I wasn’t intending to watch the Michael Jackson Memorial program at the Staples Center today. I admit I had judgments about the whole thing. But I’m so glad I turned it on this morning while I was making breakfast because I would have missed something very special. It truly was a celebration of an amazingly talented and loving man. And it feels like the judgments we’ve had about how strange he became was wiped clean during those two hours.

The point I want to make, however, is something else. In the middle of the program my ex-fiance’ (I call him MDF – My Dear Friend) phoned me on his way to an appointment, as he often does. I was sharing with him what I was watching: the impact Michael has had on the world, how so many of us can track our lives by his music, his great dancing, choreography and song writing. And in the midst of my enthusiastic telling of this piece of history – actually, I just now realize, a piece of my personal history – I got to the core of why I needed to break off our engagement and shift our relationship to being friends.

When you hear of a couple who is ten years or more different in age, it seems the conversation always comes around to the fact that relating well must include growing up with the same music. That without this piece of shared history, it just seems unnatural. Well, MDF is only 3 years older than me. He had always dated younger women since his divorce and found it so refreshing that we could talk about Hopalong Cassidy, for instance, and relate to how important he was in our growing up years.

As I was sharing different aspects of what Michael Jackson gave us through the last 40 years, MDF was unaware of most of what I was telling him. He did not know Michael developed the Moon Walk and would not be able to give you the title of even one of his songs.

In that moment, I had a visceral knowing within me why we are not a good match. He’s an academic and takes life very seriously, very disciplined. I play and celebrate life with spontaneous gusto. Call me to go to dinner and I’ll whip myself together in 15 minutes if I have to. This difference creates a chasm that can not be bridged, at least not for me. He’s a good, extremely loving, generous man… but better suited to someone who does not have such wide chasms between them. No, it’s not the music, the music was just the trigger for the ah-ha moment of total clarity that I need someone who is more spontaneous, playful and passionate about the little things that make life such a pleasure.

So when you’re considering someone as a potential partner, be sure the things that bring “life to your life” are there. If you don’t share those things, it might be difficult to create that much-needed bridge.