Life

[Deadpan]

Doesn't strike me as unfair at least. A bit more care would not go amiss on those sites in general. They're also one of the places where you can get some of the most obvious examples of men feeling entitled to women's attention, whenever women post screenshots of dudes going from flirty to gross in the span of two to three unanswered messages.

[marblize]

Is anyone else in the apocalypse blizzard?

[miffy495]

My city hit an all time record high temperature today!

[tegan]

Is anyone else in the apocalypse blizzard?

 

It hits me in a few hours. I bought loads of snacks.

[Badfinger]

I am on the trailing edge of the snow. Our 4-8 has turned into 1-3 with a whimper.

[RubixsQube]

I was at Sundance this weekend after going on an observing down in Arizona last week. My flight back to New Hampshire was set to be tonight and tomorrow, but now I'm stranded in Salt Lake City and then probably Charlotte until Boston opens up again. Stupid snowstorm. Stupid snow. 

[syntheticgerbil]

It hits me in a few hours. I bought loads of snacks.

Snack pictures please!

[Ben X]

It was astoundingly good. I still can't believe I went through with it. XD

[sex scene]

I hope these were enough too much information for ya.

 

Plenty info, thanks! Glad you had a good time!

 

I haven't really looked at it, so I can't vouch for it, but here's a site about death grip if you do think you've lost some sensation due to over-vigorous wanking.

[Deadpan]

It seems to mostly advocate taking a break for a while, and that seems reasonable enough. In my experience at least, it's often a mental thing. I know society builds up this image of men as always being raring to go, but the truth is we're no strangers to emotional trouble and if you're stressed, nervous or otherwise distracted it can be hard to focus on pleasure and really lose yourself in it. Naturally, your first time would make you feel all sorts of pressure that can get in the way of things. Hopefully your next time will be more relaxed and even more enjoyable.

[SecretAsianMan]

Is anyone else in the apocalypse blizzard?

 

I got a bunch of snow yesterday.  Had to park on the street and shovel my driveway before I could make it into my garage.  Nearly fell on my ass a couple times.  Luckily my neighbor has an ATV he's fitted with a snow plow.  He likes driving around and plowing everyone's driveway with it, without even being asked.  It also reminded me that I need to get some snow cleats or something for my shoes.

[Roderick]

The discussion about polyamory has been very interesting to follow, proffering a bit of introspection.

 

My initial thoughts are: wow, having a single, exclusive partner is already enough to deal with in my life (in the best of ways), let alone that I'd have to deal with multiple romantic relationships at the same time. I investigated whether my ideas about monogamy were due to restrictive cultural pressure, but I didn't find any evidence of repression within me. Of course my, and everyone's, view on life is influenced by our surroundings and the stories we hear and see when we grow up, but I don't see those as shackles, not necessarily. Thing is, I have an image in my head of what I'd like out of my future with another person. I'm aiming for that and it feels natural and fulfilling to me. There's no conflict there (as far as I or anyone else can see, ofc). I'm one of those vanilla people, probably, for whom this monogamy thing just clicks?

 

However, there is also a jealous/insecure side to my not wanting to share my partner with others. I freely admit that. I don't want to run the risk of them falling in love with someone else and leaving me. I think that when you engage in a relationship with someone, flirting, having sex, there's absolutely a chance of falling in love. I wouldn't want to invite that.

 

That's all bottled up in the multivaried and complex, ultimately very positive feeling I have towards exclusive relationships. It's not descriptive. I've never felt threatened with what anyone else does, nor do I judge. On the whole, I would say the first reasons I gave are the primary force in this.

[Deadpan]

The time economics are definitely a thing that needs to be worked out. The question of who gets how much affection and attention can be the spark that ignites the powder keg of different expectations, different levels of involvement,ence the incredibly important need to talk about this constantly and with everybody involved. It's most complicated, I think, when there's some sort of imbalance in how involved people curerntly are in various romantic affairs. Like, if I have several partners at the moment, but for one of them I am the only one they are currently with, that might cause a bit of tension unless we work it out.

 

This is actually one of the reasons I was disappointed in Redshirt when I played it: the game is entirely about managing your social interactions with various people in your life, but it still included an arbitrary limit of only being able to have one relationship at a time, rather than having this be naturally determined by how many people I can keep in high spirits simultaneously, which would have been more interesting to me.

 

For me it's like, how deep is this connection, really, if I need to be worried that they'll forget all about me just because they did a sex with somebody else? Although, I don't want to paint monogamy as a matter of jealousy and insecurity anymore than I enjoy the portrayal of polyamory as an indulgance for twentysomethings with commitment issues that sometimes happens. Both are sometimes unfairly lumped with an unpleasant thing that exists in the same general neighborhood, I guess.

[Bjorn]

We fall more on the sexual side of non-monogamy than the romantic side, so that creates quite a different dynamic, but we also try to find people we can become long term friends with. Roderick, It's good that you've given some thought to why you're picking monogamy, and analyzing your own brain. Ultimately it's about defining your own relationship rather than letting society do it for you, and for a lot of people monogamy is going to be the right choice for them.

Things can also change as you age. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have believed myself capable of any form of non-monogamy, and it wouldn't have been a good fit for us for the first years of our relationship. But we've tried to stay open to change as we've aged. We're around 40 now, and still learning things about our own sexualities, both together and as individuals.

An idea a lot of people have never encountered is compersion, often described as the opposite of jealousy, which is the joy that you experience because a partner is enjoying another relationship. That you can be happy that your partner is on a date, or sleeping with someone else. I think in a lot of western society this is a radical idea. Jealousy is modeled for us almost every day, in every medium. But compersion is never modeled. And it's definitely a real feeling. It doesn't preclude jealousy, you can still also feel self-doubt, insecurity or jealousy, but in order to make this kind of thing work you've got to get really good at both communication with your partner(s) and with yourself.

