Will the real Sox please stand up?

I was having dinner the other night with Miss K (yummy Peking Duck if you want to be jealous of me) when she explained that sometimes she couldn't "feel" me. We discussed this amidst grubby paws and she continued that at times when I speak it's with such an analytical voice, such a logical, detached voice (probably the one I'm using now), that it was very very difficult to engage on an emotional level with me. That other times I spoke with a degree of emotion that was touching.

The conversation got me thinking and I have to say I agree with her. I've known that I've been living with a kind of emotional disconnection for some time now. I've never known what to do about it. Probably never known how much it has affected my relationships. Not only does this kind of disconnect affect what I receive from others but also how I let those people bond to me. My relationships over the last couple of years, with the most wonderful girls, have ended a mess. I've pushed people away and honestly, I have no idea why.

So there are two me's. The me that empathises, cares and connects quickly and deeply with others. The me that gets me a girlfriend or draws friends to me. Then there's the me that is cold, hard, rational and doesn't allow emotion to influence the end outcome. Perhaps it's the former me that enters relationships and the latter me that ends them. I'm not honestly sure how one goes about "re-connecting". I don't even know if I can do it. But there are two me's. If I can then I only want one, and I know which one that is.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I feel I'm beginning something. Something emotional or spiritual. Perhaps both. Miss K has been a catalyst for this but I feel that this is the path I've been looking for over the past decade. It's rocky and blind and I have no idea where it will take me but at least a path that leads to an old goal is one worth being on. In high school, it never interested me to be successful in the sense of money or job. Whenever anyone asked me and I was feeling perfectly honest, I would tell them that I just wanted to get the most from myself on an emotional and spiritual level. After a decade of booze and parties and people and places I feel that this original goal is a worthy one. One that I've allowed myself to ignore for some time.

When to shut up

My exam is on Wednesday morning. I know I should be studying but I just can't do it. The reality is there are a few things I can memorise but the exam is so context heavy that until I see the materials on offer I won't know what I'm dealing with and what is going to be useful. I have done some study already and will do more over the next couple of days. Right now it's stormy and I feel bloggy.

Had drinks on Friday night with a couple of colleagues. This was nice as neither of them are regular social whores (yes, I've been described this way in the past - sometimes even without the first adjective). It was very good to talk to them, but I'm sure I was a little too honest. In one case I was asked for my honest opinion and was so outraged I would have given it even if I hadn't been asked. In the other... well... maybe I was being, dare I say it, *nasty*.

The first case involved Mr Reliable. Mr Reliable is fairly new to my workplace, around 6 months, but is a top guy, immediately liked by everyone and headhunted very quickly by management. Oh yes, and he's a geek so he very quickly got my vote. He confessed to having been forwarded an email from his girlfriend that was never supposed to reach him.
Does that even happen anymore? People surely aren't so dumb!!
In it she basically said how she's not that into Mr Reliable. For very very superficial, selfish reasons. No, she did not have the decency to actually discuss these issues with Mr Reliable. Instead choosing to tell her friend. Fair play, but not when you accidentally forward it to the person you are discussing (dumbass). He asked me what I would do so naturally I told him I would take the high ground, break it off quietly and quickly (while getting in a passive aggressive dig about how I knew why she didn't really want me) and then have as little to do with her as possible. I think I used the words "fucking outrageous" a couple of times.

Then there is He-Man. I call him He-Man because he goes to the gym 6-7 times a week and is obsessed with his body (the buffness of which doesn't reflect the hours he puts in). As we talked about women in general and his total superficiality was put on brazen display I couldn't help but get angry. It eventually came to the kind of body he expects a woman to have. "I just can't respect a woman who lets herself go".



As I tacitly suggested that no woman is going to look like the above once she hits her 40's (or very few anyhow) I was rebuked because age, gravity and reality apparently have no basis in a discussion of the kind of girl you would like to date. At this point, the blatant objectification became too much and I couldn't help but ask him. "He-Man, you're never ever going to be happy with a woman? That's ok with you?" Of course he answered yes. I should at least give him credit for knowing he's a superficial Slagathor.

Oh yes, it's not like He-Man is the greatest catch in the world. He's gym-toned (I guess), loud-mouthed, money-obsessed, superficial and balding. Take a guess which country he's from.

I'm an unabashed PostSecret lover. I recently ran a short PostSecret myself with some adults. I was shocked by what came back to me. I never expected the participants who had never heard of this to come back with secrets that really encapsulate the heart of the project. I asked them if I was able to share some of the secrets so here are a couple of my favourites :

"Sometimes I talks to my toys"

"I don't like to run"

"I didn't dare to look around my bedroom before asleep everynight because scare to saw something I shouldn't saw"

"I and my colleague have smoke and dance in the toilet during work time"

"I know I'm playing with fire, at least in my job. Unfortunately my mind is not allowing me to bend before them... sorry I'm so stupid"

Thanks Frank, the world is an amazing and beautiful and heart-breaking place.

