A young woman sat in premarital counselling with me a few years ago and said, with total confidence, “I just want to make sure we’re compatible before we do this.” I asked her what compatible meant to her. She listed things like: we like the same shows, we agree on politics, we never really argue, being around him feels easy. Every item on that list was real and none of it was going to predict whether her marriage would survive year twelve. I’ve counselled enough couples now to know that “compatibility,” as most people under thirty use the word, is measuring the wrong thing entirely.
The myth: compatibility is something you find
The story we’ve absorbed — from movies, from social media, from the general cultural air we breathe — is that somewhere out there exists a person whose personality, interests, and rhythms already match yours closely enough that marriage will simply feel easy. Find that person, and the hard part is over. It’s a tidy story. It’s also almost completely backwards from what I’ve observed sitting across from actual couples for fifteen years.
Ease in dating tells you very little. Two people who agree easily at twenty-four are often agreeing because neither has been tested yet — no shared finances, no in-laws, no children, no real crisis. Compatibility measured under low-stakes conditions is not the same thing as compatibility under the actual conditions of a marriage, and the gap between the two catches a lot of young couples completely off guard.
What actually predicts long-term fit
What I watch for in premarital sessions isn’t whether a couple agrees on everything. It’s whether they can disagree well. Can they stay in a hard conversation without one of them shutting down or the other escalating.
Do they repair after conflict, or does tension just get absorbed and forgotten until it resurfaces later, bigger. Do they share the same posture toward growth — both willing to be shaped, corrected, and stretched by the relationship, rather than expecting the relationship to simply confirm who they already are.
1 Corinthians 13:11 says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” That’s not a verse about romance, but it names exactly the shift compatibility actually requires — the willingness to put away a childish way of relating and grow into a more mature one. Two twenty-two-year-olds aren’t incompatible because they still have growing to do. They become incompatible, or compatible, based on whether they’re both willing to do that growing, and to do it in the same direction.
Compatibility is built, not discovered
Here’s the piece almost nobody tells young couples: two people who start out quite different can build extraordinary compatibility over a decade of intentional effort, and two people who start out feeling like an easy match can drift into real incompatibility if neither one is doing the work of adapting, forgiving, and growing alongside the other. I’ve watched both happen. The starting point matters far less than the ongoing labor.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 describes it well: “Two are better than one… for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow… and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Notice the image — a cord, woven together over time, growing
stronger through use, not two identical strands laid side by side and admired for matching. Compatibility, biblically and practically, looks a lot more like that woven cord than like a lucky match found fully formed.
What to actually evaluate before you marry
Stop asking “does this feel easy” and start asking “how do we handle it when it’s not easy.” Watch how a person responds to being told something they don’t want to hear. Watch whether they can apologize without collapsing into shame or deflecting into blame. Ask what growth has actually cost them in the past — because someone who’s never had to change for anyone is not a safe bet for a lifetime of marriage, no matter how well your playlists overlap right now.
The line I want you to keep
Compatibility isn’t a box you check before the wedding. It’s a muscle you build together for the next fifty years, and the couples who understand that going in have an enormous head start over the ones still out there looking for an easy match.
I go deeper into this in the book.
Sacred, but Fully Known launches October 3rd. Subscribe below for more of this, every week.
— Funke
Sacred, but Fully Known: A Faith-Rooted Guide to Intimacy in Marriage launches October 3rd, 2026. Subscribe above to follow the story, and to be first in line on launch day.
