QotD: Deal Breakers

What are your deal breakers in a relationship?

This would have been a totally different list before I married and then divorced my first husband.  I think my first list, way back when, would have been easier to write.

Basically, they are these things:

1.  Lying.  That's obvious, I suppose.  My first husband didn't lie to me, at least not intentionally.  But it is a deal-breaker.

2.  Incurable seriousness.  This is not something I would have thought about before I married --we need a nickname for him, since he's going to be coming up a lot in this post.  Let's call husband #1 "H", OK?  Before I married H, I don't guess I thought there was such a thing as incurable seriousness.  I can be a serious person at times, and I dislike people who can never be serious, so I wouldn't have thought too much seriousness would get to be a problem.  It does.  H was incapable of just relaxing and enjoying something.  We used to fight--or, at least, he used to fight--every Wednesday because I used to go to sgazzetti's house to watch South Park and drink gin and be silly.  I actually take both South Park and gin fairly seriously, but to H, they were both wastes of time and energy, and he heckled me relentlessly about it.  He also couldn't see how I could let myself enjoy movies like Legally Blonde or how I could go out drinking with superficial friends with whom I had little in common, intellectually, and enjoy myself.  I tried to convince him that life did not always require gravity, but his idea of loosening up was to listen to Camper van Beethoven and discuss the melodic structures or the political significance of Joe Stalin's Cadillac.  Oh, man.  I can still feel my eyes rolling.  As mentioned, inability to ever be serious is also a deal-breaker, but this one took on particular significance for me after 6 years in Camp Gravity. 

3.  Wild mood swings.  I have them--boy, do I.  I am one moody, depression-prone, crazy woman.  I found out the hard way that two people who are both erratic and unstable should not live together.  This wasn't H's fault of course--I can't fault him when I'm just as guilty.  T, my husband now, is the flattest sea, the safest harbor, the most unshakable, unflappable, and utterly predictable person (mood-wise) I've ever known.  I don't quite know how he puts up with my moods, but his calm works wonders on me.  H exacerbated my moodiness (and I, his); T mitigates it.  Aaaah.  Much better.

4.  Paranoia and vengeance fantasies; still harboring a grudge against your girlfriend from high school.  I don't think more needs to be said about this one.  H had this in spades.

5.  Facial hair.  Sorry.  I'm not crazy about chest and arm hair, either, although I'll put up with some, as long as we're not talking Tom Selleck.  I cannot kiss you if you have facial hair.  I'm sorry, but it's the truth.  I think this is one reason why I enjoy Japanese men so much. 

6.  Smoking probably would be a deal-breaker, too, as I don't like the smell, but I could put up with occasional social smoking.  One boyfriend, Sean, used to smoke only when he was doing freaky computer things--he would program for hours at a stretch, and then he smoked, and it was fine.  Of course, I did not live with him, so I didn't have to put up with the smell all the time.  I really hate that smell.

7.  Wearing aftershave or cologne.  I like a natural-smelling man.  Clean, but natural.  Also, if it takes you longer to do your hair than it does for me to do mine, consider the deal endangered.

8.  When traveling, being unable to enjoy the journey qua journey and instead being totally focused on the destination and how soon we will get there.  H did this.  We couldn't, while traveling, spot some bizarre roadside attraction and stop and enjoy ourselves.  No.  We had to keep going, getting to our destination in a minimum amount of time.  It was only once the destination was reached that H could begin enjoying himself.  This was particularly shitty while hiking and backpacking, as I would be stopping to take pictures, smell flowers, check out tiny bugs, or whatever, and he would just keep going, getting way far ahead of me and then getting all impatient and grumpy about it.  Inevitably, he also had the bear spray when he was a mile ahead of me.  I just don't see the point of hiking if you're not going to enjoy the scenery along the way.  I think I also became progressively more poky, just to irritate him.  Yeah, our relationship was that healthy.

