So you’re saying that the only way to win the game is to pretend you’re not playing? Sounds logical to me. 
I think people say that in part because they assume that everyone has been in a string of moderately unsatisfying relationships, mostly because this is true of most people. “True love just happens” is something you say when you have spent a lot of time being conflicted over whether “this partner is the one”, not when you’re having trouble getting into relationships at all.
I think I belive in it, though, now. Not “True Love”. “True Love” is fairyland pap. But love does kind of sneak up on you.
I think you probably need to date a few people that you don’t love before that happens though. Otherwise, how do you know?
Can I just say ‘Fuck you, you sanctimonious twat’, for adopting that tone? No? Too bad.
Wow.
I think I may have new insight into the dating/romance problems of at least one person posting to this thread.
If I’m not looking, I find nothing. If I’m looking, I find nothing.
Damn fine system, that.
I thought SWMBO was Clothahump’s lady? 
In my darker and more desperate moments, I fear that we only get a certain number of chances for love, and if we mess them up, we don’t get any more. And I’ve messed all mine up.
Most days, however, I’m in a better frame of mind.
I can say, however, that the times I have met someone I got along with were all when we were working together with a common interest: at art school, at architecture school, at electronics school, when helping to build a house.
I have NOT found mutual interest with anyone through a “date”, though even I’ve had a couple of dozen dates in my life.
The lesson here seems to be, not “go back to school”, or even “meeting people is a lot easier if you are in your twenties”, but “be social”.
You need to have more than just a few acquaintances passing through your vicinity on a regular basis. Not necessarily “friends” that you go all over the place with, but acquaintances you get together with every now and then. You need to mix.
From this pool of acquaintances friends will appear. The more acquaintances, the more friends, and the greater chance of meeting someone who becomes more than a friend.
I wish I knew this when I was in my twenties…
It’s the nickname of any number of my friend’s wives. We’re a whipped bunch.
Oh, and tagos?
I was almost never hit on when I was single and almost never when married. And when I WAS hit on it generally was by people I wouldn’t (or shouldn’t have) dated.
In my experience “hitting it off” has a way better chance of success than “hit on.” And hitting it off is what "just happens. It happens when you meet someone in 3rd grade and they are still a great friend 30 years later and when you start talking to the cute redhead and discover she like the same music you do. And just because you hit it off with someone doesn’t mean the chemistry is there for romance - that’s another uncontrollable.
Only when a man can be referred to as “HWMBO,” will there be true equality! Although I would pronounce that as “himbo,” which is a totally different guy altogether.
I don’t understand why, if you love her so much, she is called “She who must be obeyed”. Perhaps I’m just an old stick-in-the-mud (which I don’t believe I am!) but I don’t find it funny.
“She who must be obeyed” does indeed remind me of whipped husbands who cower in fear everytime she raises her voice.
I think in many cases, the “I must obey her” is how males tell each other that they’d rather be with their wife. Kind of like how insulting someone is how you show your love for them, and watching a game with someone is a conversation.
“Well, I’d love to pound Miller Lite until god-knows when and eat a lukewarm burrito with cigar ash in it, and maybe get into a clumsy fistfight at a strip club, really I would, but, you know, the wife. She’s a slave driver! Ok, bye.”
I’m not married, so I never use this tactic. We’ll see.
Actually, the version going through my head right now is the one sung by one of the characters in “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?” (I think it was Wing Fat).
And in other self-inflicted wounds, I have this song going through my head (10 points if anyone can correctly identify the source):
"Oh. Love! (I am love!)
You are love! (I am love!)
Better far than a metaphor
Can ever, ever be.
Love! (I am love!)
You are love! (I am love!)
My mystery (His mystery)
Of love…
Love…
Love…!"
Oh, and don’t give up, tdn.
The love of your life may be just around the corner. Wearing leather, no doubt, and carrying a cattle prod. :dubious:
Does… not… compute…
You seem to be suggesting that this wouldn’t be the perfect night out! Well, except for the strip club fist fight. Never ever fight in a strip club. Nothing good can come from it, whether it is the ass kicking from the doorman, or the ensuing ass kicking from the police.
Since getting divorced, I will admit my excuses have changed. Now it is “I gotta work” rather than “I gotta go home to the wife.” Not that my friends ever believed the latter excuse anyway. I guess my marital status is pretty much explained by that.
Mostly it’s white guys you hear making this complaint.
I’ve also noticed that white guys generally don’t like to dance.
Is there a connection? Perhaps. Does it apply to tdn? That I do not assume. He may well come back with my observation in quote tags and assert that he goes through four pairs of dancing pumps a month.
Unless I misread your post, for 7 shows over the last 14 years, you were involved with someone. Being involved with someone is not “nothing”.
Well, we are talking about people who have the power to evict a guy from his house at whim, take 50% of his wealth away regardless of who earned it, and deny him access to his childred or poison their attitudes against him in between visits, but that’s another thread altogether.
The conventional answer to this question it that the average guy has been brought up to stuff his feelings down until he himself is alienated from them, so that by the time he’s in a relationship his only ways of expressing his emotions are through anger (never appropriate) and sex (less appropriate as time pases and children accumulate), so his only method of showing his wife he lover her is to become hen-pecked. To some women the reciprocating role comes naturally, but to many it’s a pain in the ass. However, because of how they’re raised, they don’t know how to find and alternate course, and we find ourselves back at my first paragraph.
I agree with the folks here who have said that you’re being told, in a nice way, that nobody ever gets what they really want by telegraphing desperation.
Turn it around–does an employer at a worthwhile job ever respect and seriously consider an applicant who just oozes from every pore, pleeeaze hire me, I need this job so baaaad. Likewise, does an investor strike it rich suddenly because he needs the money?
Funnily enough, I have had jobs basically just walk in the door–because I was doing well in my current job, was building a reputation, and getting noticed. I haven’t become a successful investor in my own right yet, but I do know of folks who really do make money almost incidentally, as they devote time to life pursuits that they really love.
True love might not come in your particular case, but I’d say as a general rule what those people are telling you does have a grain of truth to it–a bit bass-ackwards, but an accurate enough observation of human nature, and how we only really get what we want after we stop striving so desperately.
See what I mean?
I always used it as a reference to Rumpole, because we both enjoyed the show and books. It was never intended to be anything more than that.