Look ma it's me up there! Just for clarification re boundaries, him liking someone would be fine. The non-negotiable boundaries are: don't spend money on another partner without asking, don't ditch childcare responsibilities for another partner, and don't complain about each other to any other partner.
I've been in a similar position, and I got my boyfriend to take the plunge by telling a male friend of his that he was looking for to casually hook up with someone. The male friend helped engineer a situation where he met someone at a bar, something I would have been incapable of doing.
After the first encounter and seeing that I genuinely was into it, he was much more enthusiastic about making an okcupid profile.
I think this falls firmly into "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" territory. There are lots of things people find hot that they don't actually have to do, and if matters are progressing well between the two of you I'm not sure what's to be gained by pushing it at all.
2 is smart and something I'll keep in my back pocket. Our friends are terrible gossips but idgaf if it gets out. He might. His brothers would probably help which is weird but true.
Also, I don't know the exact age range he'd be looking for, but IME okcupid is filled with attractive cool women open to casual sex, as long as it's clear the man involved isn't a douchebag or creepy . My boyfriend had reasonable success on okcupid Even just online flirting boosted his ego to see all the women willing to flirt with him. The one caveat is my boyfriend actively loves flirting so if your partner is less into it, he might find it an ego boost or he might get stressed out.
3 I actually think it's pretty low-risk high-reward proposal. And not doing it or at least not coming to a clearer understanding about WHY we're not doing it, e.g. if he's actually less into it than he's represented, has its own risks.
I also think 3 is a valid concern. Also, how ok is he with the general idea of an open relationship? Are you already sleeping with other people? Is he ok with that? Does he think it's hot when you do it?
7: You're there and I'm not, but at least as presented in the OP I'm not really seeing what the rewards are. You think it's going to be that hard for him to get over your carefree youth?
...as long as it's clear the man involved isn't a douchebag or creepy
That's kind of the real trick for lots of things.
8 he's into it for me too. Unlike me he doesn't care about hearing details unless I'm with a woman which, eye roll, but whatever. I'm not doing it right now which is partly because I don't want to do the work described in the OP for myself & no other easy opportunities are showing up like, in my living room, plus I have health stuff that makes it more complicated (upshot I'm too beat to go out at night so it would have to be brunch sex).
brunch sex
It's all about the hollandaise sauce.
Having been a male who was briefly in an open relationship but who struggled to find an opportunity to take advantage of it: I think that the sense in the OP that it will require an inordinate amount of work, especially if y'll cohabit, is right. The majority of women in open relationships online seem to be looking for other women, thirds (usually women), or other couples.
10 His feelings about my carefree youth, and my carefree two years before we met, are really not a big deal. Aside from being stupid hot, he ACTUALLY wants this, which is different from thinking it's conceptually interesting but dangerous/not worth it. I also think lots of dumb post-divorce sex muddling is transformative. Maybe it won't be for him.
Plus I fully intend to sleep with others if/when I want to and am not nervous about that at all; this is important to me for a bunch of reasons some good, some obnoxious. If I'm doing that and he isn't because he doesn't want to, that's one thing, but if I'm doing that and he isn't because he wants to but he's nervous that seems like trouble.
14, 15: Like I said, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but maybe the two of you should find a nice couple to date?
15: I'll drop it after this, but I'm having a hard time reconciling he ACTUALLY wants this with lots of dumb post-divorce sex muddling.
17 just trust me that those two things are fully reconcilable.
"Sex muddling" is funnier if you picture the motion when making a mint julep.
How many women has he been with in the past? Does he find it vanishingly unlikely that any women he encounters on a weekly basis will be attracted to him, like so many of us? I guess I am echoing the questions about whether he sees it as a lot of work.
16 is a good suggestion and actually I have a couple who would be on board but right now my limitations keep me from tagging along and I think that's what they're looking for. This is just like the super hot cheerful movie Breaking The Waves.
21: plenty, but only two in the last 25 years. He's plenty confident about women being attracted to him in daily life, but less confident about doing something about that. I'm trying to convince him to go for it with the 24 year old on his soccer (not really soccer) league but he thinks that's too young OR is coming up with excuses. Goddam goldilocks.
I guess you're in a league not on a league? Idk she's on his team though. I know you're ON a team.
I think YOU well have to approach the 24 year old on his soccer team because there is no way she will believe his claims to be in an open relationship
What if I give him a notarized letter?
It's immoral for you people spend your time helping Louisa's beau find additional partners while I languish all alone over here.
28: The relationship is open on her end too, you know.
I don't know if I can handle that many puns.
If I did manage a profile for him would it be his profile where he's saying "open relationship, you can talk to my gf if you want confirmation" or my profile where I'm like "hi pls fuck my boyfriend."
28
Young comrade!
Don't worry, under Communism the decadent feudal class will have to give up their concubines and the revolutionary peasant and worker classes will be rewarded with wives.
As a feminist, I cannot be cheered by 35.
37: You forgot ", laydeez." This probably explains a lot of your trouble.
37 shows a lot of self-awareness, Thorn, but I'm troubled by the form of the expression.
Two options:
1) Leave him alone. I'd go this route; intermittently encouraging/ reminding him of the option, but letting him do what he wants. This honestly seems to be something you want more than him, and it's not his job to fulfill this for you. Right now he doesn't feel the effort is worth the reward, and frankly, he may be right. (He also may not be psyched to have sex with anyone but you. A lot of people are like that, and even can talk about how fun it would be theoretically, but they only want one partner and/or someone they love.)
2) Put in a lot of work to help make it happen. If you do this you're not allowed to give him $#%@ if he backs out. And you shouldn't do it if you're going to resent it. Remember this is for you, not him. (Your belief that it would be good for him is not relevant. This is a bigger deal than signing him up for a yoga class because he won't do it himself.)
Be aware that as a poly woman, even though I have lots of casual sex, I don't do it with people in committed relationships who are inexperienced in being open, because every time I did in the past it led to so much drama. Not everyone feels this way of course, but this does make things more difficult. (Also, if I'm going for just sex, I aim for hot 27-year-olds. Again, everyone has their own tastes, but depending on your location this might be a LOT of work.)
I promise you all that this is not something that I want more than him, especially if we expand the time frame from 'in the next week' to 'in the next year.' I 100% get why someone would think this was up but trust me it's not.
Also of course I wouldn't give him shit if he backed out, but that doesn't prevent FEELINGS. And I should prepare for those feelings!
If the issue is he has never been interested in pursuing casual sex even when he was young and single, I don't know how you could get him interested in it at this point. Just the procedure for pursuing that is quite different from the procedure for pursuing a monogamous partner.
One possibility is if you convince him that he h a s a terminal illness so it's now or never. Or that he's going bald (if he's not already bald).
41 he was fine casual stuff when he was young and single, he's partly anxious because he's not a deadbeat beanpole skatepunk tweaker anymore and that's the identity he associates with getting laid a lot, because holy shit do some women love making bad choices.
35: The subjugation of women holds up half the sky. The other half is held up by backyard pig-iron production.
Like "I covered up my hand-poke tattoo of captain beefheart, who could ever want me again."
Who even knows what Captain Beefheart looks like (apparently kind of like a chubbier-faced Zappa)? The most famous picture of him has his face completely obscured.
Even as we speak I'm listening to Ice Cream for Crow and yet, there are no women :(
Yeah it was the one with the trout mask.
Oh, there are women! Just not for you. Or me, to be fair.
CBH is one of those guys you're supposed to recognize by his trademark hat.
Of course it's also entirely possible that our years-long relationship is an extended prank on me.
I wonder what Donovan's up to these days.
He also had one of Haile Selassie. He says that one was handpoke, not the CBH one.
He grew up and wanted nicer art so now has nice Japanese-style sleeves over them; when he got the sleeves he was married so obviously didn't realize that in the future he'd need the need the bad tattoos to pull.
I have a question for Louisa: maybe I missed something, but have you had an open relationship before? I don't mean dating multiple people, but rather being in an established and enduring primary relationship but sleeping with other people.
I ask for two reasons: it seems to me that there's a difference between having an open relationship and being polyamorous. The people I've known in the latter category emphasize communication, communication, communication. That means, among other things, that the other persons each partner may be involved with aren't just hookups. They're full people: often both partners know who those other people are, they may meet them, and so on.
It doesn't sound to me like that's what you're going for. And yet: it wouldn't be a turn-on unless you knew about it, right? I'm just wondering what the proposal is: your boyfriend will tell you about his partner(s)? Just in the form of "I totally hooked up with this hot babe. End of story." Is it just the knowledge that this happened that's hot?
