Being a pest isn’t as bad as it may seem, unless one has had enough of being bewitched, bothered and/or bewildered. That’s two of the three in this blog post. Is it enough?
Now here is a man that understands the assertion of the word nonsense rather than its power in accusation. Glad to have you aboard.
Nonsense typically requires no facts to be substantiated. It just is, often in the wild, without explanation. To label it is to state the obvious.
Still, I believe Canadians only masquerade with English. Sure, we all use the letter U properly in our spelling but we also all know we speak American.
Nonesense. I am sure it has only been misplaced.
BUT, if true, then it is no wonder they starved! A good sour cream potato recipe without roasted gaelic just doesn’t taste right. So many sumptuous dishes are nothing without that vegetable.
Nonsense. There are plenty of Irish here and the Americans seem to outnumber everyone, including native English speakers. And they're not shy about it.
I believe the blogs are more about personal expression, rather than about interaction. You can interact on the blogs, of course, but the forum is more the designated public house with a community floor. A blog is more a soapbox, with commenting (and editing) privileges.
The blog rules clearly delineate the difference between Forum Threads and Blog Topics in rules 5 & 7
I have decided not to allow comments on any further blog topics I may post – and to hope for interaction with my readers via direct messages here. My blog is about me basically gathering wool on a topic of my interest, and some commentators confuse that with the free-for-all nature of a forum topic. This behaviour defeats the purpose of one’s own blog.
The individual comments made on a Forum topic are indexed to one’s profile – unlike commenting on a blog. No one visiting my profile will be able to find this comment. But, were I commenting on a Forum Topic, my comment would be found easily on my profile page. This makes it useful by signaling out a quick answer to a topic that represents who I am as a person and the causes I keep, rather than writing a fully articulated and well thought out blog piece. I can literally quote another on the Forums and say “agree” or “disagree” in a topic and be done – whereas a blog is (for me) much more time intensive.
I think this feeds into the idea of how difficult online dating is. On the one hand it sounds simple. It’s a simple market for a relationship: I offer Y for what I want X. But there are people on both sides of that equation who hold to no true value. They bounce around like a pinball racks up a score. Some people will undervalue themselves and others will overvalue themselves but no one holds a value. People talk about compromise far too much.
I wonder if the right woman for me has compromised for the sake of a relationship years ago, which has left me alone all these years. Does this imagined person who compromised herself all those years ago have personal fulfillment? Or does she feel something missing in her life? How does her partner feel about her, as a person who is compromised? Is she an accessory or is she really indispensable to him? And how would I feel if I were one of the two persons I am wondering about, to win my life but to lose my soul..?
It takes a lot of energy to remain true to myself online. Being authentic is easy but being open-minded, and being fresh, and being positive…. This takes work as many messages are from people who do not share my sense of personhood, and fall into a routine that may as well illicit a form response from me as a consequence. This is a backhanded criticism of some messages I receive, of course, but it also criticizes how blasé I have become serial dating the last 30+ years. It really is an instance when I look into myself and find I am wanting, sometimes holding a rope, proclaiming an elephant, and being bitten by a snake.
I begged my father to arrange a marriage for me when I was a teenager. I was terribly unpopular and had no hope of meeting anyone even to consider me seriously for anything. Our religious beliefs ostracized me, and my introvert and pondering nature were incompatible with the rash judgments and irresponsibility of youthful peers. I have had the very thoughts you express in your letter, about the Vedic matrimonial tradition, since I was about 12 or 13 in 1980. What surprises me, after living 34 years in a highly individualized society and 15+ years in one that blends a mentality of quasi-Asian collectivism with newfound post-Communist individualism, is how right I was 36 years ago.
And how sad it is to be a Cassandra-figure, powerless to do anything in accord with the knowledge I had. And then I will get a message from a happy fool, which only emphasizes how alone I am. So, as I wrote to you in the flower I sent you, I very much appreciated your letter and the sentiments it carried to me. These have been very much my own sentiments throughout my own search.
Please write again any time. While I have been under the cloud of depression, which has prevented me from giving you the attention you deserve, your letter has been a bright spot to my darkness. Reading your letter makes me feel understood; and even validated.
Kind regards, R. A.
