General Relationship Thread

It was our 6th anniversary yesterday! We didn't do anything to celebrate as Kendra put in a 10hr shift working on orders for all of the weddings, so tonight we're going out to this great shoebox-sized hole in the wall traditional Ramen restaurant. Not too romantic, but as is probably obvious to everyone (and I'm really sorry for how annoying I can be sometimes, guys), I love her as much or more now than I did the day we married. And we were smiling so big that day that our kiss was all teeth. :)

Le sigh. It's looking like the only way I'm going to be able to see my girlfriend this Christmas is over Skype. And this time, it's not so much the distance aspect of our relationship to blame, but the fact that Wal-Mart loves to work their employees to the bone. I mean, it's certainly possible I'll be able to make it out to Indiana after the holidays, but dammit, I wanted to spend Christmas with the woman I love.

Then again, I'll probably see her during Spring Break, so it's not *that* bad. Still, I'll be so happy when the distance between us is measured in inches or feet, instead of miles... Next August cannot come soon enough (as, once she graduates college in August, she's moving up to Wisconsin with me).

Every sentence in this paragraph could be the first sentence of an entire chapter. Are you getting this?

Also: Bryce even though the Washington move has been difficult for you (to put it mildly), posts like that last one surely make up for the occasional lows in your life. Some of us might even be a little bit jealous. I'm just sayin'. ;)

So tonight I have SPEED DATING at 7. It's the standard format, everyone's given a number and you rotate between stations and have two minutes to talk to each other and at the end of the two minutes you mark Yes or No on your little sheet by that number concerning whether you'd like to get to know this person. At the end of the night, they take everyone's little sheets and email you with the contact info for anyone with whom you had a mutual Yes.

That being said, I intend to go into this with a fully open mind and willingness to meet new people. However - there exists the chance that I could sit across from someone utterly loathsome. So I need ideas for things I can say in two minutes to guarantee that someone will never EEEEEEVER want to bother me again.

"I have researched this and wrote my dissertation on it, so believe me when I tell you, Hitler was simply misunderstood."

Why bother? They're not going to get your contact info unless your "Yes" is mutual.

Because trolling people amuses me, Captain Killjoy.

Just look them up and down briefly and go "EUGH".
Works eeevery time.

Well in that case you should have said "to guarantee that someone will be EPIC'LY TROLLED". Accuracy and precision, Nute!

And you should talk about how you're writing a satirical novel about the low-lifes that use online dating services, with a heavy implication that the person across from you is just the kind of person you thought only existed in farcical over-extrapolations of Poe's Law.

"So there I was, balls deep in the goat, when all of a sudden..."

Alternatively, "... and then, while I'm balls deep in his ass, he turns around and kisses me. What a fag!"

Nah, the goat line is funnier. Yours has been done.

You have to lead into it that with a story.

"New Zealand is lovely this time of year. It's a pity I can't visit anymore. You fuck just ONE sheep...."

Wishing my mother and I didn't have personalities that clashed so terribly.

Last night, we got into a spat. I had a hard day at work that involved me spraining my back (can you do that? I think you can... Spasms and all of that jazz.) and she interrupted what I was saying to input a "I wish I could take off work whenever i had pain but it's called work for a reason you should just put up with it why isn't any workday just hunky-dory for you" speech. The rest of the way home was very quiet.

And now she's acting angry and refusing to talk to me at all. Because I took offense with what she did.
She is stubborn about realizing that she did something to offend someone else and thinks it's the other person's fault for getting offended in the first place. In her mind, she's constantly in the right. So whenever there's a spat, she either pretends it never happened or stays angry until I apologize for being upset, even if my being bothered was understandable. It's sad because I wish I could maintain some kind of a positive relationship with the only family member near me for longer than a day at a time, but it's just not possible.

i want to cry but big kids don't cry

Bullshit.

Any friend who tells you is simply saying "I am unable to critically examine my beliefs; also, I am an asshole and you shouldn't be friends with me".

I'd offer you a shoulder, but you're kinda far. :(

Seconding Aaron's post. Actually, I hold myself to this standard most of the time, and then I do things like have a two-hour drunken breakdown after a very rough pair of weeks. Let it out, babe. Preferably when mom's either not around or asleep.

Just think, at some indeterminate not-very-future point: drinks and cute animal pictures in the Bay. <hugs>

People who don't cry have as many if not more issues than those who do. We have a gamut of emotional outlets and expressions and someone who doesn't cry is as weird as someone who doesn't laugh.

I only cry into the bosoms of a woman.

I wish I could cry more than once every handful of years. It's a great outlet or at least expression of emotion. I find not doing so (among other things no doubt) gives my mind free rein to rationalise unhappiness as an inevitable or intrinsic part of my condition, something to be endured, and that isn't much fun.

