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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Re: Nominally single???? A voice from the past.
Message-ID: <248@l5.uucp>
Date: Tue, 5-Nov-85 18:49:14 EST
Article-I.D.: l5.248
Posted: Tue Nov  5 18:49:14 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Nov-85 21:45:28 EST
References: <285@whuts.UUCP> <533@oakhill.UUCP> <286@whuts.UUCP> <473@uvaee.UUCP> <238@l5.uucp> <1080@jhunix.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 170

Double '>>' are me.  Singles are ins_aeas@jhunix.UUCP (Earle A .Sugar)

>> Pain means *big disappointment*.  You will get enough big disappointments
>> in your life without going out of your way to get more.  If you make a
>> big emotional investment in ``being able to be the SO of person X'' then
>> you are asking to get hurt when person X isn't interested.  You are
>> asking to get crushed when person X agrees to go out and then decides after
>> a few dates that you aren't really all that compatible.  Stop setting
>
>Maybe so, but if I don't try to make an emotional (and slightly financial) 
>investment in a person I'm trying to charm, then its more likely than 
>not that the decision that I'm not the one for her will not be made in my 
>favor.  

No! No!  This is a big misconception!!  One of the great media-lies is that
people in love are kept together by their deep love (read emotional
dependence) upon each other. This is simply not the case.  A sense of
humour is much more useful in keeping a relationship together.

Speaking personally, and for the ``already had several relationships''
crowd, that emotional investment is a big turn off.  When I meet
someone who is obviously infatuated with me I want to be as nasty as
possible to that person so as to stop this disease as soon as possible.
After all, if we just met, they can not have much of an idea as to what
I am really like (yea, even if they have been readin me for 5 years on
usenet!).  What they are doing is trying to stuff me into their image of
``the ideal lover'' and they are seriously in love with that ideal.
Rather than being impressing, this is a real drag.  Even if I wanted to
live for the sake of someone who has all that investment in me (which
I assuredly do not!) I couldn't.

This is really sad.  What I am looking for in new people is that they
are interesting as people.  If I get an evening of good conversation
out of any new people, then I am pleased.  if I get someone whom I can
respect I get someone that I am likely to look up again and again.

It is difficult for me to work up respect for anyone who is desparate
for a relationship.  I feel that I am getting railroaded.  What I want
is dinner, conversation and good times.  If you turn out to be a lot
of fun to be with then I am goign to want to spend more time with you.
But if you are desparate for a relationship, then you are going to be
not very much fun to be with and I am going to spend my time elsewhere.

Rememeber the adage where the girl ``plays hard to get''?  This is 
deceitful little con whereby girls (all who are presumed to be
desparate for a relationship) decieve the guys who don't want to be
clung to that they are not clingining until the poor guy gets so
intrigued that he ends up marrying someone for the difficulty involved.
This business of viewing someone as a trophy to be won turns my stomach,
but there is a point here.  This scam worked!  How come?  Because for any
reasonable (read not-love-desparate in addition to whatever else you call
reasonable) person a big display of need is a turn off.

As you go on in life, you want someone who can help share the load of
life's trials and aspirations.  You don't want someone who is so
desparate that in addition to holding your own shit together you have
to be the emotional support for them as well.  (As a temporary thing,
supporting a loved one is a great and reasonable thing.  As a day in and
day out vocation it is hell on earth.)

The only thing to be said for this approach is that it is likely to
work on very young and inexperienced women/girls.  There is something
very wrong about how women are raised.  All of them in this society
get some of a very bad brainwashing trip which says ``the function of
woman is to nurture the emotionally wounded''.  It is not the case that
most women enjoy this nurturing -- mostly they resent it like crazy but
feel that they ``have'' to do it.  if you go out projecting ``I'm
emotionally wounded -- I need a relationship'' you will probably catch
someone who will start the nuturing end of this trip without thinking.
If this is what you want....

>
>> yourself up so much.  You will end up believing that the world is horrid
>> and painful and rotten; you may end up stuck between believing that the
>> world owes you a {living date} and full of resentment because you aren't
>> getting it.  it is a real sad and painful trap.
>   I agree that the world ain't so hot, but it's the only one there is (
>religious and extra-terrestrial life arguments aside).  Most people I know 
>mope for a few days after a letdown, but I have seen few others who actually 
>add cumulative resentment towards the rest of the universe.

You missed it.  I *don't* think that the world ain't so hot.  However, I
was only able to reach this enlightened position *after* deciding that
I was going to stop being so desparate for a relationship and so resentful
that I was only getting lousy ones (or none at all).  You can't help but
get resentful if you are getting rejected all the time.  But if the rejection
is in your mind (because you set yourself up) then it is also easy to fix.

>> The way out of it is to not care so much whether any particular person you
>> are interested in is interested in you.  There are lots of ways to
>> organise this to accomplish this effect.  ALready having a SO is the
>> easiest, but we have a bit of a bootstrapping problem here.  Asking lots
>> of people out is another  good solution. 
>That may work in the world as a whole, but most netters are parts of small, 
>closed societies such as universities or companies.  If I were to ask out 
>a large number of women, even at different times(:-)), word would soon be 
>spread around that I had been rejected by these various women.  Who would 
>want to take the time to get to know me if they heard that I was a frequent 
>reject?  A better solution is to be pickier about who I ask out so the odds 
>of a specific person getting attached to me is greater.  This is also quite 
>a bit less time consuming than dating hoards of other women and depending 
>on statistical probability to find me someone that I can have a long-term 
>relationship with.

I think not. Look, I'vve done this before. Everybody eats.   Whether you
go to McDonalds or eat at home or eat fancy, all you have to do is ask
a different person out to dinner every night for a month and I am sure
that you will have a much wider selection of interesting people to think
about then you have now.  I did this once.  I ended up with a lot of good
eats and 3 good friends.  it works, given that you are going to eat
anyway it is relatively cheap, and it gives you something to do while you
consider how intersting this person you have gone out with is.

By the way this ``go out with one person at a time'' is a big high school
thing that needs dropping as soon as possible.  In the old high school
days (or at least my old high school days -- maybe people have changed
since then)  you measured your status by whom you were going out with.
And *anybody* was better than *nobody*.  So if you started going out
with someone you had to ``break up'' with them before you could go out
with someone else since it was the status of the relationship that was
important, not the people.  Now that you have survived high school you can
get all teh status you want by being a damn good programmer/designer/
whatever it is that you do or by being a good dancer or any number of
things which are all better than ``who is your steady''.  So you can
start going out with people for the sake of the people rather than the
sake of a relationship.  If you know 3 neat people who happen to be
of the opposite sex, you can go out with all of them and enjoy them as
people.  I know that this is a big high-school no-no and is to some
extent perpetuated by the great American Love Myth, but in the real
world this stuff is *ok*.

If you go out with a lot of people, the only person who will think that
you are a reject is *you*.  There is no big social stigmata about this.
There are circles where it will be assumed that for some reason you
want to get laid by lots of different woemn, but even those aren't all
that common.  Most people are really not all that preoccupied with you
to notice that you are going out with a lot of people (outside of
high school, where everybody is bored, people find more interesting
things to do than keeping statistics on each other).  it will be assumed
that you want a lot of variety in your life, and a great many people
(including me) will find you intriguing.  If you know lots of people
then you are probably broad enough as a person to be very interesting
and if you keep going out with lots of different ones then you must
have high standards (or you would have clung to the first one that was
reasonable to you).  There are 2 points in your favour.  If I end up
not liking you all that much I know you must be able to take it (since
you have had a lot of practice in gracefully ending dinners at this point).

If I knew this about you I would go out to dinner in a minute.  I may be a
bad example, since I go out to dinner with almost anybody who asks me since
I am confident that I can handle any sort of situation that can arise
(because, sigh, I *have* already...) but for people with less gusto than
I do you would still be a good bet.

You will loose out on the most clinging people (who will be afraid of your
presumed independence) and on the people who are terrified that anybody
who asks them out to dinner is going to rape them, but I wouldn't call that
much of a loss.

It is fairly ironic that the people who are most deparate for love are
also the hardest to love.  If you tone down the desparation then you become
much more attractive.  This is a difficult lesson to learn.
-- 
Help beautify the world. I am writing a book called *How To Write Portable C
Programs*.  Send me anything that you would like to find in such a book when
it appears in your bookstores. Get your name mentioned in the credits. 

Laura Creighton		
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa