End of an era?

Looking at this blog now is kinda funny. Since it’s been so long since I last posted (and it feels like an eternity since I posted “regularly”), going back and reading posts, even “recent” ones, feel like I’m reading something written by someone else. Even the layout looks like someone familiar yet different put it together (a huge chunk of the blog and webcomic links are even more defunct than this blog has been, and the ones that aren’t are still ones I haven’t visited in a very long time, and I haven’t been active in the Rescue Ranger community in at least a decade, despite what my sidebar implies). So it feels weird to be making a new post here, as though I’m a guest blogger on someone else’s blog, someone who I have a lot in common with but hasn’t actually existed for some time. The things I’ve gone through and the decisions I’ve made in the past few years have put me in a completely different headspace, the beginnings of which happened in the past few posts where I describe leaving the church, but it’s more than that.

I think I’m in a good place mentally regarding who I am post-LDS: what my values are, what I pursue and what I leave alone, where I find happiness, how to be OK with any sadness that may happen (for the most part); in essence, I’m fine with who I am and where I’m heading (despite it being somewhere that most of the culture around me disapproves of, but that’s far less a problem than it used to be). That isn’t to say life is perfect and all rosy; while living alone has its perks, I do eventually want to find someone. The difference between earlier and now, however, is that before I was looking for someone to make my life complete. Now I believe my life is complete even if I don’t find someone, and so now I’m looking for someone to share in the goodness I already have instead of someone to fill a hole. (This has had the side effect of me being far less pro-active when it comes to dating, but whatever; part of that is also because I’m in my mid-thirties, when meeting new people is difficult anyway, especially if you’re no longer a part of the majority local culture and you’re a bit of a loner anyway.) There are good people, friends and family, in my life who fill my social needs, so finding “the one” who does all of that for me has become less important.

So maybe that’s one reason I haven’t posted in forever: on a blog that, historically, has been mostly about angst and self-exploration, since I’ve been in a far less angsty place recently and I’m mostly at peace with who I am, what is there left to say here? I also feel like a lot of the answers I’ve found may rub some people the wrong way, especially people who are still involved with the church and its culture, and writing about that honestly here feels wrong, as you can go back in the archives less than a dozen posts or so and see a completely incompatible opinion being expressed.

I almost feel like this should be the last post of a blog that has documented my journey from boy to man, and I should start a new personal blog less focused on “why I’m still single” and “what the heck is Mormonism” and more “why I’m fine being single” and literally nothing about the church (except maybe how it’s affecting those around me, which is occasionally heartbreaking to see). I haven’t actually decided to do that yet (I literally came up with the idea as I was typing this post), but the more I think about it the more I like the idea: wiping the slate clean and starting over blog-wise may help me post more, and what’s more, may help those who read this blog separate the person who wrote most of it from the person I feel like I am now and have been for most of the past two years or so that this blog has remained silent. I’ve started a whole bunch of rough drafts for blog posts here, but it hasn’t felt right to post any of them, so maybe it’d make more sense to put them a new site. I don’t know about what I’ll do with the URL or anything, or even if I want to start a new blog (I might think of some great posts and/or finish ones I’ve started within a week, or it may take five years, who knows?) but I’m pretty sure that this particular blog feels complete to me now.

So I think that’s where I’m gonna leave this. Happy about where I am, unsure about the future, but at peace with that uncertainty. That goes both for the future of my blogging and, interestingly enough, my life as a whole.

Random Thoughts

This blog has been fallow for over ten months now (beating out the previous record between these two posts). I’ve begun a few posts on various topics — religion, dating & romance, Player and Doodler stuff — but none of them have quite coalesced. So I figured I’d do a more off-the-cuff type deal to at least get something up here and maybe jumpstart some of the other posts I’ve been tinkering with.

Most of my attempts at a new post keep reiterating what I wrote in the last post. I still feel like I’m stuck between two worlds, trying to please everyone but not really picking a side firmly. Internally I’m completely non-LDS now, but I still have things I’ve taken from being a member for more than 30 years that are important to me. Also, most of my friends are still LDS, active or not, and I find it easier to be with them (and vice versa) if I keep the reminders that I’m not to a minimum. So I still order the Dr. Pepper at a restaurant with friends, even if technically I could get a beer, because I don’t want to shove my differences in their faces. I still try to keep my chatroom for Player and Doodler videos family-friendly (or at least PG-13-ish) even if no kids are in it. Is it cowardice? Maybe. But at the same time, I’m not going to go to church or a baby blessing or even say a prayer at a family gathering because I don’t feel comfortable doing so anymore. Is that an expression of my beliefs or is it just stubbornness? Can I be the type of guy who won’t say the prayer or go to church but still wants to keep raunchy chatting out of my goofy internet videos (even though I don’t care if somebody’s talking raunchy in front of me in person)? And, in doing so, who the hell can I find that is like me? What does it say about my moral compass (or lack thereof)? It’s been nearly a year since that Lukewarm post and I still haven’t found a community, and I can’t really talk openly to anyone because everybody’s on a different place on the scale than I am, and heaven forbid I make anyone uncomfortable! And if I reveal my opinions, then I lose the trust of those around me to express their opinions freely, cutting me off even more than I already am.

So a year goes by and the blog stays silent.

As a side note, I don’t find raunchiness necessarily off-putting anymore like I used to when I was still LDS. However, what I don’t like is when raunchiness is the punchline of a joke in and of itself, especially if there are no other layers to it (aka “he said something that is slang for penis so it’s funny”). It’s akin to a five-year-old saying “poop” then laughing until he passes out (which, OK, is kinda funny, but only because a five-year-old laughing until he passes out is kinda funny, not the “poop” part). If you’re going to make a dirty joke, at least make it clever.

I’ve been dating some more this year, and I haven’t said a lot about it, mostly because there are parts to it that would remind my LDS friends that I’ve left the Church in ways that are far more obvious than just not saying a prayer would. I have learned a lot about what I want/need out of relationships, though, especially physically. I won’t talk about them on a public blog, though; if you want to know then ask me privately (but remember, I’m not LDS anymore, and that means things. I know I keep saying that, but members tend to not really believe it because I didn’t become a complete atheistic hedonist when I left). And whatever thing you’re thinking right now, what I actually learned is probably something different.

I also want to say that I love my nieces. I especially love that they are at the age where they are starting to form their own opinions independently of the forces in their lives (family, friends, media, etc.). We had a Dokapon Kingdom recording recently, and afterwards we went to go eat at Leatherby’s (with Johnathan too), and we had a really nice time just talking about stuff. Not just light stuff like school or Undertale (which Madeleine is currently obsessed with), but some more serious topics as well. Those girls are growing up, and I love engaging them on the level of people talking to people instead of adults talking to kids.

I’ve also discovered that I don’t really like bars. They’re loud and annoying, especially if music is involved (which it often is, and it’s often terrible). Of course, I have issues with any group of people who have to interact without any clear purpose other than “get to know each other” (this is also why I didn’t particularly like LDS “Munch ‘n Mingles” either) because I find myself either compelled to perform (tossing out one-liners or whatever) or shut up unless a topic comes up that I’m interested in (and considering my interests, that doesn’t happen much in those settings). I ain’t no small-talker!