Crying gives me a headache and I avoid it as much as possible.

Me too, if it's a hard cry (as opposed to the just sitting there tearing constantly).

My girlfriend finally talked me into watching Titanic a couple of weeks ago, a movie I've intentionally avoided since it's release. And yeah, I cried, damnit....I cried.......

During the scene with the painting, I hope.

Oh man, that reminds of when my wife and I watched Hachi: A Dog's Tale. Don't watch that one if you are even slightly a dog person.

Or, you know, have a soul. I teared up reading the fucking Wikipedia entry on it.

For Nute:

A woman pulled this on me during speed dating... I sit down across from her, we introduce ourselves...

Her: "So, where around here do you live?"
Me: "Malden, you?"
Her: "What's the exact address?"
Me: "..."
Her, laughing: "Gotcha!"

It'd be pretty easy to do this and have it be not funny, instead SUPER CREEPY.

I suggest UMBERTO D.

Bryce, the cute animals thread is a few lines down...

Mine is trying to talk me into seeing Les Mis (the movie). Just the fucking trailer for that one makes me tear up. NO THANKS.

And goddammit you people stop posting about sad dog movies.

Mix it up a little with Cujo.

The first time I read Cujo, I was in the...fifth grade, I want to say?
I didn't sleep well for weeks.

still love dogs, though, so dunno what's up with that.

Okay, so! Home from speed dating. The guy running it was a former elementary school teacher and BOY did it ever show. On the upside, it was fodder for some fun icebreakers making fun of him. Out of the 18 gals there (to 14 guys, an unexpected ratio) I actually gave a Yes to... let me check my notes... ten of them. So if any of those ten also gave a Yes to me, which I think is a non-zero chance, the facilitator will send out contact information and it's hopefully a start.

Things I noticed:
- the guy ahead of me was a bit of a hanger, taking forever to leave the table and move on. However, dude didn't bother to change up his patter at all, and when the tables are close enough to sort of hear what the people next to you are saying, obviously reading from a script does not earn you any bonus points. So a halfhearted bro-fist to the dude for hopefully making me look personable and erudite in comparison.
- Had fun avoiding asking the "what do you do?" question, instead working "do you like what you do?" into conversation. Asking open-ended questions was interesting to see who volunteered more information than was asked for.
- Almost everyone was interested in hearing about kickball. The ones that weren't were pretty much the ones that I thought were dull.
- There was a group of three women that all came together and were basically like trying to chat up the Roman Furies. You could tell they were more about making it a Girls' Night Out than actually meeting people.
- Wow, since when do blondes with glasses do it for me? That's new.
- Oh god, the first woman. First thing she says is "I was married for 18 years, been divorced for a year now, what do you do for a living?" Good lord, it felt like being in front of the promotion board. I felt like snapping to parade rest and barking out "I am a Grade 8 Marketing and Advertising Specialist, Sergeant Major!" My notes simply say OH GOD NO / WORLDS OF NOOOOOOO.
- One of the Furies lives in the building across the street from me. Very hot, but very high-maintenance type and by the time I came around she'd talked to 15 other guys and was more interested in just getting it over with than anything else. Might be less of an ice princess when separated from her fellow erinyes, but I don't think she was all that impressed.
- The last gal I talked to, though. New to the area, very cute, very personable, easy to talk to. Probably the only one on the list I'm seriously hoping said Yes.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Monday evening.

That ratio seems unheard of!!! Ten yeses? I always imagine that after my wife kicks me out, I would try that and it would be like a 5:1 ratio and all of the females would be similar to divorced woman.

Congrats on a successful outing!

Well, it was a 30-45 group, so I supposed it'd be all divorceés/single moms, but according to my notes, only five. Apparently in the 45-60 group, they have something like 14 women and no men signed up. I recommended sending a flyer to Leavenworth Correctional Facility.

All crying gives me a headache, I dunno why. Even the stoic single-tear will make my temples wub a little.

Dubstep tears? WUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUB

Speed dating results are in!

*drumroll*

One mutual match, which on the bright side makes things really simple. According to my notes - nice gal, kind of nerdy, we talked for a bit about a mutual love of Mythbusters and History Channel shows. And I realized something in looking at my notes: most of the women I checked "Yes" to were the ones I talked to closer to the end of the evening. They'd already been through talking to a dozen guys or so, and that probably didn't work in my favor. But at the same time, after talking to a dozen gals in a row, I probably wasn't exactly at the top of my game either.

Still, one's better than zero, and not bad for a first shot at something like this.

I hope it was for the two hours you wasted.

Did you see it in 3D? Because it's even more heartrending in 3D.