The Scrolls

Archive for the ‘Relationships’ Category

The Nature of the Beast

Sex is neither inherently good or evil, in the same way that no material object is good or bad. Sex, when used incorrectly, can be debilitating and life altering while sex, with good intentions, would be described as some as magical. For some reason, some folks can only see one half of the sex coin. It seems like I know far too many people who are using sex for the wrong reasons.

I know so many women who become obsessed with sex and start to view it as the only thing about them that is appealing which is never the truth. They whore out their bodies in an attempt to feel better about themselves and are surprised, even stupefied, when they still feel just as badly. They try to convince themselves that they are happy or should be but it’s just not the case. I don’t know why people, women especially, do that to themselves. It’s easy to tell that someone who wants you for only sex will dump you as soon as someone better looking, more adventurous, younger etc arrives on the scene.

On the other hand, people use sex to manipulate their relationships. It becomes a tool of power, not something which is shared and meaningful but something which can help you get your way or keep a person in “their place.” Everyone involved starts to see an action which can be beneficial and joyful as negative. Perhaps it makes them angry, resentful or even fearful. This approach shouldn’t really be surprising as sex has been used to control people through the ages and not just by individuals. Certainly the issue of gay rights arises as well as age of consent and religious teachings.

At the end of the day, I cannot look at sex as something which many possibilities, some of which may seem conflicting but none of which are carved in stone.

Honey Do This

For the first time I can recall, I am writing Ryan a Honey-Do list. It feels silly and sweet at the same time. Have you ever written or received a Honey-Do list or do you communicate these things verbally? If you write lists or notes, do you personalize them?

Dear Douchebag

I realize, that despite the age difference that makes you nearly a decade my senior, you don’t have the maturity to be in a healthy relationship. You, on the other hand, do not seem to realize that. Perhaps that is why you decided to string a good friend of mine along for over a year and then break up with her, without even telling her. Yea, thanks a lot.

And perhaps it isn’t even my place to say anything (but, hey, it’s my blog asshole) but I’ve been listening to her issues about your relationship for damned near a year. In my book, that’s long enough to wait for you to pull your head out of your ass and work on your shortcomings. So what I don’t understand is how you even have the balls to break up with her when you’re the one who should be wallowing in self pity after a particularly eye-opening dumping.

Without further ado, here is a list of things you need to work on in order to be successful in a relationship. Otherwise, your future endeavors will soon find themselves following the footsteps of your ex-wife and my close friend and not because of lack of trying on their parts. Wake up or, yes, you won’t ever find someone.

Learn how to communicate (Listen up, moron).

Seriously. Learn how to listen to people and hear what they’re saying or have them clarify without throwing everything through your stupid “I’m a man” filter. Then, learn how to tell other people how you feel. I’m pretty sure “I’m breaking up with you” falls into this category.

Prioritize your time (Get a fucking PDA).

You don’t need to please everyone or help everyone or do everything. You need to figure out what’s most important and dedicate sufficient time to those things and people. Working to earn a living? Important. Spending time with your loved ones? Important. Fixing everyone else’s shit? Not so important. The sooner you learn, the better. Otherwise, you’ll just wind up hurting those you care about. Furthermore, your friends and family are sick of you being so damned undependable.

Get over yourself (Now!).

Why should others make time for or care about you when you won’t return the favour? Don’t expect people to sympathize over your situation when you don’t give a crap about theirs. The double standards suck.

Take responsibility (Grow the fuck up).

Relationships are a two way road and if they’re not working, changes are both people need to step it up. You need to make an effort to recognize problems and continue making an effort to minimize them for life of the relationship, if not the rest of your life. Relationships take work and before you can do said work, you have to take responsibility for your share.

These four steps may not be simple or easy but they will help you have a healthy relationship with people. Once you can see beyond yourself, you can see why others have issues with you. Taking responsibility for your roles in those issues and resolving them will be so much easier when you learn how to listen and speak effectively. Unfortunately, this is a lifelong process that never ends. If you’re not up for it, kill yourself.

At the very least, stop fucking my friends around with your shortsighted childishness.

Sincerely,
Cole

Don’t believe all you read

Ashe sent me a link to this article on some Love+Sex blog on Yahoo (Who even knew Yahoo had blogs? Way to be hip.. and fail! LOL), entitled “5 Things You Don’t Need to Have in Common” and I was intrigued. I thought it might be eye opening and dug in to read. That’s when I discovered it’s a complete waste of time.

