Understanding

We all like our friends to understand us; even more so, we like the one we love to understand us, perfectly, if possible. While probably not realizable in reality, since the only person who can understand you perfectly is probably only a photo-copied you, nonetheless it isn't unreasonable to hope for a person like that would eventually come along.

What isnt immediately obvious is that there is not just 1 kind of understanding, but in fact, at least 3 kinds of understanding. Particularly for the case of the one you love, you probably want just 1 kind of understanding, namely the last which I shall talk about. However, different people have different preferences, so it may be that your view might differ significantly from mine, or that what you like may instead be a mix of the 3 kinds of understandings too. Regardless, lets look at what kind of understandings there are.

Firstly, there is the Smart-understanding. This particular person in your group of friends is able to anticipate what you like, what you don't like, what you are going to say, purely from your body language and inferences from your past behavior. In fact, he does it so well that he seems to be you voicing your own opinions, just that you are hearing it from him.

Perhaps he isnt really trying, not like he is a stalker or something, or mind reader. It just is obvious to him what you are going to do, say etc. As well all other people he met: he just knows what they going to do. But he likes to anticipate your actions and words just because he likes you. Nothing particularly wrong with that: even smart people are entitled to love.

Second type: Familiarity-understanding. I am going to avoid calling this Stalker-understanding, cos it is not. Familiarity breeds understanding: long term exposure to anyone can eventually give you a pretty good understanding of him in terms of his thinking, habits, etc.

Third type: SameFrequency-understanding. It isnt really that rare, to come across someone who thinks in roughly the same way as you. Sometimes you have friends who have the same habits, or same likes/dislikes. Quite reasonable, therefore to expect someone who is really on the same wavelength as you. There isnt any thinking, or long term exposure to you: he/she just happened to voice the same opinions as you, want to do the same thing, laugh at the same jokes, finds something hilarious while no one else except you does.

Well of course, we arent talking about exactly the same likes and dislikes, habits etc. Quite impossible in fact, unless you are gay or lesbians, since male and females already have different biological habits. But the really fun stuff, the ones you really place a lot of importance in, are where you hope you have this appropriate amount of same wavelengthness.

Unlike me, some people may prefer a combination of type 2 and type 3 understanding; taking pains to understand someone else through long term exposure can be a form of love, a sign of commitment to the relationship. In fact, most arranged marriages started off from purely type 2, and worked out fine in the end. Personally, however, since I am a pretty lazy person, and quite a romantic at heart, I much prefer someone who has so coincidentally the same frequency as me, laugh and talk about the same stuff all without trying to.