Ember

I've seen a lot of first date advice that would ensure we never had a second. I guess early elimination is probably a success from the perspective of a guy looking to get laid.

Is CoD still a thing?

I had my cousin and his girlfriend over today to fix his computer. She asked how old I was, because I look 20-22 and act 26-28. I'll turn 30 this year, so I'll take it. Had a steroid epidural yesterday with a new doctor. The other one was better, but the hospital didn't renew her contract and her new place isn't in network.

At work is a little different than at family gatherings, I imagine. Everyone I work with has been great about it.

I caved and started a Facebook account. Maybe this will help people I don't see every day to remember my name. It's kind of funny, really. I avoid people who call me by the wrong name because it makes me uncomfortable, and they blame the deadnaming on my not being around enough for them to get it right. The thing I've spent the most time doing with it is blocking crap people share, but it just doesn't end.

We bought a new Spark for my wife today. Hopefully that's the end of her car troubles for a while.

Wait. Really? I wouldn't have guessed that.

My thing is waking up feeling great, taking a minute to just enjoy being alive before my day goes to shit, then waking up feeling like I got run over with just enough time to get around for the day. I blame my wife and her multiple alarms, because this was never an issue before.

I can't grow a bread either. My brother had more facial hair at 15 than I do approaching 30. One of my cousins in his teens and he has more facial hair than I do. It's still more than I want to deal with. Sometimes you just have to take the lesser evil.

I should get serious about hair removal. Most of what I've found is like an hour away, and there are more places doing laser than electrolysis. I had planned to do laser on my dark hairs and then reevaluate, but I'm noticing more light hairs as time goes by. The timing belt on my wife's car went out while she was driving home from work, so that's a setback. She's borrowing a car from her dad for now, but we'll have to work our something else soon. Her car isn't worth an engine swap.

lakkalikööri

If you're running BSD and it isn't OpenBSD, what are you even doing with your life?

Fair warning, I'm probably not very qualified to comment on dating. I'm less qualified to comment on straight dating. --- Sex is something women allow men to have or that men earn from women. If sex is something that men get from women, what do women get? The whole "make him wait" thing ignores that she's deciding for herself to not have sex with him, which she has agency to do. It's written instead as though she's decided to take action against him by withholding. When sex is something that is given or earned, you get a very transactional view of sex, and I'm not interested in that. If I wanted transactional sex, I'd go pay for sex. Opening a potential long-term relationship with the idea that sex is for trade makes little sense to me. That sex is something given by women to men sort of precludes it being something she can enjoy or want for herself, something she can receive, something he could do for her. It also absolves him of putting any effort into her enjoyment. I can't get behind any of that. I'm not sure what sort of control is left to someone who is compelled to conform to perceived expectations, or how that control is worth the lost freedom to be genuine. I also don't understand how role-playing to get laid can be a satisfying substitute for an honest relationship. You mention success, but I'm not sure what you mean by that or how you measure it. --- Sex is all about men, and women are the gatekeepers who can be placated by filling a role and acting in a certain "manly" way that isn't necessarily in their nature. You say you disagree, but what you wrote doesn't seem to counter what you were replying to. With regard to "roles, expectations, desires, and priorities," I believe there are more variation among men or among women than between either group. I think you're ignoring or understating the challenges that accompany being constrained by the role played; the things you must do, or the things you would do but can't, desires forbidden by your role, or pretended interest. You don't seem to acknowledge that you also narrow your options by conforming to those roles; those people wind up in your "not interested" bin, and you might never know (or care) why. Maybe one is more severe than the other, or more desirable. I place a much great value on being true to myself than on having sex with someone who might only be willing as long as I fill a certain role. --- Any individuality of the particular person sitting across the table from you is irrelevant, because women are all similar enough that they're pretty well interchangeable. I don't think there are many people (regardless of gender or orientation) who are more interested in people who dress poorly, severely lack confidence, and treat their bodies like garbage; never mind people who are more interested because of those things. Selling it as "what women want" seems disingenuous. --- That's certainly part of it, but I also don't like painting around half the planet's population with a single brush either. Any assertion that women or men are a certain way, or should be a certain way, is going to ruffle my feathers. Even if you qualify it with "most," you're using very broad strokes. Presenting women as machines with buttons for a potential partner to press is upsetting in a visceral way, that sex is the reward for pressing the right buttons probably doesn't help.

If you ran a blog dedicated to teaching people to successfully commit murder and one of your posts included that line, I'd read it as an endorsement. When I tell my students that I don't usually use speed loaders, but that they work great for people who have trouble loading magazines, I consider it an endorsement. Why?

