Staying single: a decision made by one for two?

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I wanted to reflect on that as it hit me today. Essentially if you pull yourself off the market - for whatever reason - you're decision impacts one other person, possibly many. That could be good, it could be bad, its really a difficult thing to call.

I'm still in the throws of what feels like a life pinch, want to see how the year progresses, but at times where I feel like uncertainty is high I feel like I'd much rather suffer it or, perhaps a better word, handle it alone than have someone with me. For the most part it seems like the relationship world these days is built on fair weather, not everyone flees when the weather goes south but the relationship can be dragged down with it easily, and there's barely a point of reference for who's worth putting the effort in to make things work vs. who isn't unless its a connection of a caliber that you've never had before.

I should probably stop right there - too much more musing and I'm sure this thing will fall right off the bottom of the page. Still probably good to reiterate the question or topic of discussion - it seems like society's doing a lot to try and make singlehood another option, treating it as a concept somewhat as if it were an alternate objective. There are some people who find themselves hard pressed in the marriage direction, others in the permanent single direct, and others in the middle who just say 'it depends'. What do you find the best and most mobilizing outlook to be? Also would you agree that in abstract the decision to stay single reflexively makes that choice for another person as well?

Staying single can be a decision made by one, that affects two.
If you stay single to focus on your life, by the time you've achieved your goals you might be much older and have missed out.
Likewise if you jump to the relationship first you might find it hard to achieve your goals to a point you are content with them.
Maybe just enjoy your life, and share that life with somebody when the right person comes along?

I see the dating market as much more fluid than this. Any individual's absence or presence doesn't have a lot of impact. Every moment lots of people enter or leave the dating market, it is not a static thing.

I also believe that there is no "one" that's out there for you, depending on who you are there are likely several "ones" and each of those "ones" has several likewise-compatible "ones".

That's generally my outlook and it seems like a double-edged sword with either direction people take (and to add - I can see where a lot of divorces likely come from people feeling 'trapped' or stuck in certain areas of personal development).

What gets stressful though is having the question ping-pong in my head of whether I'm too eccentric for anyone and, the counter-question - is it vain of me to even assume I could know such a thing? I think its emotional closure I tend to be after but its difficult to come by and the minute I feel properly signed off on one thing I'll run into someone (which - almost reciprocally - I'll typically never see again) who makes me really question that assertion. I guess its really a quest for keeping solid ground emotionally but one where - like so many others in my life - the easy and clean-cut answer never seems to be the right one.

I wish i can make a such conscious decision.

and what about... your sexual needs?

Going the FWB route?This can be as hard as getting a relationship.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 03 May 2012, 12:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Girlfriends and dating aren't the only route to sexual needs
Sometimes you just meet a girl and things happen and that's it. It's not something I go looking for personally, but if you go out to town enough it eventually happens.

I have sexual needs. I have chosen to go without because I cannot engage in casual relations.

This "going without" causes me undue anguish each and every day. We all make choices.

Girls don't see me as a casual sex material, maybe i shouldn't hide my boner? xD

LOL when in doubt, rock out.

jk

I'd agree on the probability level that it has every appearance of that. It seems like right now we have more single people that ever before.

Another thing that caught my interest yestereday was reading up on the topic of guys literally 'not growing up'. The claim's been that lots of guys these days are part of a 'lost' generation where they act like late teens/early 20's well into their 30's. That's a topic in and of itself but it seems like the system is both liberated and broken though, as in there seems to be a lot of interdepencency with guys becoming men, girls becoming women, and it almost seems like very few people - if any - can really go that process alone. The closer they come to trying to do all these developmental tasks in a vacuum (needless to say - or being under malignant influence) the more likely it seems that you have 'adults' that never fully became adults - simply because they never had the right levers.

Didn't mean to veer off but I guess that's another dimension to all of this.


That gets into whether the future is fixed/determined or not. I tend to think it is, so if someone gets married once there was a one, if they get married three times and divorced twice, well... there were three. Good relationships, bad relationships, its all kinda part of life's causal scaffolding. The trouble is - determinism still doesn't liberate us from worrying about the future, especially when that was just as fixed in time and determined. A mess isn't it?

I'm always intrigued by your musings. So well thought out and so perceptive!

I disagree on a fixed future, though I'm willing to concede that patterns likely repeat ad nauseum.

I literally can't trust people's reactions to me enough. Its hot/cold, bipolar, and even aside from not being able to get proportional/sane responses from people I also have the problem of being....er.......demisexual (to use a word I absolutely hate). I haven't met anyone spry or punky enough to appeal for FWB.

I think the other thing - there's three territories my interest can fall into: 1) like them as people but no spark, can't so much as kiss them, 2) completely fascinated by them, 3) physically attracted - plenty of spark but I'd never date them. Category 3 there's really no chance, they're either repulsed by my AS or can read my expression and intentionality about as well as they can read Sanskrit. I could theoretically do things as right as I can (taking my know-how as close to the wall of my own limitations as I can) and its just a no go.

I meet lots and lots of 1)s, some 3)s, and almost never a 2), unfortunately.

My problem with 2)'s is that they're often as guarded and touchy as I am - we can both have interest and keep striking out with each other at different times (and typically the situation - whether school, work, etc. isn't ours to control). Its almost like the Saturday Night Live skit on self-consciousness except not quite *that* embarrassing and has a lot more odd coincidences propelling it to collapse.