Posts tagged with "dating"

One-Year Mark

I think I’m com­ing up to my one-year dry spell mark, but to be hon­est, I’m not sure. I used to tease Trolley about his dry spells, but now, well, yeah…heh.

I’m aim­ing for four. We were watch­ing a dat­ing show on the Life Network once, and they were try­ing to set up this guy who had a full out four-year dry spell. On his actu­al date, he could­n’t stop talk­ing about how his fam­i­ly had an inter­ven­tion con­cern­ing the amount of time he spent on the inter­net. He kept going on and on about how his par­ents want­ed less than two hours a day but he was adamant on keep­ing at least four. My the­o­ry is that any­thing past three years does dam­age to the brain. I want to be able to doc­u­ment every dis­in­te­grat­ing part of my intel­lect Charlie Gordon style. I’m dying to find out if it’ll be a grad­ual process, or I’ll just sud­den­ly wake up one day with­out my san­i­ty.

I got the idea from Dave, a guy on the floor in res in first year. He was in the reserves, so he always told us these crazy sto­ries about when he was serv­ing. One time he had to stay awake for three days, doing noth­ing but eat­ing and defending/digging a trench. After the 30th hour he start­ed start­ed hal­lu­ci­nat­ing. After that, Pita and I made a pact to pull a simul­ta­ne­ous three-nighter, just to see if we’d start to go insane, but I keeled over in my room at about the 23rd hour. I had nev­er pulled an all-nighter before then.

This time though, I’ve had a bit of prac­tice. Not three years prac­tice, but prac­tice. I want to go for as long as pos­si­ble, sort of like serv­er uptime.

Guilt-Free Selfishness

I’ve been brave enough to lis­ten to The Postal Service late­ly, although my enjoy­ment is restrict­ed to head­phones on the bus. It’s still some­thing that’s a lit­tle too per­son­al to be lis­ten­ing through speak­ers, and for some rea­son, I’m not com­fort­able with oth­ers hear­ing the same songs that I do. It’s as if being able to hear the same trip­py beats and soft voic­es gives oth­er peo­ple the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence the mem­o­ries that the music brings to my mind; curves in a gen­tle face, car rides through the thick sum­mer air, ner­vous fum­blings on the couch, the scent of unfa­mil­iar sheets.

They’re all good mem­o­ries, noth­ing painful any­more, but it’s all some­thing I’d like to keep to myself for just a lit­tle longer.

Janus

Sometimes I see the same movie twice with a large gap of time between view­ings, and I under­stand the char­ac­ters, thoughts, emo­tions, and actions very dif­fer­ent­ly each time.

A few days ago, I came to the real­iza­tion that I’ve been a dif­fer­ent per­son in every rela­tion­ship through my eight year dat­ing peri­od. Not all of me has changed, but there are a few aspects which I believe would be impor­tant in such a bond.

I’ve gained more matu­ri­ty and more con­fi­dence. I’ve gained a fair amount of intel­li­gence (though I still feel like I have infi­nite­ly more to learn). I’ve changed career goals, rela­tion­ship goals, and hap­pi­ness goals. I’m more out­go­ing, more tol­er­ant, more secure, less pre­ten­tious (I hope), less arro­gant, and less igno­rant. I’ve changed my opin­ions on chil­dren, abor­tion, and reli­gion. I’ve even changed my actions based on these shift­ing beliefs.

Although I view most of these changes as being good things, they may put strain on a rela­tion­ship nonethe­less. After all, change is change, and unless a rela­tion­ship is strong and flex­i­ble enough, it can­not endure such stress. It’s a lit­tle scary to think that I may be bring­ing extra strain into a rela­tion­ship, sim­ply by being myself.

At one point in my inex­pe­ri­enced youth, after hav­ing changed a fair deal already, I believed that I would­n’t change any more. Now I real­ize how stu­pid­ly obliv­i­ous a com­ment that was, and am of the belief that I’ll nev­er stop chang­ing.

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind through all of this is whether the change is for the bet­ter, and as Tom has helped me real­ize, rela­tion­ships (friend­ships or oth­er­wise) should form around this idea.

Whether or not a rela­tion­ship will work out in the end is not based on one per­son, but the foun­da­tion and dynam­ic of two peo­ple.

Relationships As A Nash Equilbrium

A sub­ject I find dif­fi­cult to express myself about is that of free­dom.

Freedom is a dif­fi­cult thing to under­stand. In a rela­tion­ship, free­dom is always bound­ed by some con­straint imposed when the rela­tion­ship is first made. Yet free­dom is a very gen­er­al state­ment, even if nar­rowed down to the sit­u­a­tion with­in a rela­tion­ship.

The free­dom I wish to speak about is that of depen­dence with­in a rela­tion­ship. Freedom in this case is relat­ed to a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty.

As a per­son, I find respon­si­bil­i­ties to be detestable. I have always tried to avoid respon­si­bil­i­ties in my life, and I do it well. The only thing that I am respon­si­ble for is myself, a fact that I’ve very will­ing­ly accept­ed, unlike oth­ers that I know.

