Your Best Match

Now you can get a personalized compatibility analysis custom written for you by William Cane, author of The Birth Order Book of Love. The deluxe compatibility analysis explains who your best romantic match is, and it tells you how compatibile you are with your current partner (if you're dating or considering dating someone in particular). It can even tell you which of two people would be a better match in the long run.

Using birth order to find a compatible match can be a complicated matter, especially for middle children, for those who experienced the early loss of a parent or sibling, or for those who had significantly greater than average parental conflict. In some cases, especially for firstborns and lastborns, it is relatively easy to predict who a good match would be based on birth order. Various theoretical considerations come into play, including the work of Walter Toman, Robert F. Winch, and Frank Sulloway, to name three of the biggest thinkers on the subject.

For a firstborn the best match is usually a lastborn. This is based on the theory that opposites attract. It's also based on the theory, advanced by psychologist Walter Toman, that we're more comfortable with someone who matches the sibling position of our opposite-sex siblings. So, for example, an older brother of sisters would be used to the younger sister of brothers. An example of this match would be firstborn Brad Pitt (who has a younger sister) and Angelina Jolie (who has an older brother).

Sex Conflict

What about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner? Affleck is a firstborn with one younger brother. Garner is a middle child with an older and a younger sister. In this case they suffer from what is called sex conflict, having no siblings of the opposite sex. (Affleck had the same problem with JLo, who had the exact same birth order as Garner!) Neither should be very good at understanding the opposite sex. But in this case neither will have an advantage over the other because neither Affleck nor Garner has opposite-sex siblings. (Photo from Joint Network Gulf Coast Benefit: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.)

Another important type of conflict that impacts compatibility is rank conflict. This type of conflict occurs whenever two firstborns or two lastborns date because each has the same rank. Two firstborn will fight over leadership, since they both grew up feeling like they were in control of their younger siblings. And two lastborns will get into conflict over who's to be considered the baby of the family since they both grew up with all the rights and privileges of the lastborn.

Narcissistic Relationships

Sometimes two firstborns or two lastborns have a very satisfactory relationship. This is a narcissistic relationship: they love each other because they are so similar. Such relationships are considered somewhat less mature than relationships between partners with opposite birth orders.

Another reason that two firstborns or two lastborns might have a satisfactory relationship, according to Frank Sulloway, is that similar birth orders bond together, especially during times of radical social revolution. They think alike (they may both be united against a new idea, for example, or they may both support a political revolution).

Because numerous factors come into play in assessing romantic compatibility, it's important to point out that any two people could theoretically have a great relationship. It certainly helps, however, to know about your partner's birth order since it tells you a lot about their personality and how they'll react under various stressful conditions.

Custom Birth Order Analysis

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