My little “there is someone out there for everyone rant.
My friend Andrea and I where recently playing pool and talking about her relationship and how there “is someone out there for everyone”. I don’t want to knock her optimistic outlook however I am beginning to think that it is impossible to find a “real” relationship anymore. It is not as if I am bad looking, not working, and have no goals for myself. Shit I am about as kindhearted as one can get, a man of reasonable intelligence, steadily employed, and pride myself on being open minded and tolerant. Seriously, how on earth is one supposed to find a woman to date when one is thirty-four doesn’t drink and therefore hates bars and thinks that looking for a relationship at work is just about one of the worst things that on can do?
Hell, I am not that picky. All I want is someone near my age that has also lived through addiction and a loveless marriage. If she happened to live through a loveless marriage with a closeted homosexual even better, after all it is the little things that help you relate right? Add in a dash of first or second hand experience of just how horrible stupid and unbelievable a war can be and she would be even better. If all of this made her believe that tolerance and communication should be valued and that perhaps we humans should try a lot harder to get along she would be perfect.
OK if she liked camping, tandem cooking, and a good book, was fun to be with, and didn’t run away at this being my story, she would be an exact match.
Sadly, I have found that this doesn’t work. As your standards go down, you wind up with fucked up people who are incapable of having a relationship. Much better to develop a hopeless love for someone far above you. When it doesn’t work out you can go, “Well, I never really expected it to work.”
It feels much better to get shit on by someone really cool than by some loser.
I wouldn’t know. My suggestion was entirely in jest, I haven’t the slightest pretense of understanding the mating habits of humanoid apes. There are any number of people I like who I don’t trust, and people I trust who I don’t like. Go figure. Better still, don’t.
I am back from reading a book and making lunch and I thought that I would answer some of these posts.
Guinastsia
Good advice. I go do stuff all the time but I am a little shy. I could work on meeting new people.
Elucidator
Good jest. It made me chuckle.
Khadaji
Life is good but I do get tired of friends that are in love telling me this.
Lorinada
I was trying to be sarcastic; however, there is a lot of truth to the statement. I am picky but not that picky. I really just want the real thing, honest to goodness real love. All of this makes me a romantic dork but I like that about me.
I am also tired of people saying this. Everytime someone says that to me I tell them that they are full of shit.
You see, if it were true that there is someone for everyone, nobody would ever die alone. Everyone would find that one special person in their life. The reality is that not everyone does. I would be willing to bet that historically more people do not find the one than people who do find the one. Also, by the one I mean the person that you truly feel you love, not someone that you spend time with or marry just so that you are not alone.
Goddamn, does no one here read Terry Pratchett? Of course there’s the perfect someone for everyone. There’s just no guarantee that they’ll be born in the same century/universe/species as you.
Seriously, “looking for the one” has probably ruined more attempts at dating than bad breath and poor fashion sense combined. “Looking for the one.” Jesus Christ, who the fuck are you, Lawrence Fishburne? Come now. Relationships are built on compromise. You put up with their annoying crap and they put up with yours, because past all that surface noise is another human being that you genuinely enjoy spending time with and with whom you might even want to exchange bodily fluids.
I know it sounds crude and flippant, but really, there’s so much drama anymore about “finding the one.” Forget what movies and tv keep trying to sell you. There is no such thing as love at first sight. Attraction, maybe, but that’s hardly the same thing. You have to work at it, make sacrifices, accept that nothing is perfect. I really believe that if people would ust calm down and take things as they come without constantly comparing their every experience with some impossible ideal they’ve created in their heads, life would go a lot more smoothly for all of us.
Can I suggest you try a marriage bureau? Many of the people who sign on to those (particularly the women - people I interviewed who ran the bureaus say they get a lot of married men signing up and lying about their single status) are genuinely, seriously interested in longer term and permanent relationships. They have also committed time, money and effort into joining.
It doesn’t of course mean everyone is just out for marriage, but it could provide more quality hits than the shag-around crowd that often saturate the personal ads.
I would never look at joining a marriage or dating bureau as a cop out. Today’s lifestyles really prevent people from having the marriage choices they used to. We work longer hours, we are more cut off from our families. Traditionally, people would often be introduced by family, eg, or through friends. Now we leave our backgrounds behind, we might work in jobs of predominantly one gender, or end up in an office where everyone is married already - how the hell are modern people to meet one another?
Ask any happy couple how they got together - there is usually so much luck, so much fluke involved, it seems to big a risk just to hope that fluke will happen to you. You may never bump into Ms or Mr Right at the bus stop, or the library. Sometimes you have to make your own luck, encourage it a little.
It’s all about networking. Some people do their networking in bars, some do it at the health club or at work or in cooking classes. You have to meet people, talk to people, get to know people. Don’t do it in an “I’m looking for someone to marry me and live happily ever after” mindset. Instead, just get to know people. Go out with your friends and ask them to bring along people you haven’t met before. Make more friends. Go to a class or a workshop or whatever.
It’s like looking for a job. You don’t meet someone with the expectation that they’ll give you a job. You meet many people with the realization that they’re all in the same boat and opportunities can arise.
I’d almost suggest you go to a seminar on business networking. Important skills for business and for pleasure.
Steven, you’re not the only one. My problem is that I’m buried in the back county where the demographics for potential mates are about as dismal as they get. Oh, I meet single guys all the time. Trouble is they’re either under 18, over 65, or speak only Spanish.
I love my job. I love my home. I love everything about where I am.
Except the lack of men.
I may end up moving, just so I can go out on a date.
