Relationships : Snackers and Diners

I think that when it comes to relationships some people are snackers and some people are diners.

Snackers like to snack on a relationship for six months, maybe a year sometimes, but rarely longer. They take the initial energy boost of the snack but that is really all they are interested in.

Diners like to sit down to a full meal. Their relationships last five years at least (in fact, five years could be disappointingly short), ten years, fifteen years ... diners like to take their time and enjoy everything.

I was thinking about this because of a conversation I overheard the other day. One man was telling another about his marriage, which had ended after at least fifteen years. The other man was a snacker who previously had been talking about his latest relationship and how it compared to the ones before that. The snacker listened to the tale of the long marriage and commented to the diner, ‘I don’t know what you saw in her’.

The reason that this statement caused me to ponder the differences between the two tribes was that it illustrated the divide perfectly. If you have been in a relationship with someone for fifteen years, then you obviously saw something in them. People are not stupid. Although some will hang around in a relationship that has ended out of loyalty, devotion to family, inability to accept what is going on and so on, most people will stay with people they love and leave people who they do not love.

I was not listening for long enough to hear what the snacker really objected to about the unfortunate ex- but I would guess that the relationship had broken up after some soul-searching, discussion and unhappiness. That tends to be the way with diners (though they may then be very happy to discover what they can do after a long-term relationship). Snackers tend to break up because someone stirred the pasta anti-clockwise rather than clockwise and well, that is just too much. That is too much! (storms out)

Diners develop skills to do with perseverance, compromise and learning to live with differences. Snackers bail out of relationships before (or possibly when) those skills are needed. I recently suggested to a snacker that she should ask her best friend and best friend’s husband to sit in separate rooms and write a list of all the times that they have wanted to kill each other. The couple have been married twenty years so I can guess that there is probably a long list to be written but the point is that they still love each other and manage the relationship (I did also say not to let the two of them see each other’s list, though I would also hazard that they could guess the contents of each other’s lists).

This is not a male / female divide by the way, I have known snackers and diners from both sexes, though society’s double standards tend to force differences on how each sex deals with the subject. I suspect that male snackers are more able to drift from one relationship to another and to do more dramatic storming out. I imagine that they are also the ones most likely to sit in the pub boasting about the latest woman who they are sleeping with (sorry, I mean ‘with whom they are sleeping’ for the grammar pedant’s (you always spell pedants as pedant’s, as I hope that you know by now)).

I suspect that female snackers are more likely to be telling their friends about how awful it was that it did not work out with the latest man but after nearly a year, her feelings changed and the incident with the pasta stirring fork was just something that could not be overlooked.

I should also point out that this is not about age either. I was quite surprised to find snackers of both sexes well into their 30s and 40s. I would have thought that pressure to ‘settle down’ might have some effect but it would seem not.

I should stress that snackers are not devotees of casual hook-ups, that is something different entirely. Snackers are absolutely devoted to starting relationships, they just lack the skills or inclination or perhaps devotion to continue relationships.

I am not saying that either way of behaving is ‘correct’ by the way. I could never be a snacker as I am sure that you can tell, but I also see no harm in snackers going through relationships with fellow snackers. Some people would say that compromise is no virtue either. Perhaps it all depends on what you want to compromise and to what end.

However, these are important differences to know. At some point in a relationship you have the conversation about previous relationships. I am sure that you know this – you have to describe a past in which you are the obvious hero, but without sounding bitter about those who have lost their chance to be with you. When you hear these ex- stories, you should be listening to how your new partner dumped their exes.

Remember, that is how they will dump you. I know, I know, you are thinking that that is overly cynical but I can tell you that it is a depressingly familiar pattern (and no being smug, you have a pattern too).

Listen out also for how long each relationship lasted. That tells you something about how someone approaches things and most importantly, whether they snack or dine. Crossing the boundary between the two is fraught with difficulty though I would advise keeping the assessment to yourself. Saying ‘I have to leave you because you snack instead of dine’ may be misinterpreted.