"I want a girlfriend/boyfriend", and other such relationship advice

[Low Levelled]

5'8" is taller than all the women you know?

[muggiwhplar]

Yep. I can only think of two women my height or taller, and that's only if they're wearing heels

[RpgGamer]

I know very few women over 5'7

[Bonez899]

Just sitting her at 5'4ish hoping for a growth spurt that probably won't come... 

[muggiwhplar]

Went on a Tinder date w/ a feminist somehow. She does slam poetry about gamergate :P Nice girl, we got along pretty well but she's pretty sex-negative and was unreceptive to kino and stuff. I did have fun trolling her for a while after I concluded that the date wasn't going to go anywhere though lol

 

Here's how I scheduled the date anyways:

 

Me: You look like trouble

 

Her: Do I now? How so?

 

Me: Non-smoking church-going pescetarians are always trouble. :) [a reference to her profile description] Did you do anything exciting today?

 

Her: If that's the case people clearly don't know what they're missing out on. And I went to a book signing, and on a pretty meh date. Other than that, not anything others would call exciting. How about yourself?

 

Me: I robbed a bank. Nothing too exciting. What was meh about your date?

 

Her: I'm going to ignore the "exciting" part of your day... seeing as I am a banker. The conversation was great. Then he went on a 10 minute rant on how Christianity wasn't necessary and God was basically useless... And seeing as how I'm a Christian... Kind of struck a cord. And I had to pay for my own drinks.

 

Me: Wow what a bro. Can you give me his number??? I laughed out loud as I sent this; I just wanted to see how she'd react :lol:

 

Her: Haha no, I don't do vengeful. Plus, I already told him friendship was as far as it would go. Although I appreciate the gesture. Other than robbing a bank, did you have a good day? I think she misunderstood my remark :( oh well

 

Me: Yeah I got to read by the pool for a bit so that was nice. We should hang out sometime. I'm about to go to bed but shoot me a text if you want to meet up for drinks this weekend. xxx.xxx.xxxx

 

 

She messaged me the next day and I scheduled a coffee date for that afternoon and we met up. Like I said-- cute girl, fun to talk to, but not DTF (at least not with me :P) so I won't be seeing her again.

[Low Levelled]

Wow, tif makes me feel tall lol. Of course Saq puts my height to shame

[obfuscator]

pretty sure tif is quite tall in general. on the topic the average male height was around 6 feet

[Sir_Squab]

Man, [bleep] marriage. I keep seeing everyone else's relationships fail, and I'm reminded why I'm never wanting children or a marriage.

 

Marriage just isn't compatible with how humans are, it goes against human nature. Humans are not by design, monogamous. And to claim anything otherwise is just lying to yourself.

 

I completely disagree with you. Making marriages work requires effort, work, commitment, planning and growth. What you need to do to make a marriage work is something most couples don't do and that society doesn't teach.

 

You know what I really think human nature is? The ability to change your nature. The ability to go "this is how I am, this is how I was raised, this is what society teaches me, but screw all that I'm gonna do something else." A successful monogamous lifestyle, or the successful polyamourous lifestyle muggi talks about, requires figuring out what values you need to live by in order to achieve the results you want, and living by those values no matter how you feel.

 

There's also something to be said for association. If you are actually interested in marriage and kids, start reading books written by successful married people with children and look for people with successful marriages. If 50% of marriages fail, 50% of marriages stay together. Now I'm not nearly stupid enough to think that all of the 50% of marriages that don't end are successful marriages, but what if say half of marriages that don't end are successful? Then figure out what those people are doing. (And yes I'm aware that it could very well be less then half but my point still stands.)

 

Now if you honestly value other things in life then marriage and kids then kudos to you, stay single without kids. (Looks at muggi.) But don't let the relationship failures of others prevent you from having a relationsihp.

 

oh and @ muggi again: why the hell is that girl on tinder? does she not understand that tinder is basically an app to find a ****buddy?

[muggiwhplar]

So you're saying there exists a reliable, consistent and proven system for making marriage work for anyone that wants to make it to work? >_>

[Sir_Squab]

Yes. If people in the past have made successful marriages work, I see no reason why people these days cannot. It would need to vary to suit individual couple's needs, of course.