[Ozzie]

Plenty info, thanks! Glad you had a good time!

 

I haven't really looked at it, so I can't vouch for it, but here's a site about death grip if you do think you've lost some sensation due to over-vigorous wanking.

 

Thanks for the helpful link, and for the great response from everyone.

[Twig]

Oh man I thought work this week was going to suck major butt but it turns out I'm amazing and fixed the blocker bug and then suddenly everything's falling into place super quickly.

 

Go me!

 

Also we were talking about dating sites/apps for so long and I forgot to mention for some reason that I tried out a new app called Coffee Meets Bagel. Basically it gives you one match every 24 hours (although you can ask for more by paying with "beans", which you earn by talking to people or by buying with real money - it doesn't really explain how it works for the person you've requested, though...). So, yeah, one every 24 hours. Basically the complete opposite of how Tinder works, in terms of volume. Like Tinder, however, it only lets you talk if you both like each other.

 

Anyway, the slower pace works a lot better for me, personally, and I get a lot more matches through this thing than I ever did in Tinder (i.e., zero), even after going through thousands of potential matches, swiping right for all of them. I've only had like two weeks (14-ish) of "bagels", and have five matches. Ratio of like-to-match is WAY higher here! Some of them still don't respond, but at least it's something. I've had a few days' worth of good conversation with one person, which is more than I can say for anything else I've used.

 

Now I just need to actually ask someone out for coffee I guess. Hopefully I'll actually do it because I am a coward. U:

 

EDIT: What I'm saying is life is pretty Not Bad at this particular moment!

[Mangela Lansbury]

I'm doing this stupid self help stuff to try and improve parts of myself and my life that have room for growth. Tonight, I'm making myself go to a book launch/reading for a local author and hoooopefully won't chicken out of trying to have a conversation with a stranger.

It's nice to have something to stress out about that isn't job related!

[Apple Cider]

Mangela: Huzzah! Hope you go to the book reading! 

 

Twig: YAY! Go on a date! Go you! 

[Deadpan]

Do we not have a general thread for taking about dating yet? Sounds like somebody should make that or revive that.

 

Also, yay yous! Do cool things!

[Twig]

All the dating talk generally just gets dumped into this mega-whatever thread, as far as I know, hah.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Is that coffee meat bean app very explicitly dating and not friend focused? If it existed here it'd be fun to try out. I've really not been valuing my tinder matches, and the super casualness goes both ways. I think for the first time this week someone kept coming back to talk again, which surprised* me. Though I also wonder if the good conversations that I've had and just ended were meant to have me asking them out as the full stop or was it just that I prolonged the conversation longer than it should've lasted and they humoured me out of politeness.

 

* And by surprised I mean surprised me, then cycle between

> anxiously thinking they might particularly like me and revealing I'm just in for friends might really disappoint them and

> realising that they're probably just like that on tinder and I'm not magically drawing them in or anything.

 

Oh look, a double whammy of me displaying the interplay of arrogance and insecurity, that's a good introduction to me as a person. Maybe I should put it in my tinder profile...

[deleted user]

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[deleted user]

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[Dewar]

The discussion about polyamory has been very interesting to follow, proffering a bit of introspection.

 

My initial thoughts are: wow, having a single, exclusive partner is already enough to deal with in my life (in the best of ways), let alone that I'd have to deal with multiple romantic relationships at the same time. I investigated whether my ideas about monogamy were due to restrictive cultural pressure, but I didn't find any evidence of repression within me. Of course my, and everyone's, view on life is influenced by our surroundings and the stories we hear and see when we grow up, but I don't see those as shackles, not necessarily. Thing is, I have an image in my head of what I'd like out of my future with another person. I'm aiming for that and it feels natural and fulfilling to me. There's no conflict there (as far as I or anyone else can see, ofc). I'm one of those vanilla people, probably, for whom this monogamy thing just clicks?

 

However, there is also a jealous/insecure side to my not wanting to share my partner with others. I freely admit that. I don't want to run the risk of them falling in love with someone else and leaving me. I think that when you engage in a relationship with someone, flirting, having sex, there's absolutely a chance of falling in love. I wouldn't want to invite that.

 

That's all bottled up in the multivaried and complex, ultimately very positive feeling I have towards exclusive relationships. It's not descriptive. I've never felt threatened with what anyone else does, nor do I judge. On the whole, I would say the first reasons I gave are the primary force in this.

 

It hasn't been discussed or anything, and I doubt my wife would be interested, but I could see myself going for the idea of my wife getting herself an occasional partner. We're at that age now where my sex drive is decreasing and hers is peaking, and I'm not doing a great job of keeping up *shrug* On the other hand, I can't imagine being responsible for trying to please multiple people, even in a threesome situation.

[Twig]

Coffee meets bagel is, as far as I know, very explicitly for dating. I don't remember seeing anything about an option to only look for friends. I have so far only had relatively casual conversations, but I am by no means a dating expert. Farthest from it, in fact. Soooo yeah?

...

Hang in there megaspel. ):

[Mangela Lansbury]

Mangela: Huzzah! Hope you go to the book reading! 

 

Thanks! I not only went, I talked to three whole strangers! One was the author while I was getting the book signed, but at least the others count.

 

EDIT: oh gosh, megaspel. that blows hardcore. I've learned the hard way (repeatedly) to always be wary of freelance work at the start. I'll be hoping for the best for you.