Commonalities

I have a virtual twin named Verlie whom I share 30+ characteristics with. Today, I met someone who is my classmate in 2 classes which are for the 2nd year students. I share 4 similar characteristics with her. Quickly, I am beginning to know her. A start of a new friendship. Also, in the same class, a student recently shifted from nursing in the same school happened to be my classmate in 3 of my 4 classes. I too want to know her more by making her more comfortable with the new environment.

We all have self-images. Here is an excerpt on self-images from one of the simpliest psychology sites in the web:

"To create the mental symbol we use to represent each person we consider to be very similar to ourselves, we begin with our self-symbol and then modify it to create a unique symbol for each of our close friends. For each acquaintance that is more distant from our own self image, we modify the symbol we have for them more from our self-symbol. This is illustrated on the left where our self is in the center, our closest friends each have individual symbols very much like our own, and our more distant acquaintances have similar, but increasingly different symbols. This is represented here by the differences in the color of the more distant symbols. For strangers, or people we do not want to be associated with, we may not begin with our self-symbol, but instead use the symbol for someone else we also distance ourselves from. The result is that the symbols for close friends are very similar to our own, and the symbols for people we do not identify with are quite different."

Differences of Acquaintance, close friend and intimate friend

Acquaintance

"As we get to know more about an acquaintance we develop an increasingly complete and complex mental symbol for that person. However, there is a limit to how well we ever know the other person. There are limits to how much time we will spend together and there are various boundaries limiting what we will ask, what we will tell, and what we are willing to learn about each other. Because these boundaries limit the information exchange, the information we gather is incomplete and the symbol we are able to create for the acquaintance is necessarily incomplete. Because the symbol is incomplete it remains significantly different from your self-symbol."

Close Friendship

"We know more about our close friends than we do about acquaintances. The amount of time we spend together, the number and nature of interactions and common experiences we share, the interest we have in learning more about each other, and our willingness to share more information all help us create a more complete symbol for our close friends."

Intimate relationship

"Intimacy takes this information sharing to the next level. During an intimate relationship we feel safe enough to expose and discuss our vulnerabilities and secrets. This additional information allows us to create a more complete symbol for an intimate partner. Also, because of the completeness of the symbol and also because the people we choose to become intimate with typically share many of our characteristics, the symbol we create becomes very similar to our self-symbol. This illustrated in the figure by the significant overlap of the two symbols. We feel empathy for people we become intimate with. "

Source: http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/self.htm

In short, the more commonalities 2 people have, the more close they get and the more they know and understand each other making themselves like twins. That's the advantage of knowing people like you. But the only disadvantage is that, you are becoming less unique superficially but the uniquness of a personality lies in the essence of a personality. You get to know alot with each other that you share many common characteristics that you tend to ignore the facets of the other person's problems unless they recognize it themselves.

If you have seen "Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are". This is true since, your friends are other-person reflections of who you are and vice versa.


So, let the mirrors rise as intimacy grows! :)