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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: why do women date guys who are jerks
Message-ID: <4899@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Jan-85 10:15:31 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4899
Posted: Thu Jan 10 10:15:31 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Jan-85 10:15:31 EST
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 65

Disclaimer: I only read net.singles when I don't have any other work
to do -- like now when my work machine is on day 2 of the crash. It
is getting fixed now. When it is fixed I will be back to work, so if
this article generates tons of flames or discussion or whatnot I
probably won't be reading it. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

Okay. I know 2 reasons why certain people I know dated people who
were ``undesirable'' (again, by their standards) rather than people
who were ``desirable''.  They aren't wonderfully pretty reasons, alas.

The first reason that I know is that some people are really terribly
angry and outraged a lot of the time. This is not primarily directed
at the SO -- it is just a general feeling. The problem is that any
SO who is going to be around at the time is going to get chunks of
this anger anyway, even if entirely innocent. So, for people who
figure that they are going to use their SO as a real focus for their
anger anyway would rather have a SO who deserves getting angry with.
Ranting and raging at a perfectly nice and considerate guy is very
mean -- but ranting at a jerk? That almost seems morally justified to
many people. They can be angry all they want and noone can accuse them
of being unreasonable...

The two people I know who gop out and get relationships like this
(but not, they don't go out and get women who beat them up, just are
thoughtless and inconsiderate) seem (from mys perspective) to have
confused ``having a fight with someone'' with ``having wonderful
communication with someone''. When (shudder) they end up going out
with a reasonable person they end up doing no communicating at all
(since what tehy want to talk about is how angry/depressed/pissed off
they are) and thus consider their relationship a wash out.

The other person who sprang to mind was a Christian girl (we were
all in high school at the time) who went through nearly all of my
Jewish male friends in about 3 years. I never got to meet her, but
for a while it seemed like everybody I knew was either going out
with her or recovering from the experience. She had decided that
4 months was about all she wanted in a relationship. So far, I
think, so good -- but have you ever tried to go out with someone
and tell them that you didn't think that this was the be all and
end all of all relationships which was going to end up in love,
marriage and whatever all that means to the other person? It
doesn't go over very well -- even if you have no illusions left about
``finding the perfect one who will last my entire lifetime'' (especially
at age 16!) there is considerable pressure on you to maintain this
fiction while in the presence of the SO. [Except, maybe, for the
proverbial ``summer romance''. But I never had any of those...]

So, at any rate, she had a convenient out. She had 4 months of fun, and
then, almost to the day, every one of my friends would get the same
speech. ``You know, you really are terrific, but I can't hack your
not being a Christian''. That it was a prepared speech would have ticked
us off if not for the fact that we had already noticed that after
finding Daniel unacceptable (but only because he was Jewish) she moved
on to Steve (who also was Jewish) and then to Andrew...

it was a very convenient out to have. I figure that things would have been
better if she could actually have said ``I want 4 months of relationship
and then I will be moving on'' but, realistically, I don't think that
any of my friends or I would have been willing to listen to that at
the time without being tremendously hurt. (Or at least acting as if
we were tremendously hurt.) It is amazing the amount of bs that one
absorbs as a kid about ``the way relationships are supposed to be''...

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura