OPPOSITES do attract: thank goodness

SO many couples seem to be opposites but really matters is sharing core values and a meeting of the minds.

OPPOSITES ATTRACT: Sharing core values is critical, but you don't have to follow their footy team or understand their music obsession to love someone. Picture: Supplied

FROM sport to politics, to Star Wars versus Star Trek, or Agatha Christine tea-cake crime to Lawrence Block's hard-boiled murder mysteries, opposites are supposed to attract.

Or do they?

When the Kiltman and I met after I hired him to help repair then renovate my house, I had no idea how to use a nail gun, tile a floor, cut in when painting or re-plaster a ceiling.

Thank goodness I lacked these skills, because otherwise I would never have met my husband.

Meanwhile, he had no idea about cycling, surfing or how to make a sublime sticky-date pudding.

I'm still not sure he thinks the first two are hugely important but I have used the latter to bribe my way through mayhem.

Come to think about it, he reckons the safest place to stand when I'm firing the nail-gun is behind me, although he admits a fence I fixed will never ever fall down, while he's taken to cycle maintenance and repair like the tradie he is.

Sure, despite lots of patient coaching, my painting of walls is not anywhere up to par, but my baking skills have got me out of renovating trouble time and time again.

Despite my love of jazz, Dr Who, the New Yorker magazine and op-shops coupled with his desire to own at least two versions every power every created, preferring a motorbike to a push-bike and reacting to the idea of breakfast in bed as Dracula would a bouquet of garlic, we manage to get along pretty well.

He's also incredibly tidy at all times, while I like things...well, a little more bohemian.

The Kiltman also adores camping while I like room service and while I'll paddle out in nearly any temperature of water if the surf is nice and glassy, he prefers to lounge on the beach reading woodworking magazines, I'm addicted to liquorice tea and am a teetotaller and he loves a little single malt every now and again.

But at the end of the day we share some core values: looking after each other, his excellent coffee, my superlative poached eggs, Jack Reacher novels, great art galleries, renovating together and good rock and roll.

The differences make thing interesting and really, I couldn't stand being married to another version of myself.

For heaven's sake, two journalists who can never find the can-opener, remember to do a weekly shop so end up eating beans out of tin, remember to fill up the petrol tank, change a bike tyre or operate the TV remote? I'm getting cold chills just thinking about it.

So just how much do opposites attract, I wonder because we all know of couples we can't believe are still together.

You know, the uptight accountant who lives for basketball and the hippy-hippy-shake yoga teacher who thinks pizza is food group.

Or the bloke who collects Star Wars stuff, is fantatical about footy and lives for Easter because of the chocolate, while he partner is a die-hard Tour de France fan, Country Women's Association member and loves camping.

One friend is nuts about fitness and Spanish food while her partner lives for cricket and DIY.

On paper there should be no meeting of the minds, but some reason they just click.

So if you despair your sweetheart follows the 'wrong' football code or team, don't understand your love of thrash metal, the importance of collecting tea-towels or why you need another bicycle, don't worry.

Because you're probably as befuddled by their desire to eat every meal with tomato sauce, listen to 60s country or decorate with film noir posters.

It's those little variations which make us all the more loveable.

Thank goodness.