P.S. I cannot send this reply to you because your profile has been deleted. I just hope you read this one day, checking in again on a whim, and see I did reply finally. And know that I wish you the love you deserve and the greatest amount of luck to find it, same as I wish for myself. Drop me a line again any time.
I like what Knenagh wrote so I am just going to repeat it. I have not heard this often enough from someone else – usually getting the “too serious” speech myself in answer to the simple logic. That spiel, and the even more ridiculous “it takes all the romance out of a relationship” fallacy. IMHO, nothing takes the romance out of a romantic relationship better than waking up one day alone and unappreciated while still attached. Nothing cuts deeper than loving an illusion.
I think CS has not changed because the people here are not treated like content, as they are treated at other sites. Here the content, the IT of this place, is set to match the objectives of the customers/users. Aside from whether the people here are friendly or not, the interface is entirely friendly and provides a welcoming experience.
I know, that sounds so 90s…. sadly. Maybe the other sites will come around to the formula CS has, which is what tenner is referring to.
Is “the the most impossible” supposed to signify something especially bad, catfoot?
It’s the times we are in those one-sided relationships when that checklist helps the most. Taking out that paper for review is like having a calmer sibling talk us down from the fantasies we construct for ourselves.
I really do not see the point to marry someone I find unattractive. I know that makes me shallow… to some with less experience. I do not see the point to marry someone I determine to be full of capricious drama. I like a quiet life, and my drama comes from ambition and my journey of personal development. Not from either gossip or peer-pleasing for example. I do not see the reason to marry someone who holds my intellectual ideals in contempt. If they are as half-baked as they may be at times, why would I prefer to marry someone who can only point out the failures and not take joy in helping me be a better man. Wouldn’t I want to marry someone who makes me want to be a better man, rather than the opposite? I do not see the point to marry someone if we lead two separate social lives, surrounded by two diametrically opposite social networks. And, finally, I do not see the point to marry someone whose spiritual direction is radically different from mine. According to my profile, quoting Crowley, I expect someone who is erudite in this area and not so evangelically focused as to be blinkered.
I do understand it will take compromise to be married to such a person. I just do not understand why I would want to make compromise my life’s work; especially when I can get all I need from a handful of people (men and women, i.e. friends) and some of them offering benefits as a side dish.
All of these problems can be avoided by first knowing oneself and by second taking stock in the person who would be right for marriage (before the “potential spouse” is met and working his or her glamour to blind one). Knowing what hills to plant the flag and die on will not only identify where one feels the need to be always right but, consequently, also identifies the little molehills that can seem like hills turned into mountains that are best kept in their original perspective.
The physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual are all independent areas of a person that, taken as a whole, inform the kind of life this person will lead. Knowing what these are in ourselves, and, then, knowing the compatibility we seek, can only lead to the complement we seek in our mate.
Or, we can take the modern wisdom of relationship compromise and live our lives to separately and independently satisfy each compartment of our life. Thusly, one man needs a separate woman to slake each need, and I assume the same is true from the woman’s point of view.
Once again the question is: does an April Fool and his money part easily? I am surprised that charges on adult photos are not given in lengths, or on a sliding scale.
At 34 years of age, when I thought it was way past time to meet someone and have a family, I travelled 7,000 km to plant myself in a country where I thought would make that happen: to meet someone right for me. I came to Poland. So I do not see distance as a problem.
Still, I would not be traveling the world on love junkets either. When I came to this new place, I decided to settle.
So I am on this site now. If there were someone here who proved to be a serious interest to me, then distance would not be the main obstacle. I would expect the person to visit me if only to get a feeling of the culture I have been living in the past 15 years. And I would visit her. But, for me, the discussions would have to have progressed to a serious stage and over the course of time (a long time for some) before travel would occur. No, I would not turn away the right person because of distance.
No problem, Abby1963. These particular studies may be new but their results have been known to me 30 years. I happened across these just this month and, of course, they caught my eye - selective perception what it is.
Also, married men receive more promotions to advance their careers than single men do. My dad knew about this and passed this wisdom along to me. Every so often I see a "new study" confirming it. Since I had always been serious about marriage, and marriage to the right woman, my young eye spotted those new studies every time.
You’re welcome Abby1963 Being taller really does make a difference in terms of being more likely to have a better standard of living, according to a new study published in the British Medical Journal.
