From: tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu (trygve lode)
Subject: Re: How come we aren't getting it?
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 92 07:12:03 GMT

 
 
in <92350.175451U60703@uicvm.uic.edu>
    U60703@uicvm.uic.edu writes:
 
] My feelings are that you are an intelligent/friendly group of people...
] (okay ...well...sometimes silly/immature/irrational...but...hey...who's
] perfect? :)
 
Gosh, you say "silly/immature/irrational" almost as if it were a bad
thing.
 
] The responses taught me a great deal about what men think...how they
] peceive things...(never figure them out though :)......I concluded that
] most of us men/women are looking for the same things in a relationship
] (pretty much anyway).....we all want/need love, companionship, acceptance,
] emotional/sexual intimacy, effective communication, understanding,
] support.......etc.
]
] My Ques -> So how come we aren't getting it? Why are we still closing off
]            that part of ourselves that may enable us to learn to under-
]            stand each other so we can mutually get what we desire???
 
Well, first of all, it's not quite that simple:  not only do you want
love, intimacy, support, sharing etc., you want it from the right
person--and, just to make things more difficult, that person has to be
able to supply these things to you and want to do so.
 
This, of course, makes things much more difficult--a rather large
portion of the population only wants love/understanding/intimacy/etc.
from those who can't or won't give it to them.  There are lots of
reasons for this, ranging from the perception that people who can or
will become emotionally close aren't exciting or challenging to the
common unspoken belief that you're an unworthy person and, consequently,
anyone who would love you must not be worth loving back to the popular
tendency to focus on "the one that got away" and pine away for him or
her and not respond to other options.
 
Regardless of the reason, if you're such a person, then you're pretty
much out of luck--anyone who can and will supply the desired emotional
goals is automatically out of the running--and if you're in the habit of
getting involved with such people, well, you're going to find success a
difficult thing to achieve.
 
I know a few people who follow this paradigm flawlessly--for example,
one woman I know is emminently relationshipable (if that wasn't a word
before, well, it is now) and is looking for a close, committed, long-
term relationship--but she will only consider men who are are only
interested in a casual fling; indeed, a complete lack of interest in a
relationship beyond having an occasional bedpartner when nobody else is
available seems to be a prerequisite for her to find them attractive.
 
Then, of course, there are plenty of other quirks of human behavior that
make getting together difficult.  Pulling another example from my
friends, there's a guy I know who is nice, attractive, and all that sort
of stuff, but a bit of a wallflower in public.  Now, he's gone the last
few years without anyone being particularly interested in him, until a
month or two ago when another friend of mine decided that he was really
interesting and that emminently worthy of being seriously involved with.
Now, naturally, as soon as her interest became generally known, a half-
dozen of her female friends and acquaintances all immediately decided
that they wanted to date him.  (This situation has not sorted itself out
yet and he may end up hiding in the cellar or something.)
 
Finally, there's the difficult matter of finding the right people and
determining that they are, in fact, the right people.  Given the
diversity of communication styles, relationship goals, spending habits,
and so forth, you may have to go through a lot of people to find one who
is truly compatible for more than a weekend.  Not only can each
determination of compatibility take some time, most people don't meet
all that many people outside their own social circle very often.
 
] So...what do you all think?...which way do we need to go from here?
 
A little to the left...now lower...ok, just a little bit harder....
 
Trygve
--
"Up next:  Incredible new plutonium diet lets you burn off up to thirty
 pounds in two hours!"