Personality and Character

Thursday, March 4, 2010
I have a friend who, a number of years ago, decided that she wanted to get married. She and her beloved began premarital counseling with the pastor that was to marry them, and after a few sessions, the pastor took her aside and expressed some concerns about her beloved's ability to maintain a meaningful, adult relationship. The pastor informed my friend that while her beloved might be long on personality, he was short on character, and it was character that made meaningful relationships work.

Well, it turned out that the pastor was correct, as her beloved turned out to be an unfaithful, bitchy little jerkwad. Thankfully, she found love again, with a great guy who treats her with respect. Go, her!

But the pastor's words have stuck with me over the years, and have given me much food for thought.

Here are my conclusions.
  • Personality is what makes people humorous, or exciting, or fun. 
  • Character is the undefinable human quality that forces people to do the right thing.  
  • Personality is what makes someone initially attractive. 
  • Character is what makes someone attractive for the long haul. 
  • Personality is what endears your new beloved to your partying friends. 
  • Character is what endears your new beloved to your family. 
  • Personality takes you on a fun-filled trip to the islands. 
  • Character takes you to the hospital for your chemotherapy. 
  • Personality is that ineffable quality that makes you tingle in those places. 
  • Character is that fully definable quality that makes you want to hold that person's hand when you're 80.
  • Personality and Character are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but the pearl of great price is the partner that has both. Younger women tend to fall for the personality part of the equation, willfully ignoring the character issue if it suits them. At least the women in my family. 
My only regret is that it took me so fucking long to come to these conclusions. It took me far longer than it should have to determine what having character actually means, and to apply those lessons to my own evolution as a human being, and to my relationships.

But I'm happy and grateful that now, in my 40's, I finally do get it. Go, me.

7 comments:

Stacey said...

I wholeheartedly agree Janiece. Not about the "why did it take me so long part" as much as the rest of the post. I feel that it does take some of us a while as that option just wasn't there before so you can't know what you don't know exists. Speaking as a woman of a certain age, I can say that I appreciate it now more than ever and don't know if I would have been able to do that 20 years ago. As they say, youth is wasted on the young.

mom in northern said...

Yep
That pretty much says it all.

Jeri said...

Super thought provoking and insightful. Thank you for sharing!

MWT said...

Hmm. I think my problem is that I have plenty of character but almost no personality, which doesn't cause very many people to want to get to know me in the first place. >.>

Janiece said...

MWT, I can only speak for your on-line personality, but I would not say it's absent.

neurondoc said...

Or your in-person psersonality, MWT, since I've really met you (as proven by the pics on our blogs).

Given my uncomfortable relationship with my in-laws (they don't love me), my character level would be a bit low using this measurement.

Jan in CT said...

I thank my lucky stars every day that I found my soul mate 47 years ago. We're still going strong. I just don't know which of us has all that character.