*looking for the little rolling eyes emoticon*

On behalf of the Swedish Institute, a College of Health Sciences, we decline your grant application. We specialize in Massage Therapy and Acupuncture. It is in these "fields of study" that Grants will be awarded. Additionally, we find your "theory" negligent in its absence of consideration of humor. It trumps intelligence every time. Granted, it takes intellect to create and understand sophisticated jokes and irony. Yet, slapstick endures. (see "funny" video shows) Perhaps, in the same manner as... "Buster Keaton is a genius" would a correlation occur. None the less, Grant Application.....DENIED


If you were to consider letting our "students" stick you with tiny needles, we would reserve the right to reconsider your application.


Swedish Institute, a College of Health Sciences
New York, New York, USA

I've been on the site for 2 1/2 years and have yet to meet anybody from here (not counting my ex who was here for awhile during the time we were together; but I knew her way back before I was on the site).

But I've met 9 people from other sites, and all of those situations were absolute disasters.

In my current situation, though, I really have no way to meet people EXCEPT on line. So that creates some obvious difficulties.

i think the "no way" one fills in for that in a pinch

I've been married -- haven't I been punished enough?

It is easy to point out flaws in others. But takes someone real to reflect on themselves and how others may see them, don't ya think?

Well, I see a couple of problems with that.

First, there's never going to be a consensus on it -- different people are going to see you different ways, based on their own decisions to interpret what's said, in ways they decide to use.

It's become very obvious to me that trying to use humor to make a point here is about as effective as using an ostrich feather to rob a bank --

Secondly, if you spend that much time worrying about what other people think, it detracts from you being yourself. Because you're never going to be able to please them all; the ones that get it, get it; and the ones that don't, don't.

Lex,

You're right. I didn't interpret what you said as being funny. I guess I take for granted that people don't intend to come across as unintelligent or create profiles that make them look idiotic or uneducated.

I wasn't referring to what others thought of someone but rather how they see them. I am a big proponent of self reflection and on occasion have had many people tell me the sky's blue when I saw it as pink. It makes me wonder why I saw pink. Was it the way the light was reflecting or my perception of it. That was my point.

I havent come across anyone myself who has tried to change who i am, unless i am just oblivious to it, but i doubt that.

I do agree that you shouldnt try to change who someone is, or allow someone to change who you are. What i think is reasonable though is for someone to expect a certain amount of adaptability. If two people totally lack the ability to adapt and get used to different ways of lives or situations, then for things to work out it takes perfection from the very start. Total perfection either does not exist, or is extremely rare, at best. You dont have to let anyone change you, but you have to allow yourself to adapt.

Im talking in general terms rather than directly to yourself, Lex.

I don't think it's even that, so much -- I assume they just don't even think about stuff like that. I don't see any "intent" in most profiles other than "Let's get this over with, this is soooooo hard to do, maybe I can just copy whatever somebody else wrote in theirs."

While I am generally not one to spend much time worrying about what other people think of me, I do see the profile (and forum posts) as a bit of an exception, but only because we're functioning in a wholly written medium here.

All we HAVE to represent ourselves is our words here; so I try to make mine clear, and (hopefully) interesting and humorous. But if people don't get that, at that point it's "not my problem." I shouldn't have to lead them by the hand and explain every other reference to them.



Other than by what I write, I have very little control over how anyone sees me. They are going to come to their own conclusions, regardless; some like what they read and some don't. I would rather it be this way than for me to try to be a "nice guy" and write a lot of bland, blathering platitudes that sound good but don't mean anything -- to me OR to the reader.

That's the problem then, so many people aren't willing to adapt, myself included. However, I'm not trying to date either, LOL

I think a certain amount of compromise in inevitable if a relationship is going to work.

In my relationships, though, it has never been about compromise, it has been about someone wanting to institute full-scale, massive changes in me.

Those people never should have gotten involved with me in the first place. More to the point, they never should have lied from Day One, saying they were on the same page with me when they obviously were not, and were merely waiting until such time as they felt comfortable trying to initiate their desired changes.

Compromise? Fine. Adjustment? OK. I'm pretty flexible about most things. I'm not going to drink, and I'm not going to be a parent. Mostly everything else is on the table for discussion.

Some people just arent going to agree with you that the profile is so important in itself. I never did think much of it myself, people can say anything, true or not. But then i wasnt ever trying to meet anyone through it, really. I just found that forum posts and the content of any mails exchanged were far more important. Even then you dont know what is true or not, but at least you have an opportunity to ask questions and try satisfy yourself on anything that doesnt quite add up.

The profile i have now is the best i have ever written, all of them prior to this have had little effort put into them. Maybe it was a thread of yours, Lex, that inspired me to bother, i cant remember now.

As i have only ever attempted to meet people through the forums, i dont think my experience is totally valid though.

I personally think the profile -- any profile -- pales in comparison to a person's forum posts -- for lots of reasons.

But not everybody posts in the forums, and in the case of a non-poster, all you have to work with is the profile.

You can't know what's true or not, but I'd like to think (perhaps totally erroneously) that I've been doing this long enough that I could get a glimmer of a sense of who a person is by what they write in a profile. Well, that's if anyone ever wrote one worth reading.



Dan, you're a good example of someone whose personality comes through, on several levels, in your posts (and even moreso in e-mail). But there is no possibility of anyone seeing you as a cookie-cutter boilerplate inside-the-box person. So you, of all people, are not my target audience here!

And maybe you shouldnt have gotten involved with them, and maybe you shouldnt have let their lies fool you.

Im just saying. I wasnt there to know whether or not you have any blame for anything yourself. Maybe you have just been unlucky.

Not drinking and not being a parent, are reasonable things for you to ask, thats not too much. As long as you are adaptable to most other things you are gonna have a fair chance.

No question about it. I had a naive and gullible period there, and it lasted longer than it should have.



Unlucky, I suppose is part of it -- but I have to take the blame, too, for not being selective enough in those days. I overlooked things I shouldn't have, I let myself believe things that were questionable, all in the name of expediency....



Except it never gets that far -- it seems that people only resort to dating sites once they're firmly ensconced in the alcohol/kids lifestyle. Try to find someone on a dating site who doesn't drink and who deosn't have kids! -- easier to find a Martian/Neptunian hybrid, which, now that I think about it, might not be a bad idea....

Whilst i do agree with you on many points about why you filter through people based on their profile, wouldnt you be better off to keep a more open mind and find out for sure that they are a total dumbarse through a few mails? Providing of course you can engage them in some kind of conversation(or they you).

In theory, sure.

In reality, one of the first things I discovered here was that locals don't reply to e-mails. There was a time I would send out a welcoming e-mail to new local people on the site, talking about something they had written in their profiles, and letting them know about the forums.

Several of them did end up posting in the forums (albeit briefly) but not one ever responded to my e-mails.

Well, I didn't need another piano to fall on my head to figure out what was happening there....

Now you have learnt some lessons and you probably arent naive or gullable at all anymore.

So maybe now you can have good confidence in yourself to pick someone who will be the right one, and who wont try to change you in the ways you dont want to be changed.

Maybe, you dont actually need to be as selective as you are now, just because you are wiser and wont let yourself fall into the same traps you did before. But you keep the criteria still, because you arent totally confident in yourself that you would beable to do this? I can see how you wouldnt wanna get in the same situations again, and nobody wants you to be either. Personally i think you are smart enough and wise enough to manage a relationship in such a way that it wouldnt get that far.

Just throwing my thoughts out at you.