To be clear: I'm mostly responding to comment 1 upthread. I was a little surprised by the non-negotiable boundaries outlined. Obviously the childcare ... but if one of you becomes involved with someone else who has an emergency of some kind, what happens? The lines between "open relationship" and poly are just a little blurry to me.
To be clear: it may be that you're just expecting the openness to be in the form of one night stands. To the extent that you know who the person is (e.g. the soccer mate), that's the turn-on, but nothing more is to occur or be shared.
To be extra clear: nothing I'm saying is meant to be critical! I guess I'm just a little concerned along the lines of Josh's comments upthread: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Careful what you wish for. Stuff like that.
If I did manage a profile for him would it be his profile where he's saying "open relationship, you can talk to my gf if you want confirmation" or my profile where I'm like "hi pls fuck my boyfriend."
If you do this, please don't make matchy-matchy okcupid usernames, because that really weirds me out and obviously my opinion matters most. And while "we're open and you can ask my girlfriend, who's right her on okcupid too!" seems like a good way to do it, I've never seen it executed in a way that hasn't read like a red flag. A girlfriend publicly running her boyfriend's profile also seems a little weird. (On the other hand I read okcupid looking for red flags and excuses to discard profiles, so fine, maybe my opinion doesn't matter so much.)
"This is to certify that my boyfriend is not a serial killer."
(On the other hand I read okcupid looking for red flags and excuses to discard profiles, so fine, maybe my opinion doesn't matter so much.)
To be fair, a lot of people put their red flags right out in the open.
"I'm a tall, athletic, book nerd that is as equally happy scanning the latest New Yorker as I am laughing at movies like Ted.", for instance.
55.1 yes, but my longest relationship was not; 55.3 more or less, yes; 55.4 obviously if someone were fainting and needed a cab home or whatever that would be fine, but I'm having trouble imagining what other sort of emergency there could possibly be. If he had another girlfriend which isn't his aim but sure, anything could happen, and she were short on rent and he covered it I would be really fucking pissed. He needs to not get anyone pregnant obviously but if he did and paid for an abortion without talking to me that would be ok; if he were supporting the kid for 18 years without telling me that would not be cool.
(Who is better at finding bad reasons not to contact someone, me or Thorn?)
60: Right, the hermeneutics of okcupid = people are the worst and proud of it! I'm not claiming I do anything more sophisticated than that.
I have nothing against "tall" in your example sentence. Your move!
55
I have an arrangement like this. No actual dating, but we're both free to have casual flings with others. I find hearing about my partner sleeping with other people hot, and I would be more hurt by the idea he was holding information back from me, so we have a policy of total disclosure. I suck at casual sex,* so in practicality it means I'm basically monogamous and he sleeps around when we're apart and then tells me about it. He is very upfront in his okcupid profile about being in an open relationship in a way that I think is not creepy, and he has a lot of success on there.**
We can both unilaterally shut the relationship whenever we feel like it, and we have periodic check ins when it's open to see if we still want it that way. The only time I did have a problem was when we tried to keep it going when we were in the same place, where he would have a more casual long-term relationship (with a 25 year old hipster who used to bar tend at the campus bar, FWIW). I had trouble because she wanted to see him way more than I thought was casual (e.g. 2x a week). Plus she frequently remark on how she was a superkool tatted polyamorous chick who was into subversive sex acts like the woman on top, as opposed to vanilla me. It brought out my older-millennial curmudgeon hardcore, and I couldn't handle all the eye rolling and the shouting of "goddamn kids these days." Also, am shallow and horrible, but she looked like a thinner Lena Dun ham, which was just too much.
*I have a hard time finding people sexually attractive unless I already know and like them, so the one night stand thing is fairly unappealing. If I like them enough to sleep with them, I have a hard time keeping it casual.
**I helped him write his profile, and then a woman who critiques okcupid profiles of men she thinks have promise contacted him and gave him a lot of pointers on how to frame his open relationship. Her advice was start with the open relationship and repeat it throughout the profile so it's impossible to miss.
60
Women are really attracted when men put "no bitches, crazy chicks or fatties" right at the top. Let's them know you're looking for a nice level headed woman and you're a man of discerning tastes. Or when you have a long rant about your "cunt ex gf who screwed over your life" at the bottom.
65: I find hearing about my partner sleeping with other people hot, and I would be more hurt by the idea he was holding information back from me, so we have a policy of total disclosure.
And total disclosure here just means "This happened." Just to be clear.
In other words, if Louisa's boyfriend hooked up with the soccer mate, and said soccer lady, I dunno, sprained her ankle, and so when they had sex, they had to take special care because she was in pain and he had to help her carry her groceries into her apartment and then it turned out he just had to help her ice her ankle and they couldn't have sex after all, this is a story that would or would not be disclosed? I'm guessing not.
I just rewrote my profile to consist almost entirely of extracts from Thomas Browne's Religio Medici where he's puffing himself up, so I'm pretty sure I'll be rolling in dates in no time.
67
I would definitely want to know about that. I read all of my boyfriend's online and text flirts (sometimes I give advice but he's way better at flirting than me in general, so mainly I just admire), and I require a thick descriptive minute-by-minute recounting of any rendezvous. Unfortunately, it usually goes something like this:
Me: "So, what were her underwear like?"
Him: "Um, I don't know. They were underwear."
Me: "But were they nice? Were they matching? What fabric were they?"
Him: "I don't know! How am I supposed to remember those things. They were sexy, I guess."
Me: "What color were they?"
Him: "Black. Or maybe red. Or maybe purple. I wasn't really paying attention."
Me: "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO NOTICE THESE DETAILS! HAVEN'T I TRAINED YOU TO PAY ATTENTION YET?"
I'm sure we all appreciate your input, parsley.
a woman who critiques okcupid profiles of men she thinks have promise I cannot imagine what her evenings were like before she discovered this pastime.
humanity is an unending nightmare
This might be part of the reason why your partner doesn't want to get out there and try something.
Huh, I've never dated anyone with an involved primary partner like that, but I would be very unhappy if cerutjj g I wrote to someone was being read by someone else. Clearly the recounting of a rendezvous is a thing that happens and of course sometimes someone will say something awful or amazing or amusing enough to be worth sharing, but I would have zero interest in flirting with someone knowing that was the expectation.
"What kind of robe did she wear? Was it a REAL wizard hat?"
69
I was fairly intrigued and somewhat envious of your arrangement until seeing this. I can understand the wanting to know details of his rendezvous, but is this post-rendezvous interrogation supposed to somehow positively reinforce the ongoing success of the arrangement? Perhaps on his part it is a price worth paying for the benefits of the open arrangement. Do you want the details because you find them hot?
And also, not judging. Just being aware of how this would never work for me.
I like the idea of knowing an encounter happened, and would be happy to hear sexy details but don't need to. I want to be kept in the loop about correspondence/texting but don't need to read it. Idgaf if he carries groceries or not. I am also happy to participate in any sex with people that happens before 1PM on a weekend when we don't have the kids.
Though he would actually find it super hot and exciting if she did have a sprained ankle, that's totally a thing of his, so I probably WOULD hear about it.
I only have experience with the sprained ankle part (well, and sex, just separately) but it's seemed like that wouldn't work very well without risking reinjury. That might be my own bias because I tend to take my wrap and aircast off as soon as I get in bed and maybe if I didn't any sort of movement wouldn't be so painful.
Although maybe reinjury isn't such a big deal if you're dating a sprain fetishist? I prefer not to find out.
Prob been said already, but sounds like:
He is just not that into the effort bc once 1. it is exhausting to hunt for it; 2. he has a steady supply of good stuff.
If you want him to have sex with someone, you need to find the person.
I mean not JUST sprains, but frailties inclusive of sprains. Sprain-but-only-sprain fetish would be cute.
76
I only want to know the minute details/read correspondence because I find them hot. I also enjoy recounting of social encounters in full detail for their own sake, which is good because it is my actual job. Flirting is something he's good at, and so I find it sexy to see him perform competence in an area that I am not great in. I suppose it's similar to speaking a language I don't or to lift heavy things easily. If I didn't find them hot or if they got to be too much, I would ask that he stop sharing. On his part, he likes that I think it's hot and is happy to answer my questions (although he has a hard time recalling detail). He's very upfront with all parties to what the arrangement involves, which does weed out women who are either more concerned with privacy (as in 74) or looking for something exclusive.*
*In the fact the first line of his profile is "I'm in an open relationship of the type where my partner helped write my okcupid profile and not looking for anything beyond casual" STILL gets responses from women looking for monogamous relationships.
I'm curious, if I write anything to a friend in a serious relationship, I never assume it doesn't have the potential to be read by their partner. Is this unusual?
The tolerance/affinity/inclination for open relationship structures and polyamory, is that something that is innate to you, or do you cultivate it? As stated in 55, communication, communication, communication is expected, which implies to me that when that thorough openness is not maintained, natural triggers lead to trouble.
