John Rolf Jordan: Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is John Rolf Jordan. And I am very pleased to have Dr. Marcella Bakur Weiner with us. She is currently an adjunct professor of psychology at Marymount Manhattan College and president of the Mapleton mid-wood South Beach psychiatric community and mental health center. A senior faculty for the international association for human relations training, Dr. Weiner has conducted groups in the United States as well as abroad in such countries such as Denmark, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Japan, Morocco, Norway and Panama among many others. She is an active member of the American psychological association’s media division, and she is frequently quoted in magazines and newspapers including Bride, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, glamour and the New York post and times. She has made appearances on television on ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. Dr. Weiner has co-authored twenty books in psychology and human relations as well as spirituality. Several of Dr. Weiner’s books have been translated into foreign languages such as “The Love Compatibility Book,” Co-written with Dr. Edward Hoffman today we are examining that book. Dr. Weiner lives with her family in New York City. Dr. Weiner, how are you today?

Dr. Weiner: I am great John and thank you for having me on this show; I am really very excited about it all.

John Rolf Jordan: Well, thank you so much. It’s just a joy to talk with you and let’s jump right into the questions, I am sure lot of people wondering about compatibility and on your resume, there is a lot that has to do with love, relationships and compatibility. Now why is that you are very interested in those subjects?

Dr. Weiner:  I am, because I realize that in being married and being a woman and having lived that there is nothing like love because love really warms the heart, it’s something we all seek, we need it in our childhood, we need it in our middle hood, we need it in our adult hood, we need it in our old age, and to be compatible with someone, well its like finding another part of yourself because that is what it really is, and so joining the two parts of yourself, the inner and the outer, well it’s really bliss and what could be better.

John Rolf Jordan: I would definitely agree and let’s say that you do want to find that lasting love, the person with whom you are compatible, would you say that the quest for that person actually begins with yourself?

Dr. Weiner: Absolutely, you know you can’t find what you are looking for unless you know who you are, cause once you know who you are, and you know what you are looking for.  I as a shopper, the intenerate shopper, the American women shopper as my husband would say, I walk into a store and I say this, this, this and they say,  “Well let me show you the rest” and I say, “No.” This is who I am I like this, this, this, and then I take it and so I think you know you need to do that in some way, maybe not in such an abridged form with other people in terms of you need know who your friends should be, you need to know who you should marry, you need to know how you want to be close to, but first of all you need to know yourself, otherwise you cannot make for really deliberate conscious choice which is what life is all about.
John Rolf Jordan: Very well after you know a little bit about yourself you have the good idea of who is compatible with you, why don’t you define for me what is compatibility?

Dr. Weiner: Compatibility is getting along with somebody in terms of them being similar to you, you are compatible with someone because you feel a real sense of repetition of who you are without being repeated in the real way, but you’re compatible because you are getting along, you feel like slow going from youth to death so that you feel understood. I guess the best way to say is that you feel compatible when you feel understood so they are responding to you in terms of who you are, what you are saying and that there is flow back and forth, it’s like a river that flows gently you know, you can get into it and say this river is really enveloping my feet, my toes, my legs it really understands me, it’s a poetic way of looking at it, but it’s a sense of feeling understood. If you’re sitting or standing next to somebody and talking to them or interacting with them in any way and you don’t feel a back and forth flow, you’re not compatible, because you are two different worlds, you’re on planet Mars, there’re on planet Jupiter and there is no interaction between the two.

John Rolf Jordan: How can you begin to know the core traits that you need, how can you begin to know what your core personality is?

Dr. Weiner: Well to push the book for a second but its really true, it used to be thought, John, that children came into the world with the blank slate meaning child came in and whatever the did and, as a psycho analyst, I would hear this for like 900 years or so its seems, my mother did this, my father did this, my uncle John did this, my aunt Mary, I we thought that was the impact on the child which stays forever, it’s no longer considered true.  All the new research says a child kind of comes in to the world with their own traits, which are genetic in nature, so whatever your grand father did, whatever you great great grand mother did, you have those traits.  So there are basically twelve traits that we are aware of, and out of the twelve traits that you can choose the four or five that are most important to you and you can find those four or five in another person, that’s compatibility.

John Rolf Jordan: You need to be able to match four or five of those and with these traits they will make you more joyful, more compatible, more strong in the bond?

