Portia wrote:Thank you, but now I'm really self-conscious. I'm not engaged. Now I've jinxed it.
Congrats on not being engaged! (That will un-jinx you.)
Thanks!
At church, they had a long list of bridal showers in Relief Society. A woman raised her hand and said "I'm having an un-bridal shower. It's for the foreseeable future. Cash donations only, please." Ha!
Well, apparently he "had a time picked out" but I feel very uncomfortable running back home for something that is not a sure thing. This is actually the reason I took the job in the Midwest in the first place -- I asked him if he loved me, he didn't say "yes," so I took my chances with the workplace.
I suppose I could, but it wouldn't be the same. For one, I'm not able to do whatever I please if I do, in fact, get married, for two, I'm lazy.
Sometimes people ask me this as a joke and I very seriously reply "In x years as soon as so-and-so gets off his mission." I think the last time was only 3 years away. And sometimes I say three different dates and go on to explain I'm going to start up a polyandry movement.
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. -Joseph Chilton Pearce
My little sister's youth group leader asked me how long I'd been dating my boyfriend at my sister's birthday party. I wish I had said "About a year longer than Dad has dated A.!" Darn staircase wit.
My mother jokes about me getting married (in some distant future) and it's funny. But somehow when I joke about being single still, I need to just be patient. Wut?
Well, I got dumped permanently, so not anytime this year. It's unfortunate that I turn 27 next year, because since I was about 18, I've thought 27 would be my ideal age to get married. (It's also the average age of first marriage for women in the U.S. now.) I don't want to live with an arbitrary deadline over my head. I guess I'll try my best to approach it as, "I feel financially and emotionally prepared for marriage if it's an option, but no rush with any particular relationship." Still though, why does 27 seem so close to 40 when it objectively isn't? :-|
Resurrecting this. I invited my boyfriend to Thanksgiving before I knew it was not being held at my grandma's, but at my dad's wife's. Of COURSE her parents with literally zero boundaries are going to be there along with sundry orphans, or something.
Her old man and woman are so Mormon they make my grandma look pagan. If they drop the "M" word (and hey, the two-year mark is when Normals start doing so), it WILL disrupt the delicately balanced framework of our relationship. I reeeeeeaaaaaally don't want to go, but my grandma sent me an eminently reasonable email arguing I should.
I'm tempted to fire back, "we're temperamental writers who don't believe in your bourgeois institutions," but for one thing, we've both worked in software most our dating life, and for another ... We've had the M-word discussion, and I just think that while my grandma or father could ask, it's none of his in-laws' goddamned business, y'know?
That's curious. If I were to vote for "most assertive on the board board," Portia would be my selection. Congratulations. You evidently are making a lot of progress.
Vorpal, my guess is it is the difference between online interactions and face-to-face interactions. Some of the most outspoken and assertive people online tend to feel like they are quiet and unassertive in person. Perhaps they are more outspoken online to make up for their lack in person?
My own theory is that less assertive people may actually be very assertive, internally, but in some situations they are inhibited from exhibiting that assertiveness. Perhaps they feel that they will be unloved or unaccepted if they appear assertive.
I've known many women who were very unassertive while they were dating, but soon after they were married began to strongly assert themselves. One could believe that the unassertive person was merely an act, thinking that men wouldn't like an assertive female so they deliberately hid that aspect of their personality. Or one could believe that their natural assertiveness was held back until the love and acceptance and diminished fear of abandonment allowed that assertiveness to assert itself.
I can see that being online, particularly where you aren't going to actually have to face some of the consequences of your assertiveness, might reduce the inhibitions. Others, to who validation and acceptance is more important, are only assertive when it strengthens their approval among those they consider "sisters in spirit." And then they can become very assertive, their courage bolstered by the solidarity of sisterhood.
