Let's Process Our Feelings II

Off Topic
962

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
I was tempted to post the pic but I could feel all of your eye rolls even though they hadn’t happened yet (a premonition, if you will) and also don’t think Hockey would be cool with it. So I got a grip on myself.

I just look at it in private now. [/quote]

For what it’s worth, I have some photos of the physique progress my girlfriend has made with her squats and deadlifts, and I contemplated sharing them on here. I refrained, for somewhat similar reasons.

I just look at those in private too.[/quote]

I expect Push will be along any time now to process his feelings about that particular refraining. :slight_smile:

963

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
Were you an athlete in high school?

I think there’s some strong juju in being a physically fit nerd, particularly if you were an athlete. Smart, curious people are a lot of fun if they’re socially adept. Adding in physical conditioning along with an adventurous/wild streak must have made you a top-notch prospect.[/quote]

I was a skinny distance runner, so while technically an athlete, that doesn’t really qualify.

I had a lot of girl friends in high school, because of band and French classes, but didn’t have any actual girlfriends my last couple years. And then college was effectively all guys.

Basically I had the social confidence and experience, but not the sexual confidence or experience. It took years before I was able to take something beyond friendship. Even among some friends later on, it was a weird contrast. I was absolutely comfortable talking with very attractive girls, but didn’t know how to make anything of it… whereas most guys I knew were intimidated by those same girls… however they were the ones who’d have girlfriends and get laid, and I wasn’t. Low T maybe, on my part? Sheltered childhood? Complete inexperience?

It’s funny, looking back on it, because I now realize how easy things would have been knowing what I know now. I’m not exactly complaining, considering I’m now involved with a smart, hot, doctor from a good family.

Back then, there was almost always been a hopeless case of a girl I’m interested in but who’s unattainable (due to distance or age), and those usually lasted for a year or more at a time. I don’t know whether I intentionally was using that to avoid trying to figure out how to date the girls I knew in real life or what, but I did lose out on a lot of opportunities because of it.

These days I’m less surprised, just because I’m older, more experienced, more knowledgeable, in better shape.

This stripper thing though does make me feel a bit uncomfortable though. In that environment, guys are supposed to fall in love with the girls, then keep coming back and spend all their savings on a girl that was just playing them the whole time. Maybe not always that extreme, but that’s the gist. This is just a weird role reversal.

I could be faulty in my reasoning here… but I actually feel like it’s much “safer” to hang out at a strip club, drink and talk to girls there than to do it elsewhere. I feel like with meeting girls at any other bar, there’s this assumption that it goes somewhere and leaves the bar, and if it doesn’t, that you’re just wasting her time. At the club, everything’s transient, there are no feelings to be hurt and ultimately it’s just business. Even if all I do is sit at the bar, drink, and chat with the bartenders and whoever decides to stop by, and pretty much just people watch. But now some girl happened to involve her feelings. Ugh.[/quote]

You say that it’s “safer” to hang out in strip clubs. Out of curiosity, does your gf know that you do this?

Strippers aren’t known to have the most stable personalities. Once you get past their games, for an Alpha Male, it’s like shooting fish in barrel.
I have a buddy whose goal was to make strippers cry. It pretty much worked every time we went to a club. Not nice, but very entertaining.

Sorry for the hijack. Just curious. Please continue.

964

[quote]mud lark wrote:
You say that it’s “safer” to hang out in strip clubs. Out of curiosity, does your gf know that you do this?

Strippers aren’t known to have the most stable personalities. Once you get past their games, for an Alpha Male, it’s like shooting fish in barrel.
I have a buddy whose goal was to make strippers cry. It pretty much worked every time we went to a club. Not nice, but very entertaining.

Sorry for the hijack. Just curious. Please continue.[/quote]

I’m not sure the concept of hijacks even exists in GAL.

My girlfriend knows. She’s even come with me a few times; those have been some good nights. There’s no secrecy or deception. And while you could say “what happens in the back stays in the back”, I’d never do anything to compromise that relationship.

