Learning To Love (dating, long-term, how to, marriage)

[Leisesturm]

There is a common theme to several of the posts I see here. Both men and women that freely admit to being "picky", which is certainly no crime. Men and women in their late thirties and older who just have never met that special person who does it for them. I always thought OLD was a godsend for the hard to please, but there appears to be a lot of OLD shaming in this very forum. Sadly, it also seems that OLD just gives the very picky simply more dating material to reject. I've got to say... BS! Nobody is that special that they cannot find a partner in 15 years of determined looking. More to the point, if after five years of adult life you have not had even one LTR to your credit you should do the rest of the dating community a favor and take a long time-out to re-assess priorities.

Seriously, there are a LOT of broken hearts and lives out there of the many, many people who get used and abused by serial daters who just cannot ever find The One, but keep on looking anyway. My question: how long is reasonable to get the message that "its you"? Is it reasonable for a 40 year old to feel that the right one is still out there, I just haven't met him/her yet? I know we are all like snowflakes and all that... but... how many truly distinct types of people do you think there really are? My personal figure. Highly unscientific, over-simple, and with a great deal of guesstimate...:~100. That's right. Despite our myriad physical differences of height, weight, hair color, the rest is grouped a lot by socio-economics. Politics, hobbies, etc. Person A. may be an avid reader of sci-fi. Person B may prefer slice of life fiction. They are both avid readers, they go in the same box in my book.

I can work with a great many different kinds of women. I've had an LTR with a woman that was 5'2" and one that was 6'1". They were much more alike than either of them would want to admit. I've dated music lovers and musically indifferent. Religious and atheist. Nor am I that special. Most married people will tell you that, in the past, they have had lasting commitments with people very different from the person they are with now. I don't think our society does enough to help people learn how to love. People mostly think that when they find the right person they will love them. This is incorrect, people who can love people, as they are, instead of insisting that people match a pre-determined template, have much more success. People who can love anyone who holds still long enough, obviously need to work on "deal-breakers". Somewhere between the extremes of having no standards at all and having standards so high that no one ever meets expectations is a healthy place to be, I think. I don't think enough of us are in that healthy zone. America's singlehood metrics, sexual satisfaction indices and other benchmark statistics dealing with relationship issues are well behind other developed countries.

I don't think the picky are bad people per se, but it makes me sad being privy to so much relationship pain. There is way more scorn and derision directed at men that don't mature and/or are avid gamers. Players also don't get much love... hello... what do you think a player is under all that PUA swagger? A person who does not know how to love. I like the fast pace of this forum. Threads don't die after five posts, responses come in hours, not days (weeks). It could get addictive. But the misery quotient is way up there. I'm just throwing out the truth that there really are only about ~30 truly distinct personalities in this country within each of maybe 3 broad classifications of economic status. You've met them all the ones in your self-identified socio-economic bracket. Some have met others from neighboring social classes and races.. If you can't make a choice within that large pool of behavioral combinations that's ok, I guess... but don't expect your luck to change with more time. It can't. That's the message.

[kat949]

Originally Posted by Leisesturm

There is a common theme to several of the posts I see here. Both men and women that freely admit to being "picky", which is certainly no crime. Men and women in their late thirties and older who just have never met that special person who does it for them. I always thought OLD was a godsend for the hard to please, but there appears to be a lot of OLD shaming in this very forum. Sadly, it also seems that OLD just gives the very picky simply more dating material to reject. I've got to say... BS! Nobody is that special that they cannot find a partner in 15 years of determined looking. More to the point, if after five years of adult life you have not had even one LTR to your credit you should do the rest of the dating community a favor and take a long time-out to re-assess priorities.

Seriously, there are a LOT of broken hearts and lives out there of the many, many people who get used and abused by serial daters who just cannot ever find The One, but keep on looking anyway. My question: how long is reasonable to get the message that "its you"? Is it reasonable for a 40 year old to feel that the right one is still out there, I just haven't met him/her yet? I know we are all like snowflakes and all that... but... how many truly distinct types of people do you think there really are? My personal figure. Highly unscientific, over-simple, and with a great deal of guesstimate...:~100. That's right. Despite our myriad physical differences of height, weight, hair color, the rest is grouped a lot by socio-economics. Politics, hobbies, etc. Person A. may be an avid reader of sci-fi. Person B may prefer slice of life fiction. They are both avid readers, they go in the same box in my book.

I can work with a great many different kinds of women. I've had an LTR with a woman that was 5'2" and one that was 6'1". They were much more alike than either of them would want to admit. I've dated music lovers and musically indifferent. Religious and atheist. Nor am I that special. Most married people will tell you that, in the past, they have had lasting commitments with people very different from the person they are with now. I don't think our society does enough to help people learn how to love. People mostly think that when they find the right person they will love them. This is incorrect, people who can love people, as they are, instead of insisting that people match a pre-determined template, have much more success. People who can love anyone who holds still long enough, obviously need to work on "deal-breakers". Somewhere between the extremes of having no standards at all and having standards so high that no one ever meets expectations is a healthy place to be, I think. I don't think enough of us are in that healthy zone. America's singlehood metrics, sexual satisfaction indices and other benchmark statistics dealing with relationship issues are well behind other developed countries.

I don't think the picky are bad people per se, but it makes me sad being privy to so much relationship pain. There is way more scorn and derision directed at men that don't mature and/or are avid gamers. Players also don't get much love... hello... what do you think a player is under all that PUA swagger? A person who does not know how to love. I like the fast pace of this forum. Threads don't die after five posts, responses come in hours, not days (weeks). It could get addictive. But the misery quotient is way up there. I'm just throwing out the truth that there really are only about ~30 truly distinct personalities in this country within each of maybe 3 broad classifications of economic status. You've met them all the ones in your self-identified socio-economic bracket. Some have met others from neighboring social classes and races.. If you can't make a choice within that large pool of behavioral combinations that's ok, I guess... but don't expect your luck to change with more time. It can't. That's the message.

That's why in India, arranged marriages seem to have a high success rate. Marriage isn't so much about the ego, but about maintaining the nuclear family. A different way to love, yet still profound.

I'll admit my reasons for being single at the age I am I was picky, but for the right reasons. When it came to deal-breakers and long-term future planning (growing together as a couple verses going in our own separate ways), there is such a thing called irreconcilable differences. And, some people don't want to have kids or are unsure. I'm not picky about the surfacey stuff; just about the things that matter like can we laugh together and still manage to have interesting conversations on a intellectual and emotional level? Can I still feel attracted to that person even when they're mad? Do I truly truly like him? I can love someone but not really like them. Do we share the same values? Socioeconomic upbringing?

Loving someone also involves seeing how they fit into our lives and how we fit into their's. It's complicated, in the individualistic sense, if you identify more with individualism verses collectivism. Very different.

[ohio_peasant]

The OP makes a reasonable point, but complications about. First, the "serial dater" may be the one getting rejected, rather than the one doing the rejection. He/she may be entirely willing and enthused about forming a lifelong bond with a candidate partner, but said partner does not reciprocate. Second, some people find themselves in long-term relationships that fail. This actually does happen! Two people might be together for decades – perhaps in marriage – and then split/divorce. So, back into the dating-market they go, now in middle-age or older. What advice ought we to proffer them? Third, some people have unusual values. The example that I raise frequently is being child-free. That excludes – what? – 95% of the population? Assuming raw arithmetic, that makes dating 20 times harder.

It's true that some people are capricious, ever maneuvering to optimize and to tease out improvement in what's already good. I'd be the last to endorse such behavior. But sometimes the caprice belongs to Fate, and not the person in question. Who can judge?