yea for date night.

I am reading This is Your Brain in Love by Dr. Earl Henslin as a part of BookSneeze right now, and I was thrilled to find out this book has questionnaires throughout. I was even more thrilled to find out that each questionnaire was meant to be taken by the reader and his or her spouse, so I merrily made Aaron sit through and answer each question with me on the two tests we took "Are you a scattered lover?" and "Are you an overfocused lover?"

So I was thrilled to be taking these quizzes and Aaron was bemused as I asked questions like  question 20, which asked, "On a scale from 0-4, do you have difficulty remaining seated in situations where remaining seated is expected?"and then we answered for ourselves and compared eachothers' answers. In the case of question 20, yes, I do have trouble staying seated for long periods of time, e.g., going to movie theaters, which drives my filmmaker husband cray cray. I can't stand not having the freedom to walk around and get other things accomplished as needed. For question 7, "lose things," Aaron ranked me very high at 4- Very Frequently, citing my car keys and, when I lived in my campus apartment, my keycard. I didn't rank myself as high because I feel like the keycard and my car keys were/are the only two things I ever chronically misplace.

I had an inkling Aaron would score highly on "are you an overfocused lover?" and sure enough, his quips to the statements both entertained me and were as I expected. I scored Aaron higher than he scored himself on the second and third questions, upset when things do not go your way and upset when things are out of place, and he kept telling assuring me I was wrong until I would give him examples. Then he would say my examples were misleading and twist the situation. And I laughed a lot as I read statement four, "is argumentative" and Aaron swore that he was a two- occasionally. My favorite was number 16- tends to say no without first thinking about question- because as I read the statement he said "I don't think so. I don't even know what that said. No." about three-fourths through. Then he said, "wait, what did you say?" He admitted that he was likely a four on that question.

I look forward to continuing this book and reading about my brain health (that's what the book calls it). Aaron thinks personality testing is as worthless as horoscopes because the answers are vague; I disagree- I think horoscopes are stupid, but I really do think personality profiles, etc., offer insight into how to better understand oneself and live and work with others.

All in all, it's been a sort of perfect date night- we ordered takeout, watched the end of season 1 of Giuliana and Bill and read together (me- this book; him- research on the Iraq war).

So tell me, what do you think about personality tests and the like? Insightful or a waste of time? If you like them, which one(s) would you recommend taking?