Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site gymble.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!ucdavis!lll-crg!gymble!beth From: beth@gymble.UUCP (Beth Katz) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Re: Nominally Single??? (various ramblings) Message-ID: <427@gymble.UUCP> Date: Sat, 2-Nov-85 21:43:29 EST Article-I.D.: gymble.427 Posted: Sat Nov 2 21:43:29 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 4-Nov-85 01:32:58 EST References: <1071@trwrdc.UUCP> <490@rti-sel.UUCP> <1079@trwrdc.UUCP> <515@rti-sel.UUCP> <1091@jhunix.UUCP> Reply-To: beth@gymble.UUCP (Beth Katz) Organization: U of Maryland, Laboratory for Parallel Computation, C.P., MD Lines: 63 Okay, so I'm "nominally single" and sitting home on a rainy Saturday night playing with this silly machine. My SO is far away and doing similar stuff with his PC. Maybe I wouldn't want to go out with just anyone, but I'm not married either, so I'd like to comment on some of the fluff floating around on net.singles. (Is that intro obnoxious enough? Will my mailbox fill up with hate mail? :-) ) First of all, the idea that there is one perfect someone out there *may not* be a myth. There may be one PERFECT someone, but there are many ( > 1) of people that would be close matches. I suggest that you be flexible, friendly, and not scare them off. Don't look at every MOTAS (member of the appropriate sex) as a potential SO. Look at them, talk to them, be with them as PEOPLE. Be yourself. Relax. Talk. Find out if you can be friends. If it doesn't work out, mourn for a while if you must, but then get on with your life. When I broke off a three-year relationship in high school, I was crushed. I was very unhappy for a few weeks, but I got on with life and met some other very nice people. Although that love was special, it was nothing compared to what I feel now. But no one could have told me that then. I thought I wanted to marry him. I thought I wanted to marry yet another guy (and almost did), but someone else came along. Which leads me to .... Sometimes we nominally single people even talk to people other than our SOs. Sometimes, by being a friend you can show a nominally single person that you are worth getting to know better. I changed my mind that way. I could have married the other guy, but David convinced me, by being a friend to talk with and hang around with, that I was happier with him. (It helped that the other guy was far away at grad school and busy. He is now happily married, so don't think that I gave him a raw deal. It was a mutual decision to call it off. He also met someone else.) I suppose I could change my mind again, but I have a dissertation to write and am not in a dating mode (mail accepted, but I *really* am not interested in any dates, I'm happy with things the way they are except for the long-distance, oh no, not again... :-) ). Sometimes we do change our minds. But you won't get anywhere with a direct attack unless the person is unhappy with their current relationship. Be a friend first. If you are a friendly man in search of friendly women, your local computer science department or workplace are probably not the best places to look. I also have noticed that duplicate bridge clubs are not great for such searches. Perhaps a bicycle maintenance course at your local educational institution or bike shop. Perhaps the community volleyball league. Volunteer to be a research subject in a department with a lot of women (but get to know a bit about the department before you try it); a reputable source once said that the speech and audiology department at Purdue was good in this respect (and others). You can have ulterior motives, but if you aren't comfortable in the particular environment, find another one. Those should be enough hints to get you started. But don't pounce at once. Be friendly. Go out for ice cream. Be calm. Take it slowly. If friendly women want to meet friendly men, they might try the above, computer science departments, and bridge clubs. Somehow I never had much trouble with this. I can't think of any other topics that I needed to attack. I may have wanted to attack them, but the discussion of wants and needs distracted me. :-) I could really use a big hug, but I'll survive without it. :-) People are people too. Beth Katz Univ. of Maryland CS Dept. {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!beth