I recently read a blog post that said people with type A personality and type B personality cannot have true meaningful friendships. I immediately called my best friend and began ranting to her about how much I disagreed with the post.

That best friend is also my mom and our personalities are like day and night.

After a two-hour conversation with my mom, we both decided to take a personality quiz to see which personality we best fit with. I was told all the time that I was a type A personality, but I never took a quiz until that post.

Not to my surprise, my results came back 90% type A. My mom got 82% type B.

The reason my mom is my best friend and the only person I can tolerate a two-hour conversation with is that she has a type B personality. We balance each other out. I can’t imagine having a two-hour conversation with someone classified as a type A personality. We would stress each other out.

I talk to my mom so often and for so long because I need someone to be laid back and to not get as worked up as I can. Vice versa, my mom needs someone like me to constantly tell her that she’s going to be late when she is 15 minutes early.

I can’t imagine a world filled with impatient, stress driven, competitive type A people like myself. I also can’t imagine the world filled with easy going, stress-free, non-competitive people like my mom.

Two people of the same personality cannot be friends. I’ve had friends before that had type A personalities and it didn’t last long. We got along but our motivations and opinions were so alike that it drove us apart. The friends that I have now fall more on the type B side, and that’s why we’ve been friends for two years.

Opposites attract, and it just so happens that I have the privilege of having my mom with a type B personality also as my best friend.