Dr. Weiner: Right. You want me list the 4 or 5 traits we think are most compatible?

John Rolf Jordan: Sure.

Dr. Weiner: Ok, they are twelve, and so if they look at the book they can take the test, and each of them can see what traits are most compatible to them, but Dr. Edward Hoffman and I -- my co-author, actually the book was his idea, so I am really his co-author, but we worked together before we are called psychologists. The traits we think are the most important, the first one is called idealism and that really has to deal with an attitude towards life, if you are very positive towards life, that’s one way of being like you think the world is a good place to be, if you are very negative that’s another and if you want to find the person that’s compatible with you, you need to find someone that’s on your wave length in terms of compatibility, you know if you walk around that think that things are good there always think, “Oh, that’s terrible, Oh, It’s not going to work out, Why try that?, Oh, I’ll never have this, We’ll never have that” it’s not depression, it’s actually just a way of looking at life and its not a great way of looking at life, but that’s the way it is for them and so that wouldn’t work for you if you have the opposite in terms of the idealism. 

The second trait we think is most important is need for companionship. Need for companionship some people need to be with other person and some people really like to be alone all the time and don’t have any need for companionship. So if you want to be with someone and you want to take walks with someone, go to the movies with them, go to the opera with them, go to a museum, sit in the garden with them, and they just want to be a alone all the time, they don’t care about people, that’s who they were as a child and that so they are now, so you are not very compatible. 

The third one that we think is most important is subjective well being and that has to do with how you feel about yourself.  If you are happy within yourself then you have high subjective well being, if you are not happy within yourself you don’t have it, so again it has to do with how you feel about yourself and if you are always moping around and really don’t like yourself, it’s not going to work in terms of who you look for because you need to find somebody who feels good about themselves too, so that’s another way of being compatible and not being compatible.

John Rolf Jordan: As you go through these traits you can take quizzes within the book to find out if this is important to you?

Dr. Weiner: Yes! The quizzes are easy because we have you know you take the quiz and he or she takes the quiz and if you add up the twelve traits, if you come out compatible on four or five of them you are in good shape, if that’s not so, you are incompatible.

John Rolf Jordan: One of those trades was nurturance and I thought that was very, very interesting how if you enjoy feeding pigeons in the park that can determine who you might want as a companion.

Dr. Weiner: Yes, well you know that means that you know you have a poetic quality to you, you like animals, you like looking at pigeons and again it is the quality that to you have inside of you which you want to replicate in the other person. If they say, “What? What a waste of time, what are you looking at pigeons for, what are they doing, they are just pecking and just picking up food, who needs this?”  Let’s do…and come out with some activity that is not close to you then why would you want that?

John Rolf Jordan: How many of these do you have to have in common, you said about four or five that would be good? 

Dr. Weiner: You know the more you have the better but nobody is going to be equally matched to you because that’s just not so, so out of the twelve, if you have four or five you are really in good shape. 

John Rolf Jordan: And if there are two or fewer then if that could be pretty bad shape? 

Dr. Weiner: Yeah! That’s true.

John Rolf Jordan: And that is in the intimacy profile, those are the must haves, I believe it’s called the intimacy profile, that’s what you need from a companion?

Dr. Weiner: Yeah! And you can do it easily because if you take the quizzes again you know you rate yourself and then you can do that and he rates himself, if it’s a he, and then you could match the score sheet and see you know how that’s going and then you can make a very conscious decision because what life is all about John, I think, is making conscious decisions. You know moving in to something on impulse, which shouldn’t happen because impulses are ok as a first voice but again you got to check it out in terms of, is it really something that you just took on the moment because of an impulse, or is it something that really is representative of who you are and that’s the trick for everything is knowing who you are, you yourself.

John Rolf Jordan: Let’s say that a person knows that they have a high libido, that’s one of the big twelve, where you enjoy the hugging and the kissing. Let’s say that you also have a very high mark on extroversion, you like to be with other people and then possibly lets say that you have a high activity level or you like to go out and be with other people -- those three are part of the big twelve -- that’s all and fine you need someone who has perhaps those three, but let’s say somewhere in maybe materialism, you don’t really have to go out shopping all the time it’s short of a grey area, you don’t really know if it’s important to you, how do you know where the cut off is? 

