Siblings and Spouses

Are you the oldest or youngest among your siblings, or somewhere in the middle? According to The Birth Order Book, placement in your family-of-origin says a lot about what your childhood was like and who you became as an adult. While birth-order is a study of generalities, Dr. Leman says your birth order can play out in your marriage in some interesting ways.

I've always thought in surprising that my older sister and her husband are both oldests, I and my husband are both middles, and my little sister and her husband are both youngests, so I was hooked on the topic. It turns out that Dr. Leman says that marrying someone of your own birth-order is not a surefire recipe for success. Here are his potential pitfalls of same-birth-order-pairs:

Two First-Borns (or onlies) First borns tend to be perfectionistic so when they start spotting flaws across the breakfast table, watch out! Dr. Leman says these spouses need to focus on giving each other some grace. Nobody's perfect so if they can enjoy each other even if the living room isn't entirely clean or the checkbook is 10 cents from balanced, they'll enjoy life more.

Two Middle-Borns Middle children are peace-keepers and tend toward independent behavior when things get sticky at home. According to Dr. Leman, if my husband and I aren't careful, we could end up avoiding each other in order to avoid conflict. Leman suggests that we be intentional about going to each other when we see a problem.

Two Last-Borns This one is interesting. While Dr. Leman doesn't point our strictly relational pitfalls, he does say that this pair is the most likely to end up in debt. Since youngests are often fun-loving types, working out a budget and sticking to it usually is low on the priority list. He suggests doing it anyway to avoid putting strain on the marriage with debt.

So what's the ideal pair? A youngest and an oldest who each had siblings of the opposite gender might have an easier road according to Dr. Leman. (But then he was the youngest and his wife the oldest, so maybe he's just happily married?)

RESOURCES

The Birth Order Book