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Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale
From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: wearing rings (really men shopping for wives)
Message-ID: <861@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Dec-84 00:47:47 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.861
Posted: Thu Dec 27 00:47:47 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Dec-84 03:45:49 EST
References: <954@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 37

In article <954@utastro.UUCP> mjs@utastro.UUCP (Pooh @ Across the Eighth Dimension) writes:
>
>Which brings up another poll question:
>
>I have dated men in the past who were actively shopping
>for wives.  Whenever I did something they liked, I could see
>them making a mental checkmark on some list; conversely, and
>most irritatingly, when I did something they DIDN'T like,
>I could see a little mental "x" going on the list.  In
>some cases, the man was only willing to continue the relationship
>with me until he decided whether I was The One he wanted to
>marry.  If the answer was no, it seemed that he no longer
>wanted to waste time being involved with me.
>
>Needless to say, this is not my attitude towards relationships,
>and I feel hurt when this is done.  Has this happened to
>other people too?  (Of both sexes; I'm sure that some women
>have been guilty of this too.)

Yes, this has happened to me - twice.  In one case, the woman was
definitely looking for a husband (she was already 22 and not yet married!).
In the other, I don't think she was looking for marriage, necessarily,
but she definitely wanted more than a friendship.

Unfortunately, I tend to want to get to know people as friends first,
and only become romantically interested after I've known them a while.
In both of the above cases, when the women  discovered that I wasn't
immediately interested in whatever it was they were interested in, or
perhaps that I simply wasn't sufficently close to what they wanted in
any case, they didn't seem to want to get to know me as a friend.  Yes,
it hurt.  And I think your explanation is the right one - they were
interested in finding a specific sort of relationship, and felt like
they were somehow "running out of time" and just didn't want to "waste
time" on relationships which weren't going to accomplish that goal.

I console myself by telling myself that we really wouldn't have gotten
along very well anyway, which is likely true.