Those of you who don't do open relationships but are in (or have been in) solid long-term monogamous relationships, how much "harmless flirting" can you tolerate?
It's not privacy exactly. Just if I wanted someone to make fun of the way I write, I could message nosflow. It's not that I'd assume anything was shared in total confidence but that level of disclosure isn't appealing to me as the outside party, which is fine since your boyfriend isn't the sprain fetishist and I'm off the market until I could at least potentially appeal to those who aren't.
if I write anything to a friend in a serious relationship, I never assume it doesn't have the potential to be read by their partner. Is this unusual?
It's unusual to me: personal correspondence is personal. That said, some people in serious relationships do share all correspondence, to the extent that they don't have a personal email address at all, but a joint one. I wouldn't like that myself.
90
I don't assume as a rule correspondence is shared, nor would I ever demand to read all my partner's emails or private chats, but I always assume there's a potential for something I wrote to be shared with a serious partner. Like, I think don't think all of it would be shared, but there's a chance any of it could be shared (if this makes sense).
89
Yeah, I can see how it could make someone self conscious. FWIW I mainly care about what my boyfriend says and if it's clever, not what the woman says in response.
Plus everyone knows I spent practically a decade in a relationship with someone who had awful boundaries, so I'm probably more self-protective than someone who's been healthier. (And then spent all morning in the coparenting therapy, leaving me a sad but at least hopeful little husk with a sprained ankle.)
85 first is precisely it. I suppose at a certain point you want to say hey my gf and I read your stuff together for sex reasons, is that cool? But in preliminary correspondence with someone in an open relationship there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Now I'm wondering if, when they took that x-ray of my ankle, how many of people were aroused by bone spur?
Also 87, totally innate for me. Some combination of sexual preferences and broader personality traits. It's not enlightened or aspirational, but it's how I work and I've learned not to fight it.
Also fwiw I would have absolutely no tolerance for polyamory as I understand it to work as opposed to just openness because it seems to involve caring about the needs of your partner's other partners, etc., and I don't, I am maxed out on people to care about.
The relationship that just ended was with a polyamorous woman who was sharing all our antics with her husband with my full knowledge. It's a little bit of a weird position to be in (though really quite good for me at the time). It does encourage one to bring the A-game to bed, knowing there's going to be a post-mortem, so there's that.
87
I would say it's relatively innate for me too? Like I don't think I get jealous easily, and I'm pretty confident so I don't feel insecure if my partner flirts with someone else. It also really depends on the relationship. I trust my current partner completely. My ex husband was a serial philanderer, and I was really not ok with him flirting with other people, but that was mostly about respect.
I suppose having been cheated might be affecting in some ways my current view of open relationships, like maybe it makes me want more disclosure than I would otherwise. Also, I've developed cuckholding fantasies, which I'm wondering are some subconscious desire to work out being cheated on. I don't think I really want to follow through, but I do like hearing about sexual activities.*
*It's also a form of erotica where the male is your actual partner, so it's weirdly kind of monogamous too.
96
Yeah. Polyamory like that sounds super exhausting. More power to you if you can make it work, but dealing with the emotional needs of one partner is plenty.
Though, my partner has a much greater need for nonsexual physical intimacy than I do, and I would definitely outsource some cuddling. (We like to break down gender stereotypes by conforming to ethnic stereotypes). He was kind of offended when I suggested it, but I would totally be his cuddle pimp.
He probably just doesn't want to give you a cut of the take.
Extreme relate to 99.2 except no ethnicities to blame them on. JQA is very grateful for/amused by everyone's input. I dunno about a profile w face for him before we get some custody issues squared away because it'll get back to his ex. He says this wouldn't be an issue but now I'm the one urging caution. Dunno if a no-face profile is worth it but could be a fun project anyway. And of course there's the soccer girl.
I'm no expert, but my guess is a no face profile would get 0 interest on okcupid. Possibly negative interest since he might come off like a creep.
I think that depends a lot on the rest of the profile, though I'm sure there are also relevant gender dynamics. (My last girlfriend had a no-face profile.)
That's what I figure. It worked for me back when but that was mostly about attracting men, which is... different.
I was rereading and just noticed from Buttercup "plus she frequently remark on how she was a superkool tatted polyamorous chick who was into subversive sex acts like the woman on top, as opposed to vanilla me." I hope your boyf had the sense to say "you get her name the fuck out of your mouth," if he didn't I'm happy to send a gif of my severest *stare, double-blink, stare* for you to show him.
no other easy opportunities are showing up like, in my living room
So I should send Hamilton to you instead of to LB?
In the fact the first line of his profile is "I'm in an open relationship of the type where my partner helped write my okcupid profile and not looking for anything beyond casual" STILL gets responses from women looking for monogamous relationships.
Sad to read even about anonymous people on the internet.
106 I'm ok, though only a clueless, possibly high 19 year old blinded by the prospect of sex could forgive the state of my apartment right now
There are corpses in my apartment, or copses could forgive my apartment?
Surely you ought to know if there are corpses in your apartment.
I do know if there are corpses in my apartment.
Well, then. Standard disjunction elimination should be able to take it from here.
The question isn't how many corpses are in the apartment, but how many it would take in the apartment to dissuade a possibly high nineteen-year old blinded by the prospect of sex.
A betting pool. I'm not arguing that whether or not the corpses are in or adjacent to a pool matters.
Let's have VP Burr text Hamilton and ask.
I'm not sure we can just talk about "corpses in an apartment" and leave it at that. How fresh are the corpses? What's their disposition? If you have a large, out-of-the-way freezer, and the corpses are dismembered and stowed within, you can probably discount them entirely from the calculation, provided the possibly high nineteen-year-old isn't too inquisitive. If it's just right there in the middle of the room as you walk in, that's another story.
Going back to the beginning of the thread: don't ditch childcare responsibilities for another partner
What does that mean? In my current situation I feel like I'm ditching childcare responsibilities if I'm not home doing some part of dinner/bath/bedtime seven nights a week. While the relationship is generally open to outside action, that's a pretty severe constraint at the moment.
120: People who don't have full-time custody have time off from parenting built into the schedule and can use it for work or play or whatever. I remember the good old days when I'd go to sleep at 7 pm on a Friday and not wake up until 9 the next day! Then Saturdays were for tidying and laundry and ideally a date of some sort, Sundays for groceries and getting dinner ready for the return of the kids for the next two weeks. Maybe if I went with a custody calendar dating app geared at partnered parents looking for outside liaisons I'd do even better than by targeting parent-parent dating like in my original hypothetical plan.
It is really exciting for me, a guy 30 years married whose number is neither prime nor composite, to be able to contribute to a sex thread!
Sex with a sprained ankle, and full bandage on, is doable, and much more fun for the sprained than for the healthy, who has to supply the vast preponderance of friction, motion, etc. More fun for both if the sprained has enough vicodin or similar to share (YMMV, some find it a turn off, but works for us).
The "more fun for the injured" concept appplies to a wide variety of injuries and illnesses. Speaking from way too much experience.
Another OkCupid wonder: "Cryptonomicon is the best book that's happened to me in the past decade."
:(
We both have kids with other people and the kids live with us part of the time. On a night we have both kids or only his, I want him home. If it were a night where we only had my kid, going out would be fine, since I make a point of creating one-on-one time with her anyway.
123: Is this person a book weightlifter or something?
122.2 is good to know, if unlikely to be applicable any time soon. I think with the air cast I'd feel okay. Not great, but probably better than I feel just with a sprained ankle and no sex.
Can't contribute regarding sex with corpses in the apartment. Although there is something about staying in a hotel for an out of town funeral . . .
122 experience as the injured, or...?
and I didn't get vicodin or anything fun, which is probably part of the reason I've been so whiny. I had muscle relaxants already for my sciatica from a few days before but then they were making me dopey and I was sleeping all the time and it felt like the flesh was sliding off my bones because I was so worn down, so after I quit that it's just been megadoses of ibuprofen, which is not super sexy although the container has a place of honor on my bedside table.
Also thinking it through if anything happened with JQA it would need to be at the woman's house or a hotel and gallantry demands he pay for the hotel. I should start putting extra change in a coffee can I guess.
Ugh and we'd also have to pay for her fetish cast, wouldn't we? This is so complicated.
You need to move out here to flyover country, where I haven't gotten billed for the cast or x-rays yet but my portion of the ER visit is more than my mortgage.
127: That time I was injured, but experiences on both sides of the divide confirm the pattern.
132 While you and JQA disagree both on the desirable dynamic in injury sex and the utility of high tariffs, we are gratified to know others have given this some thought.
