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I'm curious to know what people have in mind when they think of people talking to someone like they're actively seeking romantic partners, and whether I fall into that category. It's interesting, because whenever I do talk to a girl I fancy, I always do just talk to them like I would anybody else I was interested in getting to know. I don't tend to tell them how beautiful I find them (Well I've probably done that once or twice in the past, but I realised it was a pretty stupid way to start things). My whole MO is just getting to know someone like I would anyone else, and if there's mutual and natural romantic chemistry wicked, if not hopefully we can be friends because lord knows I could do with a couple more of those. That's why I just ask someone out for coffee instead of saying "hey let's go on a date" like Lutga was suggesting, because I'm actually fine with it not being a 'date' too. I consider the kind of 'friendship flowering into romance' thing that Rui and Owl speak of to be ideal and something that I strive for and would love to experience. However none of that ever really seems to go according to plan.

I think part of the problem is my face, and not just it's fish slapped animal ungliness. I mean, I think my face is just very expressive, and I think girls I fancy tend to see the longing in my eyes a mile off. Most of the girls I like probably share more of Rui's mentality to getting to know someone and thus when they see the longing think to themselves "oh god, this desperate joey is SUPER hot for me" and thus opt to run for the hills like Rui would, not realising that I would be just as super hot for becoming friends, and I mean genuine friends without any romantic hopes on the back burner. They don't realise that I get over infatuation just as quickly as I fall into it. And thus I find it incredibly hard to become friends with women I find attractive, and through probably not much fault of my own. I can find no answer to this conundrum, I can't hide the sparkle in my eye, and aside from that I don't talk or look at these people in any way differently.

I once met this really cool girl and we seemed to have a great rapport, and she seemed like she genuinely wanted to stay in touch. The very next morning I sent her a text asking if she wanted to hang out sometime. She didn't reply, and I realised how keen and 'romantic intentiony' the text probably came across, and sent her a heart felt follow up message explaining I'd hate myself if my forwardness would cause me to miss out on a potential friend in her. She still didn't hit me back :(

Rui said:
<Mr Rui> Hmm, we need to sort out the spare bed.
<Rui> Darling, I got some new pillowcases earlier this year which would be perfect.
<Mr Rui> Where are they?
<Rui> In the Play-Asia box.
<Mr Rui> Ok... *gets them out and starts laughing*
<Rui> :D
<Mr Rui> I suppose I should have been suspicious from the box.
(We now have inoffensive BL-decorated pillowcases. It feels bizarre that I'm a grown up and I can still do things like this.)

R
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Whoa, that's #relationshipgoals right there. Inspiring.
 
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ayase said:
Anyone who can't at least imagine a statue of themselves on a pedestal some day probably isn't my type anyway. Even better if they think we should both be up there, striking some kind of Worker and Kolkhoz Woman pose.
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Also, just want to say I very much endorse this. I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with anyone who I didn't put on a pedestal. Ideally I'd quite like to be up there with her too. I want that love you'd sleep on the streets for just to sleep next to them if that's what it'd take. And your not going to do that for anyone you don't have on a pedestal of some kind.
 
Vashdaman said:
I once met this really cool girl and we seemed to have a great rapport, and she seemed like she genuinely wanted to stay in touch. The very next morning I sent her a text asking if she wanted to hang out sometime. She didn't reply, and I realised how keen and 'romantic intentiony' the text probably came across, and sent her a heart felt follow up message explaining I'd hate myself if my forwardness would cause me to miss out on a potential friend in her. She still didn't hit me back :(



Whoa, that's #relationshipgoals right there. Inspiring.
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This is the thing I was kind of getting at. If someone isn't even bothered to reciprocate with simple friendship, then they clearly aren't the right kind of person. I used to beat myself up so much about this, wondering why I could never become firmer friends with certain people I - as you put it, had on a pedestal - when as hindsight shows me, while they might have been able to maintain a civil face-to-face conversation, it's just the mask of pleasantries we all play on a day to day basis.

Society has taught us that social interactions are all to a certain extent a game - sometimes we coast easily, other times we seemingly 'play to win'. And every one has a different way of playing the game. Some are more open to friendships with 'everyone' while others keep their friendship group tight and neatly selected. But it comes back to that thing of not being able to 'force' things to a certain extent. If there isn't that chemistry, even in simple friendship, then it's kind of not even worth it.

