Does Your Sweetheart Drive You Nuts with the Very Qualities that Attracted You?

A few days ago, I read Elizabeth Bernstein's Wall Street Journal piece, How to cope when you and your partner are falling out of love.

It discusses the idea of "fatal attraction" - that the traits that drew you toward your sweetheart now drive you nuts. Often, we're drawn to a quality in someone else because we somehow lack or desire that quality in ourselves - but then that very quality turns out to be a point of tension. An introverted person might be attracted to someone's more outgoing nature, but then get tired of their constant desire to be sociable.