I do believe a healthy relational is one where everyone involved is unique, rather than a carbon copy of the other person(s). Plus, having different interests allows you to breathe fresh life into the relationship and gives you something to talk about. After all, Ryan and I are different people despite some overlaps in our tastes. On the other hand, if you don’t have anything in common or the right things in common, I think you’re going to wind up feeling awfully lonely in your relationship or trying to move mountains.

According to the author, “Your Tango”, the 5 things which are completely irrelevant to any relationship are music, “Intellectual Tastes”, friends,financial habits and style. Let’s look at this point by point. Good to know but, you’re a fucktard, okay?

I sort of agree musical tastes. I think it’s much harder to find someone who is your musical soulmate than it is to find someone with whom you’re generally compatible. It sure makes things, easier though. Ryan and I have been together 6 years and we still don’t have “our song”. His musical tastes don’t include a lot of love songs and almost anything I could suggest, he would veto.

Intellectual interests actually gets a pass. We both read and I would say that, right now, he is interested in more intellectual things than I am. This is one of those fields that actually provides conversation fodder.

Friends are a tricky subject to handle. When we were in Misawa, I definitely disliked that all of my friends were married as opposed to all his single friends. Maybe it was an irrational worry but I just don’t have a lot of faith in packs of young, guys when the married ones are in the minority. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I worried that his friends would somehow convince him to go get a prostitute or participate in some orgy. So while it’s good for you to have friends to share memories and interests of things that just don’t interest your girl or guy, it’s important to have balance. Your friends relationship statuses or personalities should not work against your relationship. If your groups of friends are completely different, it could be a sign that as individuals, you are just too different to make it work, too.

Financial habits are something that absolutely can contribute to the health or deterioration of a relationship and that the author felt this belonged in such an article proves she (or he) is on crack. Finances rank around #2 when it comes to reason for divorce and, if you haven’t noticed, the economy kinda sucks. A lot of people are struggling right now and if half of your relationship is really bad at spending money wisely, this can put a lot of unneeded stress on your marriage vows and entire family. Honestly, I don’t know anyone who can say “My Husband Loses Money On Stocks—And I Don’t Mind” without worrying about where the next car or house or insurance payment is coming from. I guess that, here in the real world, we all don’t have such a luxury.

To further prove his/her/its idiocy, the author says all matters of conflicting style can be solved with a trip to the local mall, so break out your credit card. While style is usually not the straw which breaks the camel’s back, the author could have said so many other useful things. Instead, it turned a valid point into worthless drivel.

Like the rest of the article.

Leaving Well Enough Alone

Of course, this post on my shopping blog would be one that Ashe disagrees with. Of course, I had to post it when I was already annoyed with her. Of course, it kind of has to do with one of the reasons I am frustrated with her. Of course, we had to talk about it. Had to. How could we not?! Of course, I couldn’t stop when she said she was getting angry because, by that time, I was, too, and I wanted to be.

The result of all this?

I now realize I don’t believe in dating as a ‘permanent’ station in life. I simply view it as a temporary move between singledom and marriage – neither of which are any better than the other, by the way. It’s generally necessary (unless you’re Dharma and Greg) and, hopefully, enjoyable but it’s not a place I ever desired to stay in for more than a couple of years because, at that point, dating becomes a road block on my journey to marriage. I view dating as something you do until you figure out whether or not you can marry this person and then you stop. You either stop dating and become engaged or stop dating a douche and become single again. If I were to date for years and my partner were unable to show me commitment, I would feel strung along angry, if you couldn’t tell.

It just reeks of indecision to me. Indecision wastes time. Indecision goes hand in hand with confusion. Grey areas in relationships are never a good sign. If you can’t at least loosely define what the hell it is you’re doing, then I think you need to reconsider. It’s not that I think people should push for marriage to the point of being miserable but if that’s what you want, then you should go for it sooner rather than later. Because marriage is clearly defined. Singledom is clearly defined. Dating is not. I thrive on that definition. I have even less respect for casual dating, for the same reasons, but casual sex is A-okay by me.

This all really exemplifies my dislike for wasting time and not knowing where I stand, so if the goal of dating is marriage, then dating for an extended length of time is wasting it. Of course, I realize that not everyone dates for reasons of getting married but I honestly don’t understand other purposes. You may date many people in the search of someone but once you do find that person, shouldn’t you make the next logical step sooner rather than later? It’s just that, if you love someone and you’re happy with them and you want to be with them for a good long time and you can see that happening, why wouldn’t you get married? Why wouldn’t you want to show that to the world? And if you’re not all of those things, why are you still in the relaitonship? Furthermore, while it may never ne an issue, as soon it becomes one being married in the eyes of the law becomes a huge issue.

