Applying any standard will limit your dating pool to some degree. Different factors carry different weight to different people. A no illegal drug policy is reasonable…since they’re illegal. A no smoking policy will whittle down your dating pool further, but it’s a fairly common standard these days. A no drinking policy approaches the "Few and Far In-Between Zone.
I would suggest you make a distinction between “Recreational behavior you yourself don’t participate in” and “destructive addictive behavior” which encompasses much more than just the few items you mentioned… pornography, overeating, lethargy, there are few habits that aren’t destructive when taken to the extreme.
It sounds like your primary experience to smoking, drinking and drugs are based on those people who over-indulge in them (teenagers? overindulge? shocking!!) But don’t let that color your perception that all these things are neccessarily intolerable. Given that you’re 19, you may not have had the experience to discover that any relationship involves compromise. Make sure you stand fast on those things that are the most important things in life to you and flex a little on some of the less important stuff. Because he will (or should) be doing the same for you.
I found out a couple weeks ago that my dad used to do pot, when he was dating my mom. My mom told him one time though that if he ever came by to pick her up smelling of pot she’d never date him again. I take he stopped because later they got married. They also divorced after 20 years of marriage; but that was more because my dad is an awful person.
I don’ t think the OP has much to worry about it. Most of us who like to have the occasional joint or night of partying aren’t going to want to date someone who is squeaky clean. It’s not fun to have someone judge you because of your vices. I’m certainly no drug addict, and I would have a problem with someone who tried to convince me I was because I occasionally indulge.
That said, I’m sure you will have no problem. There are probably some squeaky clean women out there who will appreciate that you are completely against it. Heh, you might not find them at college though. Maybe try a church.
Who’s making fun? You delight in starting threads about your purity, so don’t get upset when someone makes a slight joke about it.
What I said is true. Someone who likes to drink or party isn’t going to want to get involved with someone so uptight. It’s your prerogative to be uptight, but you might catch some flack for it.
Don’t sweat it. Some nice girl will be along shortly for you. The point is, don’t look for a squeaky clean girl in a place where the pickings are slim.
Slightly uncalled for. Akin to “I’m sure there are some drug addled boozers who’d be happy to deal with you, check your local back alley.” There’s really no need to get all judgemental. its perfectly possible to live quite happily with or without drinking and drugs. I’ve done both. (well, still no drugs. I used to have an SO who was heavily into them…have sinece discovered, like the OP, its just not in my life.) i think you are reading mor einto the OP than exists. Nowhere did the OP say everyone who had ever imbibed was an addict.
As to the OP, its your life, make your own standards. I would sugesst not making them too hard and fast, just in case it causes trouble later, but don’t feel limited by generally seeking out the cleaner set. And, despite appearances, they do exist even on college campuses.
Though, on preview, I may have missed things. I don’t knwo if the OP has a habit of bemoaning his own purity or not. That could be just as annoying as being vilified by either side.
Well therein lies the problem, right? I mean…the majority of social gatherings are going to be party oriented, so even if I did work up the initiative to attend such an event, there wouldn’t be any girls like the one I’m looking for there.
No, I don’t bemoan my own purity. I don’t preach to people who use drugs. I just don’t fucking feel like doing them. And it doesn’t help when people attack that choice. Not only do I not feel like spending all that money, I just have no desire or interest in ever trying drugs.
And of course I would not exclude someone for experimenting once or twice in the past. But if it’s something of a habit of their’s then it might become a problem.
Well, I wrote a long and insightful post on this and lost it, and I’m not going to write it again. Suffice it to say that I agree with Indygrrl that those of us who safely indulge in alternate states of consciousness from time to time don’t want an SO who will judge us and look down on us. If those are your beliefs (and yes, you do sound a little brainwashed, but you’re young, and hey, I used to be brainwashed too) then stick to them. Leave the stoner girls to those of us who can appreciate them.
I recommend, actually, that you read the facts about some of the drugs you’re writing off as evil/bad/addictive/unsafe/whatever. A great site for real, good, non-biased (or at least less harmfully biased than info from the DEA, NIDA & friends) information on illicit drugs is Erowid, the “Plants and Drugs” section. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there that you haven’t been told about yet, that the DEA would rather you not know. And no, it’s not a site that will try to convince you do drugs if you don’t want to. But a lot of the information there made me realize that what I used to believe was really a lot of hogwash. Here’s an interesting page about marijuana that has some scientifically viable information that’s pretty good to know.
I’ll echo Hey you! in stating that you seem to be equating use and abuse–note, for example, your use of the phrase “people who are always waiting for the moment they get done class so that they can get smashed or go light up a bowl”; it’s entirely possible to get completely drunk from time to time and still be able to determine the appropriate times and places to get drunk or high.
Now, being a teetotaler is a perfectly legitimate choice–but drinking (or smoking, or taking drugs) is also a perfectly legitimate choice, provided it’s done responsibly. And remember that people have been happily drinking and doing drugs for the past <mumble> thousand years, and that the search for ecstasy seems to be wired into the human psyche (and heck, even animals will enthusiastically get hammered of their own volition–I’ve seen deer and birds deliberately seeking out fallen fruit that’s been fermenting)…so your own viewpoint could well be considered the aberrant one. (How’s that for moral relativism, eh?)
