relationships nr i'm not sure i've ever heard tv dialogue that's resonated so much with me that i've felt the need to type it out. but i found this super interesting and sort of similar to what i've been thinking about these days. (spoilers, if anyone hasn't seen season 5 of louie and wants to.) pamela: this is it. this is the best. think about it: you were married. you got divorced. i had a kid with a guy; it was awful. didn't we learn anything? louie: well, what did you learn? p: there's more than one way to be together. do all roads have to lead to ruin? l: ruin?! p: yes. ruin. friends, sex, love, marriage, divorce. ruin. okay, how about another road? friends, sex, love, italian food, have your own places, schtupp another person, friends... not to have to? i mean, to choose to? to always make a new choice to be together? ..... p: you don't have me; we're just closer than we were before. i'm not yours and you're not mine. but, guess what? i love you... right now. and tonight, we're gonna have a sleepover. and then tomorrow we're gonna be in our own places and use our own showers and play with all our own things. l: and then what? 160514 ... nr i like the realistic view of relationships. not that all serious ones lead to ruin, but that there are different kinds of relationships that work for different people. these days i've been thinking more and more about unconventional relationships and their potential appeal. 160514 ... unhinged for the most part seem like a gigantic waste of time; one of my favorite lines of the sadhana of mahamudra is 'counting on friends has brought us nothing but insecurity and sorrow' sic i used to ache with need to relate to others. now i sit still and wait for others to come to me. in the past six months i met a man doing just that and right now we are building a relationship which at the very least feels like it will be a beautiful friendship. i stopped looking and here it is. (proving once again why cliches have such power) 160515 ... unhinged eh after just a few weeks, he says 'i just casually drift from one person to another; i want to believe there is the perfect someone out there for me with rainbows and all but i move on as soon as the relationship seems stale or at the first sign of dependency' i don't even see room for a friendship in that comment. i have reigned in my tendency to share even the most mundane details at the risk of exhibiting 'the first sign of dependency' and have heard nothing from him. yet again, i'm stuck playing a game that i despise. 160519 ... nr i don't understand how people find them so quickly. i know a crazy amount of people who just jump from long-term relationship (and in some cases even marriage) to long-term relationship with hardly any time at all in between. it's hard enough for me to meet single-dude people i connect with people enough to want to talk to them extensively, let along start something that could even potentially become a relationship. 160621 ... nr remove that extra "people." 160621 ... nr and when does something turn into this? i guess it's just when both parties decide it is? sometimes you can be spending time with someone for months and have them say they like you and make plans with you, only to have things turn from semi-frequent to sporadic and back and forth again, without you ever knowing what's going on unless you dare to ask. 160621 ... and also... "let along" should be "let alone" above. sigh. 160621 ... unhinged i stopped trying to get a definition out of men a long time ago; any attempt to define usually scares them off. the only one in recent years to ask me for a commitment ran away at the first chance (he's chinese and his mommy didn't like me) so i no longer hope or look for anything. men drift in and out. the only ones that stick are immature little boys that see me as a novelty (the older nonchristian woman) even on the platonic side of things, people don't want to have to act like decent or real people. i become more and more content to be alone as the days pass. 160622 ... nr the idea that talking honestly about stuff like this adds pressure or scares people off is so frustrating to me. it's generally true, and that's why i'm usually reluctant to do it, but i have less and less patience for this as i grow older. or maybe it doesn't have to do with age, but i am a big fan of being direct and saving your time and other people's. hopefully there are ways to present the subject without making it seem like you're asking for an immediate commitment. i think if you're sure you can talk honestly about what you want and where you're at, it can be freeing. even if it's not what the other person would want to hear. like, you could say you're not really ready for a commitment but still want to hang out with the person once in awhile. or that you're not quite feeling what you were before. or that you need time and space. and then the other person could decide if they wanted to deal with that or not. i know that in the past, anytime someone's been honest with me like that, it's difficult to hear at first, and an ego blow, but much easier to get over than wondering all the time. i guess a lot of people don't want to be that honest, though. two separate friends told me they were seeing people for awhile and neither of them ever knew if they were in relationships, and then eventually (after months and months), things just ended (if the word "ended" can even be used, since there was no official beginning). one friend told me she wished she had just asked if they were dating. the other friend just told me she eventually just got tired of it. i guess i ultimately want honest communication because potentially scaring someone off is probably a bit better than both those situations. 160622 ... unhinged ghosting i recently learned this word while watching jeopardy and i hate the whole concept. have to admit, it's happened to me because i was too chicken to have a conversation with someone, but if there's a term for it, it means it has become an acceptable feature of modern dating and relationships 160623 ... nr from urban dictionary: "The act of suddenly ceasing all communication with someone the subject is dating, but no longer wishes to date. This is done in hopes that the ghostee will just "get the hint" and leave the subject alone, as opposed to the subject simply telling them he/she is no longer interested. Ghosting is not specific to a certain gender and is closely related to the subject's maturity and communication skills. Many attempt to justify ghosting as a way to cease dating the ghostee without hurting their feelings, but it in fact proves the subject is thinking more of themselves, as ghosting often creates more confusion for the ghostee than if the subject kindly stated how he/she feels." 160623 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I don't know if B. did that to me last year. I mean, I had said before that maybe things wouldn't work because we didn't have stuff in common. But then we were walking down the street and seemingly making up. Yes, walking downhill where Cote-des-Neiges turns into Guy and I asked if we could hold hands like the cheesy lactose-free cheeseball I am sometimes. And he vanished after that. Hand-holding is dangerous and will drive people away. With J-pronounced-like-Y it wasn't "ghosting," since he left to go back to Europe. For me, no other relationships to talk about... Well, lots more, but not of the romantic sort. Still complicated, though. 160624 ... nr i hadn't seen him for months, so normally i would assume whatever we had had had ended (ha, those three "had"s are actually all supposed to be there). but he contacted me during that time, and when he did, he spoke like whatever we were was still in the present. and he picked something up for me when he was out somewhere. i was in his area of town the other night, so i figured i'd message him to see if he was around, not really expecting he'd show up, but he did. and then i thought we'd just talk and catch up, but he said he'd missed certain things about me, and turned things more than platonic, and said we should make a plan to hang out sometime. then today, i messaged him asking about a show he's playing (that he's talked about a bit but didn't officially invite me to), and he wanted to be honest with me about having invited a date in case that would be weird for me. we're not and never were together, despite having hung out for about eight months, so he can date whomever he wants. but i still feel weird. even if he's still not ready for a relationship, i think it's pretty clear i'm not the one he'd choose to have one with. i'm not even sure what i am to him. i wonder if i'll ever have that local, functional reciprocation thing that seems to come so much more easily to others. 170224 what's it to you? who go blather from