Before Saying ‘I Do,’ Psychometrics Offers a Preview of Partner’s Quirks

I would imagine there’s a joke here about not wanting to buy a pig (male or female) in a poke.

But let’s take it straight instead: A pair of psychologists in Mission Valley are offering premarital personality tests.

Think of it as full disclosure for lovers: more accurate than asking his or her friends for inside information, less sleazy than hiring a private detective.

The law requires you to tell the buyer about all the leaky pipes and design flaws when you sell your house. But it allows you to get to the altar still concealing your real self.

Enter Applied Psychometrics and psychologists Nancy Haller and Louis Nidorf, who want to apply the pre-employment screening process to the business of deciding whether to get married.

“Too many people go into relationships not really knowing anything about their partner,” said Nidorf, once a professor at the University of North Carolina.

The idea is not to probe deep-seated psychopathology: mother fixations, romantic attachments to barnyard animals, etc. Rather just to expose the quirks and ticks that can drive a spouse batty.

He’s a neat freak. She’s moody.

He craves attention. She worries about the cheese dropping off her canape at a party.

He’s a plodder, a keeper of lists, deferential to a fault. She would bad-mouth Mother Theresa.

To get at this kind of everyday stuff, each takes one or more multiple-choice tests. Sample question:

When you don’t agree with what has just been said, do you usually, (A) let it go, or (B) put up an argument?

(For lovebirds in Lakeside, sorry, there is no (C) punch the offender’s lights out).

The results are analyzed and shared, and the psychologists join in the discussion.

“We want to teach you how to build on what you’ve got going for you, how to maximize it,” Nidorf said. “It’s all upbeat.”

Nidorf and Haller have been offering their service for a couple of years. Now they’re going public, including advertisements in Bride magazine.

Call it the job of love.

Campaign Rhetoric Set to Music

Attention Granny and Jed.

From the pen of Escondido’s Stephen Thorne, atheist activist and Assembly candidate, comes a song about Assemblywoman Tricia Hunter (R-Bonita).

Dealing with Hunter’s bill allowing golf carts to be driven on public streets, and set to the tune of the “Beverly Hillbillies” theme song.

Come and listen to my story ‘bout a gal named Trish

A nurse administrator with a politician itch.

Then one day after mailin’ out some letters,

She joins with the crowd that thinks they be our betters.

The Assembly, that is...

Special interests...

PAC’s...

Well, the first thing you know,

Tricia Hunter writes a bill.

Said golf folks could drive carts where they will.

CHP wonder’d how many of ‘em it’d kill,

But Trish just said, ‘Hey, I fin’ly passed a bill.

The willies it gives me.

Elder folks...

Hit by cars...

The Tricia Bill Willies.

Hunter, through a spokesman, says she’s too busy doing the public’s business to comment. Probably shooting possums for dinner or something.

Quick Cash on the High Seas

It says here.

* Look for some big poker games at sea.

The Navy is putting automated teller machines on all San Diego-based ships.

* Ann Strodtman, the welfare mother being pursued by the city of San Diego for $350, has refused an offer from a San Diego woman to pay the debt.

She’d rather fight in court.

* Donald Van Ort and his attorney, August Anderson, have split. Disagreements over money.

* East County bumper sticker: “Real Men Eat Their Road Kill.”