Player and Doodler stuff is taking up a lot of my time, and it’s beginning to wear on me a bit. I’ve got a far longer blog post in the works dedicated to the subject (we’ll see if it ever gets posted), but my current feelings are that I greatly enjoy the end result. But the process has become far more arduous since I got better equipment, and even though we only record maybe twice a month, I feel a little overwhelmed sometimes. But I gotta keep it going; it’s the only thing outside of work that I’ve got at the moment! I like making those videos because the experience of playing games with people is something great, and I want to preserve that, even if nobody else watches it. (It would be nice if more people watched it, though; even just to help make a teeny bit of money on the side.) Watching Let’s Plays, especially things like The Runaway Guys playing party games like Mario Party, helped me through some lean years after I graduated college when I was living with roommates who didn’t particularly like me and all my friends were far away or too busy taking care of families. They reminded me of better times when I did have friends close by and we could have fun together before life got in the way. So now, during those rare moments when my friends are close by, I need to do these things with them and document them, so that when this channel inevitably ends and all my loved ones move on with their lives (again), I’ve at least got something left. Experiences are better than things, they say, and this is turning things (video games) into experiences, which can then be remembered. This is also why my favorite stuff so far is the Dokapon Kingdom stuff, because that project is far more about the people involved than the game itself, and that’s really why I’m doing this.

I use too many parentheses (it’s true).

Anyway, there’s a bunch of random stuff that came out of me. Hope that tides you over for the next year, or whenever I feel comfortable putting my thoughts out there without alienating anyone I care about, whichever comes first.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this! Exactly ten years ago (minus a day), I moved this blog to WordPress, where it has been ever since! To celebrate, I’m making this edit!

Save

Lukewarm

So it’s been about two and a half years since I was active in the LDS Church, and about eight months since the time I consider to be the point where I actually left the faith (despite having been inactive for a year and a half before that). I’ve spoken at length on this subject, especially recently on this blog, and I’ve no wish to beat a dead horse. Suffice it to say that, between what I’ve already said and a lot of research I’ve done in the interim, I cannot believe in the Church or take its claims at any sort of face value. My opinion of the Church in general now is basically this: an organization, mostly filled with people doing their best to be the best people they can be in the way they’ve been taught, that, despite dubious and/or peculiar beginnings, now exists as a force both for great good and great ill, depending on both the issue and the specific people involved. If there is divinity and/or goodness in the Church, it is there because some people in it seek to be good people; it’s not an intrinsic divinity. But it is there. If there is evil in the Church, it is because fallible people are in it whose opinions hold more sway than perhaps they should, and too much emphasis is placed on contradictory, nonsensical points. But, before I get too off-topic, the point is that I’m never going to be able to go back to being an active, believing, temple-recommend-holding member again. I know too much. However, the cost has been more than I expected.

Compared to a lot of ex-Mormons, my situation has been “ideal.” I didn’t have a wife or children to be torn apart from. I wasn’t serving in an active position in a ward (especially not one high up, like a bishopric or higher) when I found out the Church wasn’t true. I didn’t really even lose any friends, though that’s mainly because I’m not the kind of guy who has a giant amount of friends to begin with. And, with a few exceptions, most people’s reactions have been, “Believe whatever you need to believe. I’m not going to drag you kicking and screaming in either direction.” I had already fallen through the cracks of the Church’s inefficient midsingles program (my inactivity coincided with my 31st birthday, the point when I became too old for the YSA program, too single to really fit in to a family ward, and too “works on Sunday too much” to attend a midsingles ward), so in essence I got lost in transit, like somebody’s luggage that was supposed to go from Newark to Los Angeles, but instead ended up outside the LDS Church. And, for a while, my life wasn’t really different, other than a change of underwear and a few people on Facebook praying for my soul or whatever.

But I’ve lost the community.

Now, fitting into the LDS community was a not a thing I ever did, even when I was active, as many posts on this blog can attest to. And my current, shall we say, melancholy, is not because I’ve “lost the Spirit” or some such. I’ve actually felt what many would consider the Spirit on several recent occasions which are irrelevant to this post. However, as time has gone on, I’ve noticed a few patterns with people, and it has started to take its toll.

With people who are still members, even people who have remained my good friends, there now exists a bit of a wall. Certain subjects simply remain taboo. There are things I’ve found that I cannot share, simply in the name of preserving the peace, whether it be “anti-Mormon” material (especially if it’s, say, a non-partisan study from scientists who’ve had almost no exposure to Mormonism; how the heck would they have a pony in the fight?) or a funny bit of fluff that may be poking fun at a sacred subject, or experiences (good and bad) I’ve had since leaving that would’ve been impossible to have when I was still a member, or even just something incredibly insightful with the word “fuck” in it (yeah, I said it; please disregard this entire blog now if it’s important for you to do so). And, in return, I’ve noticed that people are a lot less prone to talk about Church-related stuff around me, even if it’s just something funny that happened in sacrament meeting, or a bit of wisdom that a bishop shared with them, probably also in interest of keeping the peace (and those who do share Church stuff with me are very transparent in their “bring him back to the fold” motive, though fortunately that’s been rare in my case). Neither my LDS friends nor I will ever be able to be 100% comfortable around each other anymore. That’s simply the nature of the beast. It does make things lonely, though.

So what about joining an ex-Mormon community instead? The problem is that what unites the ex-Mormon community is, by definition, opposition. People in it have to remain dedicated to that cause to remain a part of the crowd. What many members don’t realize, however, is that, unlike faithful LDS members, the status of “ex-Mormon” isn’t nearly as all-consuming as the status of “Mormon” is. For some people it can be, I suppose, and most who leave have to go through a period where they untangle themselves from what they thought was true for so long. But at the end of the day, we’re all people. People have different interests, likes, dislikes, personalities, and idiosyncrasies. One thing the Church does well is unite people under a (supposedly) positive banner. “Come to us and we will make you better,” they say. The ex-Mormon community cannot offer that same promise. Nor should it. Its promise is, “Come to us and we will show you that this Church isn’t the only way to be better, and you don’t have to accept or deal with all the other stuff that’s making you worse.” It doesn’t tell you how to be better, though. It’s not a philosophy. The paths people take after leaving the Church are as diverse as the people involved. Some find another Christian faith to follow. Some let go of Christianity but hang on to belief in God and/or divinity. Some end up in atheism. I think a lot end up in atheism because they’ve found out so many flaws with Mormonism that they can’t bring themselves to believe in anything after putting so much labor, blood, sweat, and tears into a system that didn’t ultimately live up to its own ideals. You can’t make a positive belief system defined by opposition to something not wholly negative, just like you can’t make a fair and balanced news channel from opposition to a political party that isn’t wholly negative (yeah, I went there too). And, while it can be important and even cathartic to get together with a group of ex-Mormons and let out all your issues and maybe have a good time, it’s not what appeals to me. Just as I’d be the guy in the back of a priesthood meeting thinking, “This whole thing is faulty logic at best, and I can’t just sit here and take it,” I’d be the guy in the back of the ex-Mormon get-together thinking, “I don’t want to drink. Coffee tastes like burned pizza. Yes, we all have issues with the Church, now how about that local sports team or shared cultural event?”

I don’t just want catharsis. I want community.

I wanted community within the Church, but couldn’t find it. Outside the Church, I don’t even know how to find a community. Within the Church it was automatic: these people who live near you are the people you’ll see every Sunday, and the people you’ll see in activities during the week. These are your friends, or at least a decent pool from which you can hopefully draw some friends. And you all speak the same language, too, figuratively speaking. You can walk up to a random stranger in Church and gush about how great Joseph Smith/President Uchtdorf/whatever is and already have something in common. Outside the Church, there’s no such thing. About all anyone has in common is weather patterns and how much it sucks to be tired or hungry. Within the Church-based support system, I didn’t really know how to make friends; outside it, I’m thoroughly and totally hosed. It doesn’t help that I’m now over 30, not in college, and work a job with a ton of night hours, limiting my time to go do a play or join some local community group or something.

I talked with a recent ex-convert (or however you term people who’ve recently left) who was advised to stay within the Church even if they didn’t believe anymore simply to keep that support system. After all, you sure as heck can’t call the elders’ quorum to help move your stuff, or have visiting teachers watch over your sick mother, or whatever, if you don’t both believe in the same religion (for starters, how do they even know you need help if you’re not crying about it in Relief Society?). I can’t live like that, though. I have to do what I believe is right for me, even if it means I lose those opportunities. It still hurts.

It also doesn’t help that, romantically, things are a lot more complicated now. Since my ideal relationship is no longer mandated by the Church, I’ve (potentially) had the option to reach outside those definitions and experiment a little. And no, that doesn’t mean I’ve been going out having one-night stands or anything, but it has meant that I’ve been able to go out with people without the immediate pressure of “will this person be the person I marry?” And while I’ve learned a lot, I wish that I could’ve done this ten or fifteen years ago, because I really do want to have a family of my own when I’m still young enough to keep up with kids, and spending time in relationships where I’m not focusing on marriage seems to be wasting time. Don’t get me wrong, the dating experiences I’ve had are very important to me, and I want to keep having them. But finding someone who wanted to marry me in the Church was already a giant challenge for me. Finding a girl who wants to have kids with someone my age or in my position who’s outside the Church seems nearly impossible, especially since finding someone with the same moral system as me suddenly got more complicated. I want someone to come home to, or who comes home to me, or we both come home to each other, or however the employment situation would work…look, I’m open-minded; the point is, I want to be with someone who is as devoted to me as I am to them, and that’s doubly hard to find outside the Church in an environment that doesn’t specifically push that narrative.

So there’s loneliness.

When your best friend literally can’t afford to see you. When the girl you’re sort-of dating has contacted you only once over the past week just to say, “Sorry about the rash,” (uh, out of context that sounds a lot worse than it actually is; don’t read into it) and normally all you talk about between dates is scheduling anyway. When all of these people who have left the Church keep complaining about how well-meaning ward members keep trying to bring them back, and you realize that you’ve heard maybe one peep from anyone Church-related for more than two years (I’m not complaining, really, but it is odd how clean of a break I made). When you go to a party with a bunch of ex-Mormons but don’t drink anything, and so haven’t been invited to another one since. When your sister who also left the Church tells you about great parties and get-togethers and so on that she goes to that sound like a visit to a foreign country without a guide.

When you’ve spent almost an entire week without human contact other than the work-based or store clerk type, and it hasn’t been the first time in recent history, nor will it be the last. When most people your age are too busy living their own lives to have room for you to be a significant part of it. When online dating hasn’t worked because your message gets lost amidst a sea of creepy guys sending inappropriate pictures. When the most social thing you do is talk over video games that haven’t been relevant in decades, spending hours and hours working on a series of videos and a website that, ultimately, will have ten viewers at most if you’re lucky, because you can’t, don’t know how, or are too scared to peddle it to a wider community, so you playact at running a popular series without any numbers to back it up. When people tell you all about their lives or problems, and you listen because it’s what they need, but you don’t want to alienate anyone with your problems, so you put them in a blog instead.

When you’re too Mo for the Exmo community, but too apostate for the membership. When you’re too introverted to just go to a bar or something, but you feel entirely out-of-place at a gaming/comics store or other nerd nirvana. When you like acting, music, and theatre, but never quite mesh with music or theatre people. Jack of all trades.

When you’re not hot, but you’re not cold, you’re lukewarm. And nobody wants that, not even God.

“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” — Revelations 3:16

What do I know?

I was attending the LDS wedding reception of a long-time friend. While there I engaged in a conversation with one of my friend’s stepsisters: a young, vibrant, attractive, 15-year-old high school student who proceeded to tell me and my other friend at the table all about how she wanted to either go into cosmetology when she grew up, or spend some time doing professional equine sports (I don’t remember the exact field, but it was something along the lines of horse racing but with obstacles that the horse had to jump, kind of like a steeplechase but called something else*), which I thought sounded pretty cool. Later the conversation turned to dating and typical high school relationship stuff: you know, how a bunch of guys like her but she has to fend them off because she likes this other guy, etc. etc. and I joked that when she got out of high school she could just wear a fake wedding ring around guys that she didn’t want to deal with. She then gave me that withering “well, duh” look that only high school girls can give and said, “Um, when I get out of high school I’m gonna have a real wedding ring.”

That statement brought me crashing back into the reality of a culture that I had left behind years ago, where a young woman with great hopes and dreams of cosmetology and/or horse racing was also expected to immediately find a guy, settle down, and start popping out kids before she reached her 20’s. And with how many guys she said were always pursuing her, I’m sure that it would be no problem for her to find some fresh RM ready to marry the first girl that he goes on at least two dates with.

I bring this girl up, not to pick on her specifically, but to use her situation to address a larger problem. I’ve seen this story before. At first a woman will be happy that she’s fulfilling all of her godly mandates by having kids. But then she’ll start to think, “You know, I miss those times when I rode that horse through the steeplechase courses. Could I have been a good competitor?” The answer isn’t no, or yes, because she never got the chance. She had to sacrifice everything that she was for the sake of her family. The tragedy, though, isn’t that that’s what she had to do, but that she made that choice without even realizing what that sacrifice meant. She married so young that her brain wasn’t even done fully developing (which happens around 25-ish), and she went immediately into motherhood without even knowing what it was like to not be living with her own parents. The girl at this reception, who spent about ten minutes telling me a “hilarious” story about how much she sucked at Mario Kart the previous night (that was literally the entire story; most of the time telling me about it was spent giggling with her friends), was expecting to have a kid of her own before the end of this decade. It was so clear that this was her course in life that I got that contemptuous look usually reserved for the most obvious of dorks when I even hinted at her life taking a different path.

Most of my readers who are or have been LDS shouldn’t be surprised by this. This type of situation is by far expected to be the norm. Am I saying that everyone who got married young and chose motherhood over all their other interests was wrong, or misguided? Of course not. I can’t presume to tell anyone what would truly make them happy. I guess I’ve just been talking to, hearing from, or reading about so many women my age who did this when they were young, to the severe detriment of their marriages and family life, and it took them years to suss it all out (and many of them still haven’t), that it took me by surprise to hear that this mindset is not just still existent, but prevalent. Default, even. I wanted to take that girl by the shoulders and shout, “No! Don’t do it! Go buy a jumping horse (or whatever the term is), or study cosmetology! Find out who you are! Become a strong woman who knows who she is and what she wants! Then make the decision to find a good guy and have a family! Do it because you know it’s what you want, not because you’ve been told it’s what you should want!” But, of course, I didn’t. It wasn’t my place to steer a teenage girl I barely knew away from marriage in the middle of an LDS wedding reception, at least not if I didn’t want to get thrown out or something. And who knows? Maybe I’m being presumptuous and she’ll be perfectly fine giving up all her current hopes and dreams to become the attractive wife of a worthy priesthood holder. It’s not my place to judge (unless, of course, I’m doing it anonymously on a blog later; then it’s all good, right?). After all, what do I know?

What do I know?

I know that I spent a large chunk of my adult life not being able to live up to the ideals set forth in front of me by someone else, and it made me feel like less of a person by comparison. Even a cursory reading of older entries in my blog can attest to that.

I know that a culture dedicated to homogeneity on such a scale that one of the best-selling and widely-read non-official publications in it is based on trying not to feel guilty about not being good enough is a culture that doesn’t allow people to grow in positive ways.

I know that, since leaving the Church and its culture behind, I have better been able to define myself, what I want, how I feel successful, and what makes me happy. Sometimes it’s what the Church teaches. Sometimes it’s not. Often I have to tweak those definitions and seek advice from those wiser in certain areas than I am. But I can finally grow organically, freed from a cookie-cutter end goal.

I know that the leaders of the Church, at best, are mortal men trying to do what they believe is right and whose counsel is sometimes wise, but who don’t have the authority to tell me what is black and white, right and wrong, especially if what they are telling me is not what I know in my heart to be true.

I know that, if I’m wrong, then I’m OK with that, for I am learning things down this path that I didn’t even know I needed to learn, and I treasure the opportunity more than I can express.

I know that “Love thy neighbor as thyself” for many of us needs to also be “Love thyself as thy neighbor,” because many Mormons hate themselves for not being perfect, and it hurts them and everyone around them.

I know that some women have found supreme happiness in child-rearing. But many of those needed to get a few years of steeplechasing out of their system first to be able to decide who they really were and what they really wanted.

I know that, when I do eventually get married (which I still want to), I won’t be doing it because I was commanded to, or because I have a fear of dying alone, or I have to marry somebody in order to have children, but because I know who I am and what I want, and I will have found somebody who knows what she is and what she wants. Sure, we won’t be perfect people by any means, but our marriage will be built on a foundation of love, hope, and joy, knowing that out of a world of possibilities we chose to be with each other. Not because we were expected to, or because we thought we should, but because we wanted to, and we were old and experienced enough to know what that means.

Am I still Mormon? I guess I’m still technically on the records. But at this point I’m not going back. I’ve done enough research into the Church, its history, its policies, and its effects to know that I am done with this organization. What good it does is far outweighed by the damage it tolls, especially on people who don’t mesh with it, and the good that it does do can be found elsewhere. So no, I don’t consider myself Mormon anymore.

Am I still Christian? That’s a harder question to answer. At this point I’m skeptical of most religious texts in a historical and/or literal sense. I think it’s safe to say that I follow the philosophy of Christ as best I can, though I don’t limit myself to it (which is actually more a Buddhist idea, I’ve found), and the question of whether or not he is my personal savior or the Son of God and so on is, in reality, a moot question, as it doesn’t affect how I live my life or how I treat others. You can follow someone’s good example with or without literally believing in their divinity. And if he is truly the ultimate good in the universe, then I hope that my attempts to be the best person I can be will be looked upon kindly, regardless of whether or not they’re derived from a specific belief system (like the Calormene in The Last Battle, perhaps), even if the good I do consists of things like “play around with and love my nieces” or “post silly Internet videos so that my artistic roommate knows that someone values his work.”

Am I atheist then? No, I don’t believe so. While I find myself increasingly out of the Judeo-Christian tradition more as time goes on, there still exists a measure of spirituality in my life that I can’t chalk up to mundane or empirical evidence. I’ve received and acted on spiritual promptings, even as recent as within this past week. An atheist may argue that this kind of thing is a result of either physical external stimuli, or the power of suggestion/persuasion/emotion/what have you, and maybe they’re right. And maybe I’ll change my mind down the road, given enough evidence. But, for now, I choose to believe in at least some things.

I know that guidance can be found even in the most unlikely of places, if one is willing to search for it.

I know that I am far from a shining example of a selfless, pure, giving person, and that it’s a lot easier to spout all this philosophy then it is to live it. But I also know that I don’t have to be perfect yet, as long as I am willing to continue to learn and grow. There’s room for improvement all over the place. And as I live life and learn more, my philosophy will inevitably shift and change, like a tree shaped by the weather.

I know that some people will take issue with parts of what I’ve written. I know that I may get some differing viewpoints on Facebook, or here in the comments. If so, that’s great. Let the reader read both points of view and decide which one works for them. I’m not telling you that I’m right. I’m saying that I’m doing my best to do what I believe is right, but that definition is no longer dictated to me, nor is it set in stone.

During my first semester at BYU in the fall of 2000, I took an American Heritage class. The very first day, the professor put forth the idea that there is an absolute “Good” in the universe that all (morally) good ideas and philosophies spring from, things like “2+2=4” or “slavery is wrong.” He represented this “Good” using a tree trunk with a giant “G” on it, with various branches symbolizing different belief systems that nevertheless sprang from this source. He then introduced the idea of moral relativism, i.e. there is no “Good” that ideas are coming from, and that any idea is as valid as any other idea, and humans can come up with morals from scratch that go against the “Good” and believe that, for example, “2+2=5” or “slavery is fine” (never mind the fact that math is not a moral belief system, but whatever, BYU, amirite?), taking this idea to its final conclusion: that some moral system had to govern the others, and if it was completely man-made, then there was no guarantee as to whether it was good or not. This idea he termed “utilitarianism,” represented by a mechanical monstrosity that kind of looked like a tree, and was based on the idea of a purely logical moral system (e.g. John Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”). In later classes he went on to teach that the American Revolution turned out well because the Founding Fathers were not moral relativists, but at least tried to base the government in this “Good” (which increasingly became obvious as a euphemism for “God”), where the French Revolution ended badly because it was based in philosophies of men (utilitarianism), and how other failed systems of government (e.g. communism) didn’t work for similar reasons.

In other words, moral relativism = bad. Also absolute truth exists, and one should align oneself with it as opposed to making up one’s own truths.

I still…kind of believe this? What I think I disagree with is that this “Good” must equal “God,” or at least Mormonism’s definition of God, since through the Church much harm has been done (and yes, much good too, it’s not black and white). And I don’t think that “philosophies of men” necessarily means “devoid of good,” because I think that mankind is inherently good (though that doesn’t mean that I think all philosophies of men are that way). I also believe there’s a middle ground between absolute moral relativism (i.e. every idea is just as valid as every other idea) and dogmatism (i.e. we figured out/had dictated to us everything that you should do to make your life the best it can possibly be, and if you deviate then it’s impossible for you to be happy and/or good), but it’s one that’s increasingly swallowed up by black-and-white arguments. I bring this up because I can see some people wanting to accuse me of moral relativism, when in truth that’s not the case. When I say that what is right isn’t dictated to me or set in stone, I don’t mean that I’m not seeking what is right, but that my understanding of it is changing based on what I’ve learned and how I’ve progressed.

I know that I’m grateful for the chance I’ve had to learn this in my life, and to have the opportunity to be able to explore it without being locked into a marriage or other social situation within the Church that would’ve made this exponentially more difficult. And my heart goes out to those who have had similar faith shifts but have to remain within the Church out of a sense of obligation, or familial duties, or cultural ties, or because they believe that because some part of it is probably true then it’s worth weathering all the stuff that is harmful.

And finally, I know that a young girl should be allowed to pursue her own hopes and dreams in the adult world, and get to know who she is before getting married, so that she can truly be a whole person and have a happy home. And if her true hopes and dreams are all based around motherhood, not because she’s been told they should be, but because they truly are, then more power to her. Let her be at least old enough to make that decision. Let her be at least older than fifteen.

—

But what I actually said at the reception was basically, “Well, that’s a choice. Hey, is there any more cake?”

It was good cake.

*EDIT: It’s called Hunter Jumping! Not Steeplechase! I’ve edited the photograph!

Think, McFly, think!

Today is Wednesday, October 21, 2015, and, as social media today will attest, the same day that Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel to in Back to the Future Part II. So I figured it’d be appropriate to share some short musings related to the subject.

This was one of, if not actually, my favorite movie trilogies, not just growing up, but today as well (and not just because my birthday, Nov. 12th, is the red-letter day in 1955 when the clock tower got struck by lightning). I love this franchise more than Star Wars, more than Star Trek even. There will probably always be a small part of me that, whenever people talk about “the present,” I will think of 1985 (hey, it’s like that Bowling for Soup song!). Time travel, in particular, has always been the sci-fi concept that I’ve found the most fascinating. This is probably why I also adore Quantum Leap from around the same time period, and may contribute to my love of Chrono Trigger as well. (You would think that it would make me also a big fan of Doctor Who, but, well…) The “What if?” scenarios are full of endless possibilities, both as forces for good and for ill. I’ve always found it more interesting, however, to see stories that deal with this on a personal level, rather than a global or historical one, and Back to the Future (along with the aforementioned Quantum Leap, usually) focus on this aspect a lot more than the ol’ “let’s kill Hitler” or “let’s prevent Skynet” that sometimes crops up in time travel stories. The story is kept small, mostly affecting some random teenagers and their subsequent families more than any far-reaching national or global scenarios (at least in the first movie), which works to its advantage. Keeping it small keeps the focus on the characters, and helps it become more relatable. Instead of being a far-out tale about the weird science-y possibilities and pitfalls of time travel, it’s simply about a normal kid trying desperately to still exist and get his dad to not be such a loser, and the questions it raises are about things that most people can ponder, not just nerds.

My early-life obsession with this movie and the potential it represents has led, I believe, to my propensity for introspection. As a kid, I was more concerned with what the future holds: if I could travel to 2015 or beyond, what great things could I find? Often at recess I’d pal around with my friend Dan Burk pretending to be time travelers from the future (inspired not just by this movie but also a little by Bill & Ted), coming back to this primitive 1990’s era where you had to use pencils and paper to do your homework: lame!

As I’ve gotten older, however, I have more of a tendency to look at the past, as most people do when they age. Being in your 30’s gives you the unique viewpoint of having enough in your past to truly see where you have been and what has shaped both you and the world, yet with enough time still in your future to have the opportunity to still live up to your potential. And I often ponder: what events in my life have shaped my future into what it is today? How many “punch out Biff” moments have I had, and where have they led me? If I could take to my teenage self, what advice would I give? Or, conversely, what would my teenage self think if he could see where I am now and what has happened in my life? Would he be proud that I’ve still kept up with my video game skills and I like the same type of stuff that he did? Or would he be disappointed that I’m still not married, not writing music for a living, and barely have enough money to scrape by, despite the large potential that I had? I think he may be disappointed, but perhaps not surprised. After all, I was a pretty smart kid; I think I saw where things were heading, even if I hoped that some day, somehow, my future teenage son would magically appear and help me find my density.

Every year I think, “This could be the one! This is the one where I finally meet that girl, settle down, and become an adult!” without having any idea how to get it to happen. My recent religious status has forestalled my usual venues for finding dates (I’m now far too non-LDS for any faithful girl, yet I’m still probably too LDS for most women outside the Church since I still won’t drink), and now I’m to the point in life where all my friends are either married or in the same have-no-idea-how-to-get-married boat that I’m in. Seriously, everyone, how do you meet people outside of YSA wards or bars?

As for my career, I’m working in a field that I enjoy, and I think that my teenage self would be happy with that, though with the hours that I keep and the relatively low pay/lack of advancement opportunities he may chafe a little. Also, I had always wanted to become a professional composer, but have had little progress in the field. I tried it for a year and a half, made about $500, and realized that, more important to success than actual musical aptitude was the ability to be a self-promoter, which is something I’ve never been good at (this also explains many of my dating problems).

Indeed, I probably have more in common with the original sad George McFly. Or, more likely, I have more in common with the George McFly that we never saw: the one from the future where he never got hit by the car or punched out Biff and Marty never was born. I may not be quite that much of an obvious loser, but I do suffer from similar self-esteem issues. Am I living in my own “bad future?” Was there a point in my past where I should’ve punched out a guy, or taken some risk, and become a far superior version of myself?

More importantly, is there still such an opportunity in my near future, and will I have the guts to take it?

More Dating Woes And So Forth

I don’t know what I want in a woman. Or a relationship. No idea.

As a single guy in his early 30’s who’s never been able to hold on to any relationship for more than a month, I’ve got a fairly diverse dating background. True, I haven’t dated nearly as much as maybe I should have throughout my dating career, but between the women I’ve dated, women I wanted to date but never did, women who wanted to date me but never did, and even just friends who happen to be women, I’ve come to the stunning realization: I don’t even know what I’m looking for anymore.

Last time I came to this realization, I tried to codify some attributes of a desirable mate in a list (before thinking too much of this list, keep in mind I wrote it seven years ago). This ended up being a bad idea for several reasons. First, any girl (well, OK, two girls) I dated who then found that list automatically compared herself to it, which kinda screwed things up between us. Second, as times change, people change, and a lot of the things I found important at the time are now no longer important, whereas now new things are important. Third, it becomes a lot easier to dismiss a woman who otherwise would have made a wonderful partner if she doesn’t live up to some pre-approved set of standards (kind of the same as the first point, but from my point of view instead of hers). Maybe a woman has some quality that you didn’t even realize you were looking for until you found it, or she has other great qualities that make up for a lack of something on the list, or a woman that fits all the attributes is either impossible to find and/or wouldn’t be interested in you anyway.

The point is, I don’t do lists anymore. But it does leave me a little blind when it comes to the dating scene. Without anything terribly concrete to guide my brain, I’ve got to trust my heart and perhaps rely on it a little too much, which often is a problem because I don’t trust my heart to make good decisions. My heart likes to flip-flop based on the silliest Seinfeld-ian things, and I end up breaking off a relationship that could’ve had potential, or (more often) falling for women who, in the end, would not be good for me, nor I for them.

