Relationship....
 

I'm ready for one. I'm tired of hookups and fwbs who are flakes or hard the schedule with. Yes, relationships have their own issues, but I'd rather deal with issues in a real relationship than all the other issues with flakes.

well don't sell yourself short for that 'relationship.' get right with yourself first, please.

and watch out for flakes that you can surely attract in the nsfw thread, and any real life similar situations. just sayin'

i love ya girl, i just think you should be taking smaller steps right now. just my experience and ymmv.

I agree with IM. Take your time. My wife and I dated for a few years and we were engaged for 19 months. We'll be celebrating 30 years in August.

You have to know yourself before you can know anyone else. Give yourself some time to get your balance back.

You have a lot going for you, so you will find someone who appreciates you.

BTW, when you are ready, don't go to bars. Go to book discussions, art shows, cooking classes, or some gathering that reflects your personal interests. Hopefully the guys you find there will share some of your interests for real, instead of just faking it.

Oh I guess I should say I don't want to jump into anything quick like, just more I want to get away from the hook ups and fwb and start trying "real" dating. I know I have a lot of work on myself, but I will always be working on myself. I'm not trying to take leaps and bounds.

My immediate advice would be to stop being friends with/hooking up with flakes.

I am right with you mtp - just got out of a fwb because I found out he has had a gf since Jan - pretty sure I was the other woman during that time.

I just want something meaningful with someone I can trust. Done with the random sex to the point I got off birth control because I don't want it.

I miss the feeling of being cared for - you know, before the heart break. I am working on myself, too, but it helps to have someone to lean on. It gets old being alone.

I've just broken it off with my fwb. He wanted to come over for a lunch quickie and I told him I was tired of doing that. The conversation went on for a bit where he even told me he had wanted to tell me he loved me at times and blah blah blah. I made a clean break.

Fwb is a lie. It's benefits, not friends.

Women will never even get close to the ability that men have to compartmentalize sex and feel nothing. Women, sociopaths excepted, invest. Men should realize and respect that, and stay home if they're physically attracted but have no intention of investing.

That is all.

I'm confused.

I've said this before - that honest women invest when a relationship gets physical. Men are capable of compartmentalizing their lives - of truly separating physical intimacy from emotional. Women, not so much.

Am I wrong about men? I don't mean to imply that their hearts can't be broken.

I guess I must have a strong feminine side

I thought I was supposed to not stay home any longer, because I have no intention of continuing to invest, despite my physical attraction.

Maybe instead of painting with this,
Attachment 43893

you could use this:
Attachment 43892

;)

I think you're wrong to generalize that belief, and it stems from actions of the "bad boys", who all the girls seem to be gaga over.

Uhooooh! I think I'm a sociopath.

I guess me too since I'm the one who wasn't emotionally invested.

Time to remove both feet from my mouth. :redface:

Glad to hear different points of view. I'll trade in my broad brush for a fine detail one. It's good to know there are men who don't compartmentalize. And I'm sorry about the 'sociopath' thing. I meant that women are less likely overall to emotionally disconnect, but that isn't how it came out. I apologize.

No need to apologize for describing the view from where you stand. Just be aware there are other views, so not everyone will agree. It's kind of fun getting this emotional travelogue from around the world.

Awww, c'mon, Ortho. You were just getting going.

Someday I'll have to tell you the story of when I worked at a video dating place (after which Lowered Expectations was based, typeface and all)

All I say is there is no such thing as typical, excep,t typically men and women have very unrealistic ideas about what league they are playing in.

I thought it was funny ortho. ;) I don't think anyone else was offended either.

I can only speak from my own experience when I say that I have enjoyed a number of no strings type relationships during my life. Mostly during the time when I was a single mother and had no time or desire to share my life with anyone emotionally, but I still had those same old urges.

We females call them plumbers over here. The bloke you ring when you want someone to come clean out your pipes.

IMO, every woman should have at least one to call on. :)

Actually, I'm gonna be different and thank you for the apology, ortho. I was actually offended. I thought a long time about how to respond to the sociopath comment, but since you apologized, I won't go into it. And you are completely forgiven based on your post.

To add another point of view, I will say, that in my case, the betrayal didn't come from him having a girlfriend or moving on. I was happy for that. My issue comes from someone I considered a friend, someone I trusted so much that I gave him a key to my apt, lied to me. Made me into something I wouldn't have been (the other woman, the one he cheated with) given the choice. In our entire history, when I was with someone else, even just a first date, I let him know. I expected the same respect from him. It's something I won't tolerate from anyone that I consider a friend. It takes a lot for me to open that much because of the betrayals I have lived through. It's why I make a distinction between sex and making love. I have had a lot of sex, but only made love to one person.

Former fuck buddy is not understanding the concept of a clean break. Now he's all upset I don't want to give him the details of my sex-escapades. I don't want that kind of relationship with him anymore. He even admitted he was hoping to have sex with me again. Yes, I get it, I'm awesome in bed, but if you wanted more, you should have given me a bit of romance.

