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well it happens to many men/women who have had an overexposure to bad experiences with the opposite sex.. and, please, i want to keep this topic from spilling over into abusive relationships that are just wrong and sometimes criminal. so enough said on that. i am talking about just not connecting or having repeated bad dating experiences and massive SO disappointment. the kind that at times seems bitter, disillusioned with "finding the one" or someone that makes them feel special, and in general a pretty sour attitude toward the opposite sex, whether in person or "ruminating" as the shrinks say.
being jaded changes your perspective on your potential relationships. what have you seen? got examples? and bad-gone-good stories? any interventions? any hope for recover? any thoughts on how to reprogram that mindset?
i will throw one out there: i was texting someone the other day and she says she never wants to get married because so many married men cheat. i think we hear a lot of that from OLD too.
Times when I have felt that way, I figured it was time to take a year or two off from dating and focus on other aspects of life until I stopped thinking everyone was like the person who hurt me.
What I don't get are the people who are bitter and have no interest in getting over it. Why try to date if you hate your target gender?
you know, i guess you could be married and jaded too. like, you are (and have been for a while) so unhappily married but your post-divorce options are so good either, so you have total displeasure with the opposite sex. i think that happens too.
There are a few factors at work when referring to someone being 'jaded' in terms of being in relationships:
The most prevalent and hardest to understand deals with the inner workings of human nature itself.
But when someone becomes jaded regarding relationships, it is the result of a process that occurs rather than due to one or a few isolated experiences.
Time as a concept is finite, whereas the potential possibilities that one could experience in terms of relationships is almost infinite depending on how they structure their lives and what direction they take.
As one of those components decreases with age: the amount of time left available to practically take part in and experience a relationship - the other remains static and/or the potential idealized and infinite realm of possible experiences continues to exist. That conflict often leads to one becoming jaded and can result from realizing that they never met their true romantic and sexual potential in their previous relationships, might not in the future and/or settled for less at any point. And the finite resource known as time continues to be depleted.
Another aspect that plays a role is one's own preconceived (often illusionary) and ideal version of what they expect a relationship and their partner to be colliding with the concrete reality of what they live with everyday. Very often, what a person wants is not equal to what they are able to get, and the hard work that a relationship requires conflicts with the romanticized view of what they wanted to have, in the absence of any hard work.
I attribute the above to a systemic rise in the level of narcissism in society and it's pervasive hold that it has on relationships and how potential partners view each other, themselves and what they expect their relationship to be.
And on a side note. . . . . . true unconditional romantic love with monogamy as the ideal, when set as the standard (by either one or both parties involved in a relationship) is an extremely unrealistic and often self-defeating goal to be reached, especially consistently and over a period of years. In that sense, any attempt to obtain that model of relationship perfection is inherently a castle made of sand and the tide of life ultimately causes it to was away.
Humans are prone to become jaded with anything that does not allow them to fulfill their full potential as human beings and results in non-actualized potential coming into conflict with fantasy based definitions of relationships and what unconditional love is.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NilaJones
Times when I have felt that way, I figured it was time to take a year or two off from dating and focus on other aspects of life until I stopped thinking everyone was like the person who hurt me.
What I don't get are the people who are bitter and have no interest in getting over it. Why try to date if you hate your target gender?
This. Take a break and live life. Hobbies, career, travel, friends, etc. Big time for a break.
Times when I have felt that way, I figured it was time to take a year or two off from dating and focus on other aspects of life until I stopped thinking everyone was like the person who hurt me.
What I don't get are the people who are bitter and have no interest in getting over it. Why try to date if you hate your target gender?
Sometimes I think this very forum makes being jaded worse for some individuals. It's hard not to be jaded when you want a relationship and can't find one and a forum like this (where people remind you of their relationships) only adds fuel to that fire. It's like they want a relationship and they more they are reminded they don't have one, the more bitter they get.
It would be best, like you said, to step away from everything relationship oriented (including talking about relationships) and just work on yourself or better yet, focus on something other than yourself like a charity, other people, etc. Grow a little.
Times when I have felt that way, I figured it was time to take a year or two off from dating and focus on other aspects of life until I stopped thinking everyone was like the person who hurt me.
What I don't get are the people who are bitter and have no interest in getting over it. Why try to date if you hate your target gender?
You know, I don't get this. I'm friends with a woman on facebook who is always posting stuff about men who cheat and lie and whatever. We are not close friends, so I don't call her out, but ... She seems to have a wonderful boyfriend who adores her (and whom she clearly loves) and a son to whom she is very close. I don't get why she persists in posting such negative and nasty-toned statements, when she clearly has a lot to be happy about.
Coming at this from a different angle, I figure the obvious way to avoid becoming jaded about the opposite sex is to simply have opposite-sex friends. I have a number of very close platonic male friends - how could I grow bitter about men when some of my strongest supporters are my guy friends? They're not a foreign/enemy species - they're 50 percent of humanity.
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