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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: May 11, 2016  ·  

Listen up, Grasshopper.

"Love" is not about finding the "kind of person you want" it's about finding someone who revises your requirements. The person you will love will or will not read Mindy Kaling. Either way, you will forgive her. The person you love will convince you to stay in when you want to go to the sunset and convince you to go to the sunset when you want to stay in.

Love is about buttressing our identities, not about defining ourselves by our choices and our tastes. Love makes solitude effortless and sharing an assumption. Love is not additive or subtractive, it is multiplicative. Therefore, we must not be zeroes when we operate.

There's this assumption amongst the lonelyhearts of early adulthood that love is "filling the void." Those who are happy in love are those who have tended to their own voids as you are doing. We do not "complete" each other. We stack.

My wife's taste in music sucks. I think in the past ten years she's bought a Norah Jones CD, and maybe an Iron & Wine. THAT'S IT. Over a thirteen year relationship I have determined that she fundamentally dislikes music that includes "bass" and "drums." Early on, I told her that she was perfect except for her taste in music. She laughed at me and said "I can buy my music at Fred Meyer. You're the one that needs to buy obscure, out-of-print German bands that howl at each other." She's right. And she won't come to my concerts, and that's fine because everything else matters so much more.

"Love" will challenge your ideas about love, and you'll love it. But you're right, and you're on the right track.

You have to be up for the challenge, and that starts within.





ButterflyEffect  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I disagree, to an extent about the choices and tastes aspect of this. The choices and tastes of a person are a defining part of their identify. I do not believe, for instance, that the person shooting guns and listening to pop country and the person sitting in a coffee shop listening to Sam Beam are romantically compatible people. Therefore, how a person defines themselves directly relates to the pool of people available to them for identity buttressing. If I'm aware of my identity, and therefore aware of the scope of the previous sentence, is that not a good way to temper expectations?

Like I said, void was due to a lack of other words to use, I don't feel much of a void right now. But I also have no interest in love or being close to anybody.

kleinbl00  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It is not and I will tell you why.

When I was your age I walked around in a Schott Perfecto airbrushed with a Skinny Puppy logo on it. I had holes in my ears spaced to fit electronics components. I had a chinese assault rifle in my dorm room and at least three designs for at least three morbidly embarrassing tattoos that I fortunately never went through with.

When my wife was your age she had hair down to her ass and was an avid chamber music performer. Her principle interests were Renfair and needlepoint and she wore a college sweatshirt everywhere. She had never eaten sushi, considered butterscotch schnapps to be her cocktail of choice and rebelled against her parents by attending - gasp! - EndFest. Yet we hung out, were friends, and flirted. She met two of my extremely spooky girlfriends and I was friends with the potato she dated, and then married.

But we got along pretty goddamn well. My wife is fond of saying "we weren't ready for each other back then."

"Opposites attract" is most likely the single most common romance trope. I'd look it up but I'm in a hurry (and there's enough biochemists on this site to fact-check me faster than I can say "o-chem") but I've heard from several different places that the pheromones we're attracted to come from people with moderate genetic drift from ourselves. Biologically, we're looking for diversity, but also compatibility.

The science of attraction is far from settled. Both Match.com and eHarmony.com use variations of Meyers-Briggs in their questionnaires; the funny thing is that Match.com pairs opposites while eHarmony pairs equals. This is probably why eHarmony was favored by older people while Match was favored by younger - our personalities and behaviors when we're young are more malleable.

Far more importantly, however, is research conducted by Dan Ariely that determined that speed dating is far better at finding a lasting companion than any sort of online questionnaire, and that speed dating with shared experience trumps everything. Simply putting two people on computers and making them look at abstract shapes with a chat window does a better job of finding partners than swiping right. It's not about who we are, it's not about what we want, it's about how we interact with each other.

You have to be certain in yourself before you can be confident in your interactions. This, I believe, is why young people flailing about looking for identity have a hard time at romance while the self-assured pricks who know precisely who they are tend to clean up.

Who you are matters fuckall. How you share it is everything.

ButterflyEffect  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, I've read that Ariely book and think online dating and dating apps are a complete crock of shit designed solely to keep people using them. Success doesn't matter, give the user the tools to have just enough success that creates a story that draws in more people, whole you leave the rest tugging at strings trying to figure why it's not working for them.

Your last sentence is really kind of upsetting. If only because I don't want to share who I am. I don't care.

kleinbl00  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

But they do, and they will, and that is how you will find love.

