I'm interested by your point

Those of us who escaped our lower working class roots and now work as urban professionals tend to spend a lot of time around people from a different class background, and end up forming relationships with or rooting people from higher classes. It can be surprising how much of those taste and deal-breaker concerns tend to work in one direction when one starts doing that.

For example, you won't find many of those of us who worked our way "up" refusing to date people who eat bulgarian fetta. But you will find pretentious upper middle-class snobs thinking we are phillistines if we don't eat bulgarian fetta. I don't have much interest in or aptitude for financial betterment through property, nor do I have the accumulated capital to do so. But it forms a large part of the conversation of upper middle-class professionals in my age group.

Which is why for me class difference isn't a dealbreaker per se, but it tends to end up operating as one whether I want it to or not.

Does this reflect a hidden fact about the person? Or is it just art?

I may be taking this WAY out of context, but it strikes me as being a little insulting.

Some of my closest friends have been people who come from a poorer family than my own. In fact, almost ALL of my closest friends have. Almost everyone I have dated has, too. Granted, I am not from the upper crust or anything even remotely close. And most people I meet as an adult have similar careers and interests to my own, now, regardless of how they grew up.

If you're saying there's something somewhat innate about the lives and experiences of people from different socio-economic classes, such that people of different backgrounds cannot understand each other well enough to have close relationships, I think that's really fucked up.

If somebody said to me, "I don't think Black people can ever really establish meaningful longterm relationships with white people because the type of understanding one needs to maintain a deep tie over a long time seems always to be absent," that would probably be A DEALBREAKER for me.

Radical feminists got death threats for suggesting less about the ability for live jasmin women and men to ever really understand each other.

Long thread, it's bound to happen

There is a limit what a person can learn, how fast, and what society can accept.

Yeah if both couple are ok and can afford battling society together. (eg. if both are highly educated and can afford it) more power to them. But most don't. Don't have the energy, skill, connection or flexibility to do it. I don't say it's impossible, but VERY hard. most people can't do it. Social interaction pattern is designed to maintain status quo, shieve out threat and accumulate advantage.

But say. Relatively middling educated white man dating brown muslim woman. Imagine the social challenge that you can bet the man and the women are not prepared to face. (getting house loan or where to send kid for good school alone will be a major task, nevermind harassment at EVERY SINGLE government check point. Do the chaturbate couple want to keep certain religion? which one?)

It's easy to talk in academic environment where everybody is relatively young, open minded and doesn't need to think about large future decision.

But it's not outside world.

And we are not even talking about how one person suppose to touch how, in private, public, how to talk, gaze, relate, every single interaction pattern is new. A mistake can quickly cascade to faux pas and occasionally major event.

(let's just say i doubt you have what it takes outside very cosmopolitan enclave and small social circle. You may believe you have it, but you don't)

Let's put it this way

It's precisely the unspokenness of class that makes it so poisonous. In places like the UK, it's more out in the open. Society here is no less stratified, but we like to think we don't carry around classist attitudes simply because no one's a Lord or Duke of anything. When we bump into that submerged class iceberg, it comes as a bit of a surprise.

It's not that we in the lower classes want to think about money as much as we do. It's that we have no choice. When you're a paycheck or two away from living on the street, the currency keeping you sheltered and fed looms very large in your daily thoughts.

We also tend to be less picky about jobs because we can't stay unemployed for long. And switching jasmin live jobs causes gaps in things like health insurance coverage, which is a risky situation when you have no funds to cover medical bills in the interim. When you feel stuck in an unfulfilling job and the only reason you're there is because of money, there's at least some measure of bitterness that most working class people have as background noise in their lives. It's hard not to feel envious and occasionally resentful of those who are free of that static. I freely admit that my hatred of someone like GWB is amplified tremendously by the fact that he's never been poor. To me, that makes him appear almost as if he was born without a head. I simply can't wrap my mind around that kind of experience.

