The Necessity of Parallelism?

So, I'm far from complaining, because I get to embark on a 2-year adventure after graduation, but dating lately has been more of a spectator sport than anything else. Having made the choice long ago that I would never inflict a long-distance relationship on some poor unsuspecting fool, or a guy for that matter, I’ve been sort of laying low.

I’m secretly glad I can RSVP no to the thousands of weddings that are happening this summer. “No, sorry, I can’t make it. I’m moving to Africa.” sounds exceptionally better than “No, sorry, I can’t make it. I don’t support dumb choices.”

I suppose not so secret since I’ve just shared it with 6 million of my closest friends.

Anyway, my writer-honed skills of observation have been finely tuned lately and I'm posing a question to you all- do you really think that opposites attract?

I mean specifically people that have nothing in common but each other. Like, could I ever date a guy who hated to read, or to browse in bookstores for hours? Could I deal with that but also deal with a guy whose whole video collection consisted solely of anime? Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s just not my bag.

How many of these things can you get over and still have a functional relationship? Is it enough to have similar demeanors? If we’re both pretty mellow, can we be accepting of the differences?

My mom and her boyfriend have been together for quite a while, enough that at this point jokes about being an old agoraphobic couple are becoming redundant. They sit together every night and take turns, him watching soap operas with her and her watching Swamp Brothers with him. 

Is it the next level of maturity to be in a relationship where you transcend the sort of things that might have mattered when you were younger? When I was in high school, I doubt I could have dated someone that wasn’t into the same things I was because there wasn’t much else to talk about. There wasn’t much life lived. But as you get older, does it become more about the person, less about what you have in common?

Based on the type of guys I seem to attract, can I expect there to be yearly trips to both Comic-con and Disney to appease us both? For eternity can I take pictures for my guy geeking out over meeting Iron Man if he’ll hold my hand through Wishes? Is that the promise you make when you get older?

I’ve learned that you can’t choose who you fall in love with. But you can choose to make it work. My hope is that as long as you can go to bed at night after watching either Lord of the Rings or Aladdin, both people can still feel like equals. I guess I can rest my beer on a crate of comic books if the guy will still rub my feet and ask about my day.