We know a couple who are the nicest people on earth. They’re in their 60s, still hold hands, he buys her flowers, really almost too sweet. Both are intelligent, well read, keep up on current events, etc.
Oh, and he’s about as right of center as she is left. He likes Trump. She supported Hillary hard.
We wonder how the heck it works for them.
This is me and my SO- I cried when Hilary lost, he didn’t love Trump to begin with but now…ugh. Anyways, we both like animals , get a long good (maybe not great since he’s always right in politics and everything else) and have been together with little drama for the past 16 years.
We enjoy some of the same shows- mostly HBO shows but I’m much happier watching a Jane Austen flic or character based drama and he goes for the action/sci-fi which with the exception of Star Wars/LOTR type stuff, I don’t love. Music is pretty different tastes except I do like punk/new wave and he was a sorta punk rocker in the day so a few of those type of bands we have in common. Food wise- I like to cook and he likes to eat. He doesn’t have a very large vegetable tolerance (he only eats corn/carrots/green beans) where I had to stop cooking for him 3 nights a week so I can have more vegetable friendly fare. OTOH, we both like good food, esp seafood, and compared to my sister’s husband, who will pretty much only eat Dinty Moore and candy bars, he’s pretty open minded as long as its not a vegetable.
We’ll celebrate our 24th anniversary in August. We’re close in age, but I’m a the end of the boomer era while she’s gen x. We like a lot of the same music, although she’ll listen to poppy music that I (and our sons) don’t care for. She’s more of a movie person than I am; that’s one area where she’s really bonded with our sons (one has a film festival podcast, while the other is a screenwriting major). She reads fiction, I read nonfiction (when I read books at all, despite a long career as a librarian). I was raised Baptist, but am now a liberal Christian. She is Jewish, but wasn’t raised going to temple. Now we are both happy in our UU Church. Both of us are fairly liberal politically, although I have more of a prejudice toward the wealthy. Her family was upper middle class, while mine was working class. You’d think that my southern, Baptist, white, working class parents would be big Trump supporters. Well, you’d be wrong. They’ve got no use for him.
Both I and my wife are pretty conservative, like cats, and both dislike Trump. Aside from that, we have basically nothing in common.
We celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary last June.
She’s warmed up to horror movies and sushi. Otherwise our tastes are worlds apart.
On music: she steadfastly refuses to listen to anything on the SiriusXM that she hasn’t heard before and can’t sing along to. That means that I don’t get to listen to Blues if she’s in the car, and instead have to listen to whatever she claims we both like even though I don’t like any of it. 80’s hits (we’re both Gen X), 90’s, she also digs a lot of that stupid bullshit that I can’t stand like Train, Panic! At The Disco, Matchbox 20, that kind of shit.
On TV: she likes the most boring fucking TV that has ever been written. Reruns of Little House on the Prairie or Star Trek:TNG are, to her, the gold standard of TV. She also likes schlock like Dr. Phil or Ancient Aliens. I’m more about cerebral comedies (What We Do In The Shadows) or mainstream network sitcoms (Bob Hearts Abishola).
On movies: if it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, it doesn’t get her attention. She could spend all day watching movies with deep philosophical import within: Ad Astra, August Osage County. I like horror, stoner comedies, and the rare art-house flick.
On food: at home, unless it’s a bland, Midwestern recipe that her mom or grandma used to make, she ain’t cooking it, and neither am I. And the meat isn’t cooked until you can snap it in half. At a restaurant she’ll eat just about anything on her plate, as will I (with some exceptions).
On games: she could play gin rummy until the end of all time, and not complain. I’ve been trying for decades to teach her chess, she refuses. Then she saw a video about Go and decided that we’re both going to learn that ferkakte game.
The Ukulele Lady and I both like our dogs. I think that’s about it.
Together 39 years, married for 31 of them.
I think it works well for some people because you realize early on that you have different interests and don’t try to force something that isn’t going to happen. I mean, you cannot have zero interests in common, but when you have too many interests in common you tend to want to force each other into the little box with each of you doing things that the other doesn’t like.
Take a hypothetical couple with little in common on a beach vacation. The husband wakes up, take a half day deep sea fishing charter, stops at the bar for lunch, has four drinks and takes a nap. The wife lies on the beach in the morning and goes shopping in the afternoon. They have a nice dinner, sex, and either go out or go to sleep. Each enjoyed their day and each other’s company.
Another couple with too much in common will try to make it too rigid. They will both lie on the beach for an hour, then go parasailing (which the husband likes but the wife is so so about) then go snorkeling (the wife loves it but the husband gets seasick but goes along to “be a couple”) and continue that all week. Some couples have the feeling that they must be attached at the hip at all times or else they are not acting “like a family.”
I’m not saying it is good to stay apart too much, but many marriages work because each person recognizes the limits of compatibility and don’t try to force it when it isn’t there.
Married 28 years this summer. We initially had different tastes in music, but I introduced her to more melodic punkier stuff and she introduced me to Erasure and the Smiths. Nowadays we can generally find a way to agree on the radio and movies. I’ll go see more genre type movies on my own (bad horror, hard sci-fi, westerns) and I’ll put up w/ some live 80’s music, but for the most part we learned to sync up. TV is more difficult, but I usually put up w/ some really crappy stuff (The Duggars, or Worst cooks in america), but I have a manland so if she’s indulging in something horrible, I’ll just walk away and do something else.
She’s really introduced me to to some yummy food, I famously called cheese that wasn’t individually wrapped as “gourmet” cheese. Never had fresh veggies, or fresh cheese, or salsa. Or good booze. We both have a learned alot from each other and, for the most part, it’s been wonderful.
Diverged. About 340,659%