Gah! Now he's saying he wanted to change the relationship but he certainly didn't make any gestures. I'm fed up. I'm done.

I'm unclear on the fuckbuddy/romance boundary. I thought they were in different zip codes?

Well he was saying he wanted more to the relationship.

Ahh!

But this sudden desire for a more meaningful relationship occurred when the casual sex stopped ?

Or is he saying he'd already been leaning that way but just hasn't said anything?

I'm slightly confused :-p

He basically said that he had been hoping it would become something more, but he didn't do or say anything to that regard. At the beginning of the relationship he had specifically said he didn't want anything more than sex. He never amended that statement so I really had no idea. Even when I would try to spend more time with him he was always too busy.

Sounds like a line to keep the sex, if you ask me.

Yeah.

Only if one or both of you is lying.

To one another or each to themselves.

It fucking kills me to hear/read a woman say "I can't find a man.".

JFC.

If you are a woman, I don't care if you're still carrying the hatchet you killed your last bf with, weigh 750 lbs, are literally covered in genital warts, ooze puss instead of sweat, and have the teeth of a syphilitic camel, all you gotta do is stand on a corner for fifteen minutes (you won't even need a sign) and there will be a line of motherfuckers waiting to make you their fucking queen.

Yeah. The sentence maybe should continue: I can't find a man I want

I don't think that's true grav. If every man I'd ever dated had wanted to make me their 'queen', I'd have stopped at the first one. Unfortunately, it's not the case. Just like every woman doesn't treat her man right. Anyway, it'd be nice if it were just as easy as saying, "I want someone to love and be loved in return", but we all know it doesn't work that way. It doesn't even work that way with animals. Most of them are choosy too.

Perhaps it's a matter of definitions. To one person, fwb may mean friends, actual friends who care about whether the other one is alive, or sick, or dead, and who can have affectionate good times without doing the Romeo & Juliet thing. To another, fwb could mean a 90-minute booty call every few weeks with zero contact in between. I suppose defining terms at the start is helpful.

Btw, Grav, I know men think that women only have to show up ... but somehow it doesn't work out that way. I have given up attempting to comprehend male/female relationships, however. Wiser and more experienced folks' opinions are worth far more than mine.

Grav, as a woman who's been overweight her whole life I ca tell you categorically that ... that's simply not true. There were times in the late 90's early 00s when it would have been nice to simply go to the bar and pick up something just for a quick bit of fun...

doesn't happen

even trolls want a supermodel, and if they can't have that they want the next closest thing.... simply getting laid when you're a larger woman isn't as easy as some like to think

Amen sister.
The bigger I got the more invisible I became.
I was the elephant in the living room.

I think that's why I got hooked on the Cellar.
Because if I was ignored, or citicised or just plain smacked down it was because of my mind, my opinion, my mistakes (I've had a few) not because of how I looked.

I could probably get a man now by standing on a street corner. On this estate, on a main road it might take more than 15 minutes just because of the speed of the traffic.
But will he look at me as if I'm an alien when I complain about greengrocers' apostrophes?

Will he enojy my little games like Guess the Advert or Who Can Get the Closest to the Cost of the Shopping (me, always me - rubbish with money and sums but just too many years of counting every penny - if I won £1m tomorrow I'd still be be able to guess within a fiver how much I'd spent in the supermarket). Or see the significance in the number 143?

Treating me like a Queen would be wonderful. Although I'd prefer to be treated like a courtesan.
And I would do what I could to treat him like a King in return. Except the bit about occasional beheadings.

But if he don't get my quirks it's going to get old very soon.
Because I want to get his quirks too; to me that lasts longer than bouncy boobies and not being afraid to swallow.

Still, I can hardly claim to be a role model in this aspect.
I'm the resident crone now we've lost Bri.

I know a woman who is under five feet, and over three hundred pounds, and has a mole the size of a green pea on the side of her face.

I have never known this woman to be without a man. Ever. I've known her for ~25 yrs. (3 men, total, btw)

Maybe she settles, but, she ain't alone.

I do hear what you're saying, though, ladies, really I do.

:lol2:...Might I suggest Kegel exercises?...:lol2:

It's outside of my area of personal knowledge, but I heard a piece on NPR a few months back about a couple that decided they were going to take a break from one another to be sure they really loved each other (whatever) and they went to bars to hook up with strangers for casual sex. They said that what they learned from the experience is that anyone can go to a bar and if they stay until closing time, they are basically guaranteed to have sex. Because that's what everyone else there is doing too. And everyone there is dramatically lowering their standards, but if you want sex, you just have to stay until closing time and you can get it.

The way drinks are priced these days, whores are cheaper. And the risks are about the same.


Try the new and improved drug resistant gonorrhea.

So...back on topic. Details are yet to be worked out but I'm supposed to have a date this weekend. I'm trying not to get worked up about it in case it falls through.

Dude, you don't show up when the bar opens, you show up just before last call, and use the $ you saved to buy jimmy hats