I'm not deliberately ignoring your other points, I actually have half-written replies to things that are now pages back. I can't help but feel a bit like I'm on the receiving end of a firehose here. I'm also not focusing on negging; I don't know what that is, and Google wasn't helpful. Rather, I'm highlighting that this apparently controversial (or maybe just bad?) thing you have claimed wasn't mentioned was referred to in your link with a note that it works. "It works" is an endorsement. "I don't do this, but it works," especially given the rest of the post as context, is an endorsement. It's utterly bizarre to see you claim the author doesn't endorse something, after linking to one of their posts with an endorsement, and proceed to tell me that I'm misrepresenting the author or you. You keep talking about nuance, and insisting that anyone who doesn't agree with you is missing it, but you don't seem to be interested in pointing out any missed subtleties.

It was mentioned in the article you linked earlier. And the author said so himself that he doesn't endorse them. If all you guys got from reading my essays here are "muggi and his sources recommend negging" then this discussion is hopeless because you guys are just cherrypicking To be clear, that's not what he said. Don't feel bad, maybe you missed the nuance. "I don't do it but it works," is certainly closer to an endorsement than a condemnation. I don't think it's a stretch for someone whose objective is to have sex a hot woman soon to focus on "can often work" and proceed accordingly. To your claim that: You linked an article from 2013, five years after "nobody used [the term]," which used the term and stated that it "can often work." The author mentioned that he doesn't do it, but doesn't seem to delve into why he doesn't or why or whether his readers should.

Why? Short list, because I'm on my way to bed and don't want to pull it up again: Sex is something women allow men to have or that men earn from women. Sex is all about men, and women are the gatekeepers who can be placated by filling a role and acting in a certain "manly" way that isn't necessarily in their nature. Any individuality of the particular person sitting across the table from you is irrelevant, because women are all similar enough that they're pretty well interchangeable.

It was mentioned in the article you linked earlier. And the author said so himself that he doesn't endorse them. If all you guys got from reading my essays here are "muggi and his sources recommend negging" then this discussion is hopeless because you guys are just cherrypicking I don't even know what negging is. I know that reading what you linked makes me feel like I should shower thoroughly.

It was mentioned in the article you linked earlier.

Basically here: [hide][/hide] Beautiful area, really. It's only illegal if you get caught.

I don't know anyone who was killed by a drunk driver, but I know better than to suggest drunk driving isn't dangerous. And you know that because it's strongly supported by tons of statistical data and research, which the scientific community more or less unanimously agrees with Right, and I'm also not saying rape doesn't exist - clearly it does. But the vast majority of people see it as a serious and perverse crime, which is not what would be expected if society supposedly sees it as normal I would equally say that it's obvious we don't live in a "drunk driving culture", the vast majority of people see it as immoral and it is regularly prosecuted as a crime with severe penalties And I would say you're just as wrong about "drunk driving culture." Into my 20s, I honestly believed that drinking and driving was normal. Sure, I had that one uncle who hasn't had a license in decades and just got caught again; his problem wasn't drinking and driving, just that he'd chosen the wrong roads or shouldn't have taken a car with one headlight out. My sister's boyfriend would run up the old railroad tracks. He rolled a truck with her in it not a week after buying it, and was back to doing the same thing with a beater car within a month. She kept going along. Cops were a hazard, but you just had to get good at avoiding them or good at losing them. It wasn't until I moved away that I realized how [bleep]ed up that was.

I don't know anyone who was killed by a drunk driver, but I know better than to suggest drunk driving isn't dangerous.

That I live in a place where I have had to explain to grown adults that being married doesn't mean they lose their right to say no to someone who doesn't respect them or their boundaries is far from imaginary. That I have heard so many people around me say that victims earned their assault, or wanted it, or didn't do enough to prevent it often enough to believe it about my own assault is far from imaginary. I don't think that's controversial. If you don't want to wait, you find someone who doesn't want to wait with you.

In an ideal world, I could open every woman online with a disclaimer saying, “hey BTW I have a really high sex drive so if we’re not getting closer to sex every time we meet, I’m going to spend my time/attention elsewhere.” Or I could tell every girl as soon as I meet them face to face, “Wow I’m very attracted to you and want to have sex with you” But sadly that’s not how the world works. (Though I have gotten laid in the past a couple of times by directly telling girls I want to have sex with them within the first 10 minutes of meeting them). That’s why I set personal standards/limits (which Ginger and Noxx don’t seem to do) to prevent me from being strung along. So you feel like you have to hide your intent while approaching a relationship, but it's your potential partners who are stringing you along, manipulating you? They're wasting your time by not meeting expectations you haven't made clear?

If you continue pursuing a relationship with me for sex we're not having, I'm not the one wasting your time. By setting the expectation of sex on date $X, not communicating the expectation or how important it is to you, and then pushing it out each time it doesn't happen, you're stringing yourself along. We're exchanging attention, sharing experiences, opening ourselves; if that means nothing to you without sex, I'd prefer you make it clear early so I don't waste my time. "...and I probably never will," I think, isn't always easy to know. I can say with certainty that I don't know you well enough to be interested in sex with you. Whether knowing you better will allow me to be interested in sex with you is something I can't know until we're looking back at it.