On Why Men Aren't Getting Married...

I feel less inclined to write about relationship issues these days because, frankly, I find the whole topic kind of tedious. Additionally, it's rare that anyone has anything to say on a blog on the matter that hasn't been said before or doesn't sound trite.

So... at the risk of being trite...

I came across this article which basically says that many men are remaining single because they are more concerned about having a bad marriage than the ever-popular myth that men don't want a marriage at all. Now I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with this point of view. I do want to get married, but the idea that I may end up in a bad marriage, or worse yet a boring one, scares the shit out of me. It accounts for some of the carnage I have left behind me in previous relationships, which is not to say that I may not have been in error in at least one of these cases. I don't subscribe to the "divorce is the reason why I'm too scared to get married" theory. That sounds like classic boohoo, wah-wah and smacks of a convenient scapegoat rather than looking at deeper issues. After all, I am not a product of divorce and yet here I am, in the same boat as many other men.

Anyhow, as I mentioned earlier, I'm really not that interested in getting into such topics. However I couldn't help but notice then end of the article where the researcher goes on to say he looked around at the people he was researching and promptly moved in with his girlfriend and is considering marriage. So his real conclusion was not that men are scared to get married but that most of those men are a bunch of sad fucks and he didn't want to end up like them. Weird way to sell your book...

Salsa

I stopped collecting comics the first time I moved overseas. Once I was back in Melbourne for a long period I began again but limited myself exclusievely to American superhero fare - a far cry from where I'd left off prior to emigrating. Now with cheap comics available easily via Kinokuniya I'm collecting again. While there are the occasional superhero purchases the following makes up the bulk of what I have purchased recently. If you are a non comics reader then I can't recommend the above selection highly enough. Guess I'm heading back to a more emotion-driven indie (ish) landscape.

Went to the gym this morning and found myself confronted by Salsa (the dancing woman from the gym that I think I have mentioned in the past). She must have been bored because in addition to auctioning off her friend as a blind date (to which I declined to her annoyance) she also offered to help me with my househunting and consequently took my number and declined to give me her name because it "didn't matter". Salsa is an enigma. The middle-aged woman that dances around the gym and occasionally does a set on a machine. She's an attractive woman that offers that sense of mystery I've found so lacking in women recently. Don't mistake that on my part for interest in a romantic sense because it's not. I am OFF the market. But I am curious as hell as to who this woman is. Why does she dance alone in a public place? How can she be at the gym almost every day? Doesn't she have a job? If not, why not? And no, I don't think she's a housewife - they tend not to chat to strange Ang Mohs in the gym. So the mystery deepens. Just have to steer clear of her offers of blind dates!

Having been away for work on the back of a break-up you tend to think about what went wrong. What happened? Did I choose the wrong person? Did I break up for the wrong reasons? Etc etc. And you also do the cast-back. Comparing them to previous girlfriends and wondering whether there's a pattern to this tidal wave of breakups. It's always a bit annoying when you look back and think "Damn, I shouldn't have let that one slip away". I guess in such situations, the best you can hope for is that that person is healthy, happy and being taken care of, whether that's by another guy or just by friends and family. As mentioned, have decided to take myself completely and utterly off the market (not that I am some kind of "catch" with above average market value). Given that I'll be studying I think this is for the best. A friend gave me advice recently that was given to him by another - don't make your shopping list too long. I think there's some wisdom in this. If your shopping list is too long from the outset then you may have total blinkers on to the one thing that may be what you want in brand packaging that you never considered.

P.S. Is it just me that's weirded out by seeing a poster at the cinema today for the Sex and the City movie. The series is banned here!!!

Old Man Sox

Prior to leaving for Singapore I began dating a girl back in Melbourne. She was really sweet and had the job offer come a couple of months later I may well have stayed in Melbourne. As it turned out I got the job offer after we'd been dating for about 6 weeks. So I took the job. I still see her on MSN sometimes and we update one another about what's been happening and the like.

She works close to my parents home so she sees my younger brother around town. As I chatted to her this afternoon something came up about ages and she suggested that she thinks my younger brother is around 30. Which makes me...? Egad! Meesa getting older boom boom, Obi!!

So she was a fair way off with ages but that's ok. Does make me wonder though about what impression I give off? To look at me, people always assume I'm fairly young but are surprised to hear my age once they start speaking to me. Of course age is irrelevant. God knows the average age of my exes is about 7 years my senior.