The problem is, I don’t know what kind of woman would be good for me.

It’s really hard maintaining even the desire to go out and date when you’ve got nothing really to guide you. I mean, sure, there are some pretty obvious things to look out for and avoid (“no puppy-stranglers,” for example, or “not a lesbian”). Lately it seems most of the women I’ve dated have been between “women I’m attracted to (not just physically, but overall)” and “women with whom I have much of anything in common,” though I’d rather not get into too many details on a public blog like this. I know that a lot of guys go for broke on the attraction angle and just live with the fact that many, if not most, of their hobbies and interests will be separate from their wife. I’m not sure if I can do that, and I’m also not sure whether I should keep searching until I find someone with whom I share a lot of interests and a mutual attraction, or whether I should let one go to focus on the other. That’s not necessarily settling as much as it is rearranging priorities (especially since a lot of my interests are, like, really niche interests, at least as far as most women in LDS culture are concerned).

The other problem with dating women that have similar interests to yours is that the little differences tend to be more problematic than the big differences between you and someone else. Take, for example, the silly example of Star Trek fandom. If someone I was dating didn’t care too much for Star Trek and liked, say, So You Think You Can Dance more, I’d be all, “Yeah, OK, that’s fine, different strokes for different folks.” But if she liked Star Trek: Voyager way more than Star Trek: The Next Generation, then OMG it is ON!!!! Nobody badmouths Picard or praises Janeway in my home, b^#&@!!!

Now, realistically, that isn’t a deal-breaker, but it is a fact that almost every nerdy girl I’ve dated recently has been waaay into either Doctor Who or the recent rash of comic book movies, neither of which really holds my interest (for reasons I can delineate probably a little too specifically), so it’s been hard to bond over similar interests when really, they haven’t been that similar after all. Once again, I could overlook all of these things if an attraction existed independently of them, but when you’re trying to build a relationship with someone using these similar interests as a starting point, it ends up not working at all. (It also doesn’t help that most nerdy girls I’ve dated have also had little to no experience in the dating realm either, and I’m not exactly the best person to teach someone how to be a good girlfriend after they’ve had ten or twenty years of non-experience.) So if building off common interests isn’t the place I should start, what is?

There’s that oft-quoted passage from Alice and Wonderland, where Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which road she should take, and he responds that it depends on where she wants to go. When she admits she doesn’t know where she wants to go, the Cat then replies that then it doesn’t matter which road she takes. That’s how dating has felt for me for a while: when I’m not even sure what kind of relationship I’m looking for, how will I know if I’ve found it?

I have no conclusions to draw from all of this. I just wanted to share.

Love: The Shifting Paradigm

It’s been an extremely long time (about a year and a half or so) since I’ve done a post about being single, dating, relationships, and all that jazz, despite my last post on the subject (The Third Date Dump) becoming at least somewhat popular and even entering the lexicon of some of my friends. Some of that has been due to a desire not to screw up or bias women that I’d been contemporarily dating (nobody wants their dirty laundry aired, even if names have been changed, as anyone who knows the two probably can figure out what or who the blog post is talking about). But even a bigger part has been that something strange has changed since the last time I posted. It was kind of a slow process, but the playing field is a little different now than it has been, and I’m not quite sure how to proceed.

Long-time readers of this blog know that I’ve done quite a bit of complaining/soul searching/whatever on the subject of being single and dating. Almost all of it, however, have placed me in the helpless victim column. You look at almost any post in the category and you can see that I’m either blaming my failures on something else or lamenting my inability to gain whatever undefinable skills are necessary in order to succeed with women or making elaborate excuses (or just simply complaining). In pretty much all of those cases, wherever I had put the blame, the underlying theme was similar: this is how things had been, how they are, and how they will always continue to be. You will always be alone because you aren’t attractive to women (whether physically or mentally or financially or whatever) and, barring something utterly miraculous, you’ve just got to get used to it.

That was how I saw the world. It also isn’t true.

The woman I was dating when I made the “Third Date Dump” post didn’t dump me on the third date. Or the fourth. Or the fifth. We actually had a pretty good thing going for quite some time, and I was actually the one who broke it off. Since then I’ve been in a few more relationships, and all of them have either been broken off by me or ended mutually (or at least it seemed that way on my side). What’s more, I’ve been informed that a few women that I haven’t dated have been interested in me nonetheless. I’m not going to go into any details, but this represented a whole new mindset for my dating habits that has just begun to coalesce into something more powerful than I’ve ever had before.

More broadly, I’ve noticed in the past year and a half or so that women’s attitudes toward me have changed, at least generally speaking. Part of this might be due to the fact that I’ve now turned 30, and then 31, and the women in my life are somewhat more mature than all the 18-21-year-olds from my YSA wards. Part of it may be that I’m living on my own, in a situation where I feel I’m in control of my life and at least somewhat satisfied with how things are going. Part of it may be due to the de-mystification of women for shy guys (not those shy guys) that has been helped along by things like Facebook (seriously, I could write a whole blog post about that topic alone). And part of it may be that I’ve been starting more and more relationships with online dating, where at least everyone’s there for the same purpose, so you never have to perform the surreptitious ring-finger glance or start flirting with someone until their boyfriend shows up. But there’s more to it than that, and it has much more to do with me than it does with anyone else.

One of the hardest ways to start a relationship with anybody is from the pity side, where the person is only going out with you because they feel obligated or just want to be nice, or whatever interest they may have had gets squashed pretty quickly once they get to know you. This has happened to me a lot, as I assume it has happened to most people that make it to their 30’s as singles. The problem comes when you get stuck in a mindset that every relationship you start will be that way. That every date you go on is doomed to the Third Date Dump (if not sooner). Then, when it isn’t true, you see it that way anyway and try to pre-empt the pain of breaking up later, in effect ruining whatever budding relationship you may have been building. And if both the man and the woman have this mindset despite being quite attracted to each other, why, that’s the saddest thing of all. I even wrote a song about it recently as part of my most recent “52 Weeks of Music” project, about the assumption that all relationships will end before they begin and the missed opportunities that result. It’s stifling. It’s painful. It’s damning, in the old sense of the word (i.e. hindering one’s ability to progress). It leaves one powerless. And it totally sucks.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Believe it or not, most people are attractive to somebody. I have seen some of the strangest people somehow get married, but when you see the spouse you go, “Oh, oh, OK, no, that makes sense. That works, somehow.” And a big difference between those who succeed and (some of) those that don’t is that some people never try (or make a token effort every once in a while, expecting failure). They’ve bought into Hollywood’s notion that either a white knight or some sort of Zooey Deschanel pixie dream girl will swoop in and fix everything. Or even worse, that since that type of thing is not going to happen, no relationship will ever work.

What’s the difference? Confidence. Confidence that, yes, somebody out there will find you attractive. A lot of people will find you attractive. And you have to assume that this is the default case. You don’t have to fight an uphill battle with literally everyone you date.