When you're ready they'll know. Girls can smell fear.

goobster  ·  2877 days ago  ·  link  ·  

These may be the two most important sentences on the internet.

The fact is - speaking from MUCH personal experience - that you won't "find someone" until you stop looking. And I don't mean the whiny, self-pitying, "nobody loves me so I'm not going outside anymore" version of "not looking."

You will pass through that stage. Then you will come out the other side, and have genuinely given up entirely.

Then you will be someone that other people find attractive, because you aren't using them as a battery to power your sad little existence. You will be a source of power and energy and that is attractive.

And that's when they will find you. You gotta be whole and not-needy before someone is gonna want you in a healthy and loving way. It'll happen. Eventually.

b_b  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    The choices and tastes of a person are a defining part of their identify. I do not believe, for instance, that the person shooting guns and listening to pop country and the person sitting in a coffee shop listening to Sam Beam are romantically capatible people.

No.

Taste is what one finds pleasing, and there are many reasons why one might prefer country to classical, say, or vice versa (upbringing, genetics, etc). They have nothing whatever to do with identity. If you're defining yourself by your taste in music, art, whatever, then you, my friend, are leading an exceedingly shallow existence (my apologies for being so blunt).

There is definitely a lot to be gained by having similar interests insofar are you will enjoy doing stuff together, which I think is important (such that one needs to be friends with their partner, first and foremost, to be anything else). But some interests will converge and some diverge, and there's nothing wrong with that, unless you're looking for an accessory and not a partner.

My wife, for example, is an amazing person. She is a beautiful piano player, and is a highly talented and successful artist, all qualities you might be attracted to. BUT, she also enjoys laying on the couch and watching The Kardashians and King of Queens. I can't be in a room where Kim Kardashian is on TV, so guess what? I leave. I don't see it as an existential threat. KoQ I find absolutely terrible and trivial, but it doesn't inspire the level of disgust in me than does reality TV generally and Kardashians in particular. But that just shows she's human. No one has high minded ideals all the time. I play hockey and occasionally even get in fights like a high school kid while doing so. Those are things she probably finds childish and low brow about me. These things make us more human.

ButterflyEffect  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I still don't know how much I buy into that. How can what a person enjoys, what they do as a hobby, what their tastes are, how are those things not a part of their identity? Is there not a tie between these things and deeper aspects of a person? (To which I say: yes)

The identity is the sum of its parts and to simply ignore facets of if just doesn't feel right.

oyster  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't think it's so much what you do/like but how you share that with somebody. Sometimes she'll do things she doesn't necessarily enjoy just to see you enjoy yourself and sometimes you'll do the same for her. I don't give a shit about guns but I love talking to my SO about them because I liked seeing how passionate he is. It's not necessarily the topic or activity you find interesting but the person in front of you.

ButterflyEffect  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not necessarily, but there are certain topics I have zero tolerance for, and guns are a great example of that. If you own guns, support the gun industry and lobbying, then I flat out do not want to be intimate with you. As a person in front of me I have very little interest in you (see: judgmental comment in reply to bb).

Granted, I have a family member who was killed due to gun violence, so that's an extreme example.

oyster  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh I don't live in America and we don't really support how you guys do things. To be blunt thought you will likely have to work on the quick to judge thing you've seemingly got going on. You'll never like everything about a person and if you did you would probably get bored of them. A partner should be somebody who you can grow with and that's not really gonna happen when someone is exactly like you. Also if you are with them for being like you you won't like when they inevitably grow to be a different at different times from you.

b_b  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think (hope) what you're trying to say is that there are people who are sensitive to the world around them and people who aren't, and that you prefer the former, no? If so, I agree with you.

However, the specifics are irrelevant. Only the most superficial aspects of one's being can be summed up in the way you suggest. Do you only relate to people who, say, have similar political or religious beliefs as you? Make the same amount of money as you? Eat the same kind of food as you? All of these things are skin deep at their deepest, and none is an example of a character trait any more than being white, black, Asian, or Latino is. Judging a book by its cover is bad enough. Judging a person by theirs...

ButterflyEffect  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think I have too many trust issues to not be a judgmental person.

OftenBen  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I have met your wife and find the fact that she watches reality anything super confusing.

Devac  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.
snoodog  ·  2878 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks for saving me the trouble of writing it up. This man is 100% correct.