Comments on: (Video) How Many People Are Dateable?

By: Helen

Helen — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:09:34 +0000

Hi Goldie – this definitely is a dimension of marriage that I hadn’t even considered when writing my earlier response. Having different interests isn’t unusual. What sounds unusual in this case is that he seemed completely unwilling to participate in these activities with you and to be cordial with your friends (and possibly the other way too?). Part of the fun of marriage is going to these new activities with your spouse and making new sets of friends and acquaintances. What you described above sounds like complete incompatibility and unwillingness to try new things.

I’m confused by what you said about being terrified of what would happen after the kids go to college. “Terrified” is a pretty strong term when it comes to describing two people with divergent interests. Were these differences really so intolerable?

What I had meant by spouses being on each others’ sides has nothing to do with compatibility of interests. It means being loyal to each other in the face of everything life throws at us, and believing the best of the other person. It means sticking up for the other person both in professional and familial contexts.

I really wish you all the best in your dating experiences now!

By: Goldie

Goldie — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:30:58 +0000

I have to comment on Helen’s #64:

Sayanta, I too am an arts/music/literature freak. My hubby can’t carry a tune, falls asleep when listening to classical music, and teases me for loving art museums so much. It doesn’t matter for a LTR. Not at all. Please believe me on this. If and when you have kids, you are not going to have time for that anyway.
You want a hubby who will be on your side, who always defends you, who sympathizes with you, who tells you he loves you and reminds you of your good qualities. You want someone who appreciates you and loves you. You don’t need a brilliant, handsome, or cultured man for that.

I only agree to a point. From my experience, to a certain point, closeness of interests does matter. True, it doesn’t need to be all or nothing, but it does matter.

“If and when you have kids, you are not going to have time for that anyway.” is only correct until the youngest kid hits their teens and doesn’t want to hang out with Mom and Dad anymore. Then Mom and Dad are free to do whatever they want as a couple. Except Mom wants to go to an art exhibit, and Dad wants to go fishing. Every. single. time.

But wait, it gets better. When Mom’s artsy friends and Dad’s fishing friends get together, things get awkward very fast! Well not for Dad’s friends, because they get plastered quickly enough and they feel comfortable enough after that. But, bottom line, it pretty much comes down to the fact that Mom and Dad have each their own set of friends that are unable to mingle.

Meantime, Mom sees her artsy friends go to concerts, exhibits, theater plays, vacations that she’d actually find interesting… with their husbands, and the husbands seem to actually enjoy every minute of it. She sees couples that do things together — things that interest them both — and that brings them closer together as couples. At concerts, plays, etc. she’s the only single person in the group and she’s sick of sticking out like a sore thumb, but there’s no way her husband can be persuaded to come to any of these events, just like she cannot be persuaded to go fishing.

She feels like a single woman who, for some reason, has a grown man living in her house.

I have just described my marriage, thank you for listening. And we didn’t even get to the point where both kids moved out of the house. Frankly, I was so terrified of what would happen after that, I decided not to wait.

I would also add that, in my opinion, a man who has nothing in common with you and is adamant that he wants to keep things that way, does not understand you, does not understand your interests, refuses to make an effort to do so, refuses to try any new things or use his brain in any way outside of work, — is not “on your side” already by definition. He wouldn’t know your side if it walked up to him and smacked him in the face! How on earth can he be “on” it? How can he say he appreciates you, if he has no interest in anything that makes you tick? He’s just hanging around for hot meals and regular sex. I am not, of course, referring to Helen’s family here AT ALL. (Her marriage sounds pretty cool, so I am sure she’s omitted quite a few positive details of their life together in the above post) Rather, to mine and other families like it.

I’ll admit that I do not yet have an answer. From my dating experience, I am already finding out that for a man to be interested in the exact same things you are, is not nearly enough. My guess would be that an interest in you as a person, combined with some degree of intellectual curiosity that would make it fun for him to try new things, and some degree of brain capacity that would make it possible for him to understand those new things, will probably make for a happy couple. But that’s just a guess that I’ll have to verify on my own

By: A-L

A-L — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:43:37 +0000

Yoohoo, Evan! Can I just say that I would totally love to see what everyone looks like too? Some blogs have commenters register at gravitar.com and you can upload a picture. That way when you post there’s a miniature picture that pops up too. Perhaps that way we can see what each other looks like while maintaining our private identities.

