HE SAID:
Things to consider before reading this article: To figure out what to write about this article, I went through my Facebook friends, scrolled down and tried to figure out what it is I don't like about certain people. This has made me feel like a slightly awful person. I didn't realize that disdain had a homepage. Now please enjoy my article.
For about the last year and a half I have lived with three girls. They are all very lovely people. They're neat, they have a tendency to spontaneously make baked goods magically appear, and at one point they started this game where whenever I would enter the room they would start clapping (not a joke, it's awesome).
But, being in this never-ending and tripled exposure to the opposite sex has really helped me to understand what it is I'm looking for in someone and what forces me to lose all interest.
Most of the time, encountering a deal breaker is just on the negative end of your preferences. You don't want someone who lives too far away, has a high pitched voice or thinks "like" is a synonym for every other word in the English language, and a lot of these qualities tend to never surface just based on the people you surround yourself with and are generally interested in.
However, the worst part about deal breaking is when it sneaks up on you and karate chops your attraction into little pieces of awkwardness that ends up looking like a conversation you no longer want anything to do with. At this point, the conversation really holds no honest value. Like my parents said to me when my high school band broke up, "It's over; let the dream die. Go to college."
One of the big deal breakers for me is girls who like shitty music. The inclusion of the word shitty is important because it draws a fine line between girls who might just listen to whatever is on and girls who actively seek out music which lacks any semblance of a soul. You are what you listen to, and when it comes to girls who listen to crappy music that makes you unoriginal and nothing new. Maybe that's harsh. It more makes you a 14-year-old girl in my eyes and that's a felony.
It's not so much that I judge what a girl listens to, nor would I immediately dismiss someone solely based off the music that they listen to; it's just that a frequent barrage of crappy music will make me start frothing at the mouth. I can also only really talk about a few things for longer than two minutes, and chief among those things are music, Star Wars and the intricacies of Super Smash Brothers. I know, eat your heart out ladies. So if a girl can only list her favorite tracks off of the OC Soundtrack when talking about her favorite albums, we might be in trouble. (I mention the OC because TV shows are a semi-deal breaker. They're not that bad because they're infrequent and can't leave one room, but my roommates have been on a recent OC binge, and I have heard parts of the show because my room is right next to the TV. That show is terrible - it is so goddamn depressing to live in the OC. How did it go on for so long when any normal human being in that show would have off'ed themselves by the start of the second season?)
Chattiness is another deal breaker of mine. I hate needless conversation and some girls can rattle syllables out of their mouth with incredible speed, but never actually say anything substantial. It's like being around a drunk person or going to one of my English classes.
Deal breakers are a good defense for potentially damning relationships. They are a buffer that protects a person from waking up one day and realizing that they got the short end of a lifelong bargain.
SHE SAID:
Imagine meeting this hot, intelligent, hilariously amusing polite potential boyfriend at your friend's party. (Essentially this is a hypothetical situation, because really when is that ever going to happen in the real world?) He is everything you currently want - complete with a white smile and fat wallet - in a significant other.
That is, until he makes the fatal, of-epic-proportions mistake of mentioning his gratuitous affinity for Star Trek or Star Wars. (Is there really a difference? Never mind, I don't care.) It's a major loss and such an illustrious creature of his quality almost tempts you enough to spend time anchoring him back to earth from his sojourn in fantastical outer space. But at the same, be grateful for the bullet you've just dodged. Think of the television show "Friends" and what happened to Rachel when Ross told her his fantasy. Uh huh. Deal breaker.
A deal breaker is a set of strict prerequisites in the dating arena that you demand of your fresh friend and, like the name implies, has the sheer force and magnitude to break your new relationship before it really had time to grow - like when you pluck a pesky weed from your garden of possibilities.
There are those few things in life that you'll just never learn - or even have to want to learn - to tolerate from a boyfriend (like the fact that they know the difference between Spock and a spork).
Somewhere lurking in the precarious combination of guanine and adenine in a woman's set of DNA is the one all-powerful demand that determines whether a guy deserves a presence in her life: whether he likes to cuddle. You know, he doesn't even have to enjoy it - we don't care if you like it, we just know that we need it (just like a guy's attitude about sex). As long as he's willing to do it to make her happy, then he can stay.
The dire need for cuddlage means that he who is not willing to spend a lot of time with her, loses her. Like calculus homework, she demands a lot of work and effort (especially on the kitchen table) and if you're not able to put in the time, find another less-fulfilling hobby because we are not afraid of passive-agressiving our way into your schedule. We will pout and whimper in such a passive aggressive way you'd almost think we were in extreme need of Prozac or a cathartic ice cream fest with the girlfriends. We will guilt you into spending a lot of time with us. And we won't feel bad about it; in fact, we'll rejoice in the surplus of cuddle time. It's good for the female psyche.
A guy, now that I mention it, must be able to mend her mental health with compliments and presents. Gentlemen - just know that you will be dumped faster than Peewee Herman at a speed dating organization.
Girls spend a lifetime getting ready, and if all you can do once she leaves her perch in front of the bathroom mirror is complain about how long it took her to get ready, then, darling, I can almost guarantee you'll get the boot. Literally. Appreciate her beauty and give a lot of honest but flattering comments.
Deal breakers are kind of like tollbooths - you either have to compromise and pay a little bit to keep going on the same road or you can realize that it's just not worth the price and take an alternative route.