And, what’s more, men find women with simple faces more attractive. This study says that results support recent advances in psychology and neuroscience that suggest aesthetic preferences are a perceptual bias favouring efficiently coded stimuli.
This last bit is easy for anyone to know for oneself if one’s honest. When I was 22 years old, and more heavily under the influence of (peak performance guru) Tony Robbins, I sat down at my kitchen table with dozens of headshot photos of women I thought were attractive. Since I was a tall drink of water at 60 kg and 180 cm, someone thin like myself was attractive so I wasn’t so concerned that way. Looking at all the photos I noticed some differences and some similarities and focused on the similarities to find attraction. This was one way I could spontaneously meet a woman and not be tongue tied for a genuine compliment to give because I had already identified my attraction and could easily see articulate it.
I also discovered what attracted me to a face was usually the one feature that a woman did not like, which made my compliment all the more powerful because it was true and unforced. (So much for all the negative talk about ideal/perfect people here.)
On paper it does matter to me. I would prefer a woman my height (180cm) or taller in bare feet. I have noticed I tend to bend to the person I am listening to. It's a habit of mine to give an ear. I would prefer a woman into whose eyes I could directly look without adjusting my chin or someone I could look up to, and hold up my chin. I've had enough experience with women that the simple physical psychology of looking up at a partner would be a plus at this stage.
Now all that is on paper; it's a checkbox theory for a dating website. If the chemistry were strong enough, I would overlook the theory but I would still want to look up to her regardless.
I disagree. When I have decided I am ready to shuffle off this stage, I intend (to continue my climb) to reach the summit of the tallest structure that will bear me, dive headlong into an overstuffed mattress, and dissolve into a cloud of feathers.
What can I say, Catfoot? I was a Republican/Conservative at that time and believed salvation comes from a pure/unregulated market economy. People who didn't have did not merit sympathy and victims were to blame for their own misery bringing us all down in the process! So naturally I didn't want to be a victim.
Tony Robbins (a peak performance guru) says that scarcity is a matter of mindset so, of course, I thought I had lots of everything to spare.
By the time I realised he was wrong I had to buy it all back at a rate that near cost me an arm and a leg.
I suppose I should mention that the site is (obviously) a joke site. I tried to sell them a kidney but they never responded. I was really upset at the time because I had all that freezer space to empty. At that time....
On a serious note, the only liver I enjoy - before I got into selling my kidneys - was breaded calf liver. Never fancied the others. Looks like your getting some recipes, Catfoot.
This is called Daylight Savings Time, Catfoot. It is completely normal behaviour. Even awake, I was still asleep many times until finally the clock returned to normal sometime in the autumn. Shout out to Saskatchewan – home of the intelligent!
You don’t do your kidney shopping over the Internet do you by chance…? It just struck me as funny but I have a black, sometimes ghoulish, sense of humour.
As my co-managing partner used to say – he with the 24 years international experience and me with the gumption of a 24 year old and less know-how,
”When partner agree on everything, it is time to wind down the partnership.”.
and I have to agree. When someone has nothing to add to the life of the other someone, then one of the partners is expendable. I think this works in life as well as in business.
I do not think a perfect person (or the ideal candidate to be more accurate) is the one who has nothing to offer. I think the ideal person is the one with a life (of their own to share) to share. A good debate never hurt a good decision; it takes steel to sharpen steel. But arguments and feuding begin when the two people are working at cross-purposes.
I learnt my trade from my partner. I owe him more than I can ever repay. I would like to say the same about the woman who would want me to father her children. And I believe that person exists, and is the ideal partnership for me. She is not perfect and may not be another man’s cup of tea but she contributes to the things in my life I find important. Those things form my relationship criteria and leave me feeling uncompromised by being committed to another. I also think such a situation contributes to the long-lasting of the relationship.
If memory serves me it’s a revelation in the last book in The Set of 67: The Apocryphal of John. I got the fancy faux-leather Bible free from Time-Life Books when I ordered The Gunfighters series back in the ‘80s. I am sure the quote is in there. Somewhere….
Check under Apocryphal in the Google oracle. I am sure yu'll find it.
aRrAe Blog Comments (120)
RE: To one of the blogs below
Being a pest isn’t as bad as it may seem, unless one has had enough of being bewitched, bothered and/or bewildered. That’s two of the three in this blog post. Is it enough?May be.