Damn you people for making me jealous and wistful.
Look, I think we can all agree your odds of finding that are much better than Shag’s.
This is the thread I first really discovered the blackness of Shag’s mind. Although reading about his high school circle jerk is something that’s squicked me out for years. Dude’s just all-around an unappealing git.
Much, much better. And if I can find it, anyone can. Except Shags.
Even Shags. But in order to find it you have to want it.
Which isn’t to blame anyone who wants true love but doesn’t have it. But rather to say if you have a clear idea of what you want in a relationship, you’re more likely to find it.
That’s the idea that I was wrestling with before I gave up trying to do an immediate reply. I assess my chances of finding love and companionship to be a hard zero - absolutely no chance at all. But at least if I somehow did find it, I wouldn’t deliberately sabotage it! As Shag has made it eminently clear he would. He has no interested whatsoever in a worthwhile relationship. He wants nothing more than eye candy and a sex doll. (Gender of sex doll unclear.)
Believe me, if I had a chance, anyone does. My mother had a string of abysmal, often abusive relationships, including five marriages. When I met my husband I was mad as a hatter, severely depressed and anxious, and had more baggage than you’d think a single man could carry. Likewise his own parents had the marriage from hell, and somehow we cobbled together something positive and safe and enduring. I think we just really didn’t want to repeat our parents’ mistakes.
But it still felt ridiculously surreal to me and sometimes still does. I wasn’t exactly considered a bombshell, it’s not like I had men lined up for the chance to date me or anything. But we connected on a human level and it changed everything. He’s the one big miracle of my life.
I’m a hopeless romantic. Never give up.
It’s not really worth debating, but the short version is that I quite literally don’t meet new people ever.
(Not that (allegedly) meeting people is helping Shagnasty, but I presume that for non-nasty people the presence of another person is a necessary first step.)
I meet new people (not nearly as much as I did when I was younger mind you), but the problem is that the older you get the higher the % of people who are off the market. Plus, the older you get the higher the odds that the people still on the market (men and women) are there for a reason. After a while the odds don’t look good and you just quit trying for long stretches of time.
For me, its important that a woman have a college education (for various reasons). But the divorce rate for college educated women is less than half the rate for less educated women (its about 15%, vs 40% for high school educated women). So the college educated women who get married tend to stay married.
Chalk this one up to carelessness on my part.
It’s also worth noting, the older you get the more set in yours ways you get, AND the more (emotional) baggage you get. Making it all that more difficult when you do meet someone.
That’s funny, I feel like I had more emotional baggage at age 18 than I do now. Not saying it’s easy by any means. I don’t actually know. I wasn’t looking for a forever friend at age 18, I just got lucky. The heavens parted and he was dumped into my lap, pretty much. I hold out hope for everyone.
My Daddy was a confirmed bachelor for many years, after my Mom died. And was happy in it. He had friends and club members, dance partners, and church. Plus 8 kids and many grandkids. He always said he wouldn’t have time for a wife. So you don’t have to be married in the second part of your life to be happy. Surround yourself with people and get out there. I do think people who have never married or had a SO have a harder time, though.
I remembered Shag’s comments about hosebeasts (you can see my posts in that thread) when his most recent vomitus spewed forth, but I’ve just been too busy with a term paper to address it. A few days ago, though, my love of 15 years and I were in the grocery store figuring out what we’ll have for Thanksgiving and laughing about what minor disasters would occur because they always do. Hilarity regaling disasters past ensued right there in the produce section. Shag will never know the joy of those everyday moments.
I almost put something about hosebeasts in my sig a few days ago, but I’ll just sign this,
Helena Hosebeast 
One thing I love about my relationship is we’re so chill about stuff like that. Like one of our fondest memories is when we were moving to New Jersey (no, not that part) from Michigan and the moving truck we were driving broke down at the Pennsylvania border. As we’re sitting there, chatting and waiting for the tow truck driver, Bon Jovi came on the radio.
‘‘Ooooooohh we’re halfway there…’’
Naturally, they couldn’t fix the truck and we had to sleep overnight in a hotel and then move all of our stuff into a new truck the next day. Awesome.
But it was like, funny horrible. Not horrible, horrible. Because we were together. It was like part of the adventure. Of course, shit is going to go wrong. That’s not even our worst moving story. But ‘‘Livin’ on a Prayer’’ is now one of our songs.
I think Shagnasty tends to say a lot of things that people in the real world commonly think. I think there is certain rough honesty of emotion in much of what he says. Some of his stories seem a tad embellished. I haven’t really read all of the comments in the thread. Sometimes I feel like I’m a bad person. I’d like to live on a farm, far away from all this madness . . .
This madness? far, far away in a distant star system. I can only hope what he says isn’t true. I would like to believe the world is all sunshine and rainbows. But we know it ain’t. Fight ignorance where you can folks, it’s really all we can do.
Maybe in his little world, and that of, what, the most narcissistic 1% of the male population?
Assuming his daughters really exist, I just hope they don’t end up with men like him.
“He’s just saying what we’re all thinking!” is almost always complete bullshit, but at least it helps point out who the assholes are who think like the asshole who says what he thinks.
I have not perused his entire posting history but the subject of the OP has made a few comments about marriage(his and in general) that I have identified with. That doesn’t make me an asshole.