Not really on topic, but I've been doing more walking lately. My ankle is really feeling better, but my hip is now giving me a nearly constant, dull pain.
Not a hot look, Mobes. Though when I took the girls to the doctor the other night, the receptionist had a mug on her desk with a toe fungus saying and I thought of you and took a picture for the Flickr pool but then I couldn't remember whether it was actually you and was actually fungus and also I'm pretty sure you're not on Flickr. But don't think you're forgotten or overlooked just because two doesn't want to be your secret boyfriend and no one wants you to snap your hips.
It's not toe fungus. It's toe-nail fungus.
Yes! The mug reads:
Toenail fungus?
Risk Free
Topical Treatment
Available!
Anyway, my doctor recommends Naproxen (Aleve) for me instead of ibuprofen. He says because it's better for holding down swelling, but maybe he looked at my family's history of strokes and such.
It's not better, but anybody with $5 can cure toe fungus. Unless Thorn's coffee mug is right, toe-nail fungus is harder to get rid of.
It's not really my mug, I hasten to add!
I assumed you stole it on the way out. My apologies.
Sexy as this fungus angle is, I'm still curious about the psychodynamics of sex with a sprained ankle. I'm assuming it's bondage-adjacent in that one party really needs to lie still and be in a having-things-done-to role, but does the "it hurts whenever any part of my leg is jostled and I don't mean in a good way" only happen to me? I guess that's where the cast makes a difference. (Now I'll do more musing about how I doubt I could even do sprained-ankle sex right, but I'll keep ur in my head and off the blog.)
but does the "it hurts whenever any part of my leg is jostled and I don't mean in a good way" only happen to me?
Maybe the interest is in the display of skill required to elicit only pleasing effects and no painful effects. Like a tightrope fucker.
Anyway that's what first occurred to me. Seems bondage-orthogonal.
Perhaps! And there are plenty of options nowhere close to the leg, but I perhaps erroneously assumed we were taking a more rigid definition of sex.
Not just you, Thorn. I had a sprained ankle a couple years ago that was, well, not an enhancement.
"Ow, goddamnit!"
"Wait, which ankle again?"
"I knew I shouldn't have taken the aircast off."
This sex thread on open relationships has really taken a turn to the weird.
Both helplessness and disfigurments do it for some people in some contexts. I swear! It's like non of you have ever gone home with someone only to find that they have a homemade hospital cot with traction gear because that's what sex is now.
Even if I have a severe ankle sprain, I'm still going to hop on one foot over to the cupboard to look for a mug that doesn't advertise toe fungus.
Back to more mundane questions, are there some deal breakers wrt to JQA's potential partners? Like if the other person is in a married-not open marriage? Or if she's someone you know peripherally? Wants you to take part in a threesome? Has some not at all vanilla kinks?
149.1 makes total sense. I think I'd be fine with someone who wanted me to seem/be helpless in sexual situations but there's no way I could cope with being with someone who wanted me to show helplessness in other parts of my life. Sorry. I'm sure this kind of overthinking is why I haven't actually been successful at casual sex. Clearly I don't love the blog enough to experiment and report back.
Clearly I don't love the blog enough to experiment and report back live blog.
To love the blog truly is to give it the full Mutombo.
I think the blog's best hope right now is to find a girl for nosflow. Give me a little time to get unpacked and be a boring mom and spend a lot of time and money trying to get to a finalized custody agreement. Once all that's done (okay, and also the part where after physical therapy I make myself go to a gym where there's weight stuff and strength training until I have a more appealing body) I can start thinking about offering a hecatomb to Mutombo or however it works.
WELL. I woke up this morning and went downstairs where JQA casually told me "your boyfriend has a Bumble profile" so you all must have done something right.
don't care about the stuff in 151. I don't think JQA would want someone married where it wasn't above board. His reticence is wasteful insofar as it seems like a really convenient way for someone to have an affair, but ok I get it.
If it were someone who said stuff like "isn't it great I'll do all this stuff Louisa won't" or otherwise prodded him to complain about me, I would expect him to put a stop to that.
If I really loved the blog I would have liveblogged this year's folsom street fair but maybe the reason I didn't is that I'm too despondent without a girl (or woman, Thorn, jeez) by my side???
156
How do you feel about Austrian bodybuilders? I have a friend doing a postdoc round your parts in a struggling LD marriage that you could maybe tempt her out of.
On second thought maybe hold off there a bit.
159
Hard to tell. They got married less than a year ago for visa reasons (she's a dual citizen, he's not). She's openly stated she regrets getting married, complains about him all the time, and isn't sure she wants her husband to come to the US. She was also super annoyed he wanted to take a small honeymoon.
But then again, it's hard to really judge from outside a marriage, even if all signs point to not working.
161 it is not really hard to judge from the outside of that marriage.
How do you feel about Austrian bodybuilders?
Is there some way you could describe this woman that wouldn't just make me think of Arnold?
There are corpses on the counter if anyone wants any.
"Thanks for a really fun evening. Would you like to do it again?"
"I'll be back."
163
She has a heart of gold under her brusque Teutonic exterior?
In addition to bodybuilding, she enjoys training for triathalons, waking up early, being efficient, and following rules?
165 felt cute-ish when I was still reading upthread and it had a context and now I'm like "well, that was just creepy of me."
Other parts of the thread have reminded me that I used to wonder, when I was single, why nobody ever set me up with people and then later, when the shoe was on the other foot, realized it's because you never know the right combination of people at the right time. Also the one time I can remember that I was set up was a flop.
I feel like most of 168 is conceptually contained within "Austrian bodybuilder".
165 felt cute-ish when I was still reading upthread and it had a context and now I'm like "well, that was just creepy of me."
I liked it.
169 setups are so much fucking work for the set-upper. JQA and I were set up and it took tenacity on the part of our mutual friend that I would not be capable of.
I know a happily married couple who were a sort of rom-com setup (each was told something about the other that they assumed meant the other was awful.)
Then I typed out a list of the origins of my non-negligible dating relationships and deleted it because it wasn't that interesting and contained a faulty parallelism I couldn't get around.
contained a faulty parallelism I couldn't get around.
Good instincts.
A couple I know met at a party but, each having been told about the other, endeavored to keep their first conversation short, because each feared that the other would try to talk about Lacan. Apparently. Now they are wed.
That is a meet cute that will never make it into the movies.
Make it Freud and it could be in a Woody Allen movie, but it won't be, anymore, given the sort of movie he makes now.
I watched part of The Curse of the Jade Scorpion because it was on Netflix and most of what is now on Netflix is even dregsier than that, but boy was it not funny or charming. And that's from years ago.
"No no, laconic, I said you were both laconic, and was I wrong?" (terribly low-hanging fruit I know)
neb, I'm going to stick to my strange idea that you will meet the love of your life within about three weeks of moving to a different city. I advise people to move all the time, though. I've been advising myself to move increasingly frantically and it just doesn't take, though.
The problem is we have all had a thousand conversations about what cities we should be moving to and it turns out everywhere sucks.
180 is the gospel truth, but have you confirmed that this isn't a strange illusion that can be dispelled by leaving the Bay Area?
Multiple persons have insinuated that I would thrive in some place called "New York City", but I've never heard of it myself.
Well I did leave here once, but it was a long time ago.
The "we wouldn't be any better off because our salaries would go down and the labor market sucks much more everywhere else" question at least must have a factual fucking answer that we've somehow never been able/willing to puzzle out.
Berlin, baby.
Yeah, but 15 years ago or so.
Allow me to be the first to suggest that nosflow should move to New York.
If you moved to Vienna, you could probably find a bunch of single lady Austrian body builders.
When I'm not thinking about how to get my boyfriend to sleep with other people I'm thinking about how to convince him and our respective kids' other parents and THEIR partners to migrate to LA. Or Houston but it's ruuuulll hard to sell folks on Houston. Anyway WWLOAD is that.
186: is it worth it if you're just going to end up in today's Berlin after 15 years?
Anyway everything in New York is terrible but possibly less terrible than Bay Area.
Oh hey I have some affection for Houston so that makes us and literally nobody else I can remember talking to in recent years.
192 ahhhhh! There are just a LOT of unexpected things going on in all these parking lots, right?
I actually love LA, and would move there in a hot minute. I also really love Cologne, which feels cool and not overhyped. My boyfriend is living in Prague this year, so at some point I'm going to visit. I'm worried that my contrarianism will kick in and I'll hate it simply because everyone else seems to universally love it.
I have a strong contrary affection for unlovable cities, but I've never been to Houston. I was genuinely fond of Milwaukee, but only as a (local) tourist.
Enough people now find Prague loathsome that you've probably got even odds. I was unable to give it a fair shake due to nightmarish study-abroad field trip conditions.
