“Sufficient money” can mean everything from “Fifty bucks to run to the airport? Sure!” to “Fifty bucks to run to the grocery store. Um…that’s crazy!”
I wouldn’t want to partner up with someone who thinks spending fifty bucks of our money to get to the grocery store is responsible. Especially if that person has the capacity to learn how to drive, but refuses to.
There are a TON of places in this country where there is no cab service. Or you have to wait an hour to get one, and then pay for the convenience. If there’s going to be child-rearing involved with this person, then this would be completely unacceptable to me. So yes, there would have to be some strategic thinking involved with finding a place to live.
Compared to most people, I don’t drive a whole lot. I live close enough to work so I can walk, and my default mode of transportion when I run errands is my feet. However, I do enjoy being able to take a road trip now and then, like when I want to visit family who live hundreds of miles away or when I catch a wild hair to see something new. It’s one thing to do all the driving when I don’t have any choice. But it really is nice when someone offers to take the wheel when I’m tired, or if heaven forbid, I should get sick from eating bad roadstand food.
Your daughters will internalize your conflicting views on women, and will end up with a guy like you. Your disdain for women oozes through most of your posts.
You cannot think of women as interchangeable disposable cum buckets, (although I don’t think you are getting any very often) and not have that negatively affect your daughters perceptions of their own role as future women.
If you want fully functioning adult women, who expect and actually are treated well in relationships, you have to treat all the women in your life with respect.
This is you modeling what a good guy looks like, so they know one when they see one.
And I look at how much my husband pays for his car, and I think that’s nuts. Fifty dollars to fill up the tank? Again? A thousand dollar repair? And that kind of expense can just pop up any time, with nothing you can really do about it but pay up so you can get to work, because you’ve chosen to make yourself car dependent?
And then car payments, insurance, registration, smog checks, oil changes…a cab ride a day wouldn’t even cover the rent on a parking spot in my last place.
We calculate pay-per-use as “words” than fixed and occasional costs in our head, but money is still money.
I think you are the one living in a bubble- you have enough income for unlimited cab rides and can get a cab in 5-15 minutes. That doesn’t mean everyone has the money nor does it mean that everyone lives in a place where they can get a cab that quickly. And if you don’t drive, you are going to have to either live where you can get to work without driving or depend on a partner to drive you or depend on that partner to financially support you. Not everyone is as wealthy as you - someone who makes $31,000/yr is not going to be able to afford to travel by cab to a job 20 miles away. And whether that person is restricted in where they can live, or depends on the partner to drive them or depends on the partner to support them or even if they can afford all those cab rides- all of those have an effect on the partner. Because if my husband is spending $200 a week on cabs to and from a job that’s 20 miles away (and that’s a low estimate - I checked and an actual taxi from my home to a former job 20 miles away would be more like $500 a week ), it’s going to affect our joint finances.
That IS crazy because close to nobody lives a $50 ride away from a grocery store. 80% of Americans live within 2.2 miles to the nearest large grocery store (cite). Even in American Indian Tribal areas, 80% live within 12.8 miles to the nearest grocery store. And average income scales inversely with distance to nearest grocery store, so when they are further you pay less per unit time for your driver.
Yeah immediately “our money”-ing the partner’s money is very attractive to potential suitors.
Have you heard of Uber? Craigslist? Care.com? Task rabbit? Sittercity? Retirees, college students, unemployed people and stay at home parents who need extra income?
even sven, you can’t seriously be arguing that there is no point where a person who pays $50 to run the grocery store every week pays more for transportation costs than a person who drives their own car. Because you know that would be an insane thing to argue, right?
If you can’t see the difference money-wise, surely you can see how the person who drives is saving more time, at least. Time also equates to money, for folks with busy enough lives.
I consider accessibility to the grocery store an important feature whenever I scope out a new residence, because as I said earlier I prefer walking when I run errands. From my experience, rents are always higher the closer you get to a supermarket, especially the kind of supermarkets where you won’t get ptomaine poisoning just from walking through the doors. If you are unable to drive, living within walking distance of a grocery store is no longer a luxury. It’s a near necessity. But not everyone wants to live within walking distance of a grocery store, and not everyone wants to be restricted to areas within walking distance of a grocery store. If your partner is one of these people, then someone’s going to have to compromise.
If you have “sufficient money” to cover cab fare, that’s great. I guess live wherever you want to. But I’m guessing there is cabfare that even you and BrightSunshine would find excessive, right? You have “sufficient money” for your current circumstances and needs. But these things can change.
There is a difference between saying that one solution is not cost effective for a particular person, than saying that that solution does not exist for anyone. I never said that everyone can make it work without driving, simply that not everyone would be living a life of misery or be a burdensome leech without driving.
I suppose it depends on the definition of “not 100% independent”.
