I like to be contrarian. Fuck off.
Mine is distributed through my hubski history. I don't feel like rehashing it.
wow wow - it's been a while. I see that you systematically removed all your brilliant poems from #todayswritingprompt - did you ever publish them elsewhere?
You know what? No. Ducks mate for life, so can people. I recognize that it's the edgy thing to slag on romance and love on Valentine's Day but I met my wife in '94, was friends with her off'n'on through 2003, started dating her when her marriage collapsed in 2003 and we've been together ever since. It's fuckin' great. Women are the best thing about being a man - at least, if you're straight. Sex and love are fascinating and beautiful. Robert Heinlein pointed out that there were no works of art created by eunochs and just because the advertising industry seeks to subvert our basic human drive for companionship once a year doesn't mean it's all bullocks. Just 'cuz it didn't hit you this time don't mean it'll never hit ya.
Got the word that I got the apartment today. Which means I’ll have my place to settle, to build a new social circle. And I feel like I’m the opposite of collapsed right now. Can’t fuckin wait. :)Just 'cuz it didn't hit you this time don't mean it'll never hit ya.
Thank you for writing this out so well. I feel like I'm in a sort of similar place. Five years ago I wouldn't have said I was happy. Today? And not just today metaphorically but literally today, Valentine's Day when I'm single and sharing my bed with a cat? Yeah. I think I'm happy. The best example I'd have of love lost is a good friend who randomly texted me a picture of her cats last night. She's in a relationship that appears really healthy. And I think I'm single and not just as healthy as I've ever been, but actually healthy. We have a great friendship.
Weird felling, ain't it. Good, but weird. I'm technically on a medical necessity controlled diet, but I still did my February thing and bought $200 worth of fancy chocolates. Instead of eating them all by myself as I normally do every year, this year I shared them at the office.Five years ago I wouldn't have said I was happy. Today? And not just today metaphorically but literally today, Valentine's Day when I'm single and sharing my bed with a cat? Yeah. I think I'm happy.
I did think you weren't entirely serious in your first comment but also that it was coming from a place of honesty. I do appreciate being stoic but I think it has its time and place. The men who've influenced my life are, variously, stoic, tough guy, hard ass, bad ass, empathetic, sensitive and intelligent. I feel like kind of an odd duck but in a good way. I can sometimes try to be a sarcastic hard ass but I can also be sincere and emotional if I need to be. I also have never had close male friends. Guys still more often than not rub me the wrong way with the constant rib poking about whatever may not be suitably masculine about them. I'm pretty witty though and now that I'm around a lot of men that do this I will sometimes throw them some smart ass comments about gender expectations or the treatment of women. Over the last year and a half or whatever it's been that I've been in some kind of treatment, I've decided that my closely held beliefs are worth vocally defending, even if they're unpopular. So I can be sort of a jerk if someone says something stupid in group therapy and turn around and give a sincerely empathetic response based on my own experience to someone who seems to be earnestly reaching out and not rambling on about some canned bullshit in order to sound good. I think men are fortunate in that we can fill a dichotomous role at this point, depending on who we're with, where we can be like the old kind of man's man but also sensitive. Woman who might seem stoic would be called frigid bitches and that's unfortunate because that kind of behavior can have it's place, in some work roles and environments for example. Just fuck all expectations. Everyone is just a person and we'll all be healthier people if we're not expected to act or look a certain way.
Bingo. Takes most of us WAY too fucking long to figure that one out. Life is too short to live inside someone else's head.Just fuck all expectations. Everyone is just a person and we'll all be healthier people if we're not expected to act or look a certain way.
My wife takes some meds to keep her brain chemistry level. The particular thing she takes is made by two different manufacturers, and the pills look identical, and they are supposed to be identical in every way. But if she takes them from one manufacturer, she is grumpy and irritable and prickly. If she takes the other manufacturer's version of the same meds, then she is balanced and normal. The last couple of weeks have been ... "off." She just figured out that the pharmacy gave her the wrong manufacturer's meds. Again. So my Valentines Day (and the last week, really) has been spent in the opposite end of the house from my wife, mostly. Glad we figured it out, but ... damn. Brain chemistry is finicky thing.
i fell in love with my best and only friend (who was in a relationship already) and got obsessed with her and started stalking her / being overly controlling that's how i figured out i was bipolar, because i was obsessing with her when i was manic so it's a shame, i suppose.
