People and their different approaches to choosing significant others...

i thought about doing that one time or two, but it was too difficult. I presume for a lot of people there doesn't need to be full of electric sparks but at least some voltage needs to be there?

i know a few people who would go for anyone who is interested, though.

yes, it can change with the weather can't it? everyone seems to want the same thing ultimately but not always at the same time or with the same person etc.

it seems reasonable to give someone a chance, provided you actually get on with them or have enough things in common for there to be some chance of it working out

dating someone you don't actually like seems absurd, but there's that 'hate-sex' (for want of better term) aspect i suppose...

Yes. As a result, I am a monk.

well there are some people who go for a "tally".

The two most serious relationships I have ever had have both been with people where there wasn't that initial electric spark. In both cases, my partner was initially way more into me than I was into them. I mean, it wasn't really a "don't really like" situation, but more a case of not having made up my mind yet. Over time, I *grew* to love deeply and passionately.

In most cases where I have that instant spark of thunderbolts and electricity, it has not worked out. Perhaps it's because I get too emotionally overinvested, and I get scared and sabotague myself, or else I scare the other person off with my intensity.

I am sure others must be the same. Maybe it is a foolish game.

xxxpost
I'm married too, but when I was younger I was ridiculously uptight about my dating choices, which I'll sum up by saying I worried too much about how somebody was going to fit in my self-improvement plan.

Love and attraction *can* grow the more that you know about a person.

I am more curious about Ronan's use of the word "choosing". I've not had many occasions in life where there's been a choice (other than "yes I want to go out with them" or "nah"), as that implies there are multiple possibles floating around. Unless you're Spencer Chow, I'd imagine this is rare.

I mean, I understand what the electricity and the knee trembling is all about. (In fact, I'm kind of in that situation at the moment.) But it's usually accompanied by the crippling fear that I am going to screw everything up completely before it even gets off the ground. The process of falling in love for me is often accompanied by actual physical sensations of being sick with nerves. If it were not so exhilerating and exciting and amazing it probably would not be pleasant at all.

**Are some people just really bad at deciding what they want in a relationship?**

So you're saying that because they don't know what they want, they are prepared to date people they don't feel strongly about, to see what happens? BUT, even if they DID know what they wanted how would they know before they went out with them for a while? (exception : if they simply want 'big tits'. Joke. Sorry.)

I would say that it's a continuum from 'she looks fun, I'd like to talk to her', through 'I fancy her' to 'oh my god, she's the one'. You may as well go out with them all if you can. Anything can happen. I for one, have never had any success at changing an 'already a friend' to 'girlfriend' - I don't know why. This 'gradually noticing how much you fancy a friend' thing never really happened for me. I think it's because I like unfamiliarity.
I married an 'oh my god she's the one' by the way.

i used to be much more selective about who i dated, and as a result, spent a lot of time alone. i'd reassure myself by saying that i was holding out for the "vhadfhaushfc" when in retrospect what i was really doing was sheltering myself from anxieties and potential rejection of cold-call dating.

these days i am much more pragmatic about who i date (the result of having had amazing relationships with people i was not initially very sparky with), but on the flipside, i am now starting to feel as if i have to be more careful about indiscriminately throwing myself around. i guess soon i will find a happy medium between the two, one that involves knowing what i want and not being scared to ask for it.

(massive ex-posts)

and I don't mean that in an arrogant way.

I mean, you've all surely met someone you thought was pretty and attractive, intelligent, funny, and you got along with, but when it came to the relationship side of things you weren't interested.

What I'm saying is there is something between thinking someone is attractive and funny and pretty and actually thinking "wow imagine a relationship with that person".

I know lots of girls I think are attractive and funny and pretty and whom I respect but I don't necessarily fancy them.

As I said this may be kind of reckless/foolish, maybe being more sensible would be better. But I think lots of people can't do that, I guess I'm trying to see if anyone will categorically denounce one or other approach.

if my brain is able to logically think about a relationship I think I start to compare it with ones where my brain went a little haywire, maybe that's inexperience/insecurity, I don't know.

haha, i had to seriously think about that for a few minutes...i guess there may be one or two examples. what about wanting something slightly 'less than a relationship' with someone like that?