This isn’t arrogance. This isn’t that one douchey guy who thinks he’s God’s gift to women. That’s swinging the pendulum a little too far in the other direction. Assuming that every date you go on will end with your date hopelessly in love with you is just as out-of-touch with reality as assuming that every date you go on is a pity date, or just a “friend thing.” This is just operating from a different viewpoint. You may still have failures, relationships that don’t work out, and even maybe some pity dates. But it’s much better to assume a relationship may go somewhere even if eventually it doesn’t, than to assume that a relationship will go nowhere even if eventually it could’ve.

And here’s the kicker: it’s the very act of recognizing this, and changing your attitude to fit it, that makes you even more attractive! And this applies not only to men, either. I’ve seen women who own their lives and make something of themselves vs. those who are just piddling around waiting for a man to fix them (or waiting for a man for them to fix, putting him in her debt), and the former are much more attractive (to me, anyway). It doesn’t guarantee success in love, but it at least makes success possible and more likely.

For some who may be reading this, all of this seems pretty obvious. But for others it may seem pretty hard to believe. It’s certainly been my major sticking point for many, many years. And it’s a viewpoint that’s really hard to shake. It’s a scary viewpoint to shake, because it destroys victimhood and instead fosters responsibility. The old catchphrase from Spider-Man is “With great power comes great responsibility,” yes, but the inverse, “With great responsibility comes great power,” is not only just as true, but much more useful. Responsibility doesn’t just mean that it’s your fault if it goes wrong, but that you have the ability to make it go right. And it’s a lot easier to focus on the first part of that sentence than the second, especially for me and people like me when it came to dating.

So, in the end, what does this mean, in terms of how I will proceed in my dating life from now on? I’m not quite sure yet, because fundamental shifts in viewpoint tend to take a while to shake out bad habits, but so far it’s helped me realize that a successful relationship is indeed within my grasp, and it won’t take a miracle. Indeed, the real miracle is this change in my way of thinking. (A pessimistic part of me would say that it would be a second miracle for me not to fall into my old ways of helpless victim thinking before I actually see any success, but ignoring that part of me is essential to this working.)

I’m not sure this blog post made quite the point I was planning to make, but I like the point it did end up making, so I’m sticking with it.

P.S. One more thing that shows how my way of thinking has changed: I realized that I’ve stopped using the term “girls” and started saying “women” when I refer to people I date. I’m not sure exactly what that portends, but I think it’s a good thing.

The Third Date Dump

We interrupt your previously scheduled philosophical musings about religion and its place in the universe and life to bring you…another post about being single. Yay.

So I have probably done a lot more dating in the past year than I’ve done in any year previous. And while that doesn’t mean I’ve actually done a ton of dating, I have dated quite a few different people, and different types of people. I’ve dated people near my age, and people a lot younger than me. I’ve dated people I’ve known for years, people I’ve only recently met, and people I met online through dating services. I’ve dated fat girls, skinny girls, girls who climb on rocks. Tough girls, sissy girls, but no girls with chicken pox. And even though I’ve gone through a rather large range, there have been some striking similarities with every single one of these “relationships”, and one common trait in particular, which I shall dub the “Third Date Dump.”

What is the Third Date Dump? Well, contrary to what it sounds like, it’s not where I consistently got dumped on the third date. At least, not exactly. Rather, it refers to the moment, usually during the third date, where I know that the relationship wasn’t going to go anywhere. And on almost every occasion (save maybe one), it was due to the girl making it clear that she was just kind of being polite, usually something like sitting stiff as a board with her arms crossed while we’re watching the movie/watching the DVD/taking a walk/whatever, coupled with That Look. This normally coincides with a complete lack of contact after the date other than replying to me asking what their schedule is so we can go on the inevitable next date (which is especially telling with the girls I meet online, where we normally have several long and meaningful conversations in text before we even meet each other). Sometimes (OK, once) we do end up talking about it, where the girl confirms my suspicions that yes, she’s not interested and was just interested in putting me in the friend zone. Other times she just gracefully disappears from the radar (this works great with the dates found through online services). Often we go on a fourth or even fifth date, but it’s apparent to both of us that the relationship is over and we’re just humoring each other, and things just peter out after that. This, I have found, is the way that most girls will dump you: not by sitting down and saying, “I think we should see other people” or whatever, but by the little signs until you get the hint. Therefore, the “Third Date Dump.”

This has happened with every single relationship I’ve been in over the past year. Heck, I shouldn’t even call them relationships, since three dates doesn’t really constitute any sort of meaningful relationship. This is similar to something I’ve complained about several times in this blog (see that “That Look” post I linked to earlier), but with one important distinction: the first date is almost always great. We normally hit it off pretty well, have a lot to talk about, and we enjoy each other’s company, with both of us eager for a second date. And the second date normally goes pretty well, too; sure, some of the excitement of the first date may have worn off, but we still normally have a good time and get to know each other better. But always by the third date we hit that wall of “sudden disinterest”, and I just don’t understand it. A few times this wall had been hit prior to the third date, but all of those were cases where the person had known me for a while, which makes me think, “At what percentage of knowing about me does the typical girl get turned off?” or “What precise trait do I possess that always comes out at the same point in dating someone that is such a deal-breaker?”

It’s really starting to get repetitive. And that’s what caught my attention. Normally I’d be prone to think, “Well, this particular girl isn’t interested, and that’s fine,” if this had happened once or twice. But every single one? What are the odds? In fact, if we extend this back to all the relationships I’ve had/dates I’ve been on, only once has something like this not happened. And of all the times it did happen, only once did it not take place until past the third date, that I can recall. It’s seriously sapping my will to date at all. Why put so much effort into getting to know a person if we’re just going to break it off two weeks down the line?

I’m turning 30 in a little over two weeks. And the problem with being single for so long is that you get set in your ways. Your life is so self-focused that, even though you want a relationship, you really have no idea how to get one to work, or even start. I know I have this problem, and all of the girls I’ve dated around my age have the exact same problem (and anyone who doesn’t…is probably already married). They have constructed their life already, and adding a partner to that doesn’t jive with everything else that’s already been set up. And while that carries with it a certain amount of loneliness, it also carries with it a certain amount of control and comfort. While I was searching for an image to put at the top of this blog post, I came across this article (yeah, I just linked to the Oprah magazine; make of it what you will) that describes this phenomenon much better than I can. And while the analysis is spot-on, the conclusion (that people who feel this way should learn to accept and embrace being single instead of chasing unobtainable dreams) is something that I can’t accept. Is there another option to break out of this? Is this the thing that breaks up every relationship I’ve attempted? I don’t know! How come everyone who has a successful relationship is always like, “Well, I met the right person, and the rest is history?” How is that supposed to help? I didn’t make it this far alone because that “special someone” is still out there, gazing at the stars outside her tower window. I don’t believe in the “one true soulmate” story. So it’s gotta be something else! Angry rant! Frustration at everything! Inability to figure out what to do differently! Resignation that nothing’s gonna change unless I change it, coupled with the ignorance of what to change! Awareness that I keep using the word “couple” as a verb, because I guess it’s on my mind! Exclamation points!!!!

