WOMEN GETTING TOGETHER TO COMPLAIN ABOUT MEN - IS THERE REALLY A SORTAGE OF "GOOD MEN?"

WOMEN GETTING TOGETHER TO COMPLAIN ABOUT MEN - IS THERE REALLY A SORTAGE OF "GOOD MEN?"

Yes and no.

Something I don't much miss is getting together with women who are trying to get married and unhappy.  Now honestly, sometimes "dating hell" stories are funny (looking back on it), or tragic, or simply must be told to a bevy of women friends so that one can get support. It's women's night out and everyone is kicking back and complaining, which is no fun.

It's not easy dating for the purposes of finding someone right to marry, and really many of my women friends have put up with a whole lotta you know what in the process.  They are in pain.  Which is a shame.  So there have been SO VERY MANY DATING SELF HELP BOOKS published in recent years in which experts (self-proclaimed) attempt to explain how to do it better.

And I DO think, based on the experience of friends, that many women are MAKING DO, so that they will not be alone in this life.

Let's say that in your late teens and early twenties, you're just out of the starting gate, and so are most of the other horses.  People are mixing it up, are often sexually explorative, and very many do get married.  Late twenties and mid-thirties is the "it's about time,"/ "everyone's doing it" zone.  Dangerous.  Mid-thirties to mid-forties, if there is any time in which a "biological clock" ticks (for some women) that's when marriage is about having a baby before it is too late.  (And actually, all things considered after your mid-forties it probably is too late, even if you read about a billionaire woman having a child near 60 years old - consider that her fortune will sustain the best for a child even if she's dead.) 

I think people are dating wrong, and though I know this applies to a lot of men also, I'm speaking to other women here.

First of all YOU HAVE TO KNOW YOURSELF, and this is not about your own personal philosophy (an esoteric concept) but practical things like how important income, religion, sex, and other big issues are to you.

If you are very religious no doubt you need to find a man at your church, or at least of the same or very similar religion.  The more political you are - ditto.  I'm telling you that if there is anything at all that others think of you as "radical" about, you probably are in some way, and differences here will end up breaking you as a couple.

Think you can "work" on big differences?  You probably CAN if there is only ONE big difference.  Consider that different races, different in "class," and expectations about income (who makes it, who makes more, who quits working to childcare, etc.) are all issues, as in BIG ISSUES.

So, let's say you're exceptional.  You've made it out of poverty to become a Phd.  You're also a Republican even though your family is a Democrat.  Through hard work and sacrifice and innate brilliance you have gone way past your circumstances of birth.  You will probably feel most comfortable with someone from a similar experience.  (I know - good luck finding this person!)

And MOST COMFORTABLE is the thing people have dismissed as THE ALL-IMPORTANT consideration when they are dating to find a spouse.

Because HOME, your marriage/relationship, IS THE MOST IMPORTANT IN YOUR LIFE.  YOU MUST BE COMFORTABLE there, or it is not the REFUGE from the rest of the world/life that it needs to be to sustain you.  This means you don't bicker every day and you don't have too many blow ups.  Maybe you're not constantly verbally communicating, but because you have no to few BIG ISSUES there are other ways to know and FEEL you are on the same page.

One of my friend's divorce came down to this.  He was from a Germanic Father is ruler of the home background, and even if his wife's income was much higher, and even if he was out of work, he was NOT going to do much childcare.  She was from a Slavic Mother is ruler of the home background, and a working woman, who wanted a role reversal.  They had a power struggle over the children constantly.

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DO PEOPLE REALLY MAKE THE NEW YEARS RESOLUTION THAT THEY WILL NOT DATE, HAVE SEX, OR MARRY?

They do!

But I actually never have.

One might think, because I write this blog, that I've totally given up or find distasteful the very idea of dating, having sex, or getting married.  Not true.

I'm devoted though to going without a relationship unless it's right, and it's not that I think there is only one Mr. Right for me, or for anyone; I really do not expect perfection.  But I also do not care to pretend someone who is not right for me is, in order to be part of society.  I know I'm not perfect and others are not perfect.  I get that.  It's just that the longer I live, the more people I know who have divorced because they married for all the wrong reasons (or some of the wrong reasons) such as "It's about time."

I'm not talking about marriages that are abusive which should never happen at all.  I'm talking about incompatibility that was overlooked or not dealt with in the first place.  Years go by and suddenly the couple realizes theses things.  It's tragic when there are children involved.

I think, if you're going to have even one child, first find a great partner and then willfully have that child.

I don't hate children.

I just know that I cannot give a child what all it deserves.  Again, not expecting perfection.  If I had a child I might even have to home school it, rather than send it to a bad school.

So there!

