From: kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown)
Subject: Re: Exactly what I mean by "unattached"...
Organization: I can't see any in the immediate vicinity...
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 05:25:03 GMT

In article <28993@hydra.Helsinki.FI> taina@cs.Helsinki.FI (Juha Taina) writes:
>In <1992Aug12.040417.15972@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
>>But if the friendship is the only thing that's happening, it won't be
>>too long before a romance becomes close to impossible.
>
>I didn't quite get the previous sentence. Could you clarify your
>thoughts a little?

Certainly.

There seems to be *something* which distinguishes friendship and romance.
If this were not the case, then every friend one had which was of the
appropriate sex would be considered a romantic partner.  Since this is not
the case in Real Life (tm), the conclusion must be that friendship and
romance are different things (even if they overlap).

Now, most of the women I've talked to (yes, yes, I know there may be some
exceptions to this on the net.  I'm talking about women I've talked to
in person) seem to think that it would be ideal to make friends with
someone first, *then* start a romance after the friendship is firmly
established.  Presumably, of course, to determine compatibility issues
and all that.

But I discovered that in Real Life (tm), it doesn't work like that.  Instead,
what happens is that I make friends with them, the friendship is established,
and then they say that they couldn't even conceive of a romance with me
because I'm too much like a brother to them.  I also discovered, in talking
to my male friends, that they had experienced *exactly* the same thing.

Well, it took a few instances of this to cause me to realize that the
approach I had been taking, which was directly derived from what these
women *claimed* they preferred, was all wrong.  That is, starting off
with a friendship is, if the friendship is allowed to develop sufficiently,
the Wrong Answer (tm).  And this can mean only one thing: that the claims
that were originally made were *bogus*!

That's why I say that if the friendship is the *only* thing that's going on,
i.e. a romance isn't developing in parallel, then eventually the romance
will be almost impossible to develop (due to the Sibling Effect (tm)  :-).

Nowadays, of course, if some woman claims that she prefers to develop
romance from friendship, my bogosity meter goes off.  It may be true in
her case, of course, but I have no way of knowing that unless I actually
see it happen, and given my experience, I'll either reserve judgement or
believe that the claim is probably bogus, depending on the age of the
person I'm talking to (there seems to be some correlation between a person's
age and how in touch with themselves they are).

>>For the purposes of starting a romance, friendship by itself is a deadly
>>thing, or so it seems.
>
>As it's stated before, It works both ways. Personally I'd rather date
>someone I know than a total stranger.

Well, again, this is what is *claimed*.  This *doesn't* seem to be what
happens in practice.

I don't care what people claim.  I care about what they actually *do*,
because *that's* what I ultimately have to deal with in Real Life (tm).

>Juha Taina | taina@cs.helsinki.fi | Phone: +358-0-708-4247


-- 
				Kevin Brown

			    kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com
			    kevin@taronga.taronga.com
Newsgroups: soc.singles