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From: hestenes@sdcsla.UUCP (Eric Hestenes)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Are you involved with anyone?
Message-ID: <1017@sdcsla.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 31-Oct-85 14:52:13 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsla.1017
Posted: Thu Oct 31 14:52:13 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Nov-85 15:03:54 EST
References: <133@cornell.UUCP> <2576@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Cognitive Science Lab
Lines: 26

> There's something that seems to have been ignored in this whole long
> discussion of "nominally single" -- just because someone is currently
> attached/involved/married or otherwise "taken" does NOT mean that this
> person is "unavailable" -- it means that there will be various degrees
> of difficulty in your forming a relationship with this person.
> "Difficult" is not the same as "impossible". After all, married people

i totally disagree. the problem with these situations, the element
that makes a person "nominally" single is that you have to go through
weird contractions in order to get them into the state where they are
sort of "more single than they were before". We can naturally associate this
with another activity, namely, breaking up married couples. Look,
people fool around, the get married, the get divorced. Can you be "nominally 
married"? I think so. The "nominal" part of both situations is that your
activity widely deviates from the activities of others in your "category".
A "nominally single" person tends to hang out with 1 other 99.999% of the
time, barring interference. A "nominally married" person, likewise, 
fools around more often than not. Now, it is not *impossible* to take
over a relationship from a married person. Neither is it impossible to
take over a relationship with a "nominally single" person. While the latter
may be a tad more easy, that certainly doesn't make the person more
available than if they were married. Not, they are nominally single until
they become un-nominally single and give in to something new. You have to
change the person before the become availible. 

eric