Tag: relationships

Posted on

Romance vs Platonic Love

So, I don’t intend to wade into aro-ace discourse here. My opinions are my own and I’m afraid of Tumblr.

But yesterday I had this really cool metaphor finally finish working its way through my head, and that is: Romantic relationships are to Friendships as Petals are to Leaves.

I remember back in 9th grade biology, learning that petals are just hyper-specialized leaves. They develop with different pigments and shapes and so forth, to serve a different purpose in the plant, but they’re the same homologous structure as a leaf.

And that’s how I think I view romantic relationships. They’re like friendships, but hyper-specialized.

It’s hard to explain “what makes a relationship Romantic” when you take sex out of the equation. To the point that I do sometimes think I might be aromantic, or demi-romantic.

But I do very much appreciate the relationships that rise to the level of Romantic, so it’s not that it never happens! It’s just…I don’t know?

Just muddling through, trying to figure myself out. 😊

Posted on

Take people at their word

I think one of the most important life skills I have cultivated is the ability to just take people at their word. To believe what they say.

Doing this requires some degree of “if you get hurt, I’m okay with that.” You have to turn down the empathy dial here. If a person lies to you (whether on purpose lying or not) about being okay when they’re really not okay? You have to be comfortable with the fact that any hurt they experience from you taking them at their word is their own fault.

But they will be hurt nonetheless. Even though it’s not your fault. And you have to deal with that.

Because you know what’s worse, in the end?

Not respecting your friends enough to believe them when they tell you things.

Being so arrogant that you think you know their inner mind better than they themselves do.

And the pretzel logic we all get into when we try to anticipate and guess what everyone actually means, rather than just taking them at their word, hurts everyone involved.

So just…believe people when they tell you things. If they lie, return the awkwardness to sender. You did nothing wrong by believing them.

Posted on

Really excellent comment from Reddit

I know the original will probably get deleted, so I’m just going to paste this here.

The original context was a young woman asking for relationship advice when her boyfriend wanted to have sex and she wasn’t ready yet.

Assuming that you are in your early 20s (as listed in your other post)


If you want to remain a virgin and your boyfriend wants a relationship with sex, then you are not compatible, and yes the relationship will probably end. 


> I kind of like being a virgin


> it’s not even like “oh I’ll be ready soon,” I genuinely don’t know when I’ll be ready


You may be asexual. 


> how do you even know when you’re ready? it’s not something you can undo


There was a time I had never tried Thai food, and then I tried it and realised I liked it, so now I eat Thai food regularly. I don’t think about “who I was before I had Thai food”, it’s not like I lost anything by having a new experience.


But if you don’t want to have sex and you don’t think you ever want to have sex, you should tell prospective partners that you’re asexual. It means “I don’t want sex” vs “I just haven’t tried it yet.”

The Thai food metaphor, in particular, I find very apt. Sex isn’t particularly special; it can be risky; it can carry extra religious or cultural weight; but in the end, it’s just another experience, one that you are free to try or not try, as you wish.

Posted on

A NSFW neologism

When you take precautions so that other people can’t hear you going at it, that’s called OPSEX.

Posted on

Burned Haystack dating

Today I learned that this concept has a name – Burned Haystack. (I’ve heard of it before, but it didn’t have a name.)

Basically, the idea is to be as raw and honest and true as possible on your dating profile, so that you don’t waste time with incompatible people. It might take longer to find a person who meets your parameters, but they’ll be a better fit for your life and goals.

The metaphor is that if you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, it can be better to just set the hay on fire and then look for the needle in the ashes.

20+ years ago, advice columnist Carolyn Hax called hairy legs “a built-in doink filter.” I’ve always remembered that.

Posted on

An orange rose

Rose

I remember, years ago, reading a poem about how red roses are for passion, and white roses are for committed love; so the ideal rose for a relationship is one that’s mostly white but with a blush of red on the tips of the petals.

That may be ideal for some people! But I would hesitate to claim it works best for everyone.

Today I was thinking about how my favorite roses are the ones that look like this. I have one as the background of this website, in fact.

Yellow, but with a goodly amount of red as well.

A yellow rose is for friendship.

This, to me, is the ideal relationship structure.

A close friend made this quiz for thinking about your relationship, as part of his work as a therapist. It can either be for analyzing an existing relationship, or for thinking about what your ideal relationship would look like. Anyway, I think it would work pretty well to visualize it with different rose colors, or with a full-om Tussie Mussie.

https://quiz.sowellsocialwork.org/lovetrianglequiz

Posted on

Chivalry



Today I had a small epiphany: throughout the course of my life, I have had men and boys tell me that they wished chivalry was still around, so that they would know how to talk to women and girls/structure their interactions appropriately.

…Those guys were probably just on the autism spectrum.

Gonna chew on that for a little bit.

Anyway, a bonus How To People that I observed in a conversation today: if you are talking with someone (perhaps while walking towards the parking lot together) and the conversation dies down, it is okay to say “Well, good chatting with you, talk to you later!” and just wander off/speed up your pace/slow down. This is an accepted script for How To End A Conversation.

Posted on

Dating and false negatives

The other day, a friend said something in a discussion group that really made me think about relationships and dating and how all of this even works.

I’m not an expert on dating. But I do have a lot of friends, and I read a lot of advice columns, and so I have started noticing a pattern.

Some people think that if they go on one date and it’s mediocre (not Bad, just Mediocre), if they’re not Feeling It ™️, then it’s not worth going on a second date with that person.

So.

While it’s fine for someone to adopt this strategy, it’s important to realize that it’s not going to give a high probability of getting together with someone for the long term. (Which is relevant if anything other than one-night stands is your goal! No shame at all to the ONS people, but you’re not my target audience here.)

Everyone has “off” days.

The dating profile is a paper-thin slice of who someone is. This is fairly well established, even though some people still insist on judging a book by its dating profile.

But even beyond that, the first date is a bologna-thin slice of who someone is. It’s still not very much data at all.

If you want to really see if someone is compatible with you, you will have to date them (not exclusively, you don’t need to be exclusive during this period, as long as you’re honest and clear) for a while. Otherwise you’re just gonna get a shit-ton of false negatives.

And sometimes, for some people, that’s what they want: some people are very risk averse, or have trauma, or similar things going on. It’s okay for them to say “I will take the false negatives in order to not put myself in danger.”

But it’s important to be aware that that is what you’re doing: piling up a bunch of false negatives in addition to the true negatives. This is an extreme strategy for extreme situations. It’s not a strategy with a good chance of success.

Posted on

Internal vs External Processing

This Instagram reel highlighted a difference I haven’t been able to put into words before: Internal vs External Processing.

I know I process things by talking them out. I used to joke that I have an “external dialogue” rather than an internal monologue. But not everyone works that way.

Like the commenter said: this is one of those Differences that should be brought up in couples therapy and premarital counseling. Figuring this kind of thing out first can make solving the other problems exponentially easier.