Sandbox Romants: Wooing and Problems

otm

I hate saying no/hurting ppl's feelings

I think its way more "women are socialized to be able to say no to something without hurting anyone's feelings" rather than them being socialized to not say no, period

Perhaps, though that is often a distinction w/out a difference.

I mean, I'm a guy and I've been asked out by people that I don't really like and my natural instinct is to give them the runaround rather than flat out deny them, I don't think it's objectionable to say that women are generally better at that kind of stuff

I like that CiF response to the Kate B0lick article!

I felt it wasn't actually about me but about a more mythical, or perhaps just tv-like, "30-40-something women"

this encapsulates my problem with it really well! I understood and recognised and was sympathetic to the situation in it, because I'm familiar with it from media, but... i sort of can't believe in it, at the same time? I have seen a lot of tv programmes in which mothers are all 'did you know [foo] has two children now, when are you going to meet a nice boy/girl and settle down' but I have never met a person who's said their mother says that. sometimes my mother says 'i met [bar]'s mother the other day, did you know [bar] has two kids now' and i say 'jesus, already?' and my mother says 'it's not really that unusual, dear', but... that's about as far as it goes.

i guess i feel like articles/tv shows/other media in which women are still concerned with finding someone "marriageable" (beyond, like, 'not abusive' and 'has mutual feelings about you', which i like to think are minimums) reinforce the idea that this v limited idea of "marriageability" is/has been/remains a normal concept? even when the ostensible message of the article is "let's change our ideas about marriage and 'marriageability'"?

I meet women w/some desperate need to validate their life through timely marriage and optimal wedding far, far too much.

ditto.

i never do! i mean, i meet people who want to ~get married~, sure, but this kind of rom-com mindset, no. unless they're all too afraid of offending me to say it?

I even had one say to me, "Oh, you're divorced? Well, at least you got married." I backed out of that conversation very soon afterwards.

Maybe I should go into the consulting business teaching people how to say no. I'm really really good at it!

My workshops will start with the beginning intro to to the Human Beinz "Nobody But Me"
and then I prance onstage and teach everyone how to say no by offering them outrageous things and having them practice their no skills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxtJoGdujYo

I'm really really good at it!

I've said this before but I learned how to say no politely but firmly from a French lady. It's quite liberating.

See even though I've tried not to be, the joke's on me and I am totally one of those women, only it has stealth-neurosis powers and didn't spring until a couple of years ago and then SURPRISE!

So I p much took the B0lick article at face-value where perhaps I shouldn't have; I'm glad to have this counterpoint. Thanks, rrrob!

LL: Would attend all sessions of that class, with pressures increasing from "Would you like to clean rat's cages for minimum wage on Mars?" to "If you were a good woman, you would know that your behavior is inappropriate and I expect you to change that if you really love me." That would be the advanced skill level, presumably.

I expect you to change that if you really love me

LOL/sad

I meet women w/some desperate need to validate their life through timely marriage and optimal wedding far, far too much.

― M. White, Wednesday, November 30, 2011 6:41 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

as a single woman in her 30s i have people (male and female) project this desire on me all the time and it really angers me.

i don't have any desire for marriage or children. at all. but people are completely clouded by the fact that is what i am supposed to want and don't listen to the actual words that come out of my mouth on this subject.

I'm sorry, did you say something?

<3 <3 <3

Exactly, Laurel -- first you refuse things that are easy to refuse (would you like to smell my foot? would you like a bite of this heavily mayonnaised chipped ham sandwich with mold on it?), and it gets more and more challenging based on the questionnaire you filled out at the beginning of the seminar.

To be fair, I also have no trouble agreeing to things and am not a negative person at all -- in fact, I'm pretty game, for the most part! I just feel very little pressure to acquiesce when I don't wish to do something, either in the work sphere or the personal sphere. If I do acquiesce after refusing initially it's because I probably didn't really want to say no in the first place ;)

at thanksgiving, me and my cousins (all in our early 30s) were actually seated at the kids table, in an entirely diff room. my aunt dropped her 7 year old kid off with us, saying 'ok, mommy's going to go hang out with the adults now'. when getting more food, my cousin reported that the "adults" were saying that we gotta start having kids soon.

i'm in the same boat as you, b_g, and i fear i'll be seated at the kids table till i'm 60!

It's fine to want to be married. It's fine to want kids. It's the neurotic desire to do it willy-nilly like it will 'fix' your life that freaks me out. As if not keeping up with the Joneses or not landing any husband, regardless of your long-term compatability, is some freakish loser thing to do. If the Joneses are your standard, you've lost already and marrying fools isn't exactly some rare achievement.

I'm perfectly fine with the kids table; they still have to serve me wine and I have less competition for th bottle. Plus the conversation isn't as inane.

Also, I have been kind enough to give my parents perfectly adorable grand-cats for years now and if that's not enough, I'm not sure what they'd think of any human grandchildren I might sire.

My mother's not happy with me for not having children, but she doesn't talk about it much. (My sister has three and my brother has two. Three of them are married--all of my grandnieces and grandnephews are in their mid to late twenties--so she should even have great-grandchildren before she dies.)

I'm from a cadet branch so I really don't see the need. ;)

yes, i have produced a lovely grand-cat that my mother dotes upon with fancy cat food from wholefoods.

Wow. My mother actually refers to our dogs as her granddogs.

i kinda feel that the concept of marriage as a whole is probably on the outs anyway, anyone who seriously says "you're in your 30's, why aren't you married yet?" is almost definitely a sitcom character written by someone with a 1950's view of marriage

Or an older family member.

