Home (at least somewhere they are welcome to stay, and comfortable staying…)
Income (Don’t budge on this one)
Vehicle (or at least used to public transit/walking/biking enough to not treat you as a chaufer)
… all anyone needs to bring to the table on a material level. People will tell you about their standards all day long, but most are hypocrites - they are more flexible than they’ll let-on and/or are probing for push-back, checking to see who will “wear the pants” in a relationship.
If you’re inflexible your-self, with zero tolerance for bullshit or even a sense of humor about it, you’re going to have a bad time.
People say “single people are single for a reason”, but almost always pretend its unique to their age group or dating pool/whatever, but really its just-about equally true at all ages, and always applicable to onesself. Hardly anyone is single just-because their shitty ex was so shitty - shitty people attract shitty people, and its easier to make a new lover into a shitty person than to un-fuck what previous relationships and they have done to themselves, trying to hold-on to what they saw in so-and-so to the point that when its over they can’t let go of all the bad “surprises” that awaited them.
Don’t think of yourself or your experiences as so different from theirs. If you’ve had fewer, longer-term relationships than they, you still likely had many events where you and previous SO’s fell in-and-out of love - you just happened to work through them until you didn’t. In many cases, by most people’s criteria, maybe you shouldn’t have, and in just-as many, maybe your partner “should have” walked-away - its when “should have” wins-out over attachment that the relationship is dead, even if it doesn’t know it yet.
That said, if someone demands to be treated like a pet, that’s between you and them, and no, I’m not referring to furries or people who are self-aware, but the “don’t you dare shatter my fantasies”-types. I don’t have the patience to constantly pretend I am also surprised that the inevitable happened, but I’ve seen plenty who do. The ones that realize it aren’t always so-bad off, unless its “I gotta pretend for th kid’s sake”. Generally, don’t have kids with the poor, the disrespectful, OR the crazy, yeah?
No. I’ve had lots of kinds of relationships. dozens. short, long, one night stands, casual to we’re going to get engaged serious.
and the all end because of bullshit. hypocrisy, lying, cheating or otherwise being dishonest about themselves or their intentions.
I don’t bullshit or lie to people, I think it’s pretty easy to do, personally. But I understand that for many people relationships are built on bullshit and lies, and nothing of substance and they don’t know anything else is possible.
my favorite is the women who wanted to be no strings casual, but got bitter and jealous if they found out I was seeing someone else, but thought it was total legit for them to sleep around with whomever they wanted, but if I did that it was misogyny or abuse and when I laughed and walked away they were enraged, because the rules mutually agreed to only apply to her, not to me, or something.
You don’t build on the bullshit and lies, but around it. It’s a pain-in-the-ass, but so is dealing with a snitch who is incapable of lying. Personally, I tell my wife and kids to throw me under the bus as needed to get them out of awkward conversations and commitments they don’t want to make. “My dad won’t let me do that” works a treat. The latest was “my dad won’t let me commit insurance fraud”(like I particularly care about insurance fraud, but my limits are surprisingly more restrictive than some we know who would never admit it).
cool. i’d want nothing to do with you or your wife if that’s how you interact with other people. you sound like your both happy being shitty to other people together.
Nah, my wife is much more like you, and it’s often exhausting, although she’s learned a bit across the decades.
You’re a little old to be equating the capacity to lie to get by, doing even the bare minimum to preserve your own and others’ dignity, and feelings, with “being shitty”. As if euphemism and metaphore are just “cool story-telling tricks we developed for some reason”, or human recall doesn’t make AI hallucinations look almost par for the course of actual intelligence.
Home (at least somewhere they are welcome to stay, and comfortable staying…)
Income (Don’t budge on this one)
Vehicle (or at least used to public transit/walking/biking enough to not treat you as a chaufer)
… all anyone needs to bring to the table on a material level. People will tell you about their standards all day long, but most are hypocrites - they are more flexible than they’ll let-on and/or are probing for push-back, checking to see who will “wear the pants” in a relationship.
If you’re inflexible your-self, with zero tolerance for bullshit or even a sense of humor about it, you’re going to have a bad time.
People say “single people are single for a reason”, but almost always pretend its unique to their age group or dating pool/whatever, but really its just-about equally true at all ages, and always applicable to onesself. Hardly anyone is single just-because their shitty ex was so shitty - shitty people attract shitty people, and its easier to make a new lover into a shitty person than to un-fuck what previous relationships and they have done to themselves, trying to hold-on to what they saw in so-and-so to the point that when its over they can’t let go of all the bad “surprises” that awaited them.
Don’t think of yourself or your experiences as so different from theirs. If you’ve had fewer, longer-term relationships than they, you still likely had many events where you and previous SO’s fell in-and-out of love - you just happened to work through them until you didn’t. In many cases, by most people’s criteria, maybe you shouldn’t have, and in just-as many, maybe your partner “should have” walked-away - its when “should have” wins-out over attachment that the relationship is dead, even if it doesn’t know it yet.
That said, if someone demands to be treated like a pet, that’s between you and them, and no, I’m not referring to furries or people who are self-aware, but the “don’t you dare shatter my fantasies”-types. I don’t have the patience to constantly pretend I am also surprised that the inevitable happened, but I’ve seen plenty who do. The ones that realize it aren’t always so-bad off, unless its “I gotta pretend for th kid’s sake”. Generally, don’t have kids with the poor, the disrespectful, OR the crazy, yeah?
No. I’ve had lots of kinds of relationships. dozens. short, long, one night stands, casual to we’re going to get engaged serious.
and the all end because of bullshit. hypocrisy, lying, cheating or otherwise being dishonest about themselves or their intentions.
I don’t bullshit or lie to people, I think it’s pretty easy to do, personally. But I understand that for many people relationships are built on bullshit and lies, and nothing of substance and they don’t know anything else is possible.
my favorite is the women who wanted to be no strings casual, but got bitter and jealous if they found out I was seeing someone else, but thought it was total legit for them to sleep around with whomever they wanted, but if I did that it was misogyny or abuse and when I laughed and walked away they were enraged, because the rules mutually agreed to only apply to her, not to me, or something.
You don’t build on the bullshit and lies, but around it. It’s a pain-in-the-ass, but so is dealing with a snitch who is incapable of lying. Personally, I tell my wife and kids to throw me under the bus as needed to get them out of awkward conversations and commitments they don’t want to make. “My dad won’t let me do that” works a treat. The latest was “my dad won’t let me commit insurance fraud”(like I particularly care about insurance fraud, but my limits are surprisingly more restrictive than some we know who would never admit it).
cool. i’d want nothing to do with you or your wife if that’s how you interact with other people. you sound like your both happy being shitty to other people together.
Nah, my wife is much more like you, and it’s often exhausting, although she’s learned a bit across the decades.
You’re a little old to be equating the capacity to lie to get by, doing even the bare minimum to preserve your own and others’ dignity, and feelings, with “being shitty”. As if euphemism and metaphore are just “cool story-telling tricks we developed for some reason”, or human recall doesn’t make AI hallucinations look almost par for the course of actual intelligence.
No wonder you’re single.