When I was 14, I feel in love with a girl that showed up from nowehre. We both grew up in the weird arabic world that has many similarities to what francopoli metioned. I played my part and was trying to be that son my father wanted me to be (tough, masculin, dominant, love sport) but she, she was just 100% herself. A rebel that, for me back then, figured life out. It can be all distilled down to one action she did on that day. Our families were invited to the house of a common friend, a neurologist and his wife. When we were all about to have dinner and and the wife of the neurologist asked us what we wanted to drink, everyone said "water" or "juice" or something else that sounded suitable. When she asked that girl she said "Cola!". When the neurologst's wife said that they had no coke, the girl simply said "no worries" and took a can of coke from her handbag, cracked it open and drank straight from the can. I don't know why, but that one move back then sums up my fascination with her. I was a weird guy back then, getting bullied at school for being the weird one etc. and I found in her a role model. Of course I will have a crush on her. That went on for the next 4 years. At some point I lost contact with her (she was living in another city) and I was wondering how she was doing so I called her cousin (who was also there on that one dinner evening) he told me that he is on his way to her engagement party right now and that she is going to get married in a few months.... My whole world broke into pieces. From that moment I knew I had to pack my stuff and move to Germany. Far far away.... For the next few years I lost contact with her, I was too hurt to talk to her. One day I just decided to contact her and we reconnected. Visited her and her husband and things were much better. The story continues but that is for another day. Even though we never got together, she is a great friend and actually, I just got off a skype call with her where we talked about our love lives... Feels weird to write that story out somehow
Based on my own experience, I think things worked out for the best. Not that you two CAN'T at some point get together and live happily ever after, but a pleasant fantasy is sometimes better than reality. I dated a girl whose boyfriend had just died and in dying he effectively became a perfect ideal and no longer a person. And I couldn't live up to that because, well, dead people don't make mistakes. And I had a similar thing with a teenage love happen to me. Except my perfect memory of teenaged love now has to live in my head with the reality that people change as they get older and life has a tendency to make us more bitter than we were when we were naive to the fact that life is a cruel thing. And the best we can hope for is not to let that fact consume our perception of it (that last sentence is my feeling because I didn't want to leave it at life's a bitch and then you die). You two get to be friends and experience those benefits without the complexity of relationships possibly fucking that up forever
Well, the story continues as follows: 5 years after she got married, she decides to get a divorce. Things weren't going that well. During the divorce her husband gets diagnosed with cancer. 5 months later, he dies. His family blames her for his cancer (!!!!) and that she left him when he needed her most. Then starts probably the hardest time for her. Because she also blamed herself for leaving him. It took her the next 2-3 years to get clear about this. During that period she called me once and basically asked me if I want to marry her. For a split second, I thought about it but then pushed it away. She way mentally unstable and I couldn't even think about that working out. A year later I get mentally unstable and refuse her approaches because of that.... Now both of us are better off. Who knows what the future brings :)
Ah well, here we are. Been an interesting two months. I met a girl in Berlin the day before New Years. The situation of meeting, unfolding of events, and instant chemistry felt straight out of a movie. Everything about her is harmonious. I don't think I've ever connected so thoroughly and easily. Her presence made me want to be more honest then I've ever been, even with myself. We ended the night in a small bar, talking until almost 5am. We made plans to go out New years, which would have been perfect had I not come down with horrible food poisoning and spent the night puking in my hostel. She left the next day. We've been talking for about two months now. She lives halfway across the world. I have a highly intensive job. Neither particularly matter. We can both deal with distance, I know that. The problems lie solely with me. I've had years of pent up restlessness and boredom. I've recently moved into a new country with plenty of opportunities. I feel unsatisfied. Years of pent up frustration are boiling out. To be blunt I want to drink and sleep around, free of responsibility and worry. This would be so easy to cut off if she wasn't so goddamn perfect. I can't help but think if we had met a year later I would have settled out a bit more. I know the inevitable truth I have to tell her, but fuck do I hate having to say it. I'm still trying to convince myself I can change my mindset.
Aye, different strokes, at least for the moment. I need some time sans commitment
Met the love of my life at 20, was the happiest person on Earth, after year and a half I've seen she lost interest in me, broke up with her, have been in depression since (am 27), life went to shit, have no friends now, no job, taking antidepressants.
😐 I have a pretty dramatic tale of heartbreak that involves homelessness and unexpected reconnection. It sucked. It still sucks. I thought I was about to have a normal life. But nope. Finding meaning and purpose in life beyond a relationship goes a long way towards getting over that kind of thing. Which is easy to say when it can be difficult to figure out what that purpose is. It's not easy but neither are relationships and when your life has a purpose you can offer more to a partner who appreciates that purpose and build a stronger relationship down the road
Buy the good stuff Yea, it costs more. That means you eat less and treat it as something special once in a while. I do a buy once a year or so when they have specials this time of year and get my fix. Some of the stuff is so good you don't want to just shove it in your face, and those truffles are works of art. I could eat 50lbs of chocolate a week as I have no self control when it comes to cheap stuff, because hey cheap, right? So I save for the year and get a batch of stuff that I can nibble on and share instead.