After reading this I wonder if it was actually that my ex-partners were incapable of understanding how someone unlike them would react to different situations. I was usually able to predict their reactions, but maybe it was only a one way street.
I can vouch that you do not have to have much in common with your significant other despite what all the dating services will lead you to believe.
My wife and I have failed every compatibility test (most of the tests are gimmicky anyway) and have very little in common yet we have been together for 17 years.
However we can still effectively communicate to one another.
One armchair conclusion I sort of take from the study is that this should give some greater credence to couples therapy and that sooner participation is probably better. After all communication can be learned.
I don't know you or your context but, without that context, that reads like someone missing the boat completely about relationships. Sure, you might start out without anything in common, but part of the bonding processes is finding things you do have in common (typically by experimenting with each other's interests, or mutual exploration/discovery of new interests/experiences). If you don't nurture that, then over time you may grow apart and no longer have anything in common.
You trying to predict what your partner is going to do might not have been such a positive contribution to the relationship. People don't like it when someone tries to predict their reaction to something. If you're right then it makes the other person look predictable, and if you're wrong then you look like you don't know them very well. Either way it's bad.
What? How exactly do you expect to pleasantly surprise your significant other if you can't predict what they'll like? How could you possibly buy them gifts? I'm pretty sure that predicting what I like is something that pretty much everyone is perfectly ok with.
[1] https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/07/31/what-weve-been-getting-...
That's great, but you claimed that your partner wouldn't like it if you try to predict what they would like. The link you provided actually says the opposite: that people say they prefer gifts tailored to their preferences, which means they wouldn't mind you predicting what they'd like, contrary to your original claim.
I suspect if you broadened the scope even a little, the effect would reverse. How about beverages? Alice likes coffee and hates whiskey. Bob hates coffee but loves a single malt. What should Alice and Bob get each other for Christmas?
They probably don't like it if you set it up as a trap for them, but surely a lot of the "little things" in a long-term relationship are exactly this kind of prediction? Knowing their favourite X and least favourite Y?
Partner dances are rather old fashioned these days, but I think one of the reasons for their long popularity is precisely mutual prediction - it's a little test of whether you're able to sync up with someone and go in the same direction.
That said and with a bit of tough love I really doubt they were incapable of understanding you. If they were, perhaps there's something you should change so they can understand you.
Offhand, your "I already know" remark comes off as putting up walls because you're afraid of being hurt. It's hard to learn about someone when they don't want you getting too close.
Can you identify what your common interests were in those relationships? What brought you together besides you both having equipment the other fancies? If there's a limited supply of answers, it's possible you really didn't have mutual interests or aspirations/life goals.
Long term they may have been doing you a favor.
"Having just met you I can already tell nothing about you interests or excites me. I have trust issues and I fully expect you to leave me so in preparation for that I'm going to put up emotional walls and not invest myself too much in this relationship in case it fails."
There's a wide and opaque area between not being someone's clone and having nothing in common.
The parent meant, I assume, that they expressed the first one: that they don't currently know much about the other person's interests, and vice-versa.
That doesn't mean they won't learn about them. And, in fact, if the two people are compatible on a personality level, they'll likely turn out to enjoy similar interests—finding out about "things I liked but didn't know it."
But it does communicate something important: that if you're someone who isn't willing to learn about new things, and stretch your definition of "who you are" to encompass new things—i.e. to "invest yourself in the relationship"—then this won't work.
And that is an important thing to communicate, at some point (maybe not the first conversation, but at some point.) Some people really do just want a partner who likes "what they like", instead of a partner that will help them grow in directions they will enjoy only in retrospect.
To be fair, I do see how you could misinterpret this as blaming the other person; but an alternate take is that the person is brainstorming, after reading the article, that the other person was simply less adept at predicting behavior.
It's human to use our register of past experiences to foresee problems in the future. I'd rather put out a warning than waste time with someone who later hits the eject button based on something that was evident from the jump. In relationships of any sort, really, including business, it's reasonable to say "hey, just so there aren't any misunderstandings down the road, let's be clear on x,y,and z; otherwise, we're wasting our time and this probably isn't going to work."
So I think that intro of yours is just a half-truth because you really don't know until you do.