People Talk About the Pop Culture That Ended Their Relationship

When we choose to intertwine our lives with a partner, we ask them to accept our shortcomings along with our positive traits. But, despite the affection, we might feel toward someone, some hurdles are simply too high to clear.

When it comes to irreconcilable differences, few things eat away at a relationship more than a significant other not getting your sense of humor, hating the objectively shitty music you love, or being ambivalent about the book that changed your life. We asked people to tell us about the movie, band, or other pop-culture artifact that ultimately sunk their relationship

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My ex asked me who Ginuwine was. I said, “The reason we’re breaking up.”
-Haley, New York City

In college, I broke up with a girl because she thought Borat was annoying.
– Max, Pittsburgh

About a month into dating, we both ended up at a John Mayer show, in different sections because I got tickets from work and he bought them months prior. I am a huge Ben Folds fan and primarily went to the show to see his opening set. My boyfriend was getting there late, but we were texting and planning to meet between sets. It took him a long time to get there, and I was eager to leave because I had an early morning the next day. I decided to bail out on the John Mayer set and let my guy know that I was heading home.

He then called me in a panic. “You’re leaving before John Mayer?!” I explained that I had a long drive the next day and had already seen John live once. “But, you haven’t seen him headline. You can’t leave before John Mayer!” I could tell he was super worked up, and I was really taken aback. I apologized and told him I’d see him when I got back into town.

Weeks passed, and he didn’t text or call me. I tried to reach out and only got short responses or no response. I’d try to make plans, and he always had an excuse. I was pretty upset at first, but eventually cut my losses and moved on. A few years later, he reached out apologizing for falling off the planet. He never outwardly said it was because of John Mayer, but I contend to this day that he couldn’t get past my lack of Mayer loyalty.
– Ashley, Los Angeles

She had a subscription to US Weekly.
– Fletcher, Washington, DC

A couple months ago, I was dating a woman from Dallas. For some dumbass reason, I saw the Mobb Deep vs. UGK debate on the TL and threw it to her. (Eschewing all biases as an NYC’er, I personally think UGK is deserving of much plaudits and respect, but Mobb Deep is better.) It turned out that she didn’t KNOW who Mobb Deep was. Then to rile me up she said they were irrelevant. It wasn’t just that she didn’t like them, or didn’t respect their impact; it was more that the debate was the epic conflict original New Yorkers have with transplants: If you don’t like it so much, go back home. It’s not like we need you. The debate took on other forms, like how it was weird that she liked St. Patrick’s Day (no racist Irish cops in Dallas) or how I never ate grits (we don’t eat that in the Caribbean). The way we broke up is another (unnecessarily) long story, but the Mobb Deep vs. UGK debate was the beginning of the end.
– Ben, Brooklyn

My ex and I were at a party with some of my friends, and we were talking about music. I mentioned I didn’t really like the Beatles, and he said I was just saying that to be cool. We went back and forth for a while. Him insisting I liked them, and me insisting I didn’t. It turned into me getting furious because he kept saying “agree to disagree” as if there were no way I could possibly dislike the Beatles and that I would realize I was wrong. The way he insisted I didn’t know what I was talking about when it came to my own feelings on something annoyed me so much I started shutting him out and eventually broke up with him.
– Alex, Denver

I dumped someone because she refused to watch Back to the Future because it seemed “so long and old.”
– Preston, Toronto

When I was a 24, I started dating a girl from Raleigh. She came from a relatively wealthy family in the South, and I came from a lower-middle-income family in Ohio.

We had been dating for a few months when my younger brother came to visit from Ohio. One night, we all watched Harmony Korine’s Gummo, which at its core is about growing up poor in rural Ohio. Near the end of the movie, the main character and his friend are shooting a dead cat with BB guns in the middle of a field. My ex asked, “Why are they doing that?” In unison, my brother and I both said, “Because they are bored.”

She then argued that there are plenty of things they could be doing instead, not realizing that every option she put forth cost money or required access to services that were simply not available to kids like me. Nothing she said was mean or meant to demean the poor, but it was hard to put myself in her shoes because to me, mindless destruction seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do as a bored 12-year-old.

Throughout the conversation, my brother kept looking over at me with these “what the fuck, Mike?” eyes. It was at this point that I realized that things were probably not gonna work out for me and this girl. We broke up a week or so later.
– Michael, Cambridge, Massachusetts

He thinks the Fray is a good band.
– Sara, New York City

I knew one of my exes was wrong for me when he described me as “quirky like Juno.” I was seriously shook and told him that I don’t think he understands who I am as a person. He didn’t get why I was appalled (a.k.a he had no taste).
– Diana, Los Angeles

I dated this girl for a few months, and things were going fine until she referred to Radiohead as “that weird music” that was “too sad.” I figured that since I also tend to generally be “weird” and “too sad” maybe this isn’t gonna work.
– Nathan, Philadelphia

He was more into Starcraft than my vagina.
– Jennifer, San Diego

Interviews edited for length and clarity.

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