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Because they are really tiny little aliens freefalling from outer space after their spaceship crashed into an asteroid.


Why is the ocean so big?

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Stay, and make some snacks for the movie marathon....after making those promises, of course.

I'm glad you're back too. As a friend, you had me worried, but I hope all is better now.

These three questions were intentionally linked. They were not meant to be answered individually, but to demonstrate a thought process that a jealous person might have.

The second question is perhaps the most important. If your partner no longer feels special in your eyes, then you are headed toward some sort of conflict or rift. If your partner sees you doing something "special" with somebody when it used to be reserved just for him or her, there's a good chance your partner is going to become jealous.

Personally, I feel jealousy is a natural emotion. It takes work, experience, and emotional maturity to overcome it.

But I don't believe ANYONE who says they never feel jealous. They may hide it. They may suppress it. They may subdue it. Or they may just rationalize it away. That is, they use some sort of coping strategy to move past it, and no one ever notices.

But if you never feel jealousy? Just how emotionally detached is such a person? Jealousy is one of the primal emotions. It evolved into some of the deadly sins. It gave birth to crime, bullying, rape, and thuggery.

Hence, Cranky is right - control often plays a factor with jealousy. When people see something going a way they don't like, their first impulse to take control over it, to guide it back to where they want it.

What if your partner began doing something with someone else that s/he used to only do with you?

What if that something was part of what made you feel special in your partner's eyes?

What if this also meant you received less attention from your partner because that something is now split between two people?


Discuss.

Moons and coal?

Sounds like someone's gonna get a visit from this guy...

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Thinking about what anime to watch next.

Thinking I really would like to wake up feeling refreshed around 8 am each day rather than waking up between 10:30 am and 11:30 am feeling unrefreshed.

Getting to know someone doesn't have to be 20 Questions. I've always tried to just do it through conversation. But sometimes the other person doesn't offer much in reply. That's when it gets tedious. If the other person doesn't talk much, it makes for an awful boring first date. Chances are I'll make it the last date as well.

I've tried to do fun first dates before. Unless I already know the woman well, a fun date has always been a hassle. "I don't like that. I don't feel like doing this. I don't know what I want to do." Again, when the woman gives me little to nothing to work with, it's just going to be a boring (and final) date.

If I was made of money, I could think of lots of ways to sweep her off her feet. But I'm not. I don't have much money to work with at all. So if she's expecting me to wow her by spending lots of money on like a broadway show or expensive clubs and drinks or a sporting event, it's just not going to happen. It's an unrealistic expectation.

So a fun date has to be somewhat frugal, like mini golf or something.

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I prefer a "get to know you" first date. It's hard to come up with a "fun date" when you don't know much about the person yet.

But I also agree with Poetrywriter to some extent. If both of you are clicking during the get to know you part, then you both have the option of extending the date to something fun. That's when you begin to know whether you enjoy each other's company or not. You can't always do that just talking. Sometimes you have to see what each other is like during an activity.

For instance, I knew one woman who laughed on the inhale rather than on the exhale. The result was very high-pitched and shrill, like a pig squealing in agony. Most people I knew couldn't stand the sound of her laugh. I actually didn't mind it. It made her a bit unique, in my eyes. And she was quite attractive too. Someone who didn't know her would have been caught very off-guard and likely turned off the first time she laughed hard.

I was going to ask her out, but allowed our mutual friends to talk me out of it. Years after, I kicked myself for listening to them. She liked me. She was interested in me. We probably would have made a good couple. But dum-dum me didn't follow his own logic and instincts.

Welcome back, Crankster. We missed you.

Tom, I understand your personal view, but as you know, most people aren't like you. That means the majority probably don't use the same rationale.

I encountered this whole forum phenomenon elsewhere when I was a moderator. Less than 20% of any online community tends to be active in that community's forum. I'm pretty sure Mingle is less than 10%. Secondly, the number one complaint I received from community members who didn't participate in the forums was the unwelcoming attitudes of the active forum participants. Given the Pareto Principle and the lower percentage of participants on Mingle, I think it's safe to say based on what I've witnessed over several years, that the same complaint is why there are not more active participants in Mingle forums.

One of the more common complaints among active participants here happens to be the number of rule violations that appear to go uncaught. Many try to blame the moderators, but the reality is that the forums are too large for the number of mods we have. Therefore, the forum participants need to be more active in reporting rule violations. The caveat is that's more work than participants want to put in, so they give up. Or they overuse it to the point of abuse, which can result in being suspended or banned themselves. It's a tool that needs to used in moderation (pun not intended) by a larger number of participants in order to be effective.

People tend to have all sorts of inaccurate perceptions when they aren't privy to what happens behind the scenes. You've been a moderator elsewhere, IIRC, so you should have some idea what I'm talking about.

Then again, maybe you don't, because I was an Admin for the private group for moderators on that forum. I used to get much more input from the community than a typical moderator because of both that and the huge community following I had. I had the top post count, largely due to aiding other members with bugs, technical issues, research, and idea development. That kind of outreach tends to develop a personal fanbase.

As far as your view of "dating site", you're making the mistake of debating semantics. Of course dating doesn't happen online or on a website. By debating semantics, you're creating a strawman argument. The point of a dating site is to enable people to increase their personal outreach within the dating pool. It's a numbers game, as the OP was pointing out. To increase your odds of finding the right person, you have to increase the number of people you interact with. Online allows people to do that. But going to a social forum where most people aren't interested in finding a date undermines that process. So they come to a dating site with a forum instead. But then they find that most of the people in the forums treat it as a social forum? Of course they aren't going to hang around. They're going to be upset and frustrated instead. If they search profiles, they have to weed through the fakes and inactives. If they try to avoid that by using the forums, they find the majority aren't looking. So what reason do they have to stay? None. They go elsewhere, and so does any money they might have invested in Mingle2.

Most of the fakes I see come out late at night.

That's because they are operating mainly out of the Southeast Asia, which is a 14 hour time difference, roughly.

There are some active during the day too. Those are often based in Europe, Latin America, or Africa.

For me, it's about a 2:1 ratio for night vs. day.

Tired

I can't seem to keep my bedroom dark enough. To get adequate deep sleep after work, I often have to sleep through the first 1 - 3 hours of daylight. But having too much light in the bedroom disrupts my deep sleep, causing me to wake feeling unrefreshed.