195
Milwaukee is awesome! It's like a grittier less pretentious Chicago. I would totally move there.
I still remain cranky that Portland is now basically ruined. I'm like I WANT MY SLEEPY BACKWATER BLUE COLLAR CITY BACK, BITCHES!
195 Then move here, you'll love it and the pay is good.
I'd love to live in Berlin
195 you might like it. It's big and weird and ugly, multiethnic and full of things like random swamp parks and cafeterias.
I sometimes wonder what it would take to make Dallas a likable place. It has some stuff going for it.
I am staying presidential for consistentcy not for any shame about my love of Houston which I will shout from the unzoned rooftops.
Huh, Chicago is not somewhere I would have thought of as pretentious.
I'm sure I'd like Dallas fine if I weren't committed to hate it because that's what you do if you like Houston.
Meanwhile Austin can sink into the earth for exactly this reason: JQA posted on FB before a trip with me "First time in TX! Headed to see my girl's family in Houston!" Nothing about Austin, remotely. Within 10 minutes, 10 people had commented "it's ok but not as cool as Austin" or "too bad it's not Austin." GET. FUCKED.
As a kid, the closest grocery store to our house was called Food-Valu, and next to it was a three-in-on laundromat-frozen yogurt parlor-tanning salon. It was the most glorious 80s trifecta ever, and now it's all gone and replaced by a New Seasons. When I walk by I just want to shout, KEEP YOUR $20/LB MEAT, GIVE ME BACK MY FRO-YO-TAN-O-MAT!
Across the street from the tan-fro-mat was this Cambodian grocery store in a pagoda-inspired building called Angkor Wat, and they had the best display of Asian porn right at the front. As a kid I would stare at the video tape covers while my mom bought cheap cilantro. They tore down the building over 20 years ago, and now it's been replaced by god-knows-what yuppie abomination.
*three-in-one
202
Chicago isn't pretentious compared to the Bay or NY (or even Portland or Austin), but Milwaukee is even less so.
Prauge is a bad, bad place, and I am generally fond of Central European big river cities.
Is it ok if I like both Austin and Houston? Or must we now be bitter rivals?
I actually like Austin too but what I described in 204 is everything wrong with it and that sin runs deep.
Literally his message (1) did not mention Austin (2) made clear my family, who I love, was in Houston. The responses were almost spambot level of randomness Austin boosterism.
Honestly today's Berlin seems pretty nice still. I can't compare to 15 years ago and was only there a few months 10 years ago (and a few days recently) but I'd take it.
I also spend a lot of time wondering about Knoxville bc I heard a good radio station driving through there 10 years ago, so you could all move there and be happy probably.
Ugh I can hear a bunch of Bumble messages comin in on JQA's phone but he's NAPPING so I can't know what's going on and I might die from anticipation.
But overall that problem got solved pretty fast, right?
Knoxville has a super great used bookstore.
I love Austin because I went to college there and love my people there, mostly.* The Austin boosterism thing feels recent and manufactured to me, like the embarrassing "Keep Austin Weird" thing. Anyway, fwiw, I recently mentioned my love of Austin to someone who said "oh I love Austin but hate the rest of Texas of course" and I shrugged, did a minor death glare, and said "congratulations, I guess." "You must really hate Mexicans" was esprit d'escalier but maybe next time.
*also Taco Cabana
El Paso is really great too. Everyone assumes it will be dangerous bc Juarez is right there but it's actually really safe because why bother doing a crime in El Paso when it's way easier to do one two blocks away in Juarez. This is not a good thing, but it is a thing.
I'm fond of Houston but it's kind if unbearable if you don't have connections there or are a 20s-30s single (I'm told by people who moved there without such connections). Oddly if you were gay or otherwise lifestyle-alternative it might be easier because boom instant community. Nosflow definitely shouldn't move there.
With that said the bay area right now (really for the past 20 years) is just the absolute worst and people should leave there as quickly as possible. I don't know anyone not made happier by that move.
Everyone without kids fucking loves New Orleans now too, in a way that fills me with rage, but that's another place on Earth someone could live.
Louisa, I have a long-standing "let's all move to El Paso" campaign that was originally a joke about the "let's all move to Detroit" movement. I have actually spent all of 12 hours there and have no real idea what it's like but real estate is very cheap and it's warm so sometimes it is a fun escape fantasy.
I have made a recent commitment to slag on the Bay Area less that is still in the "frequently mention that I have recently made a commitment to etc" phase.
Funny joke but also ... let's all move to El Paso, though?
Why would you ever make that commitment? I may be especially dedicated to always slagging on the Bay Area bc the people with the most vocal distaste for NYC/NYkers have always been from there and like, uh, Sarah, I'm right HERE. I can HEAR YOU.
Because I've been slagging nonstop for about 2.5 years of 3 years living here and I hear myself starting to sound like that person everybody wishes would shut up. (And "starting" is arguable.) Anyway yes let's all move to El Paso.
Vienna has been basically as excellent as advertised. Dislike the weather, but everything else is great.
I'm conflicted on Houston. I don't hate it! I also don't know it very well. I know DFW a little better and have more affection for that area, mostly because of family there.
I too have a certain affection for Houston, where I have family, but I'm not sure how much I would like living there. El Paso seems okay, having only driven through a few times.
I'm conflicted on Austin. It's insufferable but still feels like a big celebrity that I love. I'm jealous of what you get if you live there, but also defensive that Heebieville is awesome and it's own little swell place.
Houston has probably the third best opera company in the country and, it is said, good theater. The Montrose, when I used to stay with friends there, had a very charming neighborhood feel.
The "we wouldn't be any better off because our salaries would go down and the labor market sucks much more everywhere else" question at least must have a factual fucking answer that we've somehow never been able/willing to puzzle out.
I think the chances are quite good that, especially if you secured jobs in the new place before you left, you'd be a LOT better off elsewhere.
Roc North is unlovable for many reasons starting with the weather (three typhoons this month), but is also super awesome in many others. It's also visibly changing into something else, which looks much less ugly but also might be much more sterile and much less walkable. I am anyway fond of it.
You can't avoid all the problems of a small job market if my raises are anything to go by.
229: That's why you have to lock in a starting salary based on what you made in the more expensive area right when you move.
I'm thinking about trying to get a job in Burlington, but its way the fuck up there. Brattleboro would be more reasonable, but way smaller and fewer options for tech jobs.
Heebie U is in the midst of one of our recurring budget crises, and goddamn is it unpleasant.
A microcosm of the United States, and presumably Texas as well.
Have you considered admitting more cheating Saudi princes?
230: What if you did that, but ten years ago? Hypothetically.
Then you would be in a better position now, hypothetically.
Better than you would be if you hadn't, I guess.
227: STOP STOP STOP (unless you have job leads, then please go on)
217.2: tell stories?
I went to Knoxville for Big Ears 2014 and was pretty charmed, but that charm might wear off once I realized that Keiji Haino solo set* wasn't going to happen every weekend. Although maybe it does, in some form or another. Drawbacks (I assume regional) included pervasive tobacco smoke and a sense that the insanely rich food would do me physical harm. I'm not sure how I feel about avoiding local cuisine. I like most stereotypical Nor Cal food a great deal, even the occasional Mission burrito. I'm not quite as freaked out as lourdes about the prospect of living without idealized, beautiful produce at every local market, but he might just have better foresight.
Realistically we'd be in a better position to cut loose in two years than we are now, assuming a lot of things. Unfortunately I am the most impatient person alive, and I'm slightly more miserable because all my friends are in New York, whereas lourdes and the kid have close friends here.
*warning: video is almost worthless as reproduction, although if you have a really good stereo you can try turning it up to 80.
Why is Prague bad now? Is it bad to live in or bad to tourist in or both?
241: Ever since Rudolf II died and the Habsburgs moved there headquarters back to Vienna, it's been kind of a backwater.
Central Prague has been made Piccadilly Circus-level tacky by tourist traps, though it still has utterly lovely bones. I first went there before the Berlin Wall came down, and thought it was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. The Old Town now is a garish travesty of what it was then, though there are still some great cafes and bars if you can find them. (His Majesty came back from some late-night jazz in one with his hair so strongly infused by the smoke from a joint at the next table - or so he says - that I got all giggly just lying next to him.)
242: Falco wasn't the first one to hear Vienna calling.
It's always been my position that the problem with the Bay Area is the type of people who think it would be a really good idea to move to the Bay Area. When I was a young lad the East Bay wasn't even that pretentious; if you got too uppity a homeless person would yell at you. You could get hash browns at 3 in the morning with the pimps and get four bees to the dollar. Around here (MA) Lowell is a cool town and Somerville is hanging on.
