This question came to me after some on-off thoughts lately, and the desire to post the thread was triggered by seeing the title of another thread just now.
The title was something like “Girl wants to come to my house for the first date” or something like that, sorry I can’t find the thread again now, but the exact title is not important. It was enought to make me want to post this thread.
Why does the whole realm of adult relation-building, be it friend to friend (I enjoy someone’s company) or boy to girl (I fancy such-and-such a girl/boy) have to be so complicated and so full of Protocol?!
Why can’t we live in a world where I can say to someone I like, things like:
“Want to go to my house to watch TV or something?”
“Shall we go and see that new movie?”
“Can I sit here?”
without there being things to read between the lines?
Or is it that I’m just a nervous wreck about human relations?
This whole protocol-riddled world of adult relationship-building is very difficult for me and it has a quite significant effect on my sense of well-being. I so wish life could be more simple, like when I was kid and would just spend time at other people’s houses or people would spend time at mine, or we’d just hang out somewhere for no particular reason.
Or she might blush and swivel herself on one foot while holding her arms straight down in front of her and try to bury her head in her shoulder (in which case she likes you)
My God, the stuff my classmates did when we were teenagers! I never had a boyfriend because I’d never jump through so many hoops.
The usual schedule:
On Sunday. Dance the two “slows” with some guy. Spend half an hour to two hours in the bathroom discussing the relative merits of the guys each girl had danced the slows with. About half an hour before the club closed, hold up a wall with him and kiss.
Not see him Monday to Friday.
On Saturday, be berated for your appearance. If you were looking yummy, be berated because “you’re my girl now and you shouldn’t look yummy for other guys, only for me” (ok, so how do I manage that, by only seeing you at your parents’?). If you were wearing pants, for wearing pants. If skirt, for skirt… Break up with him. Spend the time after the slows making faces because ohmygodidon’thaveaboyfriendmylifeisgoingtoEND!
Once I spent some very nice time making out with a guy, during the town’s festivals. At about 1am, as we were heading from the club to dinner, he told me he’d have to leave early “about 3” as he had a soccer match the next day. I said “oh, ok. That gives us two hours, then.” After demonstrating the look known as “a lamb with his throat cut”, he spent the next 7 hours saying “I’ve never met a girl like you” and left at 8am without so much as kissing me again, the idiot.
And then he went and got his ankle broken at the match :smack:
Frankly, adults aren’t anywhere near as complicated.
Wow. I can’t think of less simplicity than when I was a teenager. If you gave me a million dollars in 1988 money and it was guaranteed to earn 15% a year, but I had to go back to being thirteen and do the whole thing over again, I wouldn’t take the money.
Your teenage years must have been more pleasant than mine.
They weren’t pleasant. But I aquired friends like people acquire loose change.
Maybe the premise of my thread should have been different: Not necessarily “Like when we were kids”, but still “Why can’t adult courtship and friendship be more straightforward” With questions like simply wanting to be with someone for extended periods of time being a case of, just, being with them and going where they go, (or them going where you go)
Make it 1973 money and I’ll bite your hand off. My teenage years sucked majorly, but with hindsight and $150k US per annum, I couldn’t help improving on them.
That’s a good question actually. It would be an improvement on the current system if we could just throw mud at someone to indicate that we liked them.
I mentioned something about this in another thread recently. Basically, I’m scared now, I wasn’t then. I’ve had too many relationships (romantic, friends, whatever) that have ended, faded, blown up or got weird. Every time I meet someone now, even before they get weird, I assume they’re going to be weird. For weird, substitute in “hateful”, “mean”, “drama queen”, “gossipy”, “clingy” or “overbearing” at random. I don’t see people anymore, I see huge stacks of baggage looming behind them, and I flinch and duck, ready to get hit in the head again as their baggage comes tumbling down.
A slightly older doper confirmed that this isn’t unusual at my age (32) and assured me I’m likely to get over it by my 40’s. God, I hope so.
Oh, yes. And truthfully, I have enough baggage of my own; I can’t deal with other people’s baggage. The expectation of weirdness has always been borne out, so far; I don’t know if it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy or that everyone just is weird that way.
I don’t much like the idea of having to wait that long to get over it, though.
I’d take the money without a second thought. I had a great time in High School.
Besides, even if you didn’t have a great time, $150,000 grand a year would let you simply stare at the people giving you shit and say “I spent my weekend in Hong Kong, and next Tuesday I’m taking the week off to go to London. What did you do with your weekend, then?”*
Actually, I think the hardest part about StuffLikeThatThere’s scenario is explaining to people how come you, at 13, have the sort of money that finances rebel insurrections in third world countries .
*And unless your name is Napoleon Dynamite, you don’t get to answer “Hunting Wolverines in Alaska”, M’kay?
Well, why not try it? What are you going to lose by inviting an acquaintance over for hanging out? “Oh, he’ll think I’m weird.” Maybe he will. Probably he already does anyway, so where’s the loss?
Maybe having kids makes this easier or something. We can hide behind getting the kids over to play, and then we hang out and talk. At any rate, I’m 33 and frequently make new friends. I generally do it by sitting next to someone and figuring out something to talk about. (This may or may not be with kids around; not all my friends are other moms with kids the same age.) After a while, you can invite them over. It does take some courage; we are all so afraid of being rejected. And I have been rejected a few times, but mostly I’ve gotten new friends out of it. I’ve usually regretted being too shy–I’ve missed out on what could have been good friendships–not being too forward.
One good thing to do is to join a club of some kind, like a book discussion group or a hiking club. It gives you automatic stuff in common. And I meet a lot of friends through my church, since it has organized activities that make it easier. But it can happen anywhere, I should think.
Like StuffLikeThatThere, you couldn’t pay me enough to be a teenager again. I was terrifically awkward and insecure, but hid it under a veneer of brashness. I couldn’t conceive that anyone would be attracted to me.
As an adult, it seems much simpler. I know myself and my worth, and I’m not going to play mind games. I don’t feel the need to rescue anybody or put up with crap because maybe, just maybe, that person likes me. I guess my experience is the opposite of WhyNot’s. I had plenty of mean, gossipy, drama-queen, or clingy friends in my life as an adolescent, but I’ve managed to weed them out of my life as an adult.
I’m more like dangermom – I have no problem saying “hey wanna go get some food?” to a person I’ve been chatting with at a shared activity for the past few days/weeks, or even to complete strangers in some situations (I made a pal on the Long Island Railroad when we both missed our train on the first day of school).
BTW, I’m 32 and I still think most people are basically weird in a good way. shrug Might be an outlook or personality thing at its heart. I basically enjoy the company of others, and this is certainly not true of everyone.