I had an interesting (aka boring as hell) weekend of physical suffering and serious contemplation. Here are some of my findings... maybe they're not new to you, but they're new to me, or I forgot about them.
If you want to make any person happy, make them good cookies.
If you want to make boys happy, make them anything remotely edible.
That said, I think people should experiment with cooking more. Even if it turns out crappy, it was a good effort and you will get to know your personal tastes better.
Turning a bad situation into humor makes the situation seem much more solvable. Laugh at the other person (not in front of them, obviously), imagine the scene with squirrels reenacting it, something.
Men are attention whores. Regardless of how hard you're trying to do the "right thing," you will inevitably be wrong in the eyes of jealous guy and he will not be able to hide his displeasure from you. A la, Thursday night. Went over to the guys' place to hang out with my guy friend. I (mistakenly or not) feel that I don't spend enough time with just him - that there's always someone else there, whether it be Clarence or other friends. I don't mean to monopolize his time by any means, but there's a reason we're close and I want to stay close. I could tell Clarence was a tiny bit jealous, but I'm not going to ditch my friend for him every time! I know guys aren't as conscious of this as women are, but I don't want to be randomly confronted one day being told I'm a terrible friend. But the point: men pout. Though it shouldn't be, it's hilarious.
It's entirely possible to sleep in the same bed with someone of the opposite sex. Thursday night and Friday night, I ended up sleeping with "just friends" and no harm was done. Purpose: to sleep. Mission: accomplished. It's all about attitude... if you're thinking about the person you wish you were sharing a bed with, you shouldn't do a single thing with the person who's actually snoring next to you.
You must know yourself to share your life with someone else. For once, I'm on the other side of the glass here. I know what I want. He doesn't. I feel distant from him, but thankfully we're not already in a relationship and grasping at bits of pieces we DO feel comfortable sharing. We're both being a little selfish. I've been too hurt to put myself out there and be brave, and he just doesn't know what he wants yet. In the sage advice of one of his roommates, "What you should do with him? Nothing."
Nothing is right. When in doubt, stay put. Don't say anything. You can't say anything stupid if you don't say anything.
Sidenote:
Part of the whole "no sex to be religiously pure and close to God" thing that drove me so nuts was unconsciously I didn't agree with him. Consciously, I know I want to have sex with him. The duh. But on a deeper level, I remembered something we had discussed in my art history class.
Artemesia Gentileschi was a female artist who worked in her father's workshop in the late 1600s/early 1700s. She was very talented and one of the first women of her period to really be recognized as a painter on her own. She was raped as a teenager by a fellow artist while left alone in the workshop. Her rapist was tried and convicted, and paid fines and went to prison for... dishonoring her father and decreasing the marriage value of his child. It was only important that she was raped because her marriage value decreased significantly. Was it important that the man hurt her? Was it important that that event changed her life dramatically and influenced her artwork? Not to anyone but Artemesia.
What was the purpose of her purity? Her purity was simply a signifier of her monetary value at the time of her wedding. I'm often accused of reading the Bible with a perspective of way too much historical context (since the Bible somehow gets to be omitted from the same intellectual scrutiny as every other piece of art, poetry, and literature from the time). But... weren't Hebrew marriages initially conducted in the same manner? That daughters were sold, or went to their husbands with "dowries"? Is everyone seriously acting like the middle ages and onward were unique in their economic approach to marriage?
To me, "purity" is of the mind, and only the mind. And maybe water, purified without germs. But a woman's body is pure from the beginning until the end, regardless of her lovers, if all were met with earnest and good intent. A woman can be impure if she takes advantage of men and hurts men. In my perspective, some of the fathers in the Old Testament were no better than pimps to their female children. Who sells off pre-pubescent girls to have sex with old(er) men today? Pimps in Thailand. There, that's my real world application of the Bible, fitting for today.
I'm not accusing Clarence of being a woman-hating, misogynistic asshole. I was just racking my brain for the longest time, wondering why this idea of purity creeped me out so much. I know that I am pure. Anyone that knows me, knows that I don't enter a single relationship with anyone on the basis of "just thinking he's hot" or "just wanting to see what I can get out of him in bed." That's not me. And for some reason, his saying he wanted to be pure was almost an accusation of me. I know that is WAY too much of an assumption to get mad and confront him. But I was wondering how his desire for purity felt so, completely, wrong. It seems like he is putting a value on himself... which was so defined in the Bible by misogynistic assholes who wished to suppress women.
I guess being a man, he can be okay with that.
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