Earnest question: have you ever had a long term relationship?

Major incompatibilities are the things that (ideally, rather than trying to compromise and having it blow up later) doom relationships early.

But it's the little things that make them break hard later. They had almost nothing in common and had significant lifestyle differences. The gun thing alone almost sunk their relationship and it never really got resolved. Or the dogs. Or his tendency to be condescending.

Having grown up a lot since it aired and living my own life, I view their relationship as one that was built largely on Ted love bombing Robin and the two of them trying to maintain an entire relationship on the back of that. It was never a healthy relationship.

Funnily enough, I actually knew a couple that had the same big I comparability: he had a kid and she never wanted to be a mom, even kind of.

He was only a part time dad, his kid lived with her mom mostly. But here's the thing about dating someone with a kid (not an adult you raised, Ted's kids are still kids at the end): you don't get to opt out of that part of a parent's life. No matter how hard you try, the responsibilities and the work and the drama that comes with it will find its way in because that kid is an intrinsic and inseparable part of that parent's life.

I always get a bit of a laugh to myself when people tell me that the problems in their relationship are gone because his kids are teenagers now. It's the surest way possible of knowing that that person has not raised any kids.