Love Versus Compatibility Check
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Witton's mental model rejects 'love conquers all'. The mechanism: love supplies motivation to work through problems, but it does not neutralise the practical life factors that actually determine whether a relationship survives — distance, work, belief systems and values, sickness and health, and money. Love and compatibility are separate variables, and only compatibility answers 'are we actually a good match?' The check is therefore to test compatibility explicitly rather than infer it from strength of feeling: talk about the unromantic factors including finances, know yourself well enough to state your own needs, and generate real shared experience rather than hypothetical agreement. Where an incompatibility is real, the response is to design a structure that fits — she cites 'living apart together' couples who are deeply in love long-term but never share a home.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Separate love from compatibility
Treat them as two different questions. 'Do we love each other?' and 'are we actually a good match?' can have different answers, and only the second predicts whether the practicalities will work.
Watch out Strong feelings are easily mistaken for evidence of fit; they are evidence of motivation only.
- 2
List the unromantic factors
Go through the practical life factors that make or break relationships: distance, work, belief systems and values, sickness and health, and finances. Assess where you actually stand on each.
- 3
Talk about money explicitly
Witton singles out money as the factor people most often forget to discuss, and one that can cause huge rifts. Put income, debt, spending habits and expectations on the table as a named conversation.
Pro tip Frame it as logistics, not judgement — 'love does not conquer your bank account'.
Watch out Avoiding the conversation because it feels unromantic is exactly how the rift forms.
- 4
Know yourself first
Compatibility data comes from lived experience and self-knowledge, not just from discussion. You can only assess a match if you can honestly state your own needs, limits and preferred lifestyle.
- 5
Replace hypotheticals with real shared experience
Instead of talking about what you'd both hypothetically like, actually do things together — go on holiday, spend extended time in the same space — and observe what surfaces.
Pro tip Choose experiences that stress-test daily logistics, not just novelty.
Watch out Agreeing in theory tells you almost nothing about how you'll function in practice.
- 6
Design a structure around real incompatibilities
Where a mismatch is genuine, ask whether a different structure solves it before assuming the relationship fails. Some deeply committed long-term couples live apart together because that system works for them.
In the wild
Witton points to couples who discover that, however much they love each other, they cannot live together. Rather than treating this as proof the relationship must end, some find a structure and system that works for them: they stay in a very loving, long-term relationship while maintaining separate homes. The incompatibility is real and unresolved, but it is designed around rather than absorbed by sheer feeling — the opposite of the 'love conquers all' response, which would push them into cohabiting and let the friction accumulate.
→ A durable long-term relationship built on an honest structural workaround rather than forced conformity.
A couple who describe themselves as deeply in love and highly compatible have never discussed finances, on the assumption that it is unromantic and will sort itself out. When they move in together, radically different attitudes to saving, debt and spending collide over rent and shared bills, and the resentment gets read as a problem with the relationship rather than an unexamined practical mismatch. Naming money as one of the explicit compatibility factors — alongside distance, work, values and health — surfaces the gap while it is still negotiable.
→ A predictable rift caught as a logistics conversation instead of a character conflict.
Common mistakes
Using love as proof of compatibility
Believing that if two people truly love and respect each other any hardship can be seen through. Love supplies motivation to attempt a fix; it does not remove distance, illness, clashing values or financial strain.
Skipping money because it's unromantic
Witton names finances as the factor people most often forget to discuss and a cause of huge rifts. Silence here doesn't preserve romance, it defers a structural conflict.
Testing fit by talking, not doing
Discussing hypothetical shared experiences substitutes agreement for evidence. Actually travelling or living together reveals mismatches conversation never surfaces.
From the transcript
“One myth that I've always enjoyed busting is that love does not conquer all.”
“People re often forget to talk about money in relationships, um, and that can cause huge rifts. Love does not conquer your bank account, unfortunately.”
“But ultimately, like love is not the same thing as compatibility. And I think compatibility is something that we have to get like really honest…”
From the episode
Snippet 9: Why True Love Doesn't Exist - Hannah Witton
Hannah Witton