William Cane - The Birth Order Book of Love: How the #1 Personality Predictor Can Help You Find the One

C upid has been shooting darts into unsuspecting victims for ages, getting people to fall in love, but never having the courtesy to ask, Will they be happy together? Im sure youll admit its happened to you at one time or another if you stop and think about it. Youve seen someone, fallen in love, and before you know it, youre involved in a relationship thats going... well, practically nowhere.

Its high time to take a break from Cupids helter-skelter matchmaking and shed some light on the subject of whos really a good match for you.

Until now it has been impossible to do this. Lovers young and old have had to fend for themselves, hoping for happiness with each new relationship. But groundbreaking scientific research has changed all that. Using sophisticated theories of compatibility, compelling clinical data, and revolutionary new birth order research, its now possible to predict who your best romantic match is.

This isnt hyperbole; its a fact which I intend to prove. And in the following pages I promise to do just that. Ill share this exciting new research with you, and present it in a way that will help you find your best romantic match.

Much of this data was compiled by clinical psychologists and social historians of the highest caliber. Before today, the bulk of this research had been largely unavailable to the layman, either because it was published in out-of-the-way journals, couched in arcane language, or written specifically for a professional audience. My long-standing interest in compatibility has led me to access all this information and to meet with the key players in the field of birth order. In addition, my background as a lawyer and college professor has helped me analyze this data and present it in a clear and understandable manner. Thats the approach Im going to take in this book, talking in plain language and ultimately sharing some of the most fascinating new research in a way that will make sense and help you find that special someone.

I first read about birth order in 1970 in an article by Walter Toman, a German psychologist. He argued that knowing how many siblings you grew up with was the most important thing in predicting personality. Tell him your place in the family (first, middle, last, twin or only child) and how many years separated you from your siblings, and he could tell who your best match was, what career youd be happiest in, and how well youd get along with friends and coworkers. After all, almost everyone grows up with a mother and a father, so what makes families unique is your sibling constellation, that is, how many brothers and sisters you interacted with during your developmental years.

Intrigued by Tomans ideas, I studied his theory and sought to see if it played out in the real world. While in college I made it a point to discover the birth order of all my friends. Lo and behold, they often fit the pattern, although there were exceptions, too, that I wondered about. In graduate school, I continued to make observations. I practiced law briefly and then began teaching English at Boston College. As a firstborn, I took to teaching like a duck to water. And I always made it a point to find out the birth order of my students. During the course of the semester I would observe their personality, their interactions with others, and their professionalism, creativity, and interpersonal skillin and out of the classroom.

During the fourteen years I worked as a professor of English, I had an opportunity to observe nearly two thousand students. I noticed how the older sister of sisters often developed a deep rapport with her male teachers. (Ill explain why later.) And how the younger brother of brothers often entertained us with his antics and great sense of humor. (This, too, will be explained later in this book.) I saw how the older brother of brothers was often reserved and conservative but a great help when you needed someone to lead a small group of students in a class project. And I saw how firstborns and lastborns frequently became great buddies and would enjoy enduring friendships. Middle children, twins, and onlies were also well represented, and each had their positives and negatives, which Ill describe in detail in the coming chapters. Each birth order had its own personality, its own strengths and weaknesses.

While teaching, I wrote my first book, The Art of Kissing. People always ask me why I chose that topic. The answer is that kissing was the most romantic thing I could think of, and I love romance. The book succeeded beyond all my expectations, and Ive been invited to speak about it at hundreds of colleges and universities across North America. I always round up some couples and rehearse them in the different kisses beforehand. Then while I talk, they demonstrate everything from the upside-down kiss to the biting kiss to the French kiss, and more.

I always make it a point to find out the birth order of my student demonstrators. Frequently its also my responsibility to match up the couples. I quickly saw how two firstborns interacted, as opposed to how two lastborns got along. I saw how complementary relationships (firstborn-lastborn) worked, and also the different dynamics of homogamous relationships (two firstborns, for example, or two lastborns). I saw how lastborn guys loved to get the laughs, how firstborn guys were often a little more diffident onstage, how older sisters of sisters liked to be paired with bad boy types, how lastborn girls loved the chance to be seen in front of an audience. To date Ive directed more than three thousand students in these shows, and everything I observed about couples compatibility is included in this book.