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From: bentrup@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Nominally single????
Message-ID: <26600140@uiucdcs>
Date: Fri, 4-Oct-85 19:59:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.26600140
Posted: Fri Oct  4 19:59:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Oct-85 15:06:55 EDT
References: <285@whuts.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:whuts.UUCP:-28500:uiucdcs:26600140:000:2775
Nf-From: uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU!bentrup    Oct  4 18:59:00 1985


In article <431@rti-sel.UUCP> wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) writes:
>>No one is ready for a sustained and giving relationship with another
>>person until he is happy with his own life and likes and respects
>>himself as a person. 
Pooh responded with:
>Or in other words, you're not ready to live with anyone
>else until you've lived alone enough.  
>
>Wait a minute. . .that doesn't sound right.  How do you
>learn to live with someone except by doing it?  Once you
>learn not to need anyone else, how do you learn to let them in
>again?  It seems to me that there's more required than just being
>able to get along with yourself--I know LOTS of people who
>can do that just fine; it's learning to give and take that they
>fail at.  And THAT can only be learned with practice.

I agree that people can be quite happy with themselves and fail
miserably at giving (and some people I knew would never be able
to give/share regardless of the practice).  However *I* didn't 
read Bill's statement as being one that "you're not ready to live
with anyone else until you've lived alone enough".  I think living
with someone or alone is immaterial here.  For a relationship to 
succeed and grow both partners must be 'whole'.  If a person is
missing something in their own life, I don't think that they're 
going to be able to find it in someone else's life.  The solution
must come from within. So until the person has their own self 
respect, Bill is right a 'sustained and giving relationship' is 
not possible.

John.

>many live dissatisfied after the
>initial sexual glow wears off; many more flit from relationship to
>relationship searching for a One True Love that is a grand lie foisted
>on us by a thousand-year-old European romantic tradition and mass
>media that are as obsessed with selling True Love as with selling Sex
>(The long sad history of the True Love myth will have to await another
>posting). The relationships that last are the result of plain old hard 
>work and dedication, folks, with a small element of luck thrown in. 
>There's nothing magical about sex OR love. 

Yow!  can you say "cynicism"?  
I'm sorry if you are as disillusioned as you appear,
Bill, because I can still find some magic out there
in places.  It's not something that you can depend on;
it's fleeting, like a butterfly.  But you can still
find it.

>Like, wow, you've
>been living by yourself for five years now; you'd better find a
>housemate or SO soon, or you'll become too INTOLERANT and SELF-INDULGENT 
>to ever do it again! 

Naaah--you just have to start feeling like you'd like
to have someone share the mortgage. . .:-)

Pooh

topaz!unipress!pooh     unipress!pooh@topaz.ARPA

Thank you, my gallant little prince of baloney.
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