All is Full of Love

[Syeknom]

Yeah, race was an unknown issue to me growing up there. Everyone was white british except for the occasional family running a chinese or indian takeaway. Very interesting hearing everyone else's experiences though.

[smiles]

Bobbin for most interesting man 2014.

[charybdis]

hooplah you definitely said a lot of what I feel about asian girl/white dude relationships

I mean, it's definitely weird since people tend to have such definite opinions about asian girls unlike white girls for instance. At the same time, a girl in the SLG I'm friend of house with is dating this white guy who is just known for exclusively dating asian girls, and they really have a good relationship, so I guess there's that. I'm not sure if I would be able to do that, although I think a line exists between "dates asian girls" and "any asian girl will do."

I think culture matters a lot more to me than race since I grew up Asian-American and while unlike a lot of people I know I don't really feel like there is a race I wouldn't date, I absolutely will not date a mainland chinese boy ever. Part of it is because I grew up with all my relatives telling me not to date a mainland boy (unless they're Shanghainese ofc) and the implosion of my cousin's marriage I guess. I'm not quite sure how to articulate it.

[ramseames]

You dance with a girl, you kiss a girl, you grab her tightly, you do a shot with her, you dance some more, you agree to leave with her, you kiss her, and then right as the cab arrives she runs away with her fucking friends. arghghhhgbngghghgh what the fuck is your problem.... ghghghzhgzhhghugdhuh.

[bels]

Yeah but ram what race was she

[Triggerdisk]

nothing like a good old race hunt

[ramseames]

sorry guys, that should have gone in the drunk thread.

she was white bela.

[charybdis]

sometimes I wonder if I'm not a lonely neckbeard minus the beard

[Syeknom]

Nothing wrong with being a lonely neckbeard

Unless you smell

Or are covered in food

And have greasy hair

And hate women / black people

And talk too much about bowel movements

And fucking girls

And can't function in the company of people not like you because you're better than everybody despite being unemployable and unlikeable

Sorry, I've been friends with a lot of these people.

Dwindles! Are you partner hunting or not so interested?

[UnwashedMolasses]

My lady and I are trying out a partially-open thing at a party tonight, it should be interesting. We've flirted with the idea for years, so it should be interesting how it turns out.

[hunnish]

Always knew you two would become swingers.

[charybdis]

Dwindles! Are you partner hunting or not so interested?

I'm not sure if I'm just enamored with the idea of having a boyfriend or not and I don't know how to go about getting one. Even though I seem friendly, I'm secretly really standoffish.

I'm not quite sure how to put it into words.

[thomaspaine]

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all.

A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way.

And just some random weirdness:

Aoyama cites one man in his early 30s, a virgin, who can't get sexually aroused unless he watches female robots on a game similar to Power Rangers.

Asada adds she's spent "the past two years" obsessed with a virtual game that lets her act as a manager of a sweet shop.

[germinal]

Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all.

e: @tpaine i was just pointing out what a badly-phrased stat this was (two-thirds of people aged 0-29 have dated at least once?), but the article and video are both very interesting thanks

[thomaspaine]

http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-t ... e-industry

I also read the above quote as "sweat shop" not "sweet shop", which makes it a little more sane.

[can-]

it's like they're all on the internet

[schiaparelli]

dwindles, i feel i definitely feel a bit uncomfortable with the thought of dating an asian dude who grew up in asia. mostly because the gender standards and cultural norms would throw me for a loop. my parents have kind of expressed the same sentiments…my mom in particular is a super career woman kind of person, and she says a lot of her friends (especially younger vietnamese women who moved to the US with their husbands) express a bit of resentment at the division of household labor and things. maybe a bit similar to your discomfort with mainlander chinese dudes?

i don't think you're a lonely neckbeard, i think there's just this awkward space if you're a slightly shy/standoffish/reserved asian girl where a lot of cool/reasonably polite/upstanding guys will be afraid to approach. i think the only solution is to strategically flirt with/hit on people first

or just you know ignore all that and STUDY

i feel like for a lot of parents but especially asian parents there's this weird event horizon where before your parents cross it they're like "don't talk to boys/girls you need to study!" and then after they cross the horizon all of a sudden they're calling you 10x a day going "WHERE ARE MY GRANDCHILDREN?!" can anyone whose parents have crossed said event horizon share their experiences?

[bels]

Spending all my time at university studying was kind of a bad decision on retrospect. It didn't help my career and it hindered everything else. But hey if you've nothing better to do then why not?

[thomaspaine]

i feel like for a lot of parents but especially asian parents there's this weird event horizon where before your parents cross it they're like "don't talk to boys/girls you need to study!" and then after they cross the horizon all of a sudden they're calling you 10x a day going "WHERE ARE MY GRANDCHILDREN?!" can anyone whose parents have crossed said event horizon share their experiences?

Haha yep. My mom was totally against me dating in high school, and probably semi opposed to it in college too. Now every time I see her she asks me when I'm having a baby. My gf's mom keeps telling her to have kids, and that we don't need to worry about getting married or anything. Her mom just thinks I have good genes so she shouldn't waste the opportunity.

It's more just annoying or slightly funny, rather than feeling any real pressure from them. But I guess we're both fairly western and independent, so I can't really imagine not doing something because my parents didn't approve. On the other hand I know a lot of people with immigrant/traditional parents who seem really bound by their parents approval, and will hide or terminate relationships based on it. Sounds awful to me but I don't know, I just can't relate to that way of thinking.

dwindling I don't remember you being particularly standoffish when I met you. I didn't check your neck for a beard though.