If I had to move and could only choose from places more than 100 and less than 150 miles away from where I live now, Milwaukee would be at the top of the list of candidates.
Why would anyone ever voluntarily move somewhere it got cold? Before I just embraced the fact that I should be in LA, I used to say "I would miss the seasons," but that's just some bullshit people stuck with seasons have to tell themselves.
Also sincerely I love each and every one of you for turning a sex thread into a thread about artichoke prices in Nashua or whatever.
Can people everywhere stop saying BS like 247? (Not just you) Being smug is bad enough without insisting that everyone who doesn't recognize your superiority is lying to themselves.
Look, to the extent 247 read as anything other than willfully blithe hyperbole that was much a joke on me as anyone else, I wrote it wrong. Even if it did read like that no one has to find it cute. But I don't have to act like I'm interested in being scolded. And that's that.
251: Let's not set impossible standards.
My personal standard is to not be a dick to the same person too often in a row unless they really keep setting themselves up for it.
"no one has to find it cute but don't you dare say that to me or I'll get offended" is not a good look.
I miss seasons, sort of. I wish we had a month more winter.
Moby, though not quite by name, I left a message for you in the "Prank" thread.
Also 247 I could take or leave. 250 is what I was responding to.
Why would anyone ever voluntarily move somewhere it got cold?
Because we've never actually lived anyplace where it doesn't get cold, and therefore we don't really know the difference? Because many of the North American places that we can imagine ourselves (happily) inhabiting do have some measure of ice and snow in the winter? (Note: we may not think of LA as a real place where real people really and truly do live). Because: what would we do with our skates and our snowshoes!?
People here are apparently VERY SERIOUS about the seasons.
Anyhow I'd like a longer winter here and I like having snow available not too far away but alos not having to live in it, so .. . comity?
Why would anyone ever voluntarily move somewhere it got cold?
To have an opportunity to don more outerwear, obvs.
257: Thanks. That does look good for him and I had missed that it was addressed to me.
I don't like warm weather unless I'm swimming or something. My ideal day is something between fifty and sixty degrees with overcast skies.
258: Neither 247 nor 250 offend me in the least. Louisa has every right to prefer a warmer climate; and c'mon, it was a bit of hyperbole in a comment thread.
That said, I genuinely do find harsh winter conditions easier to take than extreme summer heat and humidity. When the temperature climbs to the mid-80s or above, I feel like a wilted lettuce: all sad and soggy and useless (I can't think properly; I can't focus; I can't believe it's even possible to live in such a climate). And when the temperature outside actually exceeds normal human body temp? I feel incredulous (How can this be?! We are walking around in a fever, ffs!) and hopeless, and would probably even feel angry, except that I'm too enervated and basically defeated to even give a flying f*** anymore.
I like skating outdoors, with a bit of a chill in the air, and then going inside for hot chocolate.
My ideal day is something between fifty and sixty degrees with overcast skies.
This is my idea of a temperate climate. YMMV, of course.
So, the ocean-facing side of San Francisco, then?
I'm kind of torn on hot weather. I love warm nights, but not hot nights, and not the heat you usually get during daytime when night time is warm.
I was born in the Ottawa valley, and appreciate that climate, but seem to be able to adapt to others easier than many. I was comfortable in Yucatan, for instance. My dad was like that too.
My rule for NYC is the same as my rule for LA: ok, fine, if they pay me enough that I can afford a second home in the Rockies, a private jet to visit, and let me work from home whenever I want.
That's also my rule but others don't seem to be obeying. They will pay!
I reckon I could live here indefinitely if they just popped a giant dome over the top and air-conditioned the entire the city. It would make total sense. Become world leaders in a growth industry of the future.
Real life enactments of Simpson's plots?
I was born in the Ottawa valley
Yeah, me too. I'm Ottawa Valley born and bred. A cold climate is just what comes naturally, I guess.
When my dad was about three or four years old, as he once recalled to me, he went up to Killaloe Station in Renfrew County (he went up the line, up the Opeongo Line, in other words) to visit his mother's cousins. And he thought he saw a cow in the kitchen at his maternal Ryan cousins' homestead; but surely he must have been mistaken, because: a cow in the kitchen!?
"Did I dream that?" my dad asked me, about seventy years after the fact.
I doubt it was just a dream, however. With the winter winds so cold, sure, you'd want to make sure the livestock were warm.
I think the market for William Gibson will be bigger.
We've been hosting a bunch of my husband's friends this month, and he keeps pointing out all of the things he doesn't like about living here. It is getting annoying.
lourdes is trying to update his to do list but has stalled out because the app won't let him pick a font other than Helvetica. There is no way either of us will ever get to the point of having additional relationships, whether or not we find a more chill city to live in.
But so hey can you customize fonts in any of them online dating profiles?
I want four seasons, but I want actual seasons. None of this 7 months of winter and 5 months of summer bullshit they have in Chicago, where some time in June a button flips and it goes from being miserably cold to miserably hot, and then flips back again in early November.
Format whatever you want to say in the font you like, and then upload the image as one of your profile pictures? If fonts are important to you, there are solutions.
I really miss seasons here. It's 7 am and already about 80 degrees out. December and January can be pleasantly mild but that's about it.
Yeah, if given a choice I would pick some place cold over some place hot. Southern China is miserably hot and humid from like March through November, and it was horrible. (Maybe Mossy would franchise his dome technology).
My Nepali driver has taken to listening to really crap Christian music in the car. Don't think I'll be able to take much more of this.
I would always pick someplace cold over someplace hot, though I guess the cold might be associated with gloomy dark skies and whatnot and I definitely am not into that. But ugh, heat. The worst.
I am strangely displeased that you can't let prospective partners judge you by typeface more easily than that.
Heat-haters are not looking at a great future, obvs. I've convinced myself that it's tasteless to complain about heat under the circumstances. It's probably also tasteless to complain about traffic. Maybe someone will write a book touting a heat-tolerance diet, which I would buy and read.
Complaining about music in vehicles is just fine, however.
I am strangely displeased that you can't let prospective partners judge you by typeface more easily than that.
A gap in the market! You should write your own app!
Idk about fonts exactly but 20% of JQA using Bumble today has been "oh she's cute" and 80% has been complaining about the UX/UI in incredibly specific boring ways. If opening up our relationship destroys us it will be because of this.
285 But the heat and traffic are the two best things to complain about here!
I've never tried Bumble, but I've found the Tinder UI to be surprisingly terrible.
The bumble UI is indeed pretty terrible.
Oh, nope, spoke too soon, you all! Just heard some gruff muttering about kerning. There's a Bumble kerning problem.
I've never tried Bumble, but I've found the Tinder UI to be surprisingly terrible.
I take it you're not referring to Bumble and Bumble hair product, Teo? Well, I'm just asking (maybe for a friend, but probably of my own accord); and yes, I really am that shallow.
No, I'm referring to the dating app referred to elsewhere in the thread. Though I have never tried that hair product either.
287 to 293. This is your opportunity, lk!
Where can I comfortably live on the income from this promising app?
I've heard good things about Nebraska.
And Pittsburgh, but it seems like it's getting too popular.
There's always the compound in El Paso.
Really, there are a lot of cheap places to live if you already have a bunch of money.
Whoa, my parents do have a basement again, temporarily. It might even be habitable.
In earnest, the problem isn't that we're living in the wrong place; the problem is that we want way too fucking much out of space and time. It isn't a problem that moving will solve. Moving will just displace it. It's not like in magical Houston houses clean themselves and everyone can instantly speed-read in five languages. Or maybe it is.
Housecleaning services probably are a lot cheaper in Houston than in SF, to be fair. Language classes probably aren't any more effective, though.
I grew up with four very well defined seasons and then moved to Austin where it's lots of summer, a very lovely but short fall, and a low key winter. I guess I liked that. I don't require four seasons but the lack of summer is an issue for me here. I have this project of bitching less about it here so take it as just my usual mixed feelings I have about almost everything when I say it's like a damp fall morning for what feels like nine months at a time here. It's not awful. It was a nice novelty the first year, especially after ten years of no-mistaking-it northeastern winters.
Up here we basically just have two real seasons, winter and summer, with brief periods of a few weeks of rain in between them at both ends. I like it because I much prefer summer and winter to spring and fall, but it's definitely not for everyone.
I'm bitching about Chicago weather because it's basically required for residency, but we've actually been having a pretty great fall. Sunny 70s September days have been sliding into an October with highs in the mid 60s, lows in the high 50s, and intermittent rain showers.
Among the things I find annoying about the Bay Area are all the weather reporters I grew up hearing on tv talking about "micro-climates" but just 30-40 miles away from Smearcase in a few directions there are places with summer. I have to admit that after growing up in the heavier fog zone, I do prefer the weather in the south bay.