I'm perfectly fine with the kids table; they still have to serve me wine and I have less competition for th bottle. Plus the conversation isn't as inane.

i agree with this! i didn't mind it until the aunt came in w/her kid. probably because i've found her horribly condescending my own childhood.

Or a features editor at a women's magazine.

xp unless it applies to your aunt.

also the idea that i can't be considered an adult until i am married really bugs

My stepdad's family is 100% "girls aren't grown until they are married" and when I was in my late 20s, unmarried, and relegated to the kids' table, my mom threw a shit fit on my behalf, which I've always appreciated even though she was perpetrator #1 of the "when are you going to get married???!?????" pressure. (I chalk a little of that up to her just wanting me to settle down (as in quit being an irresponsible drunkard) and assuming that marriage was the only way than her necessarily believing I was an incomplete person when single.)

For clarification, I was referring to the way women are socialized to be compliant and not say no or hurt people's feelings

i was with you until this...

You were with me until I restated what I meant in one sentence? So you disagree with me? Or should I keep guessing here?

xp Yeah. Anyone who tries to speak about all women cannot be thinking very clearly. Lack of qualifiers is a boo-boo.

I… identifying an existing societal pressure is not the same as saying all women are a certain way? And I never said that?

we're constantly badgered about getting married- almost exclusively from wives/girlfriends of my friends (though i get it at work from the matronly members of staff too). Sometimes it's like a frenzy in group settings.

"Women are complaint and never say no or hurt people's feelings." (not what I said)

vs

"Women are socialized to be complaint and not say no or hurt people's feelings." (what I said)

So a woman who says 'no' when she doesn't want something is not very well-socialized, I suppose.

All of the women I met in my early twenties were happy with me for not wanting children, but they all figured that I didn't want them because I didn't want them Growing Up In A World With War, Pestilence, And Bill Clinton Getting Blowjobs From His Staffers. Phooey.

Is the sandbox making everyone bizarro?? Aimless, who in the world ever said that? Also you're combining/mixing up meanings of "socialized", and you know it.

i just think you're overgeneralizing a bit, jenny. it's not "women are socialized to be compliant" it's more "lots of people are generalized to be compliant, many of them women"

Remy and Aim: do you seriously want to argue that there is not a social norm for women that involves being agreeable and helpful and accommodating to others more than is expected for men? And that this expectation for women extends to how women are, in general, expected to react to wooing?

Maybe I'm not grokking where everyone is coming from here because I'm really surprised at both or you.

Dude. We are having a miscommunication. Let me try to draw a parallel.

I make this statement: "Men are socialized to hide their emotions."

What this means is that there is pressure in our society for men to hide their emotions, not cry in public, etc etc. This does not mean that no men cry or that men who cry are poorly socialized.

So when I say women are socialized to be compliant, I mean that there is pressure in our society for women to be agreeable or at least say no gently. One example: women who are not compliant are called bitches or harridans. This does not mean that all women are agreeable or that disagreeable women are poorly socialized.

Now, if you disagree that that such societal pressure exists, that's a different conversation.

i want to go back to giving unsolicited dating advice :(

Jesus McKinnon Christ. Saying that women face a particular pressure does not mean that men don't also face a similar pressure. That is a massive logical fallacy.

It might also be worth noting that the ppl in this thread who are saying "yes this pressure exists in a way that is specifically targeted at women" ARE WOMEN and the ppl saying "What? No! That doesn't happen" are men. Who do you suppose has more firsthand experience with this phenomenon?

well, i mean if she doesn't want to 'date' then how might she feel about you two just seeing each other

this is the problem with ppl letting ppl down gently, ime- if she's not interested romantically you'd be a sight better off knowing that, possibly in writing so's you could remind yrself in moments of weakness.

i dunno what you mean by skipping the dating bit but if you're thinkin about proposing my advice is to leave it just yet

Yeah, not quite. I may live two minutes from LJ but we haven't hung out enough for him to have influenced me that much. That says she does own a lovely flat in a very convenient location...

I guess I just take the chance? Totally agree about the letting down gently thing btw. You never really know someone well enough to be sure that's not what they're doing.

Neither one of us is around for the next couple of weeks - she to Burma, me skiing - so could just fizzle out anyway by the time we can see each other anyway. Hope not though.

i dunno, but, it seems to me that if you've already hooked up sexually, esp. as strangers, then it's kinda like the theory about the development of nuclear weapons re: warfare -- there's no going back to a pre-nuke world

ugh burma and skiing ffs why don't you just get richard curtis to direct you into each others arms after 90 minutes of lukewarm angst

not much in my court to report on. after the near miss relationship with my friend and subsequent drifting last May, I haven't really met anybody. That and my social anxiety, which comes and goes, hit me full force for about the last four months, where I am now at the point that I have difficulty even making eye contact with people, even friends and family.

I'm optimistic though. These things in my life have a way of finding me when I'm not really looking for them or don't expect them. It would be nice though if the next person I meet is in the same place I am--seems like anytime I'm looking for a serious relationship, the people I meet aren't, or vice versa (see my last girlfriend, who broke up with me, then got upset that I wasn't "upset enough" after the breakup).

Also hate to throw this into the theory, but alcohol has been involved in the genesis of every one of my relationships. Not being drunk, but enough to break down my walls long enough to actually connect with someone. Ever since I've cut back on drinking, I've had to find other ways of getting centered!

The other night I talked to a friend who I thought blew me off last summer, and it turns out he was having minor personal ish and knew he was messing up and has felt bad about it since. I got a full apology and he asked my permission to call me again sometime. Vindication is sweet!

^_^