[rjbman]

I was talking with a friend who lives abroad in the UK from Asia; from what he's told me I get the feeling that Asians tend to not do the strict 1v1 dating type stuff that is so prevalent in America and instead prefer to hang out in large groups even if definitively in a relationship. He's trying to court a girl but while she has been flirty and seemingly interested in texts she has turned him down on two separate date offers, in part because it would be the two of them alone.

It's quite interesting to think about; being raised fairly sheltered in the US I'm not used to alternative courting procedures from other countries.

[charybdis]

My roommate's boyfriend is super insecure because she was the first girl he ever slept with and so he said that they should be in an open relationship so he could "catch up to her number" (which he thinks is seven or eight) but that in that time she couldn't sleep with anyone else. He currently goes to another university, but I wonder if it's a common thing to be insecure about?

[starfox64]

how many people has she actually slept with?

my girlfriend in high school and i were each others first partners, but then my girlfriend in college had slept with i think seven guys before me. it was weird for me at first and i was afraid that i wasn't experienced enough, but i dunno, i got over it. i think in some ways there's always a weird neurosis about how you stack up to your partner's previous boyfriends/girlfriends/whatever (or at least i feel that way), but it's a matter of degree. it's something i was concerned about when i was 20, really not so much now (though i haven't dated anyone super seriously in a long time, so maybe it'd flare up again if i met someone i really liked). anyway, i think some degree of insecurity is normal if you really like the person, but wanting to fuck a bunch of random girls to get xp or something sounds really dumb. also if he is like a sophomore in college and has only slept with one girl it's unlikely that he's going to go out and slay a bunch of girls if they were in an open relationship, right?

[ramseames]

Did she actually say yes to that? I can't even comprehend why anyone would consent to that or even stay in a relationship with someone who wants that

[charybdis]

starfox more, I dunno exactly how many and I think it's irrelevant. For her part, my roommate actually said "he's too much of a pussy to actually go and hook up with another girl." But it's kind of funny to me because outwardly he's a pretty bro-y dude.

ramseams She was in a pretty awkward position since she still wanted to stay with him and she tried it out but they're basically broken up right now. One thing she said was that she initially went along with it because she assumed he would come to realize that it was a dumb idea.

[Syeknom]

He sounds dreadfully immature.

It's not like it's an entirely uncommon thing to have some unwelcome thoughts about in the back of one's mind but making the leap to seriously proposing that you need to "catch up" is aggressively hurtful, self-centred and a nasty twist of logic. It also just sounds like it's probably a consequence of the long-distance part of things and that he just wants to fuck around.

[bels]

Spoken to two different girls lately who said that their last ex broke up wth them because they "Really loved them." and "thought they were great" but they'd just met them "too early" and haven't really "experienced life yet."

Both were going out with guys younger than them who were sort of dorky.

[schiaparelli]

dwindling i legit don't even know what to say to that story. feels like a weird thing to throw away trust and intimacy and closeness on (not saying open relationships don't have that, but opening a relationship for certain purposes can destroy that). also, it honestly sounds like an excuse to hit on other girls with no consequences. v. surprised she initially agreed to it and also that he did not detect any discomfort/realize midway through the ramifications of asking that

i have this worry right now that i am not good at being single. or i don't really know how. i feel like i always want someone to project affection and cuddliness towards and text little kaomoji in the mornings. a lot of friends have given me advice on trying to get comfortable with being single, finding myself, &c &c, but i don't really know how to go about that

the one thing i feel i don't do is ditch my friends/hang out with them less when i am in a relationship, so that's not something i need to repair. fingers crossed that'll never change

[hooplah]

Spoken to two different girls lately who said that their last ex broke up wth them because they "Really loved them." and "thought they were great" but they'd just met them "too early" and haven't really "experienced life yet."

Both were going out with guys younger than them who were sort of dorky.

i don't think this is all that uncommon regardless of age/social subset; i've been in that position before. i loved my ex and if i had met him later in life i would have wanted to marry him, but we met while (relatively) young and I still hadn't experienced everything I wanted to experience in life.

relationships rely on a weird mixture of similarities, differences, geographic locations, stations in life, etc etc etc
so many factors can cause friction, you have to be willing to work for it and sacrifice. or else no relationship would ever work

edit: i just realized i used the wrong word and "stations in life" sounds incredibly feudal and classist (i meant... where you are in life) but i'm leaving it up because that is hilarious

double edit: "social subset" also makes it sound like we live in some sort of caste system. this is ridiculous

[UnwashedMolasses]

This is something my SO and I have discussed before, because we're both each other's firsts. We've dated other people, but haven't been single since early high school (we've been dating more than 4 years). The idea of "catching up" or "learning to be single" is bullshit. The only distinction that there needs to be between being in a relationship and being single is whether there's intent when you hit on people, and even then, I dislike the idea. The difference between hitting on people because it's fun and hitting on them because you're trying to get laid is the difference between conversation with a person and manipulation of a target. If you've got a relationship that allows open and honest communication and you trust each other, there's no need for games of catch-up.

schiaparelli I know what you mean about the affection. Everybody's got and everybody talks about their libido, a sexual appetite, but everybody's got an appetite for affection, whether it's giving, receiving, or both. I think this is why there are so many single people with pets; everybody's got love to give. And it's much harder to satisfy an appetite for affection. You can go out and get laid any time to satisfy your libido, but the desire for a deeper understanding of a person that allows you to derive that incredible joy and satisfaction just from making them smile a little is something that has to be built over time.

Also I'm calling it now hooplah is the sexual oligarchy.

[starfox64]

i don't think "catching up" necessarily means just having sex and being able to pull random girls though. dating someone who is way more or less experienced than you, sexually or just in terms of relationships, can be kind of weird and (sometimes) scary.