It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. More of a profound curiosity. At a jazz club, I noticed a guy in glasses with wavy brown hair who seemed both self-contained and good-humored.
It was, however, love at first conversation. After introducing ourselves, we discussed the live music we were hearing. I mentioned finding one of the performing musicians’ playing so fluid and lovely, so accomplished, that his intonation perplexed me.
“Yeah, this isn’t his first instrument,” my now-husband explained. “He’s a phenomenal electric player.”
Our first exchange established so much. We were a music writer and musician at a jazz club, but that was just the start of our compatibility. I was struck by Marc’s strong sense of aesthetics (he heard the intonation problems) along with his generous spirit (he quickly focused on the player’s strengths). We didn’t have to waste time establishing basics or belaboring the obvious when it came to music or anything else. Our instant, easy understanding allowed us to proceed to denser matters. It didn’t hurt our rapport that Marc had recently read one of my books. All the corny phrases applied: We were fellow travelers, kindred spirits, soul mates.
I thought of this scene the other day when online fighting about the new Beyoncé record reached a fever pitch. Why were people so desperate for others to share their opinion of the album? Why were people leaping to conclusions about someone’s deeper values based on their response to pop music? Partly because pop music has become yet another arena for tribalism and culture wars. Partly because of human nature: As psychologist Ellen Winner (remember her from a couple of posts back?) has found, most of us don’t believe aesthetic judgments have any objective truth but nevertheless get upset when friends don’t happen to like the same stuff we do. This is a rare scenario in which my preference for less popular art, culture, and music may be an advantage. If I demanded all family and friends love my favorite stuff, I’d alienate nearly everyone. So I never have.
Serious romantic attraction for me, on the other hand, has always depended on a shared aesthetic. This does not necessarily mean having exactly the same tastes and interests or wanting constant togetherness. Most of us have had the disquieting experience of watching a friend fall in love and become wholly consumed by a new partner, immediately adopting their politics, hobbies, or lifestyle. Part of my shared aesthetic with my husband, in fact, is giving each other plenty of space for independence.
A shared aesthetic doesn’t have to be as pronounced as, say, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo’s to power a romantic partnership. Aesthetic compatibility can involve more of a common sensibility or approach to life: a sense of humor or other way of being. I could have a long-term relationship with someone who didn’t like Keith Jarrett’s piano playing but probably couldn’t get serious with someone who didn’t like improvised music or improv comedy at all. A “yes, and” mode of expression, with its banter and surprise, is essential to my being—or so I like to believe.
Conventional wisdom long attributed the drive for aesthetic compatibility to something like sapiosexualism, or needing to feel an intellectual connection with someone to be sexually attracted to them. American Psychological Association researchers have recently found that the influence of aesthetic compatibility in our attractions instead may come down to how much we believe artistic preferences are part of our essence.
In an experiment, 423 participants were shown eight pairs of paintings and asked which paintings they preferred. Based on their responses, participants were identified as either fans of the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee or the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. Half of each fan group was then told that artistic preference was part of their essence; the other half was told it had no connection. Participants who were told that artistic preference was connected to their essence were significantly more likely to express an attraction to a hypothetical person with the same artistic preferences than those who were told artistic preference had nothing to do with their essence.
This makes perfect sense. I assume improvisation somehow defines my essence so I care about connecting to others with a shared love of it. It also stands to reason that shared aesthetics are of greater concern to writers, musicians, and other artists than the general population.
Some people look for shared aesthetics in relationships other than romantic ones. In my first round of grad school, my roommate met someone, fell hard, and got engaged to him within a couple of months. She had some trouble planning their nuptials. He had no preferences whatsoever for the wedding ceremony, reception, or dance, while her parents, who were paying for the whole shebang, offered endless input on the big event. When my roommate asked what I thought about her wedding planning hassles, I told her it was hard to imagine my parents covering the costs of a wedding and impossible to imagine having such an aesthetically disinterested partner.
“He’s not a friend!” she said, exasperated. “I don’t need him to start a book club with me or go to my favorite concerts. He just has to want me.” Like many people, she didn’t expect any shared aesthetic with her romantic partner. She got all that from friends. Obviously, we can have shared aesthetics in relationships of all stripes.
For me, her expectations for her fiancé were too low—and her courtship too short, though that’s another matter. Still, she was avoiding the common pitfall of assuming a shared preference or interest meant another person also had her values or saw the world exactly as she did. In cohabitation, more practical shared aesthetics like tolerance for clutter or culinary tastes often matter more to daily life, anyway. I’ve always loved David Sedaris’s joke that a mutual aversion to overhead lights is sufficient common ground for a long marriage.
A shared aesthetic can be so subtle that it’s hard to define or elaborate. You know it when you feel it. On a recent flight, my husband and I heard another couple debating which movie to watch together. We were dismayed as this couple argued, compromised with some resentment, and finally started watching Oppenheimer with a single pair of headphones, one earbud each. We’d never consider watching the same film on a plane—with a tiny screen at every seat mere inches from our faces, why would we bother? We save that negotiation for the big screen in the theater or our big enough screen at home. Our shared aesthetic was the common sense of not needing to express our coupledom by watching a film together on a plane.
On the plane I watched You Hurt My Feelings. In this Nicole Holofcener film, writer Beth discovers that her husband Don has been untruthful to her about his opinion of her latest novel. Her world comes crashing down when she accidentally learns about this secret aesthetic incompatibility.
Our films ended at more or less the same time. As the plane taxied, I told my husband a little about You Hurt My Feelings.
He shrugged, as if to say sounds contrived and boring. My feelings were not hurt.
“Julia Louis-Dreyfus made it funny,” I said. “What did you watch?”
“1917, a WWI movie,” he said. I shrugged. His feelings were not hurt (I checked with him as I was writing this).
Two in five Gen Zers now say marriage is outdated, unnecessary for a fulfilled and committed relationship. That’s cool. I don’t necessarily disagree. Marriage can be a bridge too far. Still, I worry that the ease with which we now fall into online conflicts has made it harder to bridge real-life relationship differences, including those of taste and opinion. I wonder if an impression of incompatibility makes some Gen Zers who might enjoy committed partnerships surrender to defeat before they give them a chance.
I often ask long-married people the secret to their partnerships. Nearly every time, they offer some variation on once we realized we didn’t have to always like or do the same things, everything went more smoothly. This has included attending art walks, traveling together, and being members of the same church. When they relaxed their expectations for compatibility and embraced independence, their relationships soared.
All that and a good measure of tolerance for those differences. I have never met a long term partnership that didn't have at the very least a well established sense of humor on the part of both parties!
I have a memory from my 20s of a friend of mine laughing at me as I screened out a potential internet dating match because she liked Adam Sandler movies. To him that sort of thing had next to nothing to do with compatibility, while to me my tastes were my whole personality. Fortunately I got over that and am now happily married to someone with whom I share a nice Venn diagram center but with lots of differing tastes on either side.