It’s a long one -- not to zero in on you, Acala, but on how different people are and how different are their desires. I’m lookin’ for a Partner, myself, figger here’s as good a place as many and better than some to get started. Feel free to skim or skip it. (Kalifornia-with-a-k, heads up, this is again your cue to steer clear.)
Yup. From HER point of view. And she is free to enter and leave as she wishes in accordance with her terms. From my point of view, it is MY relationship and I will stay or leave in accordance with MY terms. My main point is that if you enter a relationship with a woman on HER term - or what you think are her terms, you are going to be in trouble.
As I have born witness to them, relationships wherein one half of a couple dictates all terms of the relationship are usually pretty crappy for everyone BUT the dude who is doing all the dictating. Someone who is at another's beck and call cannot be spontaneous and is often unreliable even when plans are made in advance. Everything is in pencil -- if The Acala Character is in a Mood, all bets are off.
In consequence, people don't call/include those women so much. That doesn't bother you, of course. As you have said and reiterated, you don't care what she does when you're doin' your thing, so long as she doesn't disrespect you. Sitting home waiting for you would be fine.
She becomes less and less interesting. Maybe she eats while she watches TV, or drinks while she does the housework. Who needs that? You didn't sign on for depression or weight gain.
Adios . . . next!
As a man, you can do that forever -- have kids at 70 if you want, spoil 'em rotten. Society ill treats a woman who does the same.
What I would first call THEM is PLURAL.
Perhaps your bull-in-a-china-shop system for TAKING charge is better suited to serial dating than to one deep and abiding relationship?
My pattern, since you are interested, is to date around until I find someone that I fit with, and then stay with them faithfully for four or five years. Then we break up for a variety of reasons.
Yeah, like she might up and suggest that it wouldn't be unreasonable, since you're a COUPLE, to occasionally do together that which SHE particularly enjoys and would enjoy all the more in your company. Gang plank for THAT bossy bitch, eh?
I am not interested in your "pattern," per se – your patterns are your business, yes? But I am interested and surprised that you proclaim your dating pattern-more-of-a-program on a public message board, including your eminent ability to pleasure a range of sexual tastes. I am EXTREMELY interested and concerned that you PROMULGATE your dating pattern-more-of-a-program by speaking authoritatively and judgmentally to men who are young, inexperienced and impressionable.
TAKE A LONG HARD LOOK AT THE EXTREMELY DEEP SHIT WE ARE IN AS A COUNTRY WHILE DO-EXACTLY-AS-THEY-PLEASE MEN HAVE BEEN AT THE HELM, and tell me again the problem is that men don't know how to TAKE CHARGE of their women.
But I reject your assumption that any relationship that doesn't last forever is a failure. On what do you base that? The wedding vow?
NOWHERE is where I state that assumption. NEVER has that been my assumption.
Any relationship that provides happiness for the participants for a day, a week, a month, or a lifetime is a success. Nothing lasts forever.
Bullshit. According to your terms, you can pack up and take off whenever you FEEL like it, no strings attached, no questions asked. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. The future prospects of a man who elects to live this way ARE NOT THE SAME as the future prospects of serial girlfriends.
Kindly recall that the Roman senators of the United States of America, Barack Obama among them, voted just this past year NO! NOT YET! WOMEN IN AMERICA SHALL NOT BE PAID THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY, EVEN FOR THE SAME JOBS WITH THE SAME TRAINING. Serial girlfriends, those of the endless accommodation, shall fall further and further behind with each break-up until, alas, they shall be Old (and disrespected) Maids whose lives are not even REMOTELY accurately depicted on The Golden Girls television comedy.
Nothing lasts forever in the Ohhhm sense, true. But the collapse of the relationship that you must have once thought would last forever does NOT translate to there being NO partners who settle together oh-so-successfully for life. For worse or God-awful, I give you TWO sets of Bushes. Not you and and not me, but there ARE people who mate for life and who wouldn't trade their marriages for ANYTHING ON EARTH. There ARE people who celebrate 50th and 60th anniversaries, and who very often die within months of one another. One of the most charming sights on earth, TO ME, is a couple of oldsters walking along holding hands, just like they've been doing for the last half century. They FIT together. You remember from when your kid/s were little, how their hand(s) tucked and laced a certain way inside yours? You could pick your own kid out of a hundred in the pitch black if you could just take two steps holding each of their hands.
Naturally, I especially like it when one half of the couple is jabbering away and the other one is listening raptly and nodding sagely, intermittently injecting a pertinent question or a bit of clarification or a flourish of insight to a dialogue that has been percolating basically forever.
One of the etiquette gurus, I forget which one – Dear Abby or Ann Landers, I think – once advised a young ‘un that s/he should marry someone s/he liked to talk to, because conversation would be the principle ingredient of an enduring relationship. That STILL resonates as Truth, even though it hasn’t panned out for me.
I don't have to have five million dollars in a suitcase to know it exists. I'd LIKE to have five million dollars in a suitcase...who wouldn't? But I don't NEED five million dollars in a suitcase.
Perhaps you have some experience to share about how you have found everlasting love?
Alas, it hasn’t happened for me, but I expect you’ll join me in testifying that the School of Hard Knocks is a veritable TREASURE TROVE of information. Trial & Error is the springboard of many an accomplishment, and I personally believe that mating happily and going the distance is a major accomplishment. I believe that running a marathon is a major accomplishment, too – it doesn't mean that I can DO it. But my being unable to do it doesn’t detract from the accomplishment.
QUOTE=cheapseats;1936636]Everyone's DOES vary, that'd be my point. I again draw attention to your claim of making MORE women happy. If the woman is so happy, and you are so in charge of the relationship, why isn't one of them The One?
.[/QUOTE]
I reject the notion of "The One". That is fairy tale stuff.
You have rejected it for yourself because the relationship you THOUGHT was The One, wasn't. Or because you grew up or changed or whatever. It is completely understandable that you feel as you do, for you. What I’m saying is that you ought not to judge ALL women by your experience with your Ex and, further, that you oughtn’t to imply to young 'uns who don't follow in your defensive foot steps that they are somehow unmanly.
You allude to yoga and meditation -- you know very well that everyone's Path is not identical.
I'm not saying that you are a Bully. I AM saying that the extremity of your pain/disappointment/reorganization is wrongly coloring the advice you are giving to impressionable people. (It IS a hallmark of bullies to thrive on the approval of others, but THAT'S a conversation to have with Kalifornia-with-a-k.)
There are millions of people on earth that you could be happy with in a relationship. The idea that somewhere you have a "soul mate" that you will effortlessly adore forever if you can just find her is superstitious nonsense.
NOWHERE is where I say that a deep and abiding relationship is effortless. I am quite clear that a deep and abiding relationship . . . a relationship that goes the distance rather than serving the short-term fancies . . . features some compromise. I’m not HAPPY about that, and I’m obviously not prepared to make very many of ‘em, but SOME concessions? Don’t leave home without ‘em.
I also don't believe there's one right person, or "soul mate.” I believe that there are any number of people with whom I could be reasonably happy and no one on earth with whom I would be entirely content. It is not in my nature to be completely happy. Completely happy people kinda irritate me, and perky ones send me around the bend.
Here's MY theory on the multiplicity of suitable partners. Consider life as a jigsaw puzzle, with your ideal mate being more than one of the other puzzle pieces even if you’re a Corner Type. But then consider millions of identically cut jigsaw puzzles, all of which are emptied into the same space. You become part of a different picture, depending which puzzle you hook up in, but now there are multiples of multiple possible matches. There are way more pieces/people to sift through, but there is more opportunity for a good fit. From where I sit, people very often force the puzzle pieces. You know the drill – you CAN, but something is always wrong with the picture.
As I said, I am not interested in controlling the other person. I am interested in controlling my own life. If I am asleep or in Iraq or some such thing, I am still in control of my life, which is all I ask for. I don't care to manage my partners. They can do what they want with their own lives. I let them know what I expect with the way they treat me. If they don't like it, they can leave.
What it “sounds” like is that you don’t much care about your partner, period. If I understand you correctly, you don't give a shit what they do in your absence so long as it doesn't disrespect you and so long as, when you ARE present, they willingly if not downright cheerfully do every single thing exactly according to your preferences. I again draw attention to the plural and ask, what's in it for her? Do you pay the bills?
That's my experience. Whoever foots the bills calls the shots.
'Cept for weenie Americans, who are throwing good money after bad in order to be bossed around, fined, insulted and abused.
With most women, you don't have to TAKE control. They will gladly give it to you. All you have to do is step into that natural role and they will swing with it effortlessly. You make it seem like some kind of unnatural struggle or brutal usurpation when it is, in fact, the most natural thing in the world. It is actually the failure to establish a gentle dominance that creates havoc in a relationship.
As ever, there are greater chances of being misunderstood and greater challenges to clarification when communicating by letter rather than speech -- if I misunderstood, I apologize. But this is the very argument I am MAKING, i.e. that YOU make it seem like conquest, with the kicker of capricious termination of services and no pension.
If you're not that way, you're not that way. But TO ME, you sound that way. Ordinarily, I wouldn't remark on that. Who cares what I think about the way you sound? I don’t suffer from whatever compels Kalifornia-with-a-k to publicly announce his distaste for me.
Different strokes for different folks, that's bedrock with Libertarianism.
The reason I am piping up is not because I am interested in your dating behavior – again, so there’s no misunderstanding or insult – but because I sense that you are championing rather than merely presently trauma-based advise.