NYT has an essay up about romance and literary taste. It's mostly light stuff: "I like Proust. You like Da Vinci Code. Oh my!" and "It's easy to dismiss an ex because they didn't like your books" but "In the end relationships aren't built out of bookshelves, but lifestyle and values." But there is one idea that could have been developed a lot more. The writer comments about how our books, and our favorites in the age of Facebook has made these preferences intrinsic to our self-branding. By saying Milan Kundera is "my favorite Eastern-European post-modern writer ever!" I'm trying to get some sort of positive Kundera association to my brand identity.
Now apply to relationships. Theoretically I'm dating somebody, and that relationship is also very much contributing to my brand identity. If that person is associating stuff I think is posed, trashy, or lame then I'm going to have to accept the lame, posed, trash being a part of my brand identity, through my other. Perhaps, the point of the taste-driven breakup is not that it's post-fact posturing, but that taste matters more to us than ever. That something decidedly not to do with the nuts and bolts of relationship, still wields a tremendous amount of power over our decision-making process.
Posted by matt at March 30, 2008 4:46 PM | TrackBack