The word “deal breaker” gets a lot of play; even The Mix’s Eric and Kathy have their own “Deal Breaker” song, based on Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker”. It seems to be a term for our generation.
I’ve heard of deal breaker requirements ranging from must be rich to must do volunteer work to no facial hair and can’t be a redneck. I’m serious!
While we joke about marriage being a business contract, relationships are full of deal making and compromise. However, if the initial terms of the agreement are not acceptable we may never get into a relationship at all. Deal breakers are a good thing. They remind us what is really important to us and what key things make us who we are. I just wonder how a person’s list of deal breakers not only defines you, but how it defines your dating life. Some people have such a long list of deal breakers one has to wonder if they want to be in a relationship at all.
After talking to several friends it seems to me that there are deal breakers and there are preferences. The real question is what can we absolutely not live with and what are we willing to compromise on. Surely we all agree, for the most part, that drug and sex addicts, liars, cheaters, thieves, murders and abusers need not apply to ANYONE. Outside of the obvious, what are your deal breakers? That list for four to five things that you feel you absolutely can’t live with or without.
Most of the people I asked about their list of deal breakers actually seem to focus on more superficial things like lack of style, cleanliness or roughness of hands and feet, mustache, comb-over, mullet, and for women it seems key that the man doesn’t have a smaller butt then they do. The reason I am surprised is that all of my friends are well educated, sharp gals who I thought would realize that all, or most, of these things can be changed. It goes to prove that as much as we attempt to deny to ourselves that the way a person looks doesn’t matter, apparently it does.
Once we can put our requirements on paper, we can actually learn something about ourselves and our self-imposed dating limitations.
Going into this I figured that most people would answer children, religion, rudeness, and education along with ex-cons or those currently facilitating a life of crime. But I’ve realized that everyone has their own unique experiences that have created their list of deal breakers.
The reason we have deal breakers is because it’s the easiest way for us to determine what we’re looking for in a partner, but we have to also look at how they affect our future lives with that person. For instance, you really want to have children but your partner doesn’t. This is a serious deal breaker for most, but there might be another way to look at this and that could be that the person just hasn’t met anyone who made them consider having children, quitting smoking, discovering religion or shaving the mustache they’ve had for eons.
So, while deal breakers are a good protection mechanism they may also deter us from seeing someone of value because they don’t meet our immediate list of good and bad.
While driving from Austin to Dallas with my best friend and her boyfriend the topic of deal breakers arose. Matt* is a great guy who was previously married and he mentioned that he gave up everything for his marriage including friends, family and running. He completely lost who he was and wasn’t the same person who originally entered the relationship. At the end of the day his relationship changed who he was as a person and he vowed never to let that happen again. When I asked him about his deal breakers he said, “Let me put it this way. I am dating and own a house with a woman who smokes, parties and lived in a different city, to which I moved to in order to be with her.” Matt wasn’t willing to compromise the potential of his perfect mate based on a list of credentials. This is a good lesson for all of us. He also told me that all of the things on his list used to be really important until he met my friend, and now they don’t matter to him at all.
The bottom line is that we’ve become so used to making a list of the things we don’t want in a partner that we forget to make the list of what we do want, and what we’re willing to compromise on. When two people come together we have to make the effort to be flexible as we slowly allow one another into our lives. We may have become set in our own ways over the years but the beauty of building a relationship is the excitement of seeing what new things it will bring to our life.
There will always be important and personal things like religion, family and character that should be tops on your deal breaker list, but it’s important to define what are the three or four musts before you eliminate the entire dating pool. They may not load the dishwasher the same way, know how to dress appropriately for an event or realize they have bad breath, but these not a cause to break the deal. Make sure your real deal breakers keep you true to yourself and your reality, the rest you can just deal with.
• "Dating Games" appears first and third Mondays of every month, exclusively in Lumino Magazine. E-mail Jennifer at jenfort@hotmail.com.
