Dealbreakers

My sister told me that she met a guy and went out on a date with him.  Maybe it was going well, maybe it wasn’t.  Maybe it was too soon to tell.  Either way, this guy let it slip that he has a motorcycle.

Game over.

“It’s so dangerous!”  My sister whined to me.  Ok, fine.  You don’t like dudes who ride motorcycles.  But is that really a dealbreaker?

For her it is.

A few years ago, I dated a woman whose father is an alcoholic.  She said that one of her criteria in choosing a boyfriend was someone who didn’t drink.  Luckily for me, I had just given up drinking at the time.

She recalled some traumatic experiences before her dad got sober.  So it seemed to make sense that she’d be actively looking for someone who wasn’t hooking a bottle of Wild Turkey to an IV drip.

I wonder what would’ve happened if I decided to have a boys night  with Jack Daniels, Don Julio, Jim Beam, Jose Cuervo, and Johnnie Walker.  How easy do you think it would be for her to overlook the dulcet tones of a smashed Wile E. singing romantic Filipino songs as they echo from the toilet bowl?  I mean, come on.  It’s just your dad who used to come home drunk, A LOT, angry, throwing things, maybe.  And what I’d've done at that moment was remind you about all that, and bring up a bunch of scary memories.  Get over it, already!  What?  Wait… what’s that?  That’s a really shitty thing to say to someone?  You’re right.

I’m sure that if you start asking around, you might get some real ridiculous dealbreakers.  Everything from Smoking Preference (tobacco or otherwise) to “must have a strong opinion regarding the oxford comma.”  Some may seem more malleable than others, but a lot of those others might be totally justified.

For instance, my sister’s high school best friend was involved in a motorcycle accident back in the day.  Pretty freaky.  Possibly traumatizing to my sister.  But without the context, that dealbreaker might seem a little extreme.  Same goes for trying to find someone who doesn’t drink.  You’re severely limiting your options there, but understanding why that dealbreaker is in place would make most people go, “yeah.”

My #1 dealbreaker is pretty simple.  Don’t cheat on me.  This might be a no-brainer for most, but it’s come to my attention that my unwillingness to bend even a little seems harsh to some.  Well, if you’re new to this blog, here’s a recap of the last few years of blogging:

Since my junior year of high school, every exclusive relationship I’ve been in has ended in infidelity, except 2.  For those of you keeping score, that means 5 of 7 relationships that lasted between 10 months and 3 years long have ended with me being cheated on.  Not a whole lot of fun when I look back at the last 15 years of my life.

So, woe is me, pity pity pity.  Add to that a history of racism, the number of white parents who didn’t like a brown guy dating their white daughter, and the frequency of the “other guy” being white, and you’ve got the makings of a weekly trip to the shrink’s office.  Ack, pity, blergh.

I say all this to hopefully clarify this particular Dealbreaker.  It’s a trump card, a silver bullet.  It has the power to level a building filled with good experiences and happy memories.  Set your egg timer, and you can clock how quickly someone goes from “that really cool girl I dated” to “that other one that cheated on me.”