This is one of the things that I slowly and painfully learnt about the 'pedestal' mindset. I met countless girls that were achingly beautiful or 'cool' or amazing in many ways, and I'd pine after them all for hours and tear myself to pieces trying to work out how I could be friends with them - and wrack my brain over why nothing I did seemed to really move things along, and why it was so easy for other people.

And finally, as I got a bit older and wiser, it clicked with me - and I realised these people just didn't really have anything in common with me. Our interests or personality (or both) just weren't aligned. And I learned to let go. Sure I was waving goodbye to people that probably even the me of today would class as hot or cool - but it also opened up my eyes to the fact that people or friendships the old me might have dismissed as 'unworthy' were actually just as valid.

I'm a firm believer that a relationship should be built on two equals.
 
Oh 100%, I would never disagree with any of that, lutga. I'm completely agree that the chemistry is the most vital thing, for romance, for friendship, it's something you can't fake or force, it's either there or it's not, it doesn't matter how attracted you are or how many hobbies you have in common, that connection is what it comes down to, and, for me at least, it is extremely hard to find.

When I say "on a pedestal" I don't think I really mean what you're meaning. I don't mean someone who I love in an un-reciprocical relationship, I mean the opposite, that 50 50 love you also speak of. But someone I can still worship nonetheless, haha.

I think this is really what it boils down to. Does someone feel your vibe or not? I just, as I'm sure many of us do, wish that more people felt my vibe, and vice versa. It's a hard road sometimes.
 
Lutga said:
Society has taught us that social interactions are all to a certain extent a game - sometimes we coast easily, other times we seemingly 'play to win'. And every one has a different way of playing the game. Some are more open to friendships with 'everyone' while others keep their friendship group tight and neatly selected. But it comes back to that thing of not being able to 'force' things to a certain extent. If there isn't that chemistry, even in simple friendship, then it's kind of not even worth it.

This is one of the things that I slowly and painfully learnt about the 'pedestal' mindset. I met countless girls that were achingly beautiful or 'cool' or amazing in many ways, and I'd pine after them all for hours and tear myself to pieces trying to work out how I could be friends with them - and wrack my brain over why nothing I did seemed to really move things along, and why it was so easy for other people.

And finally, as I got a bit older and wiser, it clicked with me - and I realised these people just didn't really have anything in common with me. Our interests or personality (or both) just weren't aligned. And I learned to let go. Sure I was waving goodbye to people that probably even the me of today would class as hot or cool - but it also opened up my eyes to the fact that people or friendships the old me might have dismissed as 'unworthy' were actually just as valid.
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I think that's what they call "settling", isn't it? I'm well aware of the fact I'm such an uncompromising person that I'll either achieve the object of my desires or die alone like qaiz (which I'm willing to admit is probably the more likely outcome at this point).

And I guess when people talk about looking among people with similar interests, the thing is I know I don't need a relationship to enjoy those things like I know I don't need friends to enjoy them - I've gone without both for certain periods of my life. So it becomes a question of what I want from a relationship, which I'm willing to concede is different from what a lot of people clearly want (or think they need). I don't need (and nor when I think about it would I particularly want) someone to participate in many of my interests with me for a similar reason I don't enjoy MMOs, I just like to enjoy a lot of the things I enjoy alone without the distraction of other people's input. Like I say, I'm not a person who enjoys compromise and wouldn't really be interested in a relationship where it was expected - But I would however be fine with someone similarly uncompromising who knew I didn't expect them to compromise for me either. That's my kind of equality.

So the further question arises, what would we do together? Have lots of sex and plot the overthrow of the government, probably. Claire Underwood is pretty top-tier.
 
Yeah I don't really go for shared hobby thing either, I've said it before, but I still think the notion that you'll get on better with someone of shared hobbies is a myth, at least in my experience. The closest people in my life I had literally nothing tangible in common with upon initially meeting them, just that indefinable 'vibe' that I speak of. While on the other hand, I love anime, but no matter how many times I try to break into the anime society crowd at my uni, it just ain't happening, and I've tried four years in a row now, they don't seem to want to give me a shot and seem to think I'm a weirdo. Which probably speaks volumes about my weirdoness :(
 
Vashdaman said:
Yeah I don't really go for shared hobby thing either, I've said it before, but I still think the notion that you'll get on better with someone of shared hobbies is a myth, at least in my experience. The closest people in my life I had literally nothing tangible in common with upon initially meeting them, just that indefinable 'vibe' that I speak of. While on the other hand, I love anime, but no matter how many times I try to break into the anime society crowd at my uni, it just ain't happening, and I've tried four years in a row now, they don't seem to want to give me a shot and seem to think I'm a weirdo. Which probably speaks volumes about my weirdoness :(
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Probably speaks more about their uppitiness and general foolishness. My anime society is weird and quite frankly a tonne of ********, but for all their sins, they will at least try and involve everyone, even if they don't quite succeed.
 