MY CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY FOR ONE (and a DOG)

If I could have ANYTHING for Christmas, it would be to get away for a week or two with my dog, somewhere where I know no one, no one is going to bother me, and if I really feel like chatting I can take a long walk to a coffee house to meet people and then go home alone.

I could ALMOST pull this off in the city if I didn't have my dog.  Since we have no yard, I must take her for a walk down the street a few times a day to do her business.  A little chit chat with other dog owners doesn't really bother me but I don't know how to ignore friends when I see them.  It's just that I would like to NOT SPEAK, to not use my vocal chords, and enjoy RELATIVE SILENCE, which is so rare these days.

I think I could do this for a week or two without feeling lonely.

Instead we will have our citified holiday.  I plan to make a whole chicken with apple and shallot stuffing in a slow cooker and eat it with rice, cranberry sauce, and a couple drinks.  I bought RUM which I haven't had for years, coconut milk and pineapple juice and nutmeg, and will try a drink recipe made from those ingredients. 

My dog is so funny.  I do slow cooking at least once a week and my dog has to smell the cooking all day.  When I come through the door she is excited and practically attaches herself to my ankle going from room to room so that when I start putting the slow cooked food on a plate I won't forget her.

Of course I share, mindful of the foods on the taboo list for dogs.

She mostly has dry kibble.

This year though I bought her a little SALMON and already she has her new BLUE PUPPY DOG to play with.  She shows off how she has been playing with it so that I know she knows it is hers.

Slowly, I'm easing into the holidays with some BOOKS to read in the evening while me and the dog linger under blankets together.

What my dog does all day when I'm not home, I don't know.

My friend who put a BabyCam on her dogs so she could see them from work said hers mostly slept.

I suspect mine mostly does that too.

COMMITMENT PHOBIC ???? THE THANKSGIVING A RELATIVE TRIED TO MATCHMAKE ME WITHOUT SHOWING RESPECT FOR ME FIRST

I'll never forget the Thanksgiving that I showed up at a relatives for dinner and discovered that she had invited a single man to match make me.  No she never mentioned this to me when she was extending the invitation or at any time before I walked in there.  The man was a nice man, a good man, and he had a good income.  All that was true and perhaps for her that was ENOUGH to make him eligible.  But she never asked me if I had a boyfriend, if I was seeing anyone, if I was involved, or at all interested in being match made.

And when I couldn't hide my displeasure I heard her go to him and explain that I had a problem with commitment.

BULLSHIT!

It might not surprise you to know that I no longer keep a relationship with this relative who I discovered to be dishonest in the sense that she was always manipulating and designing rather than being straightforward and candid. 

Besides all this, the fact was that this man was very interested in getting married and having a family.
She told him I was family oriented.  That was true.  To my existing family.  I had no interest in actually becoming pregnant, giving birth, breastfeeding, or raising children though.  Still don't.

One thing that didn't happen?
I did not go out with him to please her.
I did not go out with him against my own instincts or wishes, where I would feel ensnared and possibly feel I had to come up with explanations and apologies for not being interested.
And though he possibly felt he had wasted HIS time and been duped, I didn't worry so much about his feelings in the moment to spend time talking to him; possibly he knew that she had made an error.

So you may wonder, HAVE I EVER MATCHMADE ANYONE?

The answer is no.

ARE YOU A MEMBER OF THE 1% WHO ARE ASEXUAL?

HEALTH- US NEWS : ASEXUALITY INVISIBLE ORIENTATION

EXCERPT:  About 1 percent of the population​ is asexual, according to research by Anthony Bogaert​, a psychology professor at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. In comparison, 1.6 percent of Americans identify as gay or lesbian and 0.7 percent identify as bisexual, according to a 2013 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey of adults 18 and older.

DEMISEXUAL? GREYSEXUAL? LITHROMANTIC?

HUFFINGTON POST - SEXUALITY TERMS YOU PROBABLY DON'T KNOW  by Noah Michelson - full article

EXCERPTS:

According to Asexuality.org, romantic attraction "is an emotional response that most people often feel that results in a desire for a romantic relationship with the person that the attraction is felt towards." The site notes that "many asexual people experience romantic attraction even though they do not feel sexual attraction" and though romantic and sexual orientations often "match," "it is common to find mixed combinations of romantic and sexual orientations" in the asexual community.

ASEXUALITY IS NOT THE NEW NORMAL BUT IT IS BEING RECOGNIZED AS A SEXUALITY CATEGORY

One of the things that horrified me in my teens was the new knowledge that, if you got married, then you were signing on for being sexually active with the same person for the rest of your life and you HAD to satisfy them.  At the time I wasn't sexual with anyone and most girls seemed to be intent on fending off boys who were supposed to be the "horny" ones.  It seemed to be our jobs - and our reputations - to stop them.  I hated the pressure and the feeling of being pursued madly.  It felt to me like all boys were stalkerish. 