[muggiwhplar]

I'm asking for you to share the system :P For example, I've shared BD's poly system. Whose system are you referring to

[Sir_Squab]

Well off the top of my head, Stephen R. Covey, author of 7 Habits of High Effective People and Dave Ramsey, author of More Than Enough, are successful men with successful marriages. Those books i mentioned are books I have read and own that talk about success in life in general, including marital success.

 

The 5 Love Languages (a series of books all based pretty much on the same premise) by Gary Chapman is also a great read if you're looking at making a monogamous relationship work. Tbh it's a good read regardless since the advice is applicable to most, if not all relationships you have. And a little internet digging reveals he's been married for 45 years.

 

A lot of what I've read on success seems to boil down to "find people who have the results you want, figure out what they did and copy it." If you go looking you can find people with successful marriages.

 

Beyond that, I've read that relationships require time; get your finances to a place where you're secure and where you have time for each other. Dave Ramsey's book speaks of a couple that spent a few years working on trimming down their debt and their lifestyle so the wife could be a stay at home mom, and they live off of 55k a year roughly, down from ~100k/year combined income. It's interesting that good financial advice and good marriage advice are often the exact same thing. (Another thing emphasized in that book is saving up a bunch of money in a savings account at the bank and leaving that money alone so that you have a security blanket for just in case.)

 

Another good tidbit is that quality time is a lie - the best form of quality time is quantity time.

 

So yeah this isn't quite as, well, obvious for lack of a better phrase, as BDs posts on polyamoury but it's a start.

[muggiwhplar]

Those guys got married in completely different eras... Covey got married back in the 1950s dude!

 

You're either stuck taking outdated advice from guys who got married decades ago, or taking advice from modern guys who haven't been married long enough to tell whether or not their advice actually works. And even if the advice is valid and you follow it perfectly, like I said earlier it's only half the battle since you can't control your wife. So you're basically gambling, hoping that your wife never changes and she follows through on her promises for the next several decades of her life or else you're screwed.

 

But anyways. What do those books say about keeping sex interesting for the next 50 years of your life? What are you supposed to do when your wife "doesn't feel like it?" The only real solution to a problem like this is to have a very low sex drive to begin with, such that a lack of sex genuinely doesn't affect your happiness. But for the average person with an average (or higher) sex drive? They're in big trouble.

 

Sex aside, what about if/when one of you gets a dream job offer in another city but the other doesn't want to move? In such an event, there has to be some form of sacrifice involved. And when it comes to things like that, your happiness cannot be your #1 priority if you want the relationship to "work." But if you're sacrificing happiness in order to make it work... then is it actually working? I don't believe so. After all, what's the point of doing something if it doesn't make you consistently happy in the long run? Your goal, should you choose to get married, shouldn't be to have a high number of wedding anniversaries; it should be consistent happiness regardless of marriage duration.

[obfuscator]

You're either stuck taking outdated advice from guys who got married decades ago, or taking advice from modern guys who haven't been married long enough to tell whether or not their advice actually works.

It seems to me this criticism is vague enough that it can apply to any marriage. It's an easy way to discredit them without having to provide any tangible reason.

[Estonian dude]

On topic of heights, I know a few girls who are over 6 feet.

 

And well, I tower over pretty much everyone everywhere. But I do know a few guys taller than I am.

[muggiwhplar]

 

You're either stuck taking outdated advice from guys who got married decades ago, or taking advice from modern guys who haven't been married long enough to tell whether or not their advice actually works.

It seems to me this criticism is vague enough that it can apply to any marriage. It's an easy way to discredit them without having to provide any tangible reason.

That's why I asked specific questions about specific problems later in my post and requested him to state what his overall goal is for the relationship.

[obfuscator]

 

 

You're either stuck taking outdated advice from guys who got married decades ago, or taking advice from modern guys who haven't been married long enough to tell whether or not their advice actually works.

It seems to me this criticism is vague enough that it can apply to any marriage. It's an easy way to discredit them without having to provide any tangible reason.

 

That's why I asked specific questions about specific problems later in my post and requested him to state what his overall goal is for the relationship.

 

Fair enough. On a similar note, is there any era, or year, or duration of a successful marriage that you would consider an acceptable role model for people seeking to get married today?

[Kimberly]

By the logic of not being able to rely on currently married fellows because they 'haven't been married long enough', you'll never be able to get marriage advice from anyone. By the time it's been long enough to be reliable, it no longer applies because it's from a different time period. Marriage success therefore cannot be gauged and should be avoided because most people in the world are, shocker, [wagon] and it's simply easier to go for short term commitments for higher return on happiness.