The choice not to drink or do drugs hasn’t made you a horrible person–but it has made you a person who can’t relate to a set of experiences that large segments of the population have engaged in over thousands of years, and it’s made you a person who has decided to avoid a set of experiences that are both probably harmless and potentially illuminating or entertaining. For example, I don’t do drugs, but I do drink–and lemme tell ya, a lot of music is waaaaaay better when I’m drunk. As another example, I like to drink wine with certain meals–but when I’m doing this, I explicitly try not to get drunk. The thing is, both good wine and good food taste good–and pairing the right wine with the right food make both of them taste better. The French chef Henri Charpentier (he’s the guy who invented Crepes Suzette) claimed that wine was not a beverage–it was a condiment. In this case, getting drunk would reduce my ability to experience these sensations.
So by being a teetotaler yourself, and wanting a teetotaler for a significant other, you’re just making a lifestyle choice. Nothing wrong or right about it, just different. I would suggest that you not frame it as a moral position, though–or if you do perceive it as a moral position, give some thought about why you think of it that way.
I don’t think that’s entirely the issue, though in at least a couple threads he’s posted about how he wants his first sexual experience to be with a virgin who hasn’t had any other kinds of sexual experience either (oral, etc.) because he couldn’t stand to think of her being intimate with another man - before he ever came into her life, even.
A quick search on threads he started showed a lot of sexual and personal relationship questions - I’d say that instead of any attitude about “purity” that people might be seeing, there’s a good amount of insecurity, maybe inferiority feelings.
Woah! way to get depressed before even trying…and bring in a huge number of issues all at once.
Social events. I have spent five years getting two degrees here at U of Pitt. I attended my first “college party” this last Halloween. College parties, to anyone who wants to do anything social other than get snockered with people they can’t actually talk to, suck. To reiterate: College parties suck. (I do get pleasantly sloshed on occassion. Even then, I prefer a couple of Long Islands lovingly made for me in the home of a friend surrounded by a couple of other good friends and, on rowdy evenings, Dr. Suess books.)
This is not to say that I do not have a social life. Social gatherings are a constant on campus, and ones sponsored by the university won’t serve alcohol, much less allow anything illegal. Join some clubs, make some friends, throw some dinner parties (it can be done, even in the dorms) you’ll be fine.
Girls don’t like to be the subject of a strategy. Insetad of worrying about some spectre pool of women, meet some. Make some friends. When you find some special individual (not a collection of things you think you like and have narrowed down to this individual) then you can start spazzing about her and her drug habits (if any.) Objectifying people and making a huge problem out of an imaginary “if” sequence will keep you from actually doing things. You’ll give up on any of it before you even step out of the door. Go be a person, rather than trying to figure out the best way to be a person, the rest will follow.
It’ll all be okay. Go do stuff. If you were nearby I’d send you to the African Drumming show that my friend is playing in tonight, I went Saturday and it rocked. College is full of crazy fuin stuff like that, and you will do none of it if you don’t loosen up a bit. (I’m not saying go drink, I’m saying take some of the pressure off and go live.)
Ask the bitter old broad who’s been around the block and through the mill and then around another block . . .
You hate cigarettes? You’ll fall in love with a smoker. You hate drugs? You’ll fall in love with a cokehead. Hate bigots? The love of your life will turn out to be in the Klan.
I should clarify that I did not mean to accuse you, Soapbox Monkey, of being a “sober preacher” who rails on and judges people who use drugs. If your only issues are money and that you just don’t want to do drugs yourself, though, I don’t see what the big issue is with having an SO that occasionally uses drugs, as long as they don’t try to force them upon you or get so addicted and hung up on coke or heroin or something that it starts to affect you and your life together. There are plenty of girls who are clean, and I’m sure one of them is waiting for you.
BTW, I noticed that you seem to think of LSD as a particularly dangerous or ‘hard’ drug. LSD is actually one of the safest drugs around, as long as its users don’t have underlying psychoses. The only real long-term danger from LSD is the possibility of bringing out some psychosis that is lying under the surface; but it’s pretty much agreed upon that anyone who has psychosis brought out by LSD was going to have it come out and show itself eventually anyway. Meaning: if you’ve got the makeup to go insane, you’ll go insane whether or not you drop acid. In other words, no long-term negative effects that aren’t there already anyway. (There can be short-term dangers like hurting yourself because you’re so wigged out you see something wrong or whatever…but you can cut out a lot of that by not driving or operating machinery, and by having someone sober with you if you’re not experienced enough with acid to avoid problems.)
I’d have a problem with being around my SO if she spends extended periods of time phased out or in a vegetative state, or any other mental state were it would be difficult to communicate with her.
And me not participating = me being left out, which is something I wouldn’t want if I’m with my girlfriend.
Substitute “joints” and/or “pills” for “Long Islands” and you’ve got my idea of a great night down to a T. The only difference is that you can invite a cop to your little social gathering and I can’t to mine. I’m not addicted to anything, I don’t abuse anything, and I never plan to. I always take safe dosages of safe drugs, and I limit myself (“only trip out on this once a month, this once a week”, etc.) based on the scientific and experiential information out there about what frequency of use of each drug is safe.