Married for life: This is how just about everyone who surrounded me seemed to be doing it, being married and faithful and loyal.  Divorce was rare among the people in my community.  Perhaps I was too young to understand that married people had all sort of understandings and contracts between them, things that sustained them, and that all marriages were really not alike, even if these people had the traditional roles of man as breadwinner and woman as wife and mother. 

I had no idea really about my parents' sexuality.  Or anyone's.  It was a private matter, not discussed, which I agree with actually.  Parents should not be talking their intimate lives with their children.  It was a shocker years later to find out that one of my friend's parents had divorced after three children because he was actually homosexual and his rejection of his wife had lead her to drink and sleep around.

Still, when you're just trying to figure things out for yourself, it can be daunting to imagine that you might have to have sex for the rest of your life with the same person, granted a person who you supposedly love and who supposedly loves you, and who you made a (sacred) commitment to for life.  If you have some sexual experiences with boys who have not a clue what they are doing and remain unsatisfied yourself, sex feels like a chore, an obligation, a duty, and a danger.

Well, I've got lots of love to give, always have.  But I never met that "special someone" who I could imagine being committed to, in love with, and sexual with, for the rest of my life.  Nor did he find me. 

Am I asexual?

I've been reading around this subject and actually I don't think so.  The reason I don't think so is that from what I'm reading it sounds like asexual could be a natural state one experiences their entire life.   Such a person just never is very interested in sex. 

Maybe we all go through questioning, doubts, and experiences, and eventually we come to  come to a decision about our ORIENTATION, and our GENDER.  What about when people get older and find themselves with much less libido?  They are still likely to self identify themselves based on all the experiences they had as younger people.

Still, I know some asexual (by self identification) people have read NEVER MARRIED NO KIDS BLOGSPOT and left comments in the past, explaining to me that this is WHY they are NMNK.

Early on in this blog I tried to identify the various groups of people who are NMNK including priests and nuns.  I said being NMNK could be a temporary lifestyle or something you have no choice in, though I myself am NMNK by choice. 

So in the next few posts I'm going to look into the latest on ASEXUALITY.


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MATCHMAKE YOURSELF? TWO YEARS OF BLISS and then ON YOUR NERVES?

The other night I told a friend of mine that I'd been thinking of a writing a list of questions which I could hand out to anyone who thinks they want to have a relationship with me.  I mean men, who if they answer enough questions right could be friends with me or if they answered ALL the questions right, could actually have a Relationship with me, or at least start one.  The reason for this is that suddenly I've attracted three potential Relationships with men I've met in recent months.  I see how easy it is for having flowing conversations, a few laughs, or a good time, can make people skip over all the important issues, and become too involved, and then break up anyway.

WHO NEEDS THAT?

I decided the list of questions would be, not tricky, but the reader would not necessarily know where I was coming from so they couldn't guess what answers I hoped for.  I would warn them to be honest since they had no idea.

The inspiration for this idea was a recent article that explained why everything you like or love about a person WILL BE ON YOUR NERVES in two years.  Well, what happens is that the characteristic you liked or loved seems exaggerated at that point.  He was neat.  Now he's excessively neat and on your back about dishes in the sink.  You loved her long hair.  Now you go crazy waiting the two hours it takes for her to shampoo, condition, set, and comb out before you go out. Etc.

So I'm not going to tell you all the questions on my list.  I'm going to tell you ONE and encourage you to make your own list, if you think that you'll have the courage to actually present it upon someone new in your life.

1)  WHAT DO YOU THINK OF LAS VEGAS?

MATCH MAKING? THE JEWISH MATCHMAKER IN AN OLD NEIGHBORHOOD

I lived in a Jewish neighborhood for a while and actually encountered a match maker.  A tradition.  Usually a Jewish woman who makes it her business to know who is unmarried, looking for marriage, and who is eligible.  As in the romantic old film "Crossing Delancy Street."

She told me that her services extended to referring men in particular for make overs and especially some better clothing.  (Ah but after marriage either his wife dresses him or he goes back to slovenly looks.)

She said that it is believed in the Jewish faith that if you match make three couples, then you go to heaven.  She had match made two couples.  You see she got into this late and wasn't sure she would go past three.

Since then I've learned that Jewish people seem to put a lot of pressure on their own to be married.  Married is the way people are supposed to go through life, it is believed.  Though there is a LOT of intermarriage with other faiths, primarily Christians, there is also a lot of pressure for the Christian spouse to convert; if a person really believed in Jesus this would be impossible.  But it's thought to be better after all to be unified religiously if you're going to raise children.

There are ALWAYS people who do not marry, for any number of reasons.  Matchmaking works on the problem of actually meeting people in general.  It can be helpful to those who are not too social maybe because they are too busy with education and work.