I never fully appreciated how great the weather is in Mossheimat. Only two seasons really, summer is too hot but not humid, and always cool at night. Winter is cold but not crazy snowfall cold, and clear and dry. Whereas Roc is awful. Maybe 2/3 of days in winter are cool and clear, the rest of time rain or heat or both.
I blah blah blah blah love fog blah blah blah but it is vaguely interesting that people's preferences vary so much and correlate only loosely with native environment. Raynaud's syndrome in feet makes prologed cold no fun for me, but I don't mind it otherwise and I really do shut down when the temperature goes above 90 F. But I don't see that as an annoying property of the weather, but of myself.
I liked (what I think is) Roc Island when I visited relatives there about a decade ago, but the weather definitely doesn't seem great. I went in October, which wasn't too bad. The mountains in the center of the island got legitimately cold the one night we were there.* At the end of the trip we went to Japan, which felt much more like fall.
*To semi-merge the threads, I don't think I've ever felt more conscious of women checking me out than on that trip. Maybe it was the mixed-race beauty stereotype working in my favor.
I blah blah blah blah love fog blah blah blah but it is vaguely interesting that people's preferences vary so much and correlate only loosely with native environment.
It is indeed interesting. One thing that has been a factor for me in deciding whether and where I would want to move in the near future is that fact that I've never lived in a place where it doesn't snow, and it feels like it would be very weird for me to do so. Obviously this has more to do with me than with the area where I grew up, which is pretty close both physically and culturally to areas that are warm enough year-round to not have snow, with lots of population exchange in both directions.
It took a month or so of living in an area with snow on the ground to break my association of snow with being in the mountains.
I finally understand why so many Japanese believe theirs is the only country to have four seasons.
October in South China is great. It's the winter that's awful. 43 degrees and incredibly damp all the damn time, which would be ok, but no one uses heat. There's nothing like a cold squat toilet in the morning. And summer is just beyond anything, like a four month fever dream. Two showers a day, minimum, and then lassitude.
316 Winters in Morocco, especially in Fez where I lived and in the Rif where I traveled extensively was exactly like this. And with everything built of masonry the cold got deep into your bones. Brrr.
October in South China is great. It's the winter that's awful. 43 degrees and incredibly damp all the damn time, which would be ok, but no one uses heat. There's nothing like a cold squat toilet in the morning. And summer is just beyond anything, like a four month fever dream. Two showers a day, minimum, and then lassitude.
This is the TRUTH. October is lovely and perfect. If you're lucky March is warm and monsoon season hasn't started yet. Every other time is godawful. I think I showered maybe once every 2 weeks in the winter, and I bought those giant puffy indoor/outdoor pajamas old ladies wear, and wore them out in public with slipper and sleeve guards. #gonenative #noshame
317
Where I lived in China was like this in the mountain villages. Everyone lives in old stone buildings with 20 ft ceilings. It was lovely in the summer and hell in the winter. Modern village homes aren't much better, they're basically the same thing but concrete instead of stone. Ridiculously high ceilings and tile or cement floor.
318 Winter in the north is rainy season so very damp.
.
320 The Moroccan solution in the winter is to put on another wool djellaba.
I would always pick someplace cold over someplace hot, though I guess the cold might be associated with gloomy dark skies and whatnot and I definitely am not into that.
I'll definitely take gloomy dark skies over hot summers. Actual rain is annoying, but preferable to heat over 25 C. And dark skies with no rain is pretty much perfect.
Scottish summer, the non rainy bit at the start, or a nice day in English late spring, is basically perfect. 20 - 24C, bright but not so bright you need to swear sunscreen all the time. Not too hot.
Speaking of weather, mid November, in New Mexico? (Santa Fe) Is it going to be cold?
I'll definitely take gloomy dark skies over hot summers.
Friends just got back from making the Hajj. They did not feel spiritually refreshed because the temperature in Mecca was around 50 C (122 F). Must be close to the limit of human tolerance. Also, there were 30,000,000 pilgrims, so a bit crowded.
That kind of heat and they wear a big, black hat with buckles?
326 The Hijri calendar moves back 11 days every year. They'd like it even less next year when Hajj in the next few years as it begins to move through August and July.
ttaM, I don't have your email at the new place, would you shoot me an email when you get a chance?
The perils of commenting on my messed up Android. Please pardon the garbled syntax of 326.1
Why is your phone impersonating chris?
OT: I guess this I don't have to keep hiding the ones I have.
315 is one of the more hilarious of AB's Japanese Facts (with which she used to regale me when we were first dating).
But I'm curious why you're saying you think it's true, rather than absurd.
As for the OP, I like the idea of an open relationship, but (a) Cassandane doesn't and I respect that, (b) the idea of lots and lots of things doesn't measure up to the reality so I try to be realistic about that, and (c) who has the time. It would have been hard to maintain one relationship with all that entails plus flings on the side. With our daughter, or plural kids, I can't imagine it. (Eventually parenting should require less constant attention, but that's probably still years away. And I'm taking as a given a job, and solitary hobbies, and sleep. I'm sure some people have less of those.)
As for the weather, I don't LIKE DC's weather, but periodic visits to my parents in Vermont helps keep it in perspective. One Thanksgiving we nearly didn't survive the trip there because of the snowstorm on the way up. That much snow that early isn't fun. In DC we reliably get one or two real snowstorms a winter (3 at most in the time I've been here, but some winters, nothing worth mentioning), and when they happen, the whole city shuts down to deal with them, which is nice. Visiting my parents even in June or August, we still need a blanket at night. Vermont has a real summer in the sense that there's a period when it's sweaty and uncomfortable to be outdoors, but it lasts like a week and a half. If I had to pick my idea of perfect weather, I'd say New Mexico. Dry, hot in the summer, cold in the winter but not all that much snow in the inhabited areas. This is not nearly important enough to make me move there, but it's a nice bonus to the vacations there.
333: I don't think it's true! My normal response to "Japan is unique in having four seasons" is a not-so-discrete eyeroll, and when I've had to translate it in advertising materials I've tried to persuade clients to use something along the lines of "Each of Japan's four seasons has its own distinctive beauty." I was just impressed by the claim upthread that a relative lack of seasons was something to celebrate, which would feed right into that belief.
I was just impressed by the claim upthread that a relative lack of seasons was something to celebrate,
And by the number of people upthread saying that there aren't four seasons where they are now/want to be in future. I tend to assume that four is the natural order of things, even if they do all tend to involve rain.
I guess really hot summers are as unpopular as really cold winters, right? I spent years saying "well of course the summers are a drawback of Austin" before remembering that, no, I actually didn't mind them. Yeah, sure, sometimes if I hadn't been able to park in the shade and had to get into a hot car, but on the whole I was like one of those insane people who live in the UP or wherever and are like "30 below again! Cold enough for ya?!"
334.1: Yeah, I'd say I'm either inclined to or at least capable of handling open relationships (my okcupid profile did mention the propensity for multitasking in all things) but not in a way that would make me prioritize a possible open relationship over an actual good and closed one. For people like the woman I dated who sees poly as a core part of her orientation and can't imagine giving it up except when trying to conceive or for a similar functional reason, the calculation would be different. (Or for people actually like me who just don't really manage actual good relationships, okay, never mind.)
333: I don't think it's true! My normal response to "Japan is unique in having four seasons" is a not-so-discrete eyeroll
Presumably a discrete eyeroll is a saccade.
Right now here we're in the lovely season where I can wear frumpy sweaters and jeans. (Or long dresses, but before this thread I'd been thinking to myself how with my ankle boots and air cast long dresses made me feel like I was engaged in some sort of polio-fetish cosplay thing. And now I wonder if there's a site for people who are into that!) I still need to buy and plant more roses and too soon it will be time to bring in the plants I plan to winter, but at least the worst of the beastly heat is done. And I survived in my room with no AC!
sees poly as a core part of her orientation
I think that it would have to be part of your core to try it here. I run into people I know so very often that I've almost stopped flipping off people who piss me off in traffic. I don't see how I could date multiple people without everybody at work eventually finding out. The only way to hide it would be to claim it was adultery.
And now I wonder if there's a site for people who are into that!
Yes.
341.last: Wouldn't it be adultery? I assume your marriage is even more baffling than most given that her pun tolerance has to have reached serious kink levels and/or she's just tuned you out completely, but if you were dating multiple people while married that seems like a fair enough term.
I mean, non-open marriage adultery.
If it were open, which it isn't. But even hypothetically, I'm saying I think it would be hard to have an open marriage in a private kind of way.
Exactly. Adultery wants to be free.
" I have to admit that after growing up in the heavier fog zone, I do prefer the weather in the south bay.":
Climate Best by Government Test
The internet routes around marriage.
