h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

NB: This post is an amalgam of two of three current threads. Much of it is my own, but there are comments from many different people. I've just tried to summarise some important points.

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Relationships and marriages are failing in such depressingly large numbers. How can a relationship survive if it isn't honest to begin with?

People put a hell of a lot of effort into misrepresenting themselves to the opposite sex and it must be difficult for the victims of these cunning and subtle subterfuges to see their way through them. Women say they want a nice guy, but they dont really mean it. Deep down in the subconsious they actually like men who cheat on them, mess them around, and generally dont treat them right at all. Hence all the women who stay with guys who beat them up and act the exact opposite of what women claim to desire. Actually, what women are attracted to is something that might have the most viable offspring. Unfortunately the b*****d gene is pretty good for survival. Just how often has a guy had a girl begin a sentence to him with 'You're really nice...' without following it with '... but ...' ?

Either there is a certain "chemistry" between two people, or there isn't. And that "chemistry" is something that isn't a matter of choice - it just happens. So to list what men look for or what women look for is somewhat pointless, because it's not going to help in finding a partner.

Nice men have a nice job with a good steady income, nice predictable life. Woman say they want nice, when they really mean unpredictable and that means they go for the ones who cant hold down a job, and dont treat you right. There are lots of nice men, some turn out to be not so nice afterall, some just seem a little boring, maybe thats why women avoid them? Avoid them until you realise that excitement and adventure and really wild things are not all they're cracked up to be. The number of times I've had a girl complaining to me about their boyfriend, and saying how they'd love to find someone nice like me, while I remain single.....

What it all comes down to is maturity. Once both genders have grown up enough to know what's really important, they start seeing beyond the superficial, and seeing what the person really is. That's when the "nice" ones win. Unfortunately, thats also when the nice guys will get the leftovers from all bad relationships, girls that are sick of being used and abused. What a prize for being a nice guy all you life.

I feel I have already reached that level of maturity, its just a shame that there are apparently no girls my age who have also reached that level of enlightenment. I really don't feel like waiting for fourty years while the female of the species catches up, and I'm certainly not about to take on a girl and all the baggage resulting from her bad decisions. So what am I to do???

Hooloovoo

It's not necessarily the world that has something wrong with it. I've been chatting on several threads in another forum about animals and it has come up over and over again that a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that human beings are not animals. We most certainly are animals! We have animal instincts just like other animals and we con ourselves with our ever so thin veneer of civility and our mighty human brain into thinking we are a confection of all things good and nice. Who do we think we're fooling? We just succeed in confusing ourselves and each other with that sort of nonsense. It would be easier to control our instincts and actually be nice, if we could first acknowledge we had them. Probably.

Yeah, you always hear the stories about how women wanted their men to be more soft. Adn when they became that, they ran off with the local gang leader. B*****d genes really succeed pretty well. Also notice how it seems women who had violent dads, end up with violent husbands. Oh, and there is of course also the atttraction murderers and psychopats have on women. Going to death row is a nice way of finding women.

I think the phrase that sums up the previous posts is: nice guys finish last. Though I don't think this true.
I had a girlfriend who seemed to want 'danger'. She went and found it in other places (if you know what I mean) and only really got interested in me when I told her to (expletive not typed by poster) off.
Best thing I ever did.

My wife was attracted to me, she claims, because I *wasn't* like everybody else she met. Where her previous boyfriend's would sod off to a club rather than walk her home, I wouldn't. Guess who won.

Woman would argue that men are exactly the same, but different. Men often want women who are, to be brutal, sluts. But do they want to marry them or have a long term relationship?

>
> Men often want women who are, to be brutal, sluts. But do they
> want to marry them or have a long term relationship?
>

I think thats the main problem.... woman who want b******s continue to date them. The women who don't, well, they're already married.

Hooloovoo

I think that, for the most part, men and women start out looking for that perfect relationship. But through dishonesty, they manage to get themselves hurt, and they can never really love another with total abandon again. Otherwise, they start to get frustrated by the search, since it can seem so fruitless, and so they settle for Mr/Ms Right Now instead of Mr/Ms Right.

There are two things that I can recommend:

1) Be totaly honest in a relationship, and compel honesty in your mate.

2) Be patient. Don't give up.

As for the rest of society, to hell with it. If some women want to date b******s, they get what they deserve.

You can't COMPEL honesty, silly.
Even if you beat a woman every day she can still escape to a place in her mind that you can never access. And believe me, you wouldn't want to.
People who pride themselves on their 'total honesty' often wonder why others avoid them. Tact is an extremely useful skill.

Anyway, what's with this "search" business?
Why not just get on with living instead?
Anyone kind and loving inevitably ends up with friends of the same ilk and the only long term relationships ARE friendships.

You can't force someone to be honest, no, but you can insist on it. And if she still remains disingenuine, then it is probably best to send her packing.

