Via Salon.com’s Broadsheet, comes this essay in the NYTimes, It‚Äôs Not You, It‚Äôs Your Books, exploring the phenomenon of relationship-killing incompatibility standards based on personal reading habits: “when a missed ‚Äî or misguided ‚Äî literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.”
When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date’s taste in books is “actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of “Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives.” “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.”
…Let‚Äôs face it ‚Äî this may be a gender issue. Brainy women are probably more sensitive to literary deal breakers than are brainy men. (Rare is the guy who‚Äôd throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.) After all, women read more, especially when it comes to fiction. ‚ÄúIt‚Äôs really great if you find a guy that reads, period,‚Äù said Beverly West, an author of ‚ÄúBibliotherapy: The Girl‚Äôs Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives.‚Äù Jessa Crispin, a blogger at the literary site Bookslut.com, agrees. ‚ÄúMost of my friends and men in my life are nonreaders,‚Äù she said, but ‚Äúnow that you mention it, if I went over to a man‚Äôs house and there were those books about life‚Äôs lessons learned from dogs, I would probably keep my clothes on.‚Äù
I’m guilty of the same hookup discrimination. How about you guys? Is there a DVD you’d see on a date’s shelf that would have you texting for a Rescue Ring? How about the reverse? Is there a movie title you typically pull out as your ace in the hole (so to speak). Name-dropping a movie title as the wily coyote of cuddle-lingus to help you get laid? Slumming in the action aisle to scope out the machosexual jocks, or flaunting a predilection for foreign films like fanning your metrosexual peacock tail?
What’s the deal-breaker movie that would wreck any hopes of living happily ever after?