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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