Personality
How Couples Learn to Live With Each Other's Flaws
A perfect partner is a partner who does not exist.
Posted July 23, 2022 Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
Key points
- In some cases, discovering partner flaws can adversely impact relational satisfaction.
- Couples who become closer as they learn more about each other have more relational commitment.
- Highly committed individuals were more inclined to work through situations that revealed negative partner information.
- A higher acceptance of one’s own imperfections increases the acceptance of the imperfections of others.
At the beginning of a new relationship, both partners are on their best behavior. Striving to maintain (already) impossible standards of excellence, paramours often both seek and perceive perfection as they trade in their reading glasses for rose-colored lenses.
Inevitably, however, someone slips up. Whether through mismatched slang or style, or insensitivity, reality begins to seep in. Even couples who are well-matched are not perfect. The good news is that personality flaws are not fatal to fanning the flames. The degree to which seeing each other's true colors impacts the future of the relationship depends on its foundation.
The Perfect Partner
Obviously, the perfect partner is a myth. There is no such thing as a flawless relationship, and a paramour who seems too good to be true usually is. But depending on the strength of your relationship, partner flaws do not need to be fatal to a great relationship.
Ximena B. Arriaga et al. studied response to partner imperfections within the context of relationship commitment.i They began by recognizing what everyone knows through experience that discovering partner flaws can adversely impact relational satisfaction. Yet not all partners are impacted in the same way. Some couples actually seem to become closer as they learn more about each other, a result the researchers tied to the level of commitment.
Studying 41 dating couples, Arriaga et al. found that receiving negative feedback about a partner affected the satisfaction of less committed individuals but not those who were highly committed. They also found that relational uncertainty mediated the increased vulnerability experienced by less committed partners to negative partner information.
Examining reactions to learning about a partner’s negative personality characteristics, Arriaga et al. found that individuals who were highly committed were more inclined to work through situations that revealed such negative partner information and may even respond to such information by strengthening their relationship.
Less committed people, in contrast, lack the motivation to ignore negative information about a partner. Arriaga et al. conclude that their data suggest that relationship threats heighten feelings of uncertainty within couples who are less committed, causing decreased satisfaction.

Loving Our Partners and Ourselves
More recently, Jia Wei Zhang et al. (2020) found that the way we accept others stems from the way we accept ourselves.ii Studying the link between self-compassion and acceptance, they found that an increasing acceptance of one’s own imperfections increase the acceptance of the imperfections of others, including romantic partners.
Taken together, it seems that relational satisfaction is a function of both commitment and compassion. Accordingly, discovering the personality flaws of a new flame will not necessarily extinguish the spark.
On the contrary, particularly within committed relationships, accepting the good with the bad—both in yourself and in your partner, can foster a healthy, realistic, respectful relationship.
Facebook image: Hrecheniuk Oleksii/Shutterstock
References
[i] Arriaga, Ximena B., Elizabeth S. Slaughterbeck, Nicole M. Capezza, and Jillian L. Hmurovic. 2007. “From Bad to Worse: Relationship Commitment and Vulnerability to Partner Imperfections.” Personal Relationships 14 (3): 389–409. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6811.2007.00162.x.
[ii] Zhang, Jia Wei, Serena Chen, and Teodora K. Tomova Shakur. 2020. “From Me to You: Self-Compassion Predicts Acceptance of Own and Others’ Imperfections.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 46 (2): 228–42. doi:10.1177/0146167219853846.