goals

I try to live my life by the idea that happiness is a decision you make, not something you wait to happen to you.  With that in mind, I’ve made all sorts of decisions that, apparently, are difficult for many people.  Moving across the country to get a PhD in something I’d basically never heard of.  Starting a relationship/sex blog.  Most recently, quitting my job as a teaching assistant at the U and moving to another city to live with my boyfriend–without even having a job.

My best friend often says that my ability to pursue the path I think is right for me regardless of whether it’s easy or not is one of the qualities she admires the most about me.  However, I have to admit that this move has been fucking tough. I could really relate when I read Holly Hoffman’s post on Introducing a New Person Into Your Life, but I couldn’t help but think–what about when you’re the new person?  Because although we’ve been together over two years, I haven’t been trying to incorporate my man into an existing routine.  I’ve completely changed everything about my life and have been trying to build a new routine–in some ways an easier thing, but in other ways much harder. Continued

Happy Father’s Day, punkz!

Have you seen this? Mayor Margarita Martinez of Escobedo, a small town in northern Mexico, is giving away free Viagra and condoms to elderly men on Father’s Day. About 100 lucky fellows qualified for the giveway. She may have gotten the idea here, when Chilean Mayor Gonzalo Navarette Munoz instituted a free Viagra program in the suburb of Lo Prado. Munoz is in the midst of a re-election campaign and it’s been suggested that the Viagra giveaway is a ploy to get him re-elected. Hey, sounds good to me. That guy would get my vote. There are some happy fathers (and mothers) in those towns.

(Time for a breather, pal. Don’t wanna have a heart attack under there.)

I had this one amazing night over the weekend, probably the funnest night I’ve had all year. I’m going to write this one field report style, so it’ll be fast and furious with little embellishment. There’s some good tactics and a few new things I tried.

Continued

A friend of mine graduated last week, so one week after packing up and leaving Flagstaff “for good,” I drove back to attend a department picnic and to attend her graduation party.  Although she’d been planning this party for some time, attendance wasn’t what she was expecting, largely because so many other people were graduating that weekend everyone was committed to something-or-other.  As a result, while a few of my friends were there, her party mostly consisted of herself, her husband, her parents, and her in-laws.  This was fine with me because I get along great with people who are older than me–in fact, I generally prefer them to people my own age.

However, it got me to remembering when I met the BF’s parents, and when he met my dad (my mom passed away when I was 18).  In fact, it struck me that meeting the parents isn’t really any different (aside from the age difference) from meeting the other person’s friends.  The question becomes, how do I impress someone who has a vested interest in, and therefore a desire to protect, the other person–and who is more than willing to do that at my expense?

Continued

First of all, hi everybody! I moved in with the BF this past weekend and it’s been a flurry of activity, as I’m sure you can all imagine. Fortunately I hired movers to load and unload, and the BF drove the truck (I followed behind in the car so we wouldn’t have to tow anything), but there was more than enough packing, unpacking, and moving of furniture to keep me busy since Friday night. I almost have everything under control here, so I should be able to focus a little more on the site from now on (especially since I am procrastinating my search for a day job)!

When Lance said that we should write this week’s double take on getting phone numbers (or e-mail addresses, myspace pages, whatever) I thought it was a great subject. He believes that it’s easy to get a girl’s number, and not so easy to ensure that she picks up the phone when you call (or that she doesn’t flake before your date). I think that his point that you have to really wow her so that you stick in her memory is well taken. However, in my own experience dating the reason that you have to be really sure that you’re coming across as exceptional and not creepy is that many, many times the number that you are given isn’t even the girl’s real number.

