dethrock Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 "Listen to me, this is the voice of experience talking. Are you listening? Fuck a lot of women, Dwayne." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek™ Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 My 2¢ on music in relationships: This goes without saying, but it really varies from person to person. That is, not only how much you value music, but also how much you'd like to see your significant other value it. Like a lot of people on these boards, I imagine, music is a pretty large part of my life. It's a daily element that I rely on, it's something that I actively explore and pursue, and it's something that I spend a fraction of every paycheck on (in some way or another.) I enjoy attending concerts, listening to records, discussing albums, and so on. Am I expecting or hoping to find that passion reciprocated in the girl of my dreams? Nope. Here's a twist on the common opinion in this thread: a couple of years back I was in a relationship with a girl who had fairly comparable tastes to mine. We shared a few favorite bands and genres, and even an interest in collecting records. And while it was nice to share a mutual excitement for the same concerts, album releases, and vinyl presses... after a while it got exhausting. She would eventually come to appreciate and love artists that she either detested or was oblivious to, prior to meeting me. And while that may sound like a dream come true, it was actually a bit of a turn-off towards the end. I don't mean to sound pretentious, but I think I prefer to have my own tastes, while my significant other has her own. Something about a girl who can put a foot down and establish her own tastes and style is far more attractive to me. Having artists that overlap in interest is ideal, sure, but when your entire library becomes mirrored over time... I don't know. It's just not all that it's cracked up to be. Upon leaving that relationship, I'd say 60% of her current favorites are thanks to me and the exposure I presented to her. No gloating. I don't think my tastes are that superior -- I just suspect she's prone to hopping aboard the common opinion. And while not a deal breaker by any standards, it's not ideal. Even if the "common opinion" is yours solely. Compare that to the last relationship I had, which was far better. This girl had her own distinguished tastes, with a dozen or so artists that we both mutually enjoyed. All of the artists she enjoyed were of respectable quality... which is perhaps the most crucial element, when comparing the musical tastes of loved ones. And while it was very rewarding to discuss and appreciate the artists that we both enjoyed, together, I loved that she was into a broader world of indie, dream pop, and chillwave than I. She opened doors and got me into bands that I otherwise probably wouldn't have explored anytime soon. (And, of course, I returned the favor and hooked her onto some bands from my end of the spectrum.) Maybe I'm alone in thinking so, but I found that far more appealing. I want a girl who knows what she likes, and isn't going to lap up any artist that I'm jamming just for the sake of following suit. I loved that the last girlfriend wouldn't dream of touching groups like Converge - a band that is near and dear to my heart - but could still share a great time listening to Fleet Foxes or The National. With me, I think it's all about a variety of shades and tastes. It's too mundane when you both love every single band. And going back to quality; that's what's key, I think. Even if all her folk, indie, and dream pop favorites weren't necessarily up my alley... they were at least respectable in their appropriate genres. I love a challenge as much as the next guy - and am not overly picky about a girl's tastes in music - but if she's all about Papa Roach, Nickelback, Maroon 5, and whoever else dominates the radio with over-saturated singles... then I foresee an issue. Or a whole lot of work. tl;dr version: I think it's attractive when a girl has her own tastes - quality tastes - and can show you a thing or two. If she enjoys good music and shares a handful of common bands, I'm good. Much more preferred than a girl who's iPod may look like a carbon copy of your own. I'd also like to add on: regardless of how polar-opposite your tastes may be, a mutual respect for one another's tastes is critical. You don't have to enjoy their favorite artists, and no one's saying they have to enjoy yours. But acknowledging that you each have your varied tastes (and leaving it at that) is essential. rudeboydh 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rudeboydh Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 I agree w/ above post for the most part. My girl and I met at a concert, so we do have some overlapping tastes (ska, when we first met). I introduced her to some more mellow ska bands (The Slackers, Hepcat, Westbound Train stuff like that) that she loves now, and she introduced me to alot of bluegrass, folk and just general rock stuff I would've never listened to otherwise. We are constantly introducing each other to new bands, and although I don't like everything she introduces me to (some ambient stuff she likes that I don't care for), and vice versa (she's not a fan of hardcore punk) , it is so rewarding and special to have somebody to talk to about and share music with. She encourages me to expand my tastes and discover music I wouldn't normally listen to. All my past girlfriends just listened to pop/radio music and weren't much into music at all. I think it really makes a difference to be able to share these things with the one you love. I know I wouldn't have it any other way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maneatingcow Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 My co-worker told me about this one howaboutwe.com. You fill out a small profile with some interesting questions and then post actual date ideas and people can let you know whether they are interested in doing that date. You can get pretty creative and it offers some nice ice breaking opportunities. I actually just had a date with this really cool girl last night. After the date we exchange phone numbers and she said that she wanted to hang out with me again. The idea for that site is awesome. I'll have to check it out this weekend. I love first dates and typically can come up with good quirky fun dates. Years back on a set up with a friend of a friend our date was to a book store. The goal was end up finding a book that we would buy and then read at the same time. Especially for a first date that was just about perfect in my mind. Spending an hour or so walking around a book store talking about what you like to read, what you want to read. If the date went well then we can read the book at the same time and have it be a 2 person book club, if it's not then you have a book to read that you might not have read. I've wanted to do the same thing at a record / cd store. Spend an hour walking around walking around digging through bins talking with the girl about what you like musically, and what she likes. Then split up for like 15 minutes and each try and pick out something you think the other might like. While not for everyone, I enjoy the quirky weirdly fun first dates. If nothing else it's memorable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottheisel Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 tl;dr version: I think it's attractive when a girl has her own tastes - quality tastes - and can show you a thing or two. If she enjoys good music and shares a handful of common bands, I'm good. Much more preferred than a girl who's iPod may look like a carbon copy of your own. 10,000% agreed. My last girlfriend loved essentially everything I loved—not that she was copying my taste, but we just had virtually everything in common musically. It got super-boring, super-quick, because there was no excitement or ability to educate one another. My next girlfriend and I had plenty in common musically but we both have our blindspots—she loves ska and is way into metal, whereas I'm all about the mid-’90s emo, math rock, etc. We teased each other all the time about our individual interests but then could come together on some key middle-ground bands that helped build our relationship and develop our mutual tastes for a number of things, not just music-related. We're getting married in three weeks. It's important to be different from your partner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek™ Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 Definitely doing it right, from the sounds of it. I'm well aware that it's all different strokes for different folks... but what you've described hammers the nail right on the head, in my books. Congrats on the impending hitch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcm1610 Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 Going back to the young girls thing, I coach girls hockey at the high school level and teach high school, so I have a lot of obstacles: a- I find it creepy, even if she's 20 or 21 and "legal" that I could have taught her. I know this will get worse as I get older. b- I see a lot of the immaturity of my students just in the faces of these younger girls, even if they're old enough to be in bars. c- There's a lot of siblings and Buffalo is a small town, so usually these young'ns have siblings I will encounter in some professional capacity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Team Avatar Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 so I called the girl last night and she didn't answer and so I left a voicemail.... I wasn't sure what else to do! OF course she didn't call or text back so....... wooo girls suck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kgry Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 I'm 33 and have been dating a 24 year old for 3 years. Age difference comes up every now and then but it's not a huge deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjb2k1 Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 so I called the girl last night and she didn't answer and so I left a voicemail.... I wasn't sure what else to do! OF course she didn't call or text back so....... wooo girls suck sorry dude. on to the next one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roadmonkey Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 so I called the girl last night and she didn't answer and so I left a voicemail.... I wasn't sure what else to do! OF course she didn't call or text back so....... wooo girls suck Sucks.. just down some whiskey and move on to the next one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 13, 2012 Share Posted September 13, 2012 my ex of 5 years shared a similar taste for music back when we met. and then as my tastes evolved over the years, she just kind of hung out in my wake, falling in love with everything i introduced her to. after we broke up, she said one of the worst parts was not having me guide her ears. im also around a lot of age gap dating. one friend got fired from coaching girls high school track once there was word of him fucking one of his runners. and in the house i just lived in, two roommates were 30, and their girlfriends were 22 and 20. 10 years is iffy. not nearly as much when youre dealing with say 30 and 40... but when we couldnt go to bars as a group because of this 30 yr olds girlfriend, it was beyond obnoxious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
circuit bored records Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 I love the turn this thread took regarding musical tastes/compatibility. Finally got me to bite the bullet and post. My last serious ex-gf and I shared extremely similar tastes, I used to play in a ska band in high school and she was really into ska at the time, we ended up getting each other into a lot of different bands and styles of music, took each other to lots of shows, etc. It eventually ended up becoming really annoying to me, almost like a competition where we would always try to one-up each other on new music, new bands or new records that we found. It got super annoying every time I put a song on in the car with the "oooooohhh who's this? Can you burn me the CD???" She even wanted to start writing music and would always probe me for help and get angry with me when I couldn't tell her how to finish her chord progression she was working on or whatever. I think I began to resent her over a long period of time about it, and she for sure resented me for what she perceived was my lack of help. Really though, music is just something that's super personal for me (and everyone else I think) so I don't see ways of helping others effectively write songs if they can't do it on their own. My current girlfriend is on the complete other end of the spectrum. She hates my bands, hates metal, hates ska, hates my record collection but we still love the shit out of each other. Been together over three years. Started as a long distance relationship too, but I'll save that story for another post. tl;dr: I can see where either side comes from, but for now I prefer to keep a girlfriend who won't step on my toes when it comes to personal tastes in music, especially because my tastes are pretty off the wall. It's funny because if you would have asked me four or five years ago I would have probably said that I couldn't date a girl who wasn't into music like I was, but I've come to learn that it definitely isn't a dealbreaker by any means. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 yan, you just made me realize that ive never met a woman who could challenge my tastes. someone who could look at what i like, and pick things out and tell me i liked some crappy music with any sort of believable conviction. this might not be an ideal partner, but it seems so much more stimulating compared to those whose tastes are usually dismissed easily. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
circuit bored records Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 I never thought of it as challenging my tastes, although it kind of is, but it's extremely liberating at the same time. There's just a mutual understanding that I play and love music in a certain way and she doesn't, at least not in the same way. She has pretty generic tastes and loves elton john and the beatles and other stuff along those lines, but she can't really understand new music. I'll put on a dysrhythmia LP or a billion ernies album and she'll give me the "are you serious?" face, but I don't feel like I need to explain the music or justify my tastes like when I talk with other musicians, or like with my ex-gf. It's pretty awesome, actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 14, 2012 Share Posted September 14, 2012 thats just what i got out of that post, personally. was taking your perspective and connecting it with all the static pieces that popped up as a result of being kind of drunk and high. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
konk Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 The first time I saw my wife, she had Dashboard and Anti-Flag patches on her backpack. I remember saying to myself that that was the kind of girl I wanted, but that's all I did (all I ever do). A little while later, I met her at a bar (didn't know it was her [not as good of a story, I know]). I'm not sure if we talked about music that night, but the next time we saw each other, I was wearing a Dashboard shirt. We had/have some overlapping bands and I introduce her to a lot, but as she gets older, she's leaning a lot more mainstream. It only bothers me when we go on road trips. TL;dr I'd be okay with different music tastes, but it would make road trips hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuzzersonKillwell Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 My theory is that it isn't an issue of music compatibility as much as it is a theme of overall discovery. You want a partner (or friend) who can broaden your horizons or bring something to the table. Otherwise the onus is on you to always be creating or delivering new experiences, which is probably exhausting. In the case of music specifically, people in this thread dont seem to mind the not having the same tastes, so much as they do having a partner who likes somethig they deem tasteless. In most cases I think people argue against pop music (or similar) because they, mostly correctly, see a vapidity in the genre. Which I think supports my earlier theory. Then again, I'm drunk at noon. So who knows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dashhax Posted September 15, 2012 Share Posted September 15, 2012 Women are so beautiful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 16, 2012 Share Posted September 16, 2012 pulled two numbers in two nights.. im gonna call that a pretty good weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roadmonkey Posted September 16, 2012 Share Posted September 16, 2012 Dammit I need new single friends to go raging with on the weekend to get numbers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronniegwilliams Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 I'm usually that friend, all of my single friends are way too shy to try to talk to gals, I'm typically the go-to wing man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 the girl i met last night, shes actually cousins with one of my friends. so it was nice to get a text from my friend saying that she was already asking about me. with the state fair in town, im gonna take her there next weekend, and go for an overly cliched date of going on crappy rides and trying to win giant stuffed animals for her. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronniegwilliams Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 this thread is pretty awesome because when it comes down to it, every dude is just a nerd for a pretty girl, and every gal is just a nerd for a handsome boy hobohunter48 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 just met this guy. he said whats up, I asked him what he was doing. then.... total overshare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts