Dealbreaker: Doesn’t Believe In Global Warming

I should have known the relationship was doomed the moment he brought up his all-consuming hobby: race car driving.

I spent an entire summer in the sticks of Ohio and Pennsylvania, feeling like an idiot as my then-boyfriend Sam, his dad, and a friend worked on the car, which was black and blue and with a giant wing on top. It looked like an alien bug on wheels. The first time I came to a race, his mom told me to dress casually, but my outfit (jeans, a striped t-shirt, red flats, and big sunglasses) might as well have been a ball gown compared to the giant silk-screened shirts everyone else was sporting. Sitting in a lawn chair in the driver pit, I folded the cover of the New York Times magazine to hide the abortion cover story and offered everyone soy nuts. From the stands, I watched cars flame out, crash into each other, and kick up dirt. I prayed for one of the cars to mow me over and texted all my friends, “One of these things is not like the other….”

But more than a year after we split, I had a bad case of dumper’s remorse. Misty, water-color memories of whirlwind trips to London with Sam, getting love letters in the mail and flowers whenever I complained of the sniffles haunted me. I resigned a pair of Ferragamo ballet flats he gave me to the back of the closet because I couldn’t bear to look at them.

Then came Facebook.

Sam started writing on my Facebook wall and sent me flirty messages packed with our inside jokes. Soon, we were messaging every other day. It was like old times, except, you know, without the sex.

But one day, I logged on and saw that he had weighed in on a virtual debate and assumed this position: Global warming isn’t “scientifically proven.” WHAT??? Are you telling me that the world is flat, too? (I’m from California and have been recycling and saving dolphins since I was in the womb.) It all came rushing back to me like a horrible movie montage: The arguments we had about hybrid cars (he contended that it didn’t make a damn difference, since car companies still pollute in other ways; I thought he was just defensive about his decidedly not-green racecar), me calling him a closeted Republican, him ribbing Al Gore, and his skepticism about the merits of organic food.

And poof! Just like that, my desire for him zoomed off into the sunset. We’re still in touch, but we’re not going to get touchy-feely again.