Love & Books Redux – Part 1

4th February, 2010 2 Comments

After the Love & Books series was completed, I occasionally received notes telling me how much a reader enjoyed the series or their own thoughts on the questions and topics covered in the series. 

Two different replies to my initial survey and kick-off post, Love In The Stacks, vetted the same idea–reading is a hobby.  We often want the people we decide to date to have similar interests, but what I learned from these responses is that it’s not the hobbies themselves that are important, but the approach to life.  Dating someone with hobbies and interests that you don’t share (or vice versa–they don’t share yours) can be a way to explore and learn about new things.  In fact, wouldn’t dating a carbon copy of yourself be rather dull?

No two people are exactly alike.  You will have your interests and they will have theirs.  Not all hobbies will mesh, and that can lead to discord (you like to travel the world, they have no interest in leaving the town they grew up in), but others can be complimentary to one another.  If your partner has no interest in reading it doesn’t mean you have to stop.  It just means that you have to schedule your time appropriately–maybe you read while they work on that ship in a bottle or bring a book with you to their weekly softball game. 

Respect is important in a relationship–you must respect their hobbies and interests while they must respect yours.  Go ahead and use their interests as inspiration for the books you buy.  They love space?  Find an astronaut’s memoir and see if it will help you understand why they find the subject so fascinating.  You don’t have to develop an undying love, you simply need to understand.

In the comments for the first Love & Books post, Marcelo made this observation:

For me it was never about someone who reads or doesn’t read as much as finding someone who was interested in something, a learner who isn’t above finding new things and trying new ideas out for size.

Readers are by nature curious.  Through books we are constantly learning and must respect that for some people reading is not easy (various learning and reading disabilities) and that one can still have that same curious approach to life through other avenues of exploration.

My favorite part of the post touched on the theme as well:  

All of this got me thinking about the people we choose to date.  I’ve dated plenty of non-geeks and there’s a reason I think those relationships didn’t work out.  There was a mental disconnect–we wanted to talk about different things.  When one date mentioned (proudly) that he hadn’t picked up a book since high school, I should have been tipped off to run the other way.  Our approaches to life were drastically different and we had nothing to talk about for the handful of months we were together.  I learned through these relationships and through my singledom what it was I wanted in a partner, how I expected to be treated, and a lot about myself.

There’s a quote that came my way not too long ago.  I have no clue where it came from, but it struck a chord with me and I’d love to give credit where credit is due:

                 Don’t date someone who’s exciting.  Date someone who is interesting.

That’s the thing about geeks–those of us who read a lot and like to share what we got out of the book or who have really odd hobbies have a wealth of stuff to talk about.  When you and the person you are with have a variety of interests, it opens new worlds of things to try, learn, and talk about even if your interests are different.  

It wasn’t so much that there were no books in their homes as the fact that those exes had a complacent approach to life or whose existance centered around partying that did not work for me.  I was dating exciting men who went out every night of the week, who were bold and charismatic–it was definitely exciting to be with the man that other women wanted, who would buy rounds of drinks, and get past the velvet rope.  But there was little substance underneath that partying. 

Where I found inspiration in books, someone else found it in music or movies or sports.  It wasn’t the fact that they were not readers that made the relationships fail–it was the fact that we had vastly different approaches to life that were reflected in our interests.

Looking at my parents’ relationship, I can see this clearly–my mother has no interest in space or physics, but she understands that these are things my father loves–things that motivate and inspire him.  So she attends his model rocket launches and listens to him explain some mumbo-jumbo that sounds like a the teacher in Peanuts cartoons.  Likewise, you will find him helping her scroll through microfiche to find some elusive birth certificate as she tracks down the family tree.  They have their shared interests and they have their time to individually go to their own thing. 

What attracts us to someone in the first place is someone’s uniqueness.  It would be a shame to lose that in the interest of only dating people just like ourselves.

Related posts:

1. Love & Books Redux: Part 2 As I re-read all the original Love & Books posts, a...
2. Love & Books: Love in the Stacks It’s personal details time on Stacked!  You know, where I...
3. Love & Books: Could You Love A Non-Reader? After our brief little side-trip to the moon, we’re back...
4. Love & Books Redux: Part 3 I still don’t understand, and don’t believe I ever will,...
5. Love & Books: Redux Do you follow Stacked on Twitter?  Yes?  You many have...

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