Here’s the thing. My most recent relationship is currently right at this phase. It’s a girl I met online. We’ve had the third date. The 3DD (you know what this stands for) signs were there, coming from her. At the same time, she wants to go see the current Poison Ivy Mysteries show with me. There’s always the chance that she’s just not sure how she feels and maybe this relationship will work with some effort. Or there’s the chance that she’s done with me but wants to go see the show anyway because it sounds fun and hey, free dinner. I want to actually discuss the topic with her, but I don’t know how to bring it up without the dreaded “DTR” talk somehow pushing things too fast and killing off an otherwise salvageable relationship (which has also happened in my past).  I like her. I want to like her more. Everything that implies. But I feel like a fourth date at this point will be the same as the previous fourth dates I’ve had recently: we’re just kind of humoring each other, and it will peter out after that. So there’s the impasse.

Thanks for reading this rant. I promise next time we’ll go back to questioning the foundations of my faith, which garners a much larger response from people.

Well, Color Me Unaccepted!

So I took another one of those online personality quizzes that I take from time to time (this one just had me pick some colors), with some interesting results:

Your Existing Situation

“Is stubborn and strong-willed, once his mind is made up it is impossible to change it. He does not ask for much, so he feels when he does ask his needs should be met.”

Your Stress Sources

“Always trying to make a good impression on others, but doubtful he is succeeding. Feels he has the right to everything he hopes and dreams of and becomes annoyed and helpless when things don’t go his way. Is troubled by the very thought of failure which leaves him feeling miserable. Always sees himself as the victim as if everyone treats him poorly and he never is given his fair share. Feels his failures are no fault of his own, but due to the shortcomings of others.”

Your Restrained Characteristics

Open and emotionally involved in relationships and easily finds satisfaction through sexual activity.

“Feels trapped in a helpless situation and is desperately seeking relief. He is able to find pleasure and happiness in sexual activity, as long as there is not a lot of conflict or emotional difficulty.”

Your Desired Objective

“Longs for tenderness and for a feeling of acceptance from a partner. Appreciates things that are beautiful, pleasing to the eye, and stylish.”

Your Actual Problem

Lack of energy leaves him unnoticed to pursue further activities or demands placed on him. He feels powerless which leaves him agitated and depressed. Tries to escape from his struggles by searching for peaceful and restful conditions in which to relax and recover in an atmosphere full of security.

Your Actual Problem #2

Disappointed because his hopes have not come to pass and he fears coming up with new goals will only lead to further disappointment. These conflicting emotions lead to a feeling of anxiety and depression. He tries to escape into a peaceful and calm relationship which offers encouragement and protection from further disappointment.

—–

I say this is interesting because, despite just picking random colors from a lineup, this pegged a lot of things quite accurately. It’s not 100% there (for instance, I usually don’t blame others for my failures, and if I see myself as the victim it’s often of my own previous decisions, not from what others do to me, and since when do I know anything about what’s stylish?), and the sexual activity part is, well, impossible to put to the test at this point, but for the most part it’s fairly accurate. It is certainly, absolutely, 110% true that my actual problem is due to a lack of energy; not necessarily physical energy (though that does play into it), but just a general sense of apathy about pretty much everything. The Actual Problem #2 is slightly less accurate, but I can still see some of my deal in there.

Speaking of the “Longs for tenderness and for a feeling of acceptance from a partner” part, I can say that that is true, but with a few caveats. I recently had another brush with dating someone, and, as always, I’ve learned a few more valuable life lessons. This time, she was into it way more than I was, but at the same time, she wasn’t really into me at all. We ended up going out about five times, and she texted me every day for about a month and a half (which added about $20 to my phone bill), but she never actually got to know me on anything other than a superficial level. I just think she wanted a boyfriend and I seemed nice, so she projected on to me all the attributes she wanted in a boyfriend without really getting to know me well enough to see if I actually fit those attributes. To that end, she ended up telling me all her personal details and deep dark secrets without ever being interested in my opinions on them, or even any personal traits of my own, and I’m not one to volunteer such information unless there’s a certain level of trust first. And I never felt like she knew me well enough as a person to earn that trust. So in the end I let her know that I needed some space, and I haven’t heard from her since.

Looking back on my past relationships, both failed and aborted, I can see that this problem is somewhat of a common one. At least one other girl besides this most recent one has ascribed to me characteristics that they want in a boyfriend that I don’t actually possess. And I know I’ve ascribed characteristics to girls I’ve liked in the past, several times (one example would be Katie Hewitt from my high school days, who I had a major crush on until I actually got to know her well. Not that I was suddenly disgusted or horrified by her or anything, but I realized that we just wouldn’t work out). This is one reason why I’m not a huge fan of the traditional dating scene, at least without becoming friends first (and I mean friends friends, not Facebook friends). It seems like you’re somersaulting over a lot of essential steps, leaving uneven expectations on both sides. If you don’t know each other, how in the world are you supposed to accept each other? That’s my caveat for “longs for acceptance from a partner”: that that acceptance comes from actually knowing me and still accepting me, not just accepting me without actually getting to know who I am. Getting to know the giant chicken, as it were, instead of just ignoring it. In other words, I’d like a girlfriend of mine to be able to say, “I think Jeff’s a great guy, who happens to be my boyfriend” instead of “I’ve got a great boyfriend, who happens to be Jeff”, and I’d like to be able to say, “I think X is a great girl, who happens to be my girlfriend” instead of “I’ve got a great girlfriend, and I think her name is X? Well, she listens to me ramble on about professional Starcraft, anyway.”

Problem is, I have never, ever, ever been good at making new friends, from the day I was born. Ever. Ever. To put it into a nerdy analogy, when I rolled up my character sheet before I was born, I put a lot of points into random obscure skills like “perfect pitch” or “good spelling” which didn’t leave any points for more essential skills like “proper social behavior” or “ability to talk to new people without immediately running out of things to say or sounding pretentious”. Also, the points I put into my “making the nerdiest analogy possible” skill haven’t helped things either. So where does that leave me on the dating front, where I can’t have a successful relationship without being friends first, yet am horrible at making friends? It leaves me spending my time reviewing old Atari games in an attempt to make some sort of contribution to society, even if it’s an obscure nerdy contribution. And that’s just sad.

The Moral of the Story

Here’s a story I heard from our bishop today, who is sadly getting released next week. He wanted to teach one last Sunday School lesson, and as part of it he told the tale of his son’s first wife, who was ultra-conservative in the faith, to the point that if the TV got turned on on Sunday, she’d go and play hymns loudly in the other room to drown out the sound. At one point they went to eat at my bishop’s father’s house (meaning the husband’s grandfather), and there was the grandfather, watching the Superbowl. This made her so angry that she went upstairs for three hours and didn’t speak to anyone, though the sound of hymns came through the ceiling every so often.

So what’s the moral of this story? And before you answer that, keep in mind that the name of my bishop is Thomas L. Monson. Which means the name of the grandfather watching the Superbowl was Thomas S. Monson. (Yes, that Thomas S. Monson.)

I won’t give a moral to this tale myself. My bishop’s point was that you shouldn’t marry a spiritual fanatic (unless you’re also a spiritual fanatic) because it will just make both of you unhappy; instead, marry somebody on roughly the same spiritual level as you (you know, as long as both of you are at least active members), but I leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions.