And I said, what about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?

The germ of the idea for this post began whilst I was engaged in that most reflective of activities, clearing out roughly five years of crap from my room. Being sick of the Spotify adverts (“Don’t you love this song?” *elevator music*) I was listening to my iPod from which a song has never been deleted since 2008. This of course means that there are an awful lot of terrible songs living in there, but thankfully there is also occasionally gold. Cue ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ by one hit wonder Deep Blue Something. FYI if you don’t know the song then the rest of the post might be a little difficult so video is below: (it’s really quite fun, I forgot how much I liked it)

SO, being reflectively tidying as I was, I got to thinking about having something ‘in common’ and how the idea plays out in romantic relationships. You see I’m not sure if having stuff in common is all it’s cracked up to be. When you ask someone ‘what do you have in common with x?’, what you’re asking for are what I shall refer to as surface points. These are the things you could talk about with a near-stranger quite comfortably. For example, I once had a great Tinder date (I know right) with someone who had so much in common with me it actually bordered on the bizarre. We liked the same music, films, books, hobbies – basically name anything you would consider a surface point and we had it in common. However, the great unexplainable ‘it’ wasn’t there, and after asking myself repeatedly what was wrong with me, I’ve come to conclude that the reason behind the absence of ‘it’ actually had nothing to do with me being odd/soulless. The thing is, we had so much in common that I wasn’t at all intrigued, we were way too similar and I DO NOT want to date the male version of me. Having different tastes and interests means both parties get exposure to different things – there is so much music that I love now that I wouldn’t have heard of if I hadn’t been introduced by exes. One of the worst questions I’ve been asked is ‘what do you two talk about?’ – I genuinely don’t know what kind of answer is expected here, there isn’t some kind of conversation menu. Having dated only science students for the last three years, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at actually enjoying talking about science for which A-levels had previously given me a burning hatred.

Of course it would be ridiculous to date someone whose fundamental life views are opposite to yours (anti-feminists of any description need not apply), but I think that matching up surface points is a poor way of measuring the potential of a relationship. Maybe it’s a safety net to stop us from asking the big questions – we both love Scorsese films so his attitude towards commitment doesn’t matter etc. etc.

‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ opens with the lines ‘You say we’ve got nothing in common / No common ground to start from and we’re falling apart’. Well Deep Blue Something, whoever the hell you are, good news is that you don’t need anything in common, bad news is you gotta find something more fundamental than Breakfast at Tiffany’s to base a relationship on.