When I Grow Up

I’ve noticed myself distancing from the idea of arguing and fighting. Although always rebellious and still argumentative in the middle of a heated argument, I am doing more to prevent the arguing from even taking place – or trying, at least.

It’s not perfect but it’s a change that I guess occurred gradually and I just now realized it. It’s certainly a positive change but one that has been difficult, at best, sometimes especially considering how much I tend to argue reflexively. Sometimes I still find myself frustrated because I am caught up in the middle of an argument but cannot seem to stop, thus only becoming more frustrated.

Still, it’s a step in the right direction.

The Park

I used to chat at a website called the Park and this is not the first mention of The Park on my site). This is not news to many (and this is not the first mention of it on my site). Several of my friends on IM or Mypsace/Facebook are from the Park day when I was a wee lass of 13/14. -chuckles- The park was magnificent in its way. It attracted millions of visitors so a site that would be shamed by even the worst sites of the internet today; it was, after all, a completely product of Web 1.0. That would also be its downfall and The Park would succumb (around 2000) to the big dot com bust and not without some well-earned hatred to the Park’s founder, Brent Hunter.

A lot of the chatters who had grown to love The Park and made lifelong friendships and relationships there went on to other similar sites, most notably The Pork, where I still chat but also including Dockwave, Ozpark and Ties That Bind. None of these sites would ever see the sheer numbers of the Park, though.

Fast forward a few years and Brent is back with a new project – The Earth Comm Center – and while I think Mr Hunter had different intentions for it than his earlier project, Park followers flocked to it as a way to relive the golden age and to find or catch up with old friends. In that way, it worked marvelously. For a while, at least, until the same issues happened with Brent and chatters and volunteers became disgruntled and slanders his not-so-good-anyway name and left the site. Some followed. Many didn’t.

But then something else happened: Brent disappeared. Though the site never saw the success of its predecessor, it did bring together some people who had been torn apart by the Park’s unfortunate demise and it was clung to as a last hope for some who wished to someday know other reunions. Brent’s disappearance brought with it a lack of upkeep on the site and, eventually (late 2007), the site ceased functioning correctly; that is, no one could log in anymore. Though the site still stands, show statistics and appears to function in many other ways, no one can actually use it for any purpose.

A lot of people find this amusing, even expected. Brent doesn’t have a good track record or a good way with people, it seems. Still, it is a loss that I, among others, mourn a bit. I had caught up with some friends via ECC, including one who was, at the time, deployed to Iraq. We have since lost contact because the site no longer works. )=

Where are you Brent Hunter?

This is all fresh in my memory because I was talking to an old friend from the Park today and, as always happens with those old friends, the conversation turns to questions like “Do you still talk to anyone?” or “Do you remember this person?” And I always feel a tinge of nostalgia because the people that I talk to and remember are far less in number than I would prefer.

And I don’t know how to find them again. Sites like Myspace or Reunion.com allow you to find people when you do know a lot of information about them but the friends one makes in chat, even if one knows their heart and soul, may never release vital information like birth date, home town or last name.

Even Brent has a few websites up which direct the visitor to chat rooms whose core is made up of ex Park chatters but it’s not the same. I began wondering why there isn’t some type of site that allows people to reunite with others from online, with search criteria different than e-mail, age or location which you might not know. Perhaps just a giant bulletin board located at “Find People From The Park.com”.

Alas, searching for those specific people is all but impossible online and searching for the masses is an insurmountable task. If I had control of The Park domains (still own by Brent) I would redirect people to the Pork (which he refuses to link) or to the Myspace group (created by myself) or the Facebook group (created by Sara) so that we would all reconnect.

As it stands, searching for sites about the Park is limited. Eventually, my Myspace group shows up and there appears to be a single Yahoo!Answers question asking if anyone remembers. Links to Brent’s now defunct websites are what show up immediately. It doesn’t seem like many people have taken the time out to put something online to say “Hey, I was there! I remember! I miss you Bob! Where are you Jane?”

So I guess this is my way of creating something a little more permanent, in case someone else is searching and finds my site, maybe they’ll find a little more direction. And maybe, just maybe, I can find a little more closure.