Personally I don't have a whole lot of experience with "dating" since the whole ordeal just seems like a terrible, terrible idea to me.

You're basically trying to mash together some sort of long term intimate relationship from "oh wow nice ass."

It's generally a better idea to uh, you know, like the person before putting it in them. (Or on them, as the case may be.)

You can develop a fondness for someone within the first few minutes of meeting them of course, but we all know that's just a facade promulgated in the interest of general social acceptibility, and while you'll never really get to know someone intimately until you are, in fact, intimate with them, you can scrape much deeper than the surface before taking that plunge.

As a note about the impossibility of men being friends with women, I think it does have partial roots in truth, although this might just be my own whacked out perception of reality. Generally speaking, when I am (was) single I looked at every interesting, attractive girl as someone I'd like to "get with." And while I've never been pushy or even overly flirtatious, the thought was always there.

Once I'm in a stable, fulfilling relationship however that desire goes away and I am capable of maintaining fully platonic relationships with women.

It's not to say that I've ever viewed other people as mere sex objects, just that when I was looking for a partner, I considered pretty much everyone. I don't think that's too far out a statement.

Fuck, holding hands is considered homoerotic in America these days, and the rest of the world does that and more. Seriously, if a couple of guys kissed on the streets like the French, every homophobe in a three-mile radius would be out with baseball bats.

Not really, but America is totally hands-off, no-contact, gesturing-makes-you-gay-and-oh-God-never-ever-say-the-word-'cute' ass backwards when it comes to what's considered homosexual.

There's also the issue of how you form friendships. Take childhood friends, if you've had a friend through much of your formative years, and they stay around into adulthood, they're more likely to be closer to you than any other friend, simply because they were there through pretty much everything that made you who you are. I look at these being kind of rare, since people move, kids can be stupid and make bad decisions, parents have so much control over who you see and what you do, all that, but anyone who has a friend like that is fortunate and should be grateful.

I put less faith in high-school friends, as during that period, you're pretty much defining yourself and being defined by others(consciously) by some less detailed parts of your personality, and interests (you're a "skater" a "geek" e.t.c.) and thus frequently get pushed together by where you "fit in" and less from detailed connections.. You end up running with people you can do stuff you like with. Everything after high school tends to be some form of this, really, with work stepping in for school where it needs to be. It takes real work to get any further than this

Dating? Please. It's all about arranged marriages, people, especially in the current financial climate. This singles ad I'm looking at says, "Education a must", obviously she's looking for some high salary to build her life around. And what better way to achieve that than having her father give her to the man with the largest dowry? This whole "dating" fad will die out soon, I'm sure.

By the way, she also says she enjoys "walks" as well as "games and movies", I think she might be kidding about this walking thing, unless she means board games or card games or something. Which would just be wacky. Although I guess I'm more into walking than if she was interested in "jogging" so maybe it'd work out.

EDIT: By the way, is there a singles ad in the universe that doesn't say that the person enjoys long walks, possibly on the beach?

Most people enjoy walking period. So putting something like that down just makes you look like a complete sham, a faker. Sadly there aren't that many of them that don't say it. Of course about a quarter of the ones that do say it actually mean it.

I know plenty of lazy bastards that don't like walking. Lazy motherfuckers.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dating_service.png

I'm happy with my single status.


That's one less bitch to deal with.

Why walk when you can roller blade! or Bike I suppose. It's to bad there wasn't Ice everywhere cause then I'd just skate to work.

Hmmm.... maybe there is a way to combine the 2...