"The only long term relationships ARE friendship" - But you don't get to have sex with your friends. However, if you are fortunate enough to find a friend that you'd like to have a loving, sexual relationship with, then you've found what you're looking for.

Don't you?
You mean you have sex with people you don't love?
I think I would be sorely tempted to be disingenuous in the face of insistence from my Lord and Master - if I didn't send him packing first - provided I could keep a straight face long enuf that is

>
>Anyway, what's with this "search" business?
>Why not just get on with living instead?
>

If anyone has successfully managed to do this, could you explain the solution to me please?

> You mean you have sex with people you don't love?

Don't be silly, of course he's not saying that. You can fall in love with someone and have sex without being friends first. The point CS is making is that if you have long term relationship as friends, and *become* lovers, then you've "found what you're looking for".

>
> I think I would be sorely tempted to be disingenuous in the face of
> insistence from my Lord and Master - if I didn't send him packing
> first
>

If you're the type of person who takes pleasure in lying to your SO just because he insists on honesty, the I'd be surprised if you were with someone long enough to be able to "send them packing first". Theres nothing wrong in asking your SO to be totally honest (see the second paragraph of the first post of this thread).

Hooloovoo

Why should it be wrong to have sex with someone you don´t love?

I personally find it bad to fall in love with a friend of the opposite sex. I believe that men and women can be just friends. But if you fall in love with a friend, that makes it seems like the other friends are just waiting to be fallen in love with and not real friends.

Aren't there rules about having sex with friends and family?

CS said
1) Be totaly honest in a relationship, and compel honesty in your mate.

I think it was the words *compel* and *insist* that Tefkat was taking exception to. If so, I agree with her. If anyone tried to FORCE me to do something I would deliberately do the exact opposite, and I would avoid that person in the future if at all possible.

"If you're the type of person who takes pleasure in lying to your SO just because he insists on honesty, the I'd be surprised if you were with someone long enough to be able to "send them packing first". Theres nothing wrong in asking your SO to be totally honest (see the second paragraph of the first post of this thread)."

There is nothing wrong in ASKING for anything at all and any SO would surely want to please, but INSISTING and COMPELLING are the best ways to drive people away.

I happen to know that Tefkat is a blissfully happily married grandmother who would no more countenance lying than murderbut she's right when she says you can have too much honesty.
Would you really want your SO to look up at you and say "Darling, you have an awful lot of nose hairs", or let you realise she noticed all your mistakes?
Believe me. I have perfect pitch and an eidetic memory, and until I learned to be slightly less than honest life wasn't terribly comfortable for my guitarist boyfriend

Yes you can fall in love with someone and have sex without being friends first (or even not bother with the falling in love bit first) but any long term relationship is doomed if you don't become friends eventually.
Taking that as a given, being friendly and helpful towards everyone you meet should ensure that you have a wide enough pool of friends to love and cherish so that when that special person sneaks up and insinuates him/herself into your affections you won't miss him/her.

IMO tolerance and kindness are the most important traits anyone can cultivate.
Honesty is too obvious to bother about. You can't live a lie for the rest of your life so starting out dishonestly has to be the most stupid thing anyone could possibly do, if they intended more than a one-night stand.

Don't you think you're being a little nitpicky? You don't have to be completely honest about the stupid little things. But if you can't be honest about the relationship, and what you want out of it, then you probably have no business being in it. As you've said yourself: "You can't live a lie for the rest of your life so starting out dishonestly has to be the most stupid thing anyone could possibly do, if they intended more than a one-night stand." - That sums up my point quite succinctly. It doesn't mean you have to count nose hairs. And if your SO cannot be honest, you should not be with them. So *insisting* on honesty is a very good idea.

Dropping in during the middle of a thread, and pickin up I think on first post.
I think the main reason for the increase in DIVORCE and couples splitting up is that in the past people were just more willing to put up with "things", so it has to be the case that at least part of the reason for the "increasin unhappyness" in relationships is due to greater availibility of information. Which isn't to say that people were more happy in relationships previously, just they put up with it, which was at least in part forced onto them by society; remember how badly DIVORCE and the like was looked on in the past.
A to factors that attract people together, there is recent published evidence that the main determinin factor is MHC gene differences between individuals. It has been discovered that on the chromosome where the MHC genes are, there is a point not too far away which encodes scent receptors. In experiments on students fromvarious Uni's, it was found by using items of clothes worm by people of opposite sex, that both women and men, but moreso women, found the scent most attractive when the MHC of the individual was different from their own. The more difference in the MHC genes, then the more highly rates d was the ttractiveness of the person whose scent it was..