(This is also mostly in the context of the last year being a long-distance relationship; I’m sure it would be a very different thing if I was skipping out on spending an evening with her.)

I’ve become friends with the staff who runs one of the places, so for me, it’s pretty much just a bar to go drink, hang out with friends, people watch and have some incredibly bizarre conversations. The drama can be pretty entertaining as long as you’re not a part of it.

And it’s actually fascinating to watch male/female dynamics in an environment where it’s so distilled, and even more so when it’s affected by drugs and alcohol.

Some people have reality TV, I have reality.

But what I’ve found is that most everything you learn about yourself and other people in that environment is also still present when you’re outside of that environment, it’s just a lot more subtle. There’s really a lot that can be learned.

965

[quote]Chushin wrote:
Exactly the same experience I had.

Minus the band and French, of course! :-)[/quote]

That’s actually pretty interesting.

966

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]mud lark wrote:
You say that it’s “safer” to hang out in strip clubs. Out of curiosity, does your gf know that you do this?

Strippers aren’t known to have the most stable personalities. Once you get past their games, for an Alpha Male, it’s like shooting fish in barrel.
I have a buddy whose goal was to make strippers cry. It pretty much worked every time we went to a club. Not nice, but very entertaining.

Sorry for the hijack. Just curious. Please continue.[/quote]

I’m not sure the concept of hijacks even exists in GAL.

My girlfriend knows. She’s even come with me a few times; those have been some good nights. There’s no secrecy or deception. And while you could say “what happens in the back stays in the back”, I’d never do anything to compromise that relationship.

(This is also mostly in the context of the last year being a long-distance relationship; I’m sure it would be a very different thing if I was skipping out on spending an evening with her.)

I’ve become friends with the staff who runs one of the places, so for me, it’s pretty much just a bar to go drink, hang out with friends, people watch and have some incredibly bizarre conversations. The drama can be pretty entertaining as long as you’re not a part of it.

And it’s actually fascinating to watch male/female dynamics in an environment where it’s so distilled, and even more so when it’s affected by drugs and alcohol.

Some people have reality TV, I have reality.

But what I’ve found is that most everything you learn about yourself and other people in that environment is also still present when you’re outside of that environment, it’s just a lot more subtle. There’s really a lot that can be learned.[/quote]

Thank you.

Other women might have jealousy issues. Your gf sounds pretty cool.

968

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:
Exactly the same experience I had.

Minus the band and French, of course! :-)[/quote]

That’s actually pretty interesting.[/quote]

How so?[/quote]

I just haven’t really met anyone with a similar experience.

Most guys I’ve known struggle with both social and sexual awkwardness, and the rest just get extremely flustered in social situations with attractive women. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit with how I phrased that, but that’s the basic idea.

969

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:
Exactly the same experience I had.

Minus the band and French, of course! :-)[/quote]

That’s actually pretty interesting.[/quote]

How so?[/quote]

I just haven’t really met anyone with a similar experience.

Most guys I’ve known struggle with both social and sexual awkwardness, and the rest just get extremely flustered in social situations with attractive women. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit with how I phrased that, but that’s the basic idea.[/quote]
This doesn’t surprise me.

971

[quote]IamMarqaos wrote:

[quote]andypotent wrote:
I was in foster care since 2-3 years old and got adopted at 5. I was left with a photo album of all my family and I reroute my roots just last Saturday and it turns out I have a sister who is 17… She’s been playing hockey for 7 years and is built more than the guys her age. I’m so proud.[/quote]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing. Have you had a chance to hang out with your sister?[/quote]

No mate I haven’t but I hope to travel down to visit after a trial at court on Friday. She was there when I met my mother for the first time but the whole family was there as well, I’m looking forward to some one to one time. You’re welcome, thanks for the reply.

972

I’m both amused and annoyed.

It would be really nice if women were better at using words to communicate and logic to reason.

I’m juggling about a million different things between stuff at work and home with the move, and the mere fact that I’m indifferent whether I show up a week earlier or later has apparently upset my girlfriend. She’s upset because she “wants me to want to come earlier”, and I’m really pretty indifferent. At this