RE: Sayanta’s #138
I did see the blog entry where Evan was promoting being understanding of guys’ whose profiles talked about working/playing hard and/or had some grammatical errors. If a guy wrote a 3 line profile and had errors & zero creativity, then I would generally blow those off. But if it was obvious that the guy put some thought into his profile, and it was generally well-written but had an error or two, I would overlook it.

In fact, my fiance had two errors in his profile. But I could tell that he had put thought into it and he sounded like someone I’d like to know more about. And our e-mails were not filled with scintillating repartee. But they were genuine and it was obvious that he read my profile and he always referenced things from previous e-mails or phone conversations. In fact, he really wowed me on our first date by remembering so many small details which I had mentioned in passing. So are there great guys with errors in their profiles? Absolutely.

I guess my advice would be to look at the overall picture. Is there effort there? Was the mistake a rarity, or did it look like it was a mistake when they actually wrote something correctly? How do you feel after reading their profile? If you have a positive feeling (or perhaps, just not a negative feeling) then I’d give them a shot.

By: BeenthereDonethat

BeenthereDonethat — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:13:04 +0000

Sayanta
I know what you mean. I feel the same way. It’d be different it were more private although – how private is face book?

By: starthrower68

starthrower68 — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:06:07 +0000

Sorry, I mean thank you Been There Done That…duuuuuhhhhh….

By: starthrower68

starthrower68 — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:05:14 +0000

Thank you for the compliment A-L. That is very sweet of you )

By: sayanta

sayanta — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:36:40 +0000

BTDT-

Well- I would show you my FB page, but I feel weird about outing myself (lol…full name and all).

By: BeenthereDonethat

BeenthereDonethat — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:50:56 +0000

Starthrower
I am a size 3 – I TOTALLY have the same types of men sending me flirts. I always think I get these guys because I’m 40. But they probably send them out to everyone.

A-L
I think of myself as a 5 or 6 also; and I always wonder if I think I’m better looking than I actually am. I’m not one of the women writing “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you” in my profile and getting 100 emails a day. It is so hard to be objective about ourselves. But I’m happy with the way I look so maybe that is all that matters.

PS to Starthrower – I do wonder what the people who post here look like at times. Once, when you outed yourself on here, I looked at your picture on Evan’s Facebook page. I thought you looked really cute! Sorry – not normally a stalker.

By: starthrower68

starthrower68 — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:33:49 +0000

Cat,
Please see EMK’s post above (#115) where he responds to Santaya that it’s tiresom to be misquoted.

By: sayanta

sayanta — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 13:01:06 +0000

Oh, sorry, another question for A-L-

I don’t know if you’ve read some of the posts from the past month or so, but some people said not to discount the men who write 2-liner profiles of the “work hard/play hard” variety, or with millions of typos, in that, they could be a great guy who just doesn’t know how to write.

You sound just like me, in that writing style and a deep, thoughtful profile seems to be important to you. Did you ever consider men like the above for dating purposes? Do you recommend it, if you did?

I don’t know- I hate to keep harping on this, but I think age is the crucial factor- I mean, there’s no other reason that I would get bombarded at age 28-29 with e-mails, and only 2 years later get none (no, I haven’t gained weight, gotten a new unattractive, hairstyle, etc.) For an experiment, I put up the pics I had at 28 (when I was getting bombarded), but kept my age as 31 (which it now is). Still no hits. I shouldn’t say no hits- about 700 men have ‘viewed’ me in the past 3 days. So, apparently my pic is prompting them to take a look.

Unless it’s because I’m starting my profile with a literature quote. I mean- I was looking at the men who’ve viewed me over the past week, and it’s not as though I felt like I was missing out on anything by not getting e-mails from them. Most were two-line profiles that said “I like sports. I work hard and play hard.” Others barely were able to write the English language.

I, on the other hand, spent hours really perfecting my profile, to make it deep, humorous, etc.

So, it can’t be the pic (considering my experiment)- it must be my actual profile. I don’t know what to think of this- I guess this means guys really do care about what your profile says, instead of going just for the pic? LOL

Sorry- you guys must think I’m the most impatient person in the world, considering I’ve been on Match all of 7 days.