  Clearly it was my job to make that happen.  He lived in a rambling dormitory house nearly off campus, and I plotted to run into him by chance there on a weekend.

Initially, my strategy worked.  I waylaid him one Friday night near his dorm, pretending I was headed to a party.  We took turns swigging from the bottle of beer I’d brought along, and when I said I had more in my refrigerator, he followed me and even kissed me as we mounted the stairs, laughing, to my attic apartment.  In bed, though, the romantic rapport fizzled, and he made it clear that by almost seducing him I’d taken things too far.  “You jezebel,” he even said to me a week later when I tried again.  I had to back away, sob my misery to Cassandra and content myself with our cozy after-class sharing of ideas.

Charmer:  Perfect manners, supremely likeable, a considerate and pleasant conversationalist.  Moderately charismatic in a fashion that others may interpret (wrongly) as romantic interest.  Values fun, learning, social consensus and the arts.  Believes in planning, even for love.  May find self-awareness a challenge.

Most compatible with: Adventurer

Least compatible with: Warrior

Decades after college Ted and I remain long-distance friends, with twinges of regret lingering on my part.  “Sorry, I just wasn’t emotionally ready then to get intimate with anyone,” he apologized to me in a letter.  When we meet at reunions and he casts that warm just-us look at me, I remind myself that it doesn’t mean what I wished it did.  Something in me is vulnerable to him and probably will stay that way until I die.

At Cornell for graduate school, I got involved with Quinn, a budding field biologist.  Wispy-haired, just an inch or two taller than me and weighing not much more, he had an all-knowing air and interests ranging from birds to music and literature   On our first date, for ice cream, he told me about his two heroes, Darwin and Mozart.  I told him about the sexism I battled in my department and my own hero, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.  On our second date, we gabbed into the wee hours, more and more enthralled with one another.  Before going home, he invited me to go swimming the next afternoon at a local no-trespassing waterfall. “It’s a skinny-dipping spot,” he added, raising an eyebrow.  I smiled.

Rebel: Disruptor who enjoys challenging authority and doing the unexpected. Prone to an inflated ego.  Falls in and out of love quickly, expresses passion easily. Dislikes commitment. Has a tender side in private yet is most engaged when sparks fly.  Motto: “Don’t encroach!”

Most compatible with: Rebel

Least compatible with: Boss

When classes started, I learned that Quinn cultivated a remote, enigmatic image in his department, bolstered by his never-varied school outfit of black turtleneck and khakis. But with me he was enthusiastic and indulgent, making me pancakes and yogurt or fresh granola most mornings after I’d slept over at his cottage. When he found out I took lessons on the flute, he persuaded a friend to lend him an upright piano. After a session of Bach, Telemann or Mozart duets in his living room, we’d make love tenderly, the bodily communication as playful as the intertwining melodies and harmonies. Unlike with Ted, our joyful feelings seemed fully reciprocal.

One morning a year or so into our idyll, I stopped by his place, which was always unlocked, to drop off some bookshelves. I ventured a faint “Hello?” though Quinn was supposed to be at school.  A quiet groan came from the bedroom. Investigating, I saw two bodies in his bed, with the blankets pulled up over the form that wasn’t Quinn’s. While we hadn’t explicitly promised to be exclusive, this dalliance punched me where it hurt.  I plodded out to my car, Quinn hurrying out a few moments later barefoot, buckling his pants. “This has nothing to do with you, with us,” he tried.  I drove off.

Somehow our old, happy equilibrium took hold again and sailed us through another seven months. I landed a prestigious teaching job in Massachusetts, and I expected we’d somehow stay together long-distance. Yet Quinn began disappearing some nights and weekends. He implied he was working hard, sleeping at his lab, and refused to say more. Since I’d never been curious to know where his lab was, I had no way to confirm or disprove that. Worried and distressed, I more than once dissolved into tears in the midst of an otherwise buoyant music session with him.

Then he literally went far away, camping by himself in a Texas desert. Without a formal breakup, I finally recognized that he didn’t want our relationship to continue. But why? Why? In a long-delayed debrief, he snapped at me, “I never loved you.  I loved who I thought you were, not that clingy, weepy person.” Oooh.  Along with the pain that inflicted, he’d expressed something true. On the surface, I radiated independence.  But my Forever One nature wanted an unshakable, deep bond that didn’t sit well with a Rebel. Had we had stayed together, Love Molds™ predicts that Quinn would have wounded me with spurts of infidelity until I couldn’t bear it any longer.