I've also decided to swear off Singaporean girls. No offence to them at all but their are some cultural differences that are... how do I say it... mountainous. As someone who has lived and dated in several countries now this is a very new situation for me. I've always been the type to choose carefully and love the differences. Here I find that the expectations about relationships are fairly different. My most recent break up centred around her thinking that four dates a week was not enough. Frankly, that was as much time as I could spare so here I am back on the blog writing about dating. I did meet very briefly a cute Australian girl on the staircase of a bar the other night. I'm not really up for dating someone immediately and she was with a group of friends so I let that one slip through to the keeper.

Weird Weekend :

Had an epic night on Friday night which resulted in the arrest of one of my friends (after I'd left so I still don't know the full story). Another friend announced to me that he's dating someone new which is fantastic. Weirdly though, I know the girl and she was just texting me last week to clarify where her and I stood (which wasn't anywhere - I think everyone else wanted her and I to date because it was 'cute' for them). Think I may just keep that little nugget to myself. Then there was the club I went to where I was sitting with friends and a girl and her friend (boyfriend?) came and sat at the next table. While he danced she flirted with me and gave her phone number right in front of him. Very very weird night all told.

Wha? Huh? Can?

Have had a confusing and weird start to the weekend. Apparently I've been a 'beastly' boyfriend over the past few weeks. What this translates to in girlspeak is that I haven't been available enough. It makes me wonder how much a boyfriend and girlfriend should be seeing one another. Or more specifically, how little should they be seeing one another before the boyfriend becomes 'beastly'?

We have been seeing one another on average three times a week. Usually Saturday night and Sunday, and then two dinners on weeknights. Given that besides the Saturday night, she is unable to stay overnight with me and we both work full-time, in a demanding profession no less, I can only wonder how much I would have to be seeing her to raise my status from 'beastly' to 'boyfriend'.

I'm the first to admit that the start to this new year has been incredibly busy for me workwise and more than a little stressful. But when we only share one coinciding day off and don't live together I fail to see what else I could be doing. What makes all this worse for me is that while work will settle somewhat after this month, I begin doing a distance study course that is reputedly time consuming to the Nth degree.

I have a baaaaaaaaaaad feeling about this...

I'm not into dressing up, sweetie

As I summoned up the extra, final, last-resort reserve of energy that I had summoned up at least 6 times in the previous 2 days, I picked up the keys and The Lady apologised for not dressing up. 'Sorry sweetie, I'm just not the dressing up type'. I made the obligatory disappointment noises about how unfair it was not to be dating a girl who was happy to cosplay, she smiled and we headed out for an early dinner. Her suggestion as she didn't want to deal with Valentine's crowds - gotta love that in a girl!

But as I lay awake last night (I should know better than to lay my head down and then think about money issues. Needless to say I was awake for the next hour or two thinking about all manner of things) it occurred to me that I actually do like a girl to dress up sometimes. Not in a dirty cosplay kind of way; schoolgirls and nurses' uniforms do nothing for me at all. But it's always nice to see the girl you are dating dress herself up, looking all hot as a lead up to a little something something.

So it made me wonder, what should we be willing to give up in a relationship? This was more a philosophical question than anything else. I like my girl to dress up, she doesn't. So is that just one of those things you let go because everything else is so good? Naturally this falls into two camps - settling and compromising. I've always been someone that has said I would never settle. If it wasn't right then I wouldn't continue on in a relationship just because it's nice to have someone. My past is littered with a host of amazing women with which it just wasn't "right". I don't want to wake up when I'm 42 years old and think 'Shit, this is comfortable but I actually dreamt of something more'.

Naturally it has occurred to me that perhaps expectations are so astronomically high that noone will ever actually meet them. Which is where we come to compromise. Maybe I'm getting cynical, perhaps just shaking off that last remnant of umbilical naivety, but I don't think there is anyone that's perfect for anyone. Yes, in my secret heart I believe there is, but the brain tells me there isn't and apparently I'm supposed to listen to that, not my heart which sometimes gets confusing messages from a different lower appendage. So we compromise. Now this requires a careful tightrope walk to avoid being mistaken for settling.

Compromising is about letting go of some of the little things. So she's not quite as tall/short/slim/fat as the girl's you have previously dated, doesn't matter. If you enjoy one another then it's probably something you can and should let go of. Perhaps she's tardy on a constant basis... grrrr... it's something you can probably get over and move on from. Or even ^gasp!^ tell her about and see if anything changes. An annoying laugh? Sleeps with stuffed toys? Doesn't have quite the career of the woman you always saw yourself with? Again, things, that on a case by case basis, should be carefully considered and probably compromised on. Though the tardiness thing really does piss me off. However I have long since pretended to accept that the rest of the world doesn't seem to see punctuality as any kind of virtue.

As for not wanting to dress up? Right now? Right now I'm settling for compromise.