9.  Sexual incompatibility.  It's not that my preferences are the right ones, but they are the ones that make me happy, and we will never be happy together if we can't agree on this.  I don't think we need to get into specifics here, but let's say that we need to have a fundamental accord regarding frequency, amount and mechanics of foreplay, acceptable locations, acceptable and preferred positions, acceptable accoutrements, intensity of lighting, and location and appropriate manipulations of erogenous zones.  I think all couples need this, and I think that an unwillingness to face this fact is responsible for many relationships failing.  Oh, I'm not saying that I want or need to change someone else's sexual habits and preferences; not at all.  The point is that if our basic proclivities are naturally out of alignment, there is no real future for the relationship, no matter how clean-shaven and clean-smelling you are.  I will admit--and I realize this makes me a dirty, sinning whore--that I would have never married a man I had not slept with first, to make sure of these things.

Before I committed to more than, erm, occasional stays in love hotels with my current husband, I tested him out for all of these things.  He passed, easily.  He has been demonstrably and obnoxiously honest with me from the very start.  He is serious when appropriate, but when we're watching kung fu movies or something, he feels no need whatsoever to dissect our Gaze upon The Other, in Edward Said fashion.  He carries no grudges and never cares at all about revenge; he is like the man Nietzsche talks about who cannot forgive because he always forgets.  You can do T wrong a million ways, and he may not continue to like you, but he will totally forget what it is exactly that you've done.  He is also just generally forgiving of human foibles, much more than I am.  He has an absolute minimum of body hair (legs, underarms, etc.) and none at all--EVER--on his face.  He does shave his face, but it takes approximately 1 minute twice a week.  He does not smoke or otherwise offend with unnatural odors, and he is truly excellent to travel with. 

This is not to say that T is perfect:  He shuffles around the house in his slippers, making noises that really irritate me.  He chews on toothpicks like an old man.  He refuses to cut his hair more than a couple times a year (I don't generally like long hair on men, and especially not on him).  He will happily go months without washing his jeans, and he complains bitterly when his jeans are stiff from having just been washed.  He has virtually no sense of taste, and therefore my cooking might as well be dog food for all he knows.  He does not care about music much at all, besides just having background noise, so sometimes I get in the car and find the station set on the Mexican station or Rush Limbaugh or something otherwise intolerable.  He speaks an ungrammatical idiolect of Japanese and is passing these idiosyncracies on to our son; he is also forgetting how to write kanji.  He was born in 1980. 

As a sidenote, I am finding it interesting that many people are putting "cheating" in their lists.  I guess I can understand why, but it's not a deal-breaker for me.  Lying about it would be, and I would suppose that a long-term affair could be a deal-breaker, although it is utterly impossible for me to imagine T even talking to--or, really, even noticing--another woman, let alone carrying on with her for months or years.  I don't really see why a one-night stand or similarly short-term and limited adultery would be so serious, though.  We're all human and capable of making grievous mistakes and hurting each other and all of that.  I think the whole idea if you love someone is that you would forgive them these errors and they would forgive yours.  What's the point, exactly, of saying that you love someone forever and ever--unless they make a mistake? 

P.S.  If you doubt my assurance that T does not notice other women (let alone speak to them), you will have to meet him and watch a movie with him or go to a place where there are lots of girls to figure this out.  For example, we'll be out somewhere, and I'll notice a pretty girl and remark upon her beauty or the fine shape of her ass or something, and he'll have to look because he did not see her and then he'll say something like, "really?  yeah, she's OK, I guess."  It's all very anticlimactic.  He has watched movies with gorgeous, half-naked women in them and decided instead to watch a TV show about gold panning.  He can see a woman wearing outrageous, revealing clothing and either ignore it totally or remark only upon the clothing.  For the first couple of years we were together, I assumed it was all a ruse--or that he was a closeted homosexual.  Neither is true, however.  He just finds most women totally uninteresting. 

Why did he/does he find me interesting?  Well, according to him, he first took a liking to me because I seemed a bit crazy, more than a little unusual, and unafraid.  He stays with me because he has decided I don't just seem that way--I am that way, and it makes his life more interesting than it would be without me.  That and NSFW NSFW NSFW.  Um, oh yeah, and I'm pretty, too *shrug*.