In my early thirties, still single after many flings failed to get me over Quinn, I flew halfway around the world to work in China for a year as a writer and editor. The country set out a welcome mat for foreign workers.  But behind the scenes, authorities controlled contacts between non-Chinese and locals. On a train ride during a weekend off, I met Bu, who came up to me with an English textbook and asked the meaning of a few words, like “goggles” and “feeble.” I discovered he was fluent in French and learning English so he might get sent by China’s Commerce Department to England or Australia instead of to Morocco or Iraq.  Tall and slim, more or less my age, he came across as confident and curious. “Really, you dare to call me?” I thought when he asked me to write my office phone number in his book.

What I expected would be language lessons turned into intense discussions about freedom and conformity.  We met at the Beijing Zoo, in a dirty, windswept park or in a dank café near the compound where I lived, never touching so as not to attract suspicions. He told me “Bu,” the word that indicates “not” in Chinese, was a nickname given him by scornful friends who told him he should stop bucking the system and just enjoy the perks that came with parents high up in the Communist Party. At work, he had access to Western media like Newsweek and Le Monde that were forbidden to most, but he always tested boundaries to know more, do more. “I think I have a criminal mind,” he whispered.

Bu’s boss took him aside one day.  “On Sunday you were seen with a foreign girl.  You know that’s not allowed,” he scolded. So we became more furtive when we got together. We each tried to investigate what would really be the consequences if we went public with our developing relationship. Deportation for me, banishment to Kashgar for Bu? Nights, I burned with longing for him while wondering why he never verbalized feelings for me. My confidantes warned that for Bu I might represent mainly a ticket out of China. I shook off that idea and schemed to get him to the US after my one-year contract wound up.  My plan worked.

Mute:  Lives by strong principles, such as loyalty, justice or freedom. Driven to understand life.  Can seem stand-offish and remote but actually craves stability, affection and long-run wisdom in love relationships. Acts according to the Taoist principle, “He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.”

Most compatible with: Forever One

Least compatible with: Empath

If someone had told me I would marry – and stay with decade after decade – someone who never once said “I love you,” I would have scoffed.  Absurd!  But Bu shows his caring without words, like the time I developed a wacky heartbeat after a medical procedure.  In the second basement of the hospital, with the anesthesiologist about to put me under and the cardiologist holding electrical paddles, I saw Bu pressed against a glass door at the other end of the room, the very picture of desperate anxiety. 

Daily he showers me with kisses, hugs, smiles and off-the-cuff jokes.  What my Forever One Love Mold™ disposition appreciates most is that Bu doesn’t know how to respond if another woman, eyeing his trim swimmer’s body, flirts with him.  For sure we’ve had iffy conflicts – over money, food and ambitions, to name three.  Yet I’m so fortunate to have ended up with him instead of with Ted, Quinn or others who are appealing though ultimately unsuitable.  At the most profound level I feel secure with Bu – and loved.

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Well done, friend!  For those who are not immersed in the logic and power of Love Mold™ analysis, let me point out a few things. 

First, note that with Ted, Quinn and Bu there was a markedly intellectual cast to our friend’s initial attraction.  A meeting of the minds took place that went missing with Yoni.  However, mind-meeting didn’t predict a compatibility or mismatch, whereas her Love Mold™ harmonies and clashes did.  Remember, surface factors don’t matter anywhere as much as we tend to assume.

Second, we can see Sub-Molds™ operating in this story.  Both our friend and Bu have Rebel tendencies, but they don’t run as deep or as strongly as with Quinn.  It takes quite a bit of experience and intuition to distinguish Love Molds™ from Sub-Molds™, so see our post on the three key differentiators to better understand this.

Third, observe that Love Molds™ makes sense of otherwise near-inexplicable dynamics, such as why someone would turn away from unconditional love, as our friend did from Yoni and Ted did from her.  Proverbial “chemistry” doesn’t account for times when there’s a glow of interest but no lasting fire.

If you’re reading this and haven’t yet taken the Love Molds™ training, start by taking our free test, which in less than ten minutes narrows your Love Molds™ type to three possibilities.  Then take the training.  Then get coached!  Your reward: Understanding why past relationships crashed and how to spot deep compatibilities that on the surface may not seem so promising.


The author of 17 nonfiction books as well as essays in the New York Times Magazine, Ms., Next Avenue and NPR, Marcia Yudkin advocates for introverts through her newsletter, Introvert UpThink. She lives in Goshen, Massachusetts (population 960).

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