Having probably seen and visited more anime clubs than most, I would say it's no different than trying to join any other social group. Sometimes you'll be lucky and fit in straight away, other times you can try for long enough and never feel like you belong. It's not worth taking it personally.
 
I like having shared hobbies as you can make stupid proposals like spending your holiday in Japan every year and because they're into the same things they never start suggesting that a beach trip to Benidorm might be interesting for a change (bleh). And you barely ever have to do something you hate to spend time with the person you like.

It's nice to have a bit of space though, like both being into games but playing different types. You can still engage in interesting debates that way without feeling you're joined at the hip.

I'm not good with people in general so I've never had much luck with anime clubs. Though I did meet some great friends at one. After meeting them online first.

R
 
I agree with Rui basically 100% but I wanted to chime in with my thoughts anyway. I also think it's important to have shared hobbies, but like Rui said not to share them completely and have some resemblance of space.

For example me and @Teapot both enjoy videogames but he plays very western games that are usually consist of first-person shooters that I don't care for, meanwhile I pour hundreds of hours into JRPG's which he rarely plays. It leads to interesting discussions because we both care about the core subject (games) but came at it from very different angles. The same can be said for TV/Anime, he watches a lot of TV shows but I only pick out the superhero shows and the odd netflix series meanwhile I watch far more anime than he will.

While different our hobbies overlap enough where I can enjoy watching TV with him and he can watch the anime (while no doubt complaining about how predictable YLiA was...), and the same goes for games where I'm happy to watch him play shooters and he'll be content to dip in and out of seeing me play JPRG's (and no doubt commenting on how they're basically all the same thing :D).

I guess what it boils down to is that it's important to be with someone that you share interests and hobbies with, but they don't have to be the same thing right down to the tiniest details and having some stuff that doesn't overlap is also important. Teapot does programming, for example, but I don't understand the first thing about that and never really will! But then I play guitar and that's equally as confusing to him so it balances out. If we both liked literally all the same stuff then it would be boring and we'd just go around in circles talking about the stuff we both have in common and have similar opinions on. Whereas right now we can learn something from each other, or at least have conversations that don't seem like they're an echo of one another's opinions.

Going back to earlier discussion I also don't agree that looking at people with the intent of a romantic relationship really works. I was like 16-17 when me and Teapot first met and had a HUGE crush on him (which is really embarrassing looking back now...), but I never wanted anything more than to be friends with him really because I liked his personality and we got on. The relationship just developed naturally after that after a year or two/when I got fed up of really liking him, thinking it was mutual and neither of us doing anything about it so I just took a chance and actually asked him out.
 
I'd certainly consider it more odd to share exact hobbies than having similar hobbies with someone, though I don't think Rui was going with this. Just more it's easier to interoperate or understand how that person feels, since it's similar how you would feel. Though I'd considered supporting your partner as important even if you disagree.
I know there's an anime club at my Uni, though I've never got round to going and checking it out. The games night one wasn't so bad, though I guess most of them be breaking up soon
 
I've found like the perfect postgraduate degree for what I want to do, but I'm still doing my part-time bachelor's degree. Including this year, have 4 years left lol. Ugh, I really want it to hurry up be over with.
 
You know that moment you have when you're walking along a path and a person is walking towards you and as you both try to pass one another you both do that awkward shuffle as you both go in the same directions before looking down with that half smile on your face, acknowledging the others presence, embarrassed and defeated, well I did that today...with a pigeon.
 
I survived the annual office Christmas party! Huzzah for introversion and the strategic requesting an early departure!

Remember friends, as soon as your inebriated colleagues begin discussing the 24-hour casino, your exit beckons.
 
Speaking of Christmas parties. The company I did my placement year at invited me to come to the party even though I'm not working there anymore. Let the awkwardness begin!
 
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