love out loud: juggalos and max tucker fans need not apply

After I moved out of my parents’ home and in with a friend, I had no money for an Internet connection. We also oddly didn’t have a TV aerial, even though we did have a television, and without the usual tools for procrastination, Alice Planetoid and I had to find new ways to waste time.

Alas, we found Six Feet Under.

I’m sure there’s someone around here who’s better equipped to tout the merits of this show so I’ll just get to my point. After three weeks of doing little else but plowing through five seasons of Six Feet Under, with the occasional break taken to attend a lecture every now and then, we made it to the last episode, where it is revealed that Claire marries Ted.

Ted was not the most interesting or exciting of Claire’s boyfriends. He voted Republican and had the audacity to pursue her despite not being an artist himself. Strangest of all, he was a nice guy who called her even when she made mistakes.

I suspect many people were disappointed by her decision to take a well-adjusted man as her husband, but I also suspect that this is how it usually turns out.

A couple of years ago, I was certain that I was incapable of dating a non-vegetarian. His ideologies would be too different to mine and I would be disgusted at his lack of concern for the environmental impact of his dietary choices. What made it easier to hold up this ‘rule’ was that I was already dating a vegetarian at the time and wasn’t prepared for how limited my dating pool would be if I discounted all males who eat meat. These days, my deal breaker is (allegedly) having poor taste in music because a guy who exclusively listened to a genre that I detest would obviously have completely warped priorities.

The main thing that upholds these admittedly idiotic criteria is that I have no interest in finding my life partner in the foreseeable future. My priorities in a mate, quite frankly, suck.

This is because I am not thinking about who is likely to make a good parent or still think I’m pretty (or at least tolerable) when I’m sick or buy me cake when that time of the month rolls around, regardless of his omnivorous lifestyle or his taste in music.

Most of us are not going to tame those heartbreakers who make us run to bar bathrooms in tears. We are not going to live happily ever after with someone who we fight with all the time, even if it’s only because we’re just sooo crazy about each other. Most of us are going to find nice people who will make good parents and still think we’re pretty when we’re sick and buy us cake, and the cake will detract from the petty partner preferences we were so sure mattered when we were young and silly.

But if you can’t remember the last book you read, you best keep that to yourself.

(Image credits: 1.)