When I was doing the club thing, if I wanted a guy to go away I would give him my phone number with the last two digits reversed (sorry, whoever’s phone that was!) or give out the Rejection Line (the local radio station had a fake phone number for people to give out with a mean message about how they’d been rejected and they would play subsequent messages on the morning show). I can only think of one time that I gave a guy my actual number, and the subsequent date was so horrible that I never did it again. So how can you make a good impression, ensure that the information is correct, and arrange that all-important second meetup? Continued

My landlord’s wife found someone to move into my apartment. Great news! They are going to let me out of my lease early so that he can move in. However, in order for all this to happen, I need to be out of the apartment by Sunday, May 11. Egads! So I have reserved a U-Haul truck and movers on either end to load/unload the truck. Now I am packing like a fiend. I actually don’t own a ton of stuff and 1/3 of it has already been moved to Phoenix, so this is not going to be too tough. I find that now that everything is happening, though, there are mixed feelings (about the move, not the BF). Continued

Ah, the cliche of a great relationship: happy people are fat people. I read somewhere on a blog or website written by a guy (or maybe it was on The Real Housewives of Orange County?) that women have an obligation to remain in precisely the physical shape that they were in when they attracted the guy in the first place. No word, of course, on whether the guy has a similar obligation.

Obviously that kind of expectation is impossible, but at the same time I resent the mentality that once a couple is together they can just let themselves go and that somehow their intellectual and emotional connections will be “enough.” The BF has observed more than once that when he and his ex were getting along she gained weight and when they were fighting she’d lose it (he was in fabulous shape the whole time they dated, which I like to think must mean he was miserable the whole time), but this time the fate of most of America has caught up with both of us. While I’m flattered to think that our relationship makes him as happy as it makes me, swimsuit season is almost upon us and this is unacceptable.

(Not liking what I see, plus we bought our home scale at Good Will and it weighs 10 lbs. heavy!)

Continued

So we posed the question–

“How do you define successful relationships, and what does it take to achieve that success?”

I have given this a lot of thought (and everyone’s comments and blogs on the subject were great fodder for that thinking, so thanks, everyone!). As many of you have pointed out, there are so many things that are “musts” in relationships that it’s hard to pick just one. However, I think that all of the musts that are out there boil down to one thing, and it’s simpler than most of us are willing to admit:

A successful relationship is one where both people are looking for the same thing, and find it in each other. Continued

Tags: dating, honesty, kickass contest, relationships

In reading Lance’s response to Goot, I was forced to ask myself an unpleasant question: why do so many ladies out there hate “players” so much? Because an emotion or reaction like hate (or detest/dislike/despise/disapprove of, if you think hate is too strong of a word) can only be inspired in someone who is threatened by whatever caused the emotion. Generally we don’t admit this, and say things like “I feel sorry for them because…” or talk about karmic retribution or whatever. But, pretty much, saying that we hate players means that a) we think they’re onto something, and b) we’re afraid that they’re going to gain the upper hand with us. So a hatred of players generally revolves around fearing loss of control.

Fear 1. Players Don’t Play The Game. When it comes to dating, most of us imagine pretty much the same things, in the same order. Women may want political and economic equality, but they certainly don’t want equality in relationships–they want the upper hand. After all, most of the traditional rules of dating were designed to give the woman the advantage. One of the appeals of “nice guys” is that their responses are predictable: I talk to you and you buy me a drink.

(I’ll have a cosmo, please.) Continued

Lance’s weekend roundup linked to this article by Steve Beale on what happens when a woman proposes. The author suggests that while women are responsible for the proposal (in the sense that, if he doesn’t propose, the woman’s gonna leave–and she lets him know this beforehand), men should actually be the ones doing the deed. Hot Alpha Female wrote her own post about how emasculating it is for the girl to propose to the guy. Lance agrees, though he refers to Steve Beale’s hypothesis as “female mind control,” which most girls would not only agree with but also feel pretty good about. I am in total agreement with everyone here that the guy needs to be the one to propose. In case my asserting it doesn’t convince you on its own, let me begin this entry with two of the worst “engagement stories” that I have ever heard.

Story #1: Girl Proposes to Self

This is fantastic. There is this chick that I used to work with who’s very female-power, in the worst kind of way. Apparently her dad was a worthless chode and bowed down to every whim her mother ever had, and so it’s been impressed upon her since an early age that this is what a marriage is. So after she’d been dating her boyfriend for a few years (I want to say three) she decided that the time had come. What’s a girl to do?

Well, she picked a ring out and special-ordered it from a jeweler and had them ship it to her:

Looks harmless, doesn’t it?

Continued