No Sweetie. *Insisting* on ANYTHING is only a very good idea if you want to grow up to be a very lonely old man.
As you grow older you will realise that asking nicely is the best way to get anything in this life.
Insisting is something small children do. Mature adults give and take.
I do understand your position though. Clever little boys are led to believe that the world revolves around them and it must be very hard once they start to realise that life doesn't really work like that, but honestly Dear, stamping your feet(metaphorically) and sulking will just make it very hard for your SO to consistently keep a straight face in your presence and I certainly wouldn't INSIST on too much honesty, from anyone other than extremely inexperienced airheads if I were you.

Which sounds more grown-up to you?

- Honey, can you be honest about our relationship? No? Okay... I guess I'll just make myself a dorrmat, and hang around in limbo until you decide to dump me...

- Honey, can you be honest about our relationship? No? Well, then you probably aren't looking for the same thing that I am. Rather than kidding ourselves, we might as well end it right now.

>
> I personally find it bad to fall in love with a friend of the
> opposite sex.
>

In general I'd agree. If it works, great, but having been on the wrong end of unrequited love on a number of occasions, its not good.

>
> Would you really want your SO to look up at you and say "Darling,
> you have an awful lot of nose hairs"
>

Actually, yes I would. I'd much rather her tell me so I could go and trim them, than have her staring at my nose all night wondering "Why doesnt he trim his nose hairs???".

Similarly, if a new girlfriend thought I was crap in bed, I would want her to tell me. I'd much rather she said "Look, you're crap, do this...." than to have her complaining to her girlfriends behind my back about how crap I am, and not actually doing anything about finding a solution (or worse, actually faking it so I don't even *know* that there is a problem). Naturally, I don't have this problem....

And yes, I wouldn't mind if she was that blunt about anything, *provided* she was willing to suggest and discuss solutions to whatever the problem is.

>
> I think the main reason for the increase in DIVORCE and couples
> splitting up is that in the past people were just more willing to
> put up with "things"
>

Yes, and its the little things that people are no longer willing to put up with that become the big relationship-ending problem. The solution is simply honest and open communication, something which seems to be lacking in most modern relationships.

Hooloovoo

Actually they both sound extremely petulant. A word of advice young man, if I may make so bold. The only sort of women who will put up with being ordered around are either the very young, well-brought-up ones who haven't yet realised that they don't have to put up with a****les in order to be polite, or the total airheads.
Is that really what you want?

I used to know a girl who was forced to get married straight from school and was kept 'barefoot and pregnant' from then on. For instance when she was 21 her 26 year-old husband told her she was not allowed to watch a new film that all their friends had seen, because it "wasn't suitable for her" and she accepted that, because she couldn't see the point in causing arguments over unimportant things. She went and read a book instead, but he said the books she read weren't suitable either.
He wouldn't even let her use contraception so she endured 5 pregnancies in 3 years, until she finally made friends with an older girl down the road who gave her the confidence to suggest to her husband that it might be nice if he came home once a month or so and looked after the children so SHE could go out, at which point, predictably, he left her for a younger, more innocent, more amenable woman.
Does that sound reasonable to you?

The problem is, though, that after a certain number of years it becomes very hard for a man to find suitably young and impressionable girls, without being labelled a dirty old man, so unless you're very rich and very famous it's probably a good idea to try very hard, while you're still young and malleable, to learn not to be a control freak.
(Or get used to the idea that everyone will be laughing at you, including the girls you are ordering about) {Who am I kidding, ESPECIALLY the girls}

Well there are ways of telling people things, Hooloovooloo (did I spell that right?)
It's OK to say "Have you run out of anti-perspirant? Would you like to use mine" where it wouldn't be very nice to say "Darling the whole office have been commenting on your terrible BO" but I really can't see the point in telling a man he's not very good in bed. (They have very fragile egos you know )
My mother always said 'If you can't say anything nice you shouldn't say anything at all' and I still think that's good advice (altho' it's not always terribly easy).
If you love someone you don't tell them they're useless in bed. You start reading 'The Joy of Socks' and say "Listen to this. It sounds interesting." or "Have you ever tried this?"
You don't say "That dress makes you look incredibly fat/like mutton dressed up as lamb." You say something like "I liked that one you wore to X's wedding. Haven't they got one like that?"
And if you're really tired and depressed and generally feeling under the weather and you know he/she needs you anyway what's wrong with faking it once in a while?
But you never, ever, tell your friends.

>
> I personally find it bad to fall in love with a friend of the
> opposite sex.
>

I always used to say falling in love was the best way to lose a good friend, but then my friends and I started to grow older and less rigid and it didn't happen any more. I've found that even my one night stands have turned into lifelong friends. It's quite embarrassing really. (I was once in a park with 8 children under 10 and a woman asked whether they were all mine. When I explained that 3 were mine, two were my ex-husband's girlfriend's, two belonged to my ex and his girlfriend and one was an ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend's by her current partner she collected her two little poppets and left in a hurry)
So what's wrong with tolerance and friendship?