Before you read any further, I feel compelled to disclose that this is NOT a sponsored post or a review for snacks. I’m not endorsing any particular snacks at all but I did make a recent discovery about them.
They just might be the key to a successful marriage.
Keep reading. I have a lot of non-empirical evidence to prove my point.
It started a few Saturdays ago when I was at book club (side note: we read Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A Novel by Maria Semple and I absolutely adored it). Each month, one of the fabulous ladies in my neighborhood picks the selection for the month and then hosts book club on a Saturday night. They provide the snacks and drinks (because we all know book club is just a ruse for women to get together and drink wine) and after an hour or so of chit chat, we actually sit and discuss the book.
But before we got into the heart of the book discussion, we talked about something more important, namely, the snacks. Some women were salivating over the s’mores dip served with graham crackers whereas others of us were hovering over the potato chips and snarfing hummus. I casually mentioned an observation I had started to make about husbands and wives and various other configurations of committed relationships.
It goes something like this.
He likes the sweet stuff. She likes the salty stuff.
OR
She likes the sweet stuff and he’s all about the salty.
But it’s always the opposite. I asked every woman at book club and in my informal poll, each partner had a definite preference for one over the other. Now, it doesn’t mean you don’t like sweet or salty. It just means that if you were at a party and saw a bowl of M&Ms and a bowl of pretzels, you know exactly which one you would hit first. And don’t ask me about the complications of the new M&M Pretzels. My brain can’t handle that.
It was a fun little observation that maybe there’s something to this “opposites attract” theory we’ve heard about for years. Or at least when it comes to communal snacking. But I needed more evidence. HARD evidence. So I took the question to Facebook and Twitter. And then it got a little freaky.
And on it went. Between Facebook and Twitter, I found that in about 30 couples there was a strong representation of relationships where one partner preferred salty over sweet. In fact, out of those 30 couples, only about 3 people said that they didn’t follow suit in some way. And here’s what I have to say to those 3 people. I’m sorry if it doesn’t work out.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. My research is flawed. For example:
- One person was responding for each couple and perhaps they were responding incorrectly. Then again, mostly women answered and we usually know what our spouses opinions are. Or should be.
- Some people didn’t really understand the question. Of course you can like both. I like both. But do you choose the pretzels or M&Ms first? You have to decide.
- There’s no indication that these couples are together happily. I simply made that assumption otherwise I would have expected to see something like, “Me: sweet. Him: salty, that inconsiderate bastard.”
- There’s no control group. Assuming these are representative of happy couples, we would need to then look at unhappy couples, namely those that are no longer together, to find out if the snacking preference is what ultimately led to the relationship’s downfall.
- This is a very small sampling. The number of married couples in the United States is estimated to be 2,096,000. My 30 or so couples represent a percentage of that number that is so small I didn’t even understand the answer the calculator gave me (1.4312977e-05 in case you were wondering). Aha! BUT 27 out of 30 couples is NINETY PERCENT. Yeah, I’m onto something.
In conclusion, I’d like to simply state that there is an observation that in relationships one person appears to prefer salty snacks and one prefers sweet. In my marriage, he’s the sweet and I’m the salty. I like to think it balances things out. I don’t get mad if he eats the last cookie and he doesn’t get mad at me for eating the last of the chips (as long as there’s still one cookie left). My husband even suggested I apply for a research grant to study this since the government throws money at frivolous projects anyway. If this blog post can serve as my grant proposal, I’m in.
Now, help me continue the research by telling me the snack situation in your marriage.Â
13 comments
I’m sweet and he’s salty. I don’t get sitting down and eating an entire bag of chips. I would die of salt overload. But, he’d probably think anyone who could eat a whole bag of chocolates was crazy too, so I don’t do that in front of him. 😉
Yup us too. I hide the bags of Oreo’s and Oreo ice cream for myself because when there aren’t salty things in the house he goes after the sweets. But sitting down and eating a whole bag of chips at once blows my mind. I have to buy those individual chip bags or he starts blaming me for making him fat by bringing hone chips.
Yup. My husband asked me last week to not buy any more chips for him.
Since then he has eaten 3 bags of my very expensive, no allergen black bean chips.
Honey, if you’re going to sit down and eat a bag of chips, please eat the cheaper corn chips we can get at any grocery store and don’t have to special order!!!!!
True story: I’ve started buying myself those 100 calorie snack bags. I know it’s more expensive but it’s hard to think about portion control with a big bag of delicious chips!
I think my body needs an occasional salt overload. But if I eat too many sweet? My mouth feels yucky. I think it’s genetic or something.
You crack me up 🙂
Totally agree, Fadra! I’m the sweet, Chris is the salty — and my parents are another proof point!
See? What does it all mean? I think it means you and Chris are a good match 🙂
I’m typically salty and he goes for sweets. As for what I grab first at a party though, has to do entirely with what I ate last. I have to have the opposite of what I just had first .So.
I think I’m more of a S-S-S-SW-S-SW-S-S-SW. I need more salt that sweet and I need to end on the sweet. Guess I’ll bring the chips for Type-A!
My great grandma used to have a similar theory with the white and dark meat of the chicken. She said her marriage worked because she liked white and he dark. Now in my marriage it works because he likes white and I like dark. So far it holds water. lol
That would certainly be a very economical theory! But I like white and so does my husband. And when we buy a rotisserie chicken, I feel bad because most of the dark meat goes to the dogs. They, of course, aren’t nearly as picky 😉
I’m sweet and he’s salty. But personality-wise it’s the other way around. 😉