 

I do not understand how people who eschew marriage as an illogical choice can justify it with such illogical arguments.

[muggiwhplar]

 

 

 

You're either stuck taking outdated advice from guys who got married decades ago, or taking advice from modern guys who haven't been married long enough to tell whether or not their advice actually works.

It seems to me this criticism is vague enough that it can apply to any marriage. It's an easy way to discredit them without having to provide any tangible reason.

That's why I asked specific questions about specific problems later in my post and requested him to state what his overall goal is for the relationship.

Fair enough. On a similar note, is there any era, or year, or duration of a successful marriage that you would consider an acceptable role model for people seeking to get married today?

Off the top of my head, no not really. Things might be different if social norms didn't change so rapidly.

[muggiwhplar]

By the logic of not being able to rely on currently married fellows because they 'haven't been married long enough', you'll never be able to get marriage advice from anyone. By the time it's been long enough to be reliable, it no longer applies because it's from a different time period. Marriage success therefore cannot be gauged and should be avoided because most people in the world are, shocker, [wagon] and it's simply easier to go for short term commitments for higher return on happiness.

 

Exactly.

[RpgGamer]

We dont know if polygamy is true happiness because its still a newer concept and we wont know what an 80 year old polyamorist feels alone in his apartment everyday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

But I thought we agreed not to argue about this again

[muggiwhplar]

Yes. If people in the past have made successful marriages work, I see no reason why people these days cannot. It would need to vary to suit individual couple's needs, of course.

 

I'm just responding to this point in particular. It's one thing to argue that it's possible for long-term monogamy to "work." It's another thing to argue that it's possible for anyone to make long-term monogamy work.

 

As far as poly goes, I measure its success by consistent happiness; not length of relationship :P If I'm getting laid with minimal drama and I enjoy her company then I'm a happy camper. If she refuses to have sex or throws drama at me it's not a big deal because I can just move on to someone else and immediately continue being happy. Ideally she'd never refuse sex and never throw drama at me in the first place and the relationship would last forever, but that's not how life works.

[Kimberly]

 

By the logic of not being able to rely on currently married fellows because they 'haven't been married long enough', you'll never be able to get marriage advice from anyone. By the time it's been long enough to be reliable, it no longer applies because it's from a different time period. Marriage success therefore cannot be gauged and should be avoided because most people in the world are, shocker, [wagon] and it's simply easier to go for short term commitments for higher return on happiness.

Exactly.

 

 

It's not a bad strategy but seeking that strategy based on that line of thought is based on info every bit as unreliable as speaking to older married couples.

 

I have no problem with the lifestlye you lead but it makes absolutely no sense to demonize modern marriage with fallacious logic.

[muggiwhplar]

 

 

 

By the logic of not being able to rely on currently married fellows because they 'haven't been married long enough', you'll never be able to get marriage advice from anyone. By the time it's been long enough to be reliable, it no longer applies because it's from a different time period. Marriage success therefore cannot be gauged and should be avoided because most people in the world are, shocker, [wagon] and it's simply easier to go for short term commitments for higher return on happiness.

Exactly.

It's not a bad strategy but seeking that strategy based on that line of thought is based on info every bit as unreliable as speaking to older married couples.

 

I have no problem with the lifestlye you lead but it makes absolutely no sense to demonize modern marriage with fallacious logic.

Just respond to the points I made here then please (the 3rd and 4th paragraphs)

[Bonez899]

@RPG if you follow BD on his blog he frequently mentions that at some point he may move in with a woman and have a 'married' lifestyle in that way. He says he will never promise monogamy, but says that he will do this with an open relationship so he can still be have time with others and its within the rules of the relationship.

 

On the same note though I believe that it takes a certain type of person(ality) to live the lifestyle as BD describes and without a partner in the traditional sense. Lots of people in this world are unable to live that kind of relationship because of the loneliness, perceived or actual, that comes from not living with a permanent partner/having constant companionship. Therefore I believe, with BD at the least and presuming those that follow him develop a similar behaviour or personality to some extent, would be so driven or having a good time still at that point of life that it would be a non factor. Let alone any kids you may have that can be relied on to visit once per year or more.