Dr.Weiner: Well, what the cut-off is this way. Arbitrate not every one has to be important to you, the best example is my own marriage. My husband is from Austria. I think he was born on skies because he skies, he skates, he runs, he fly’s, he does all kinds of things. I can’t keep up with him and I am what is called a constant sitter. I enjoy sitting and being very quiet, but it’s not important to either one of us meaning that he can go to the gym three times a day, I don’t care to do that, he could ski, I don’t ski, he could skate, I did when I was younger, but I don’t skate anymore, and he does running, he came number seven in the marathon too I watched him, but I would no way think of running but its not important to either one of us meaning, he is happy doing what he does and I am happy not doing what he does, and we say that’s fine because the things are important to us, like a aestheticism, we both love opera, we both love concerts, we go we have tickets to the ballet, to the opera, to do everything that’s available in the New York City and go continuously and if I had somebody who said, “Oh, opera, that’s disgusting, movies you know may be ok but I would never think of a ballet, an opera, a concert, Mozart, Beethoven who needs that? I would not be happy with that, nor would he. So it’s not just the traits, it’s the traits that are important to you as an individual.
John Rolf Jordan: Would you say that there is a soul-mate for everyone?

Dr. Weiner: I think there is a soul-mate for everyone and I think that there is more than one soul-mate for every one. So, again you can find it let’s say if you are young man dating, let’s say you are thirty years-old and you are dating and really thinking of settling down. You see five women and they all you know, you think they are soul mates because they respond to you in a particular kind of way. That’s very possible, but once you choose one, since I’m really very hooked on marriage and staying married, unless there’s something that’s terribly wrong. You stay faithful, you say, “Well, I met somebody, so I will keep them as a good friend,” I mean I have a lot of male friends, I’ve written books with other males, I have gone overseas and run groups without my husband, he has done the same, but we strongly believe in marriage and so we stay with who we are in terms of marital situation, but again I replicate my traits with other friends and we stay friends.

John Rolf Jordan: We are winding down in our discussion today and I guess a final couple of questions. A lot of people probably ask how do I know if this is the right one? How can I know if we are compatible enough to make marriage last?

Dr. Weiner: Well, if you are compatible enough, again if you go to the traits and its four or five and you’re really not having a problem, unless you make some tremendous changes within yourself that you are a certain kind of person and make a tremendous change and that person is no longer compatible, which can happen, but rarely does, because again we are born with these traits, and so they are intrinsic to us, if we are born with them they stay with us. Like I have blue eyes, well supposing I wanted brown eyes, I can’t have it. I have light brown hair, supposing I want to be real brunette, I couldn’t this is my color and so again we are who we are from birth on and good mothering by the way has to do with finding out, who your child is from birth on, and catering to who they are. So, again it’s who you are at birth and the good mother said “Well, this kind of kid, is this kind of kid, I will play to that”

John Rolf Jordan: Dr. Weiner our last question for the day. You are a very prolific writer. Do you have anything coming out in the near future?

Dr. Weiner: Well, I have a couple of books coming out and so one of them that will be out in about two or three months, its called “The Junk Food Bear” and it’s an adorable book with illustrations by Teresa Kasson, who is really a very famous, world famous illustrator.  It’s adorable, it’s about a bear who keeps eating, gets very fat, and all his friends who are vegetables and fruits and all the good things in life keep trying to convert him and at the end he finally does. It’s a very cute book and so I suggest anybody who is getting fat themselves, well not knowing how to eat properly or has a child who’s doing that, get a hold of it and keep looking at the website and looking for it and finding it and I think it will make the life much easier.

John Rolf Jordan: We have been speaking today with Dr. Marcella Bakur Weiner, co-author of “The Love Compatibility Book” with Dr. Edward Hoffman. The book is published by New World Library and you can find a way to order “The Love Compatibility Book” on our website at ConnectionCare.com. Today’s discussion has been about compatibility, if you would like to know more about compatibility or if you would like to find out if you are compatible with your partner, please go to ConnectionCare.com to find out more information and to take our extensive compatibility test. Dr. Weiner thanks so much for being with us today.

Dr. Weiner: John, it was delight and I am delighted to be here and thank you so much for having me.