Discreet, shamefaced applause for 339. (Seriously, I'm horrified by how dependent I've become on spell check without realizing it.)
The climate in Victoria, BC seems just heavenly. less rain than in Seattle or Vancouver (with Seattle having the most of the three). Summer highs of 79 or so and winter lows of 40. But if you drive a bit you could probably find some snow on the island.
The opposite of adultery isn't infantry, which is probably good all round.
This NYT article reiterates the horrifying income/cost stats for Vancouver:
But while median pay for tech-related jobs is $112,000 a year in the San Francisco Bay Area, it is just under $49,000 in Vancouver, according to an analysis by PayScale, a compensation data firm. (Some of that discrepancy is due to a drop in the value of Canada's currency relative to the United States dollar.)
"We have San Francisco real estate prices [sic; they're actually higher, 1.06M vs 850K] with the incomes of somewhere between Reno and Nashville," said Andy Yan, acting director of the city program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
I can't imagine salaries are much higher in Victoria, so what do you do?
The climate in Victoria, BC seems just heavenly. less rain than in Seattle or Vancouver (with Seattle having the most of the three).
But using Seattle and Vancouver as the comparison points is maybe setting a low bar? If you're worried about x-number of rainy days per year, or whatever. If you're concerned about rain, that is.
I've only been to Seattle once; and to Vancouver only twice. But I'm pretty sure I could happily live in either of those cities. Victoria, B.C. I have never visited, but I'm confident I could happily live there (by way of contrast, I have also never visited Birmingham, AL, but I'm confident I could not at all happily live there).
Vancouver is ridiculously expensive, though. As the saying goes, the B.C. stands for "Bring Cash."
Yeah, and expensive cities are nothing new, and cities captured by speculators are nothing new. But average salaries that low vs costs that high... are there comparable cities anywhere? Singapore can't be that bad, can it? Sydney? Moscow? Genuinely curious/mildly obsessed...
Does Vancouver have rent control? New-build high-end studios in SF are $3500 a month but the average rent paid for a studio apartment is much, much less than that.
Also, the article talks about "median price for a detached single-family home" but Vancouver has a ton of condos. Could be some statistic cherrypicking going on.
My co-worker was complaining about how hard it was to find land where he could put a bunch of shipping containers and have a hippie commune while remaining within driving distance of his high-paying tech job (in the SF Bay Area). I sympathize! But a place that is desireable to live, has decent jobs, and doesn't let you build lots of suburban sprawl is sort of inevitably going to be expensive, right?
From what I read, Vancouver is Ground Zero for people all over Asia buying real estate to park their money out of fear their government will steal it or their economy will collapse. It's not even so much "speculation" since they may not be expecting the price to go up, just to be fairly stable. Entire blocks of tall buildings where all the condos have owners but a minority ever have anyone in them. Unrelated to local wages or local rents or local anything.
359: Apparently our boy Justin is going to close the foreign-buyers loophole. Me, I'll believe it when I see it.
In addition to just parking money, aren't there also a lot of children of rich Chinese people living in Vancouver? (Same parking money idea, but without the apartment being empty.) Or can I not believe what I see on Ultra Rich Asian Girls?
354: Victoria is heavenly. A smallish city but you can drive out to farms fairly quickly. Much slower pace than Vancouver. Enough rain to have beautiful gardens but not overcast all the time. A very nice Anglican Cathedral too.
I think it's less expensive than Vancouver, but mostly full of well-off retirees. There's not much in the way of good-paying work.
My fantasy is to retire there.
Once I'm too told to give a shit, retired or not, I'm going to buy a Segway and ride it around town.
361, I guess if you have an ultra rich Asian girl in your family, and you have an apartment in Vancouver, you might as well put her there.
Victoria is apparently not quite so nice if you're not Anglo-Canadian, or so a couple of my Chinese-Canadian friends have said.
I've been over this before and old re-linked links are super appetizing as leftovers. It's held my interest this long because there is no fix that I can see other than the violent-revolutionary varieties, which aren't properly any kind of fix. My reasons for caring whether Vancouver thrives or not as a city are more obscure. Probably sentiment.
I'm sure the whole situation has brought the local/regional racists out of the abundant artisanal woodwork.
To 358, I'll take two shipping containers and an amenable small residential lot in Richmond (not BC), but I'm curious about how your colleague imagines the division of labor on the hippie commune while he commutes to and from his high-paying tech job. Curious for about five seconds, that is. I'm more curious about whether I could burn all of my allocated evening catch-up work time viewing video of busy container ports, as apparently I am three years old.
I love that "Richmond Costco" could refer to either BC or CA.
Also, I like Richmond, BC. Except when it smells like mulch or a dump or whatever it was that smelled sometimes when I went to the Ikea.
And that was the end of the sex thread.
371
We grow old...we grow old...
Ikea smells like mold.
Put on another sweater if you're cold.
368: when you have to deal with misbehaving computers and truculent engineers all day, hippie antics can seem quaint and charming, or so I gather. Container port videos? So much for getting my work done...
Berlin's still very nice and interesting. I think there's some grit still available in the northeast, though that has also turned into the stronghold of the new xenophobic party, so Unfoggedsters might not be a good match. On the other hand, most of you (I presume) come from one of the four victorious powers, so at some level the people who lost the war and then got East Germany as their consolation prize will feel inferior to you.
For high-intensity urbania, Moscow's where it's at. (Possibly Istanbul, too, though I haven't been in 20 years; and I'm not qualified to talk about continents other than Europe.) NYC is low-key and relaxing by comparison. On the other hand, what you've heard about Russian winters is true. On the other other hand, after living there, Winter unpleasantness can be met with the question, "Is it Moscow? No? Ok, winning." On the other other other, the authoritarian government has juked time zones around such that winter sunset in Mos is not as terrible as it could be. The sun just comes up really, really late.
(The deal with Prague is that the core of the city is geographically small, so all of the tacky gets incredibly concentrated. Budapest might have the same absolute amount of tack, but it is diluted, and so the city as a whole winds up better.)
People looking for the Berlin of 15 years ago might try Tbilisi. Still plenty of weirdness, infrastructure upgraded and amenities becoming more available. As for weather, summers are quite hot but it is a civilized country so there is usually air conditioning. If you want winter, you can go visit it in the mountains a couple of hours away. Did I mention 5000-meter peaks, visible from downtown on good days? Yes, pls. Local food traditions are also much better than those of Berlin 15 years ago. The Russian Army, while still a potential hazard, came calling in 2008, and is unlikely to return for a couple of decades. For people who feel strongly about fonts, there is an alphabet that looks like Elvish. (Alternatively, there are a lot of Orthodox churches.) Georgians are also big into polyphony; otherwise, I couldn't say about things open or poly.
On the other other hand, after living there, Winter unpleasantness can be met with the question, "Is it Moscow? No? Ok, winning."
Offer void in Irkutsk.
openphony: the choir where you can sing in tune or not. The key is that you have to be completely honest about it.
376: I was going to say that after Moscow I am good to go unless the better half gets posted to Ulaan Baatar (which I actually kinda liked when we visited) or, god forbid, Astana.
Not sure that anyone here would make a case for Irkutsk.
378 I see regular postings for jobs in my field in Astana though I've come to suspect that it's the same job reposted every 6 months to a year.
I wasn't even willing to move to Arizona.
379: one hopes that the post keeps becoming vacant because librarians in Astana generally only take about six months before they succumb to the lure of the endless steppes and the clear wind and ride out of town, a falcon on their wrist and a song on their lips, never to be seen again. (Barry is some way towards this state of mind already, so would probably last about a week.)
Once I tried to figure out how the endless steppe was different from Nebraska-but-in-Asia. I think the key is all the barbed wire in Nebraska and its lack of yurts.
I love that "Richmond Costco" could refer to either BC or CA.
Hello!?! Richmond, Virginia is where it is at.
The real Richmond doesn't have a Costco- too snooty. There's one in Leeds, though.
383: That's the place with the building shaped like a pack of smokes, right?
JQA has a date next week. I think he took my offer to handle the profile/messaging as a challenge to his industriousness and skill at seduction, how dare I, he's gonna show me what's what. And that, my friends, is how you make someone else do your work for you.
386: Congratulations! Tom Sawyer would be impressed.
386: Do you need me to send my air cast or will she have her own? The doctor had me move to just the wrap yesterday, but I guess I should hang onto it in case that changes.
388 He'll probably just bring one of the extras we keep in the lockbox under the bed.
openphony: the choir where you can sing in tune or not.
A specialty of the Old Believers, IIRC, and also Golosa, the Russian choir in Chicago.
JQA's first Bumble date was adorably perfect (and randomly with another mom at my kid's school GO FIGURE), good job blog.