I have my own health issues, but live by myself and manage things on my own. Have a great job. I only need “help” when I get the Botox-for-migraine injections (I need a driver since my doc does the injections with patients under sedation). If I have an extended asthma flare-up, I have the heavy groceries delivered and/or someone come clean the house for me.
Huh? Weird thread drift about driving. I married a guy who didn’t drive. Then we moved to the burbs, where his grad school was, and lo and behold, he learned to drive. And hey, if you have enough income to always pay a driver, that works, to.
Back to the topic: no one is perfect, but I’d have a hard time being attracted to someone who didn’t have a lot of abilities. I’m not sure exactly which disabilities I’d be okay with. I don’t think I could live with someone who didn’t understand basic math, though.
I don’t know why you have to be sarcastic here. Married people pooling their resources together isn’t exactly unheard of.
It’s great that there are all these resources now that enable transport. But not everyone wants their partner to always be dependent on others to get from point A to point B, especially if there are children involved. Maybe people are just being old-fashioned and car-centric, but I can still understand this point of view. I don’t understand why it’s so unfathomable to you.
And I don’t recall anyone saying that everyone who doesn’t drive would be living a life of misery or be a burdensome leech- just that it was likely that the inability or unwillingness to drive would affect the partner. Even if in no other way than being restricted to living in places where public transportation and cabs are readily available.
You are reading me wrong but that’s OK because lots of people that don’t know me personally make the same assumptions. I don’t think of women as “interchangeable cum buckets” because I don’t think that way at all and the hundreds of women that consider me a friend, family member or coworker would laugh at that suggestion. Sex doesn’t play into it much at all because I won’t do it until I know and trust someone very well.
What I was referring to was the fact is that many women are players themselves in their own way and it usually involves something that I don’t consider equitable. I can and do get more offers for dates than I can handle but I am looking more for activity partners with a personal connection more than anything and I am the one that pays for that.
If I just wanted sex, I would just get a high-end escort or visit one of the more upscale strip clubs in Providence, RI where everything goes but that has never been my thing. It would be more cost effective than trying to do it the traditional courtship way. I know what I am looking for exists because I had it once with a person I worked with. It was instant attraction and we became best friends that did everything except sleep together for the next two years until the whole thing blew up because we were both married and she had to quit and agree to never speak to me again to save her marriage. However, it was all innocent in terms of fact and you can’t be prosecuted or persecuted just for being close friends with someone.
If I could find the same thing with someone that is actually single, that might work but I do have some serious demands that I are both unconventional and I am not willing to bend on so I am not holding out much hope that will happen in the next few years before I move to Costa Rica. That is not a problem though. I consider myself one of the luckiest people in world and being single is awesome in general for someone in my position. Every morning is like Christmas morning when I was 4 years old because I can do whatever I want and can’t even get in trouble for it. I look at my married friends tied to their virtual shackles with pity because I was once conscripted to the same hopeless cause myself before defection led me to freedom. I would be the dumbest person in the world if I sold myself right back into slavery just because people said that is what you have to do.
What if your spouse suffered an accident or illness the made them dependent? How much of your happiness would you be willing to sacrifice as a caregiver?
I am happily divorced even though I still like my ex-wife just fine and love her family that still treats me as one of their own. We co-parent together and only live a few minutes apart. However, there is no point to us being married anymore. We already had kids which is the major point of marriage and she is a career girl that loves to travel the globe rather show up at home on any reasonable schedule. We are both good parents and can afford separate homes so there is no reason not to. I learned to disregard the conventional script when it doesn’t apply and it didn’t in our case. I originally wanted to be a TV family until I found out that isn’t really possible especially in our case so we had to change the plan. It isn’t pleasant in the beginning but it works amazingly well once you have the new routine down.
That is a nonsensical question in my mind. The answer is of course not. Childbearing was and is the point. There is no sense in me getting married again once that is done and I believe it is true for most people in similar circumstances. It is especially true for me because there are financial complications that would require a prenuptial agreement the size of a phone book to even start the process and there would be many lawyers involved. There is nothing less romantic than that.
I view marriage as a voluntary legal contract and not a romantic one. You can love, share each others company and even cohabitate without getting the state involved preemptively in the likely event of your eventual separation. There is no good that could come from that from my side.
This thread got me thinking (odd driving tangent, aside) about the dating lives of differently abled folk, especially in my sub community of gay men. We’ve read warm and fuzzy stores about Down’s Syndrome people marrying, but I’m certain there must be gay DS people around…what do they do?
Well, I have a 2014 model, and I drive my gf to and from the airport in it, as well as to and from my home to all the best restaurants. If she got to know where she was, she could drive, too.
What if it is someone who came back into your life, who was 100% independent before, but has become codependent for whatever reason. Say, someone who you had been involved with before but they broke up with you, or you had strong feelings for them but they rejected you.
I imagine most people wouldn’t want to get involved with that situation, but I’m curious about how you’d handle it.