As I mentioned earlier, it's never a conscious decision on my part to disassociate myself from wealthier people. We're just broadcasting on different wavelengths, and the sort of intuitive understanding of life's challenges that I have with my fellow underclassniks is just not present in relations with upper crusters.

You guys are awesome!

And also: way, way less shallow than I am, and way less picky too. I'm in a situation where I hope to never have to date again, but I have about a thousand deal-breakers, including a lot I'm not too proud of.

I've always had a hard time dating anyone who wasn't truly amazing at something - past relationships have run the gamut from math-dorks, poetic souls, pot growers, money-makers, jasmine live dancers, couture gown designers, and water polo players.

I'm super shallow as far as looks - perfect teeth and hot bod are two biggies. I once broke off a relationship for having too course of facial stubble (if my chin is rubbed sore after making out for a few minutes, the answer is no).

I'm a voracious reader, politically-minded, and enjoy international travel, and love reptiles. Sharing these interests with my partner is hugely important.

The ability to have deep conversations is a must, but if you can't also laugh a well-thought-out poop joke, what's the point? I need silliness in my life! I can talk for hours about your favorite author, or the symbolism in that film we just watched, or the sheer exhilaration of walking up the side of Wyna Picchu in the mist, but sometimes ask me to pull your finger, ok?

What planet are you living on? What century is it there?

Yes, a white/"brown Muslim" couple would be eligible for home loans, and yes, their children would be welcome in any school in the country.

Actually - it's kind of good that you picked that particular example. One of my favorite teachers in high school was a "brown Muslim woman", who happened to be married to a white man. They had 3 children. They lived in the absolute hinterlands of shitty rural America. I don't recall her EVER getting harassed, by anybody. People generally adored her and her husband and often commented on how adorable their little boys were. She probably had a harder time with the inability to get good babaganoush than she did with the reactions of "society" to her interracial marriage.

I'm not sure what "government checkpoints" you mean, but I have to say that I know quite a few Muslims, as well as quite a few folks of ethnicities commonly confused for "Muslim" (which is actually a religion, not a race, by the way), and none of them get an unusual amount of hassle going through airport security, crossing borders, entering federal buildings, etc.

As far as religious decisions, A) WTF does that have to do with race, and B) isn't that something that every couple has to decide, unless maybe they met at church or something?

Good summation. I now fully see what you mean

I think it is fairly good warning for a fundamental difference in weltanschauung.

I liked Forrest Gump a lot but dated someone who really hated it for whatever reason.

Which is funny, since not only do I really abhor Forrest Gump, but to me it is almost as weltanschauung-defining as your suggestion of Little Miss Sunshine.

I think part of my confusion is that I went to see L.M.S. on a whim, because I needed to make myself scarce for a couple hours (long story) and vaguely remembered seeing a trailer that looked pretty good. I got a chuckle out of it, though it was sweet/cute, and generally felt that my $10 was well spent and it was a worthwhile use of an evening (and also spent a long time pondering the ramifications of the final scene). That is pretty much my entire opinion of the movie, and wasn't aware that there were people out there who felt PASSIONATELY about it. I mean, it's not Godard.

Anyone who elevated that film to the level of Important Classic Cinema however, would probably be annoying, you're right.

As for aesthetic stuff as dealbreaker, I'm not sure whether I really care about that sort of thing. Some things are beyond the pale, or can be useful as dogwhistles about what kind of person I'm dealing with. But at the same time, sometimes it's really fun to introduce someone to new things, and to give things you thought would be lame a chance.

I was very anti-Buffyverse for many years, until a boyfriend sat me down and had me watch Angel. A mention of his obsession with the Whedon ouevre might have been a dealbreaker back then, actually. Now I am a huge dork for the Buffy. Who knew? Similarly, I once drunkenly told a film student I was trying to impress that my favorite director was John Hughes, when I really meant John Waters. He never spoke to me again. His loss, eh?