Girl music and boy music

My partner and I share an ITunes account. This is a huge mistake. We first set it up this way because he had a laptop and I didn't - this was way before IPads and tablets etc etc so it was just the easiest way to do it when we both purchased IPods. I thought it would be brilliant for me because my partner has a passion for music and I figured this way I would be able to download loads of cool new tracks by bands I had never heard of who I would absolutely love. Well, part of this is certainly true. I regularly find on my IPod loads of cool new tracks by bands I have never heard of. I try really, really hard to love them. It's not easy. Most of the time it's just not possible. My partner goes in for bloke bands, heavy on the bass guitar, lots of mournful, meaningful lyrics, lots of moody pauses, lots of clashing and banging and jarring. And I go in for disco and girl power. I spend loads of time searching out my favourite 80s tracks, twitching with excitement when I locate Echo Beach or tracks from Thriller. I hoard Annie Lennox and Joan Armatrading. The space where our preferences coincide is laughably narrow. We meet where his mournful, meaningful lyrics are belted out by girls. So we reunite around Adele, Laura Mvula, Florence & The Machine. That's kind of about it. I walk up the road to the station every morning at silly o'clock, stick my headphones on, switch on the IPod and reel from an unexpected bout of clashery from, hmm, who is this, Alt J? And my partner comes in for routine abuse at training courses where participants get hold of his IPod Classic and locate all the cheesy tracks, which are of course mine. Abba. Michael Jackson. Ministry of Sound circa 1992. Nowhere do our genders define my partner and me in our relationship quite so comically as in our musical choices. When I bake, my ideal background is anthemic dance stuff. I quite literally jiggle around the room with a wooden spoon in one hand and a bowl in the other. In fact I revel in it, as it shows the sucess of my months and months of rehabilitative physiotherapy on my brand new foot. My partner's taste in music when he does the washing up and cleaning up after the hurricane I have let loose on the kitchen surfaces, is so clashy and bangy that he listens to it wearing headphones, rendering him incapable of course of any other task - answering the phone, hearing the plaintive cries of one of the kids (I'm straying into my Why Men Won't Multitask thesis. Must stop.) Early in our marriage I made a heroic effort to adopt my partner's musical taste. In fact since we are both passionate about music I thought it was a fundamental requirement for the longevity of the relationship that I do so. My recent decision to define my taste as I wish, whether others think of it as cheesy or not, has been liberating. Frankly it's exhausting trying to develop a taste for genres that fight your personality. Mine finds its solace in soaring female high notes and foot-tapping froth. So where does that leave my partner's ITunes account? Well if I download a track I automatically untick the box next to its title so it does not find its way on to his IPod and his reputation as a cutting edge follower of fashion forward bloke music remains unsullied. His and hers music. Some things are just best kept apart.