Melancholic woman, choleric man
Compatibility
This is the ideal traditional marriage. He is a man in the sense in which society pictures a man: an introvert, active, driven, even a little aggressive at times. She is a woman in the traditional sense: oriented towards harmony and a cosy home, giving her time to the children, and an extravert. He knows everything about himself and about how things ought to be; she is emotional, needs the attention of her man and of the world around her, and gets to know herself through relationships.
This couple have it easiest of all, both out in the world and inside the relationship. They complement each other as an introvert and an extravert, they support each other as ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, and things between them are ‘the way they are for all normal people’.
Who is the MELANCHOLIC woman?
- Extravert
- Passive life position
- Needs feedback in order to understand themselves
Who is the PHLEGMATIC man?
- Introvert
- Active life position
- Knows everything about themselves, explores the world
p.s.: Want to know your own temperament?
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♫ Read stories of how couples met ♡ with commentary and examples from films
What are the prospects?
Marital happiness: excellent!
The melancholic woman, being an extravert, needs information from outside. As a rule, these are women who ask ‘do you love me?’ several times a week. The reason for that question is quite trivial: extraverts do not know whether they love their partner if the partner gives them no feedback. You know the joke about women — ‘he bought me a fur coat, so he loves me; he didn’t, so I hate him’? It is only half a joke: it captures the inner workings of any extravert.
The choleric man, on the contrary, knows everything about himself. A request along the lines of ‘tell me for the 25th time that you love me’ leaves him merely baffled: ‘I said it once, it is all clear, how many times do I have to repeat it?’. He knows how things ought to be, what is needed and when. And this is the ideal combination for an extraverted woman.
The main task for a harmonious relationship in a couple made up of a melancholic woman and a choleric man is to understand that introverts and extraverts are creatures from Mars and Venus, whose ways of perceiving the world are very different. Unfortunately, this little task is a fundamental problem in the history of civilisation that we have not yet solved terribly successfully. But with our help it is possible)
Sexual compatibility: good
An aggressive, dominant man and a soft woman who wants attention. What could be better for the classics and the missionary position?
Everything is in its place here, in the right, fitting and natural position. Of course, that is not always exciting. But since a couple made up of a melancholic woman and a choleric man are on the whole in agreement, they have free time (the time that other couples destroy sorting out ‘who is in charge here’), and so there is room for all sorts of experiments. Bon voyage!
Growth and prosperity: excellent!
Inside, the couple are very stable: the choleric man, from his active life position, is out conquering society, opening up new territory and expanding — and bringing the mammoth he has killed back home, where he licks his wounds.
The woman takes care of the household, and she does so not because society tells her to. She does it because a melancholic is a person in a passive life position. She is happy just being the two of them, but of course she needs her girlfriends, to admire her and to cry with her.
Because the man brings in resources and the woman provides support on the home front, the family's resources grow. All in all, a 1960s classic backed up by temperaments.
For children: excellent!
The same traditional family model is also traditional for the children: dad at work, mum — she is always mum, right there. Everything is fine, right and just as it should be for children.
Not quite you? Pick a different temperament!
Relationships by personality type: an overview
Melancholic women come in 3 personality types:
- In the antisocial sphere — the epileptoid personality type
- In the social sphere — the depressive type, and
- In the extra-social sphere — the frustration personality type
Choleric men likewise come in three types:
- In the antisocial sphere — the psychopathic personality type
- In the social sphere — the manic type, and
- In the extra-social sphere — the schizoid personality type
Three scenarios for this couple
Depending on the combination of these three personality types, the relationship between a phlegmatic man and a sanguine woman will be either absolutely perfect, or quite successful (we jokingly call it a ‘second-best’ marriage), or held together by a deep neurosis. But in any case these couples are harmonious; the two partners complement each other. This has a positive effect both in their private life and in their social life. On a scale from 5 (perfect) to 1 (a complete fail) they can build:
5Analysis and 3 stories
Perfect relationships
can be built by an epileptoid woman and a psychopathic man, a depressive woman and a manic man, a frustration-type woman and a schizoid man
4Analysis and 3 stories
Second-best marriage
this relationship is ideal too, just slightly complicated by their different understanding of how society works. It can be built by an epileptoid woman and a manic man, a depressive woman and a schizoid man, a frustration-type woman and a psychopathic man
1Read the analysis
Impossible relationships
If people like these do meet, it is only in order to experience what the other has and they lack. Absolutely unrealistic relationships, which we have not even come across in films, are the theoretical combination of an epileptoid woman and a schizoid man, a depressive woman and a psychopathic man, a frustration-type woman and a manic man
Below are real stories of relationships between personality types like these. We have added examples from films and, of course, analysed them through the commentary of our counsellors.
Perfect relationships
The ideal traditional family off a magazine cover — a workaholic husband and a wife who looks after herself at home, cooks the meals and raises the children. Everything about it is wonderful: the way the masculine and the feminine complement each other, and the exchange between the introverted man’s self-knowledge and the extraverted woman’s need for a response from the world around her.
The couple also share a common understanding of how to deal with society:
- The epileptoid woman and the psychopathic man are both geared to satisfying their own personal needs first and foremost. Materialism makes sense to both of them
- For both the depressive woman and the manic man, social norms and morality matter
- The frustration-type woman and the paranoid man both stand above society, far from its prescriptions
The harmony of relationships like these has been celebrated in many films. Read the real-life stories, complete with examples and commentary from our counsellors:
Second-best marriage
We only call combinations like this ‘second-best’ as a joke, because there is an even more ideal pairing, as above. But everything is excellent here too! It is the same traditional marriage along male lines: the man is socially active, the woman is responsible for harmony and comfort.
The only thing that complicates the relationship is their differing views of their role in society.
- For the epileptoid woman, what matters most is the satisfaction of her needs. She can go off the rails and show her emotions without limit. For the manic man, who puts the interests of society first, an approach like that is unacceptable, to put it mildly.
- For the depressive woman it matters to be seen as good in other people’s eyes. What is more, she needs other people, which she shows, for example, through volunteering. The schizoid man, who stands above society, has no time either for that dependence on public morality or for emotional attachment.
- The frustration-type woman strives above all to keep the world around her unchanged and pristine. The psychopathic man is indifferent to the wholeness of his surroundings — he can destroy it in the name of reaching his goals.
Impossible relationships
For the sake of completeness it is worth mentioning the couples in which the man and the woman are each other's ‘Shadow’. The ‘Shadow’ is the skills and the features of the nervous system that come hardest to us and that other people have. Understandably, meeting people who possess qualities that are ‘unique’ to us feels like magic.
But they also repel: what is beyond our reach breeds incomprehension, rejection and contempt. That is why couples made up of an epileptoid woman and a schizoid man, a depressive woman and a psychopathic man, a frustration-type woman and a manic man are unrealistic, even if they turn up in literature
A couple with your own Shadow is what the paranoid-schizoid types keep trying to form with the hysteroid-epileptoid ones. They are each other's Shadow. No one else feels an erotic attraction to their own Shadow — only these types do. A relationship with your own Shadow keeps pushing the partners into the Shadow dynamic. Romances like this never last.
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