[HPFGU-OTChatter] Decoupling

[the.gremlin at verizon.net]

I have posted more times to OTChatter in the last 2-3 hours than I post at HP4GU in 2-3 weeks.

Tabouli:
"I have often pondered along similar lines.  The whole notion that one is somehow tragic and incomplete without a sexual partner gets my goat.  The well-meaning but infuriating types who tell you you will End Up Alone if you keep being So Fussy (the implication being that life without a sexual partner is not worth living so you should take whatever you can get and be grateful).  And, worse still, dig up the most frightful single people of the appropriate gender in their social circle and try to Set You Up.  Ugh!"

My mother constantly tells me that if I am not more romantic towards my boyfriend, I will end up alone and bitter (just like my father, who has his plenty of friends, and  his parents, and me...I want to be alone like my father...). I have friends who spend their entire lives ouside of school trying to attract guys so they'll have a boyrfriend! We are only 18! We have the rest of our lives to find mates, even if we wanted to! I can't stand the notion that to mean something, one has to have a significant other.

Taboulu:
"A (former) friend of mine whose comment after my stomach operation was 'Well look at you!  You nearly died, and what would you have had to show for it?'  At my incredulous protests ('Are you saying my life would have been worthless because I don't have a *boyfriend*??') she replied 'Well isn't that what life's about?  Finding love?'"

Is that why she isn't your friend? Lots of people had meaningful lives without marrying or having an SO. Nuns and priests currently come to mind, but other people as well. 

Tabouli:
"The fact of the matter is that I have, to date, *always* been happier when single than when in a sexual relationship. *Always*."

My boyfriend and I do not see or talk very often because we go to school and hour and a lot of traffic away from each other, I work, and he takes 100 units at a time (or at the least, 20). When people balk at the fact that I've been with him 3 years (and ask if we're going to get married), I tell them it has only felt like 1/2 because we rarely see each other. I feel quite comfortable not having to plan a time to see each other on weekends, and not having to plan my evening around his phone call (we call on schedules, like 2 times a week).

Tabouli:
The most irksome thing about it isn't the lack of boyfriend, it's people's refusal to believe that you can be happy without one.  They are convinced that you are just in denial, or putting a brave face on it, or playing the independent woman who needs no-one role and fooling no-one, <snip>

My father has always taught my sister and I not to leave ourselves in the position where we have to depend on a man to support us. I don't like it when my boyfriend walks ahead of me for the sole purpose of opening the door for me. I'm not made of glass! This doesn't mean that I'd put off marriage because I don't feel I need anyone. I would like someone who can, and will understand that I am not going to up and quit my job because he makes enough money to support the both of us. I am not planning on making too much money in my chosen career, and should I marry someone well-off, I wouldn't quit my job, because I love what I'm going to do (what I'm studying to be, actually). 

-Acire, who feels wierd posting this because she went off-topic, but then this *is* OTChatter.

                 


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