This is ringing far too many bells in my head. Maybe it is time to get over myself and drop my overly romantic ideals. But it still seems somehow wrong to date someone who I don't really fancy.

do you mean on a purely physical level?

It's bullshit, you know. It made me pretty furious because - hey - where were you when I was 19? Oh yeah, dating the rugby team. I saw this a lot in the film industry, and it's no doubt the same in music. Attraction is so false. Men will always want different things from women. Me, personally, I just want the one person - someone really cool who digs me and I dig her. That's hard to find.

Certainly people who aren't immediately prepossessing and sparky have turned out to be my favorites and I am very glad that I found this out by getting more intimate.

Within reason obviously - you can't just fling yourself at everyone on the off chance.

When it happens, it can be a hinderance as much as a great thing. Maybe its fear, maybe its pragmatism, or maybe its sometimes that the Heartbeats feeling is better when there's an element of fantasy, when you can project, and maybe sometimes they should be left there.

God, this post just makes me sick to my stomach with understanding and the "oh god, yes, that's exactly it!!!" feeling.

This is exactly what happened for several years with the Great Lost Love Of My Life. Every time we nearly got together, I would run away, because both of us heard the chimes of doom in the form of wedding bells and being put in that box and we got scared and ran off and totally f*cked it up.

And I don't want to do that again. Maybe with the GLLOML, he was better as fantasy than as reality, and he's worth more to me as a symbol. Right now, with my "vhadfhaushfc" person I feel like "No, take a chance you stupid ho, see what happens, we have a lot to lose but we have so much more to gain, what you waiting, what you're waiting for?"

I think all the vhadfhaushfc probably realise that this is true. Factor in all the reasons given above plus fear of rejection plus fear of investing a lot (emotionally and otherwise) in something which will only leave you heartbroken, and these all triumph decisively over logic.

Also, inconvenience of feeling vhadfhaushfc about someone who doesn't feel it back/not feeling anything with someone who's vhadfhaushfc about you = massive dud.

Vhadfhaushfc people - when do you realise vhadfhaushfc? I don't think people are talking about an instant thing, else vhadfhaushfc = love on first sight which I find rather hard to swallow.

I'm depressed now. Man!

So yes, it's instant, and yes, it's uncontrolable, but it takes a lot more than biochemical process to create an attraction, but there is an element of attraction that is something more than "I like this person."

Julie Burchill described meeting her first husband as "We just smelled each other's blood, and that was it!" and that's about it.

My believe in the fairy tale of the one true love took a hard hit, when I realised that my "The One" in school was the same "The One" as half the class. And my other "The One" was also their "Other One".

And then I meet someone perfect and start believing again.

I keep thinking about Matrix Revolutions.

ihttp://www.netasia.net/users/sgc_wdi/images/movies/lw4/lw4-05.jpg

what if your One is in a parallel universe? i like the idea of my future wife being from another dimension

I just can't imagine getting involved thinking "well the spark isn't there now, but maybe".

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/17215

Hmmmm.

This is the kind of level I meant too, not callously stringing the other person along. And they might be equally as ambivalent.
This attitude means that you don't have to make such an effort, can be more honest about what you are like, because you don't have very much invested in it.

I don't know about the antibodies thing. I just had a brief fear that I may end up with poor-immune system babies because of not pursuing the 'vhadfhaushfc'. But I don't have the balls for that.

I think that perhaps there are few for whom I am willing to make myself vulnerable, but that when I do (because I do?), I do tend to go overboard. But (conversely?) I tend to reject those too willing to make themselves vulnerable to me. Perhaps this is what the dance requires? Or maybe I'm just not a very good dancer.

How vulnerable are implied-but-not-expressed (passive-aggressive?) vulnerability? What about verbal vs. physical (body language)? Where does flirting fit on the matrix?

-- isadora

How long do you wait for things to pick up while trying this approach? And what if a non-visceral thing ended in tears, is that even worse?

I have tried this approach, and it's very confusing. At least with the "vhadfhaushfc" there is an impetus that is almost impossible to really hold back or think about. Whereas the rational approach makes for a lot of ponderous decisions, and really tough ones, too. How long does one wait for the "intelligent, interesting, pretty" girl to become "vhadfhaushfc"?? At what point is one "callously stringing her along"?