However, in a rela­tion­ship, I’ve always felt that one should be respon­si­ble for his or her bet­ter half. I’ve always believed that it should be a com­mit­ment when enter­ing such a bond. Yet there is always the sep­a­ra­tion between being respon­si­ble for some­one, and being forced to be with some­one to serve their whim.

As a respon­si­ble per­son, it is one’s job to make sure that one is there if the oth­er needs it. However, this oth­er per­son must under­stand that when­ev­er he or she feels this “need”, he or she should not inter­fere with the free­dom allowed with­in the bound­aries of the rela­tion­ship.

A gener­ic exam­ple may make things clear­er. If a boyfriend want­ed to spend some time at home on the week­end with his girl­friend, but his girl­friend want­ed to go ski­ing for the week­end with her friends, then the male should not hin­der the activ­i­ties of the female, unless he was in dis­tress, or in great need of com­pa­ny. If his demand for her time is too great and con­stant­ly smoth­er­ing oth­er activ­i­ties she wish­es to do, then he is not being a respon­si­ble per­son and respect­ing his part­ners’ wish­es.

It has always seemed like such a self­ish thing to me, to be inor­di­nate­ly demand­ing, or unsat­is­fi­ably clingy. It begins as a form of flat­tery, to be sure, but exces­sive con­straints become a bur­den or strain on the rela­tion­ship. One finds one­self con­stant­ly try­ing to please the oth­er, with­out pre­vail.

I believe that such greed­i­ness stems from inse­cu­ri­ty. When some­one is inse­cure, he or she is scared that his or her part­ner is hav­ing too good a time, and will hence for­get about the rela­tion­ship. Perhaps jeal­ous­ly plays a part in such a vague sub­ject, and serves as a more con­scious man­i­fes­ta­tion of a sub­con­scious feel­ing.

Of course, I am guilty of such self­ish­ness myself at times, though I wish I was­n’t. I feel that I’ve improved, that I can respect the desires of oth­er peo­ple, so that they may be free to do what they wish. Perhaps this is a sign of increased con­fi­dence in my rela­tion­ships, that all I wish is for oth­ers to be hap­py.

A Nash equi­lib­ri­um is a ter­ri­ble thing.

The Rules

Aaron told me that he did­n’t think I was spoiled today. I was a bit sur­prised, since even I think I’m spoiled to an extent. I real­ize that I take many of the priv­i­leges I have for grant­ed, but I’m always thank­ful of the finan­cial free­dom that I’ve been giv­en. We seem to be able to talk for hours on end, and it’s worth get­ting in trou­ble at work for it.

One thing that we dis­cussed was the rules about accept­able dat­ing habits. The rules that he fol­lows are dif­fi­cult for me to under­stand. One seem­ing­ly uni­ver­sal rule is that you can nev­er date a friend’s sis­ter. It’s hard for me to under­stand some­thing like this, because I’ve nev­er had sib­lings of any kind. I think that the prob­lem would lie in whether a break-up would hap­pen; where would one’s loy­al­ty lie, since you’re so close to both peo­ple? I believe that if both par­ties are mature enough, they will be able to remain friends after some­thing like that should hap­pen. I real­ize that it may not always work out that way, but I believe that the deci­sion of the risk would be up to the friend and the sis­ter.

He also told me that he would nev­er date any of his friends’ ex-girl­friends, and that it was an unspo­ken rule among his friends as well. I guess the rule seems very rigid to me, as I’m sure there should be excep­tions, such as who was at fault, and why they broke up.

There just seem to be so many rules that peo­ple fol­low, good or bad. I know some girls who won’t date guys short­er than them. I can’t even begin to com­pre­hend this; it just seems so amaz­ing­ly shal­low, or per­haps I’m just over­sen­si­tive about my lack of height. I also know Chinese girls who won’t date Chinese guys. The only expla­na­tion I can find for this is that a girl may not like the Chinese cul­ture, so they asso­ciate Chinese guys with this. Yet how can every Chinese guy be com­plete­ly set in the Chinese cul­ture? The expla­na­tion just does­n’t seem to work.

One of my Caucasian ex’s said that she would nev­er date a white guy, because they always seem so shal­low. I was offend­ed because I would­n’t be dat­ing her, had I sim­ply inhab­it­ed pale skin. She real­ized that she was wrong to sim­ply asso­ciate white guys with being shal­low, based on her past expe­ri­ences.

It’s still some­thing that’s hard for me to grasp. Perhaps Chinese girls don’t find the “look” of Chinese guys to be attrac­tive, which is some­thing I could under­stand more. I still believe that one can be attract­ed to any­one though, as long as one keeps an open mind.

An inter­est­ing point that I once dis­cussed with Aaron was whether Caucasian girls found Asian guys attrac­tive the way Caucasian guys find Asian girls attrac­tive. We came to the con­clu­sion that, no, they do not. It lies in the fact that the mon­goloid race has a gen­er­al­ly slim­mer build, some­thing which guys find attrac­tive in girls, but some­thing which girls sure as hell don’t find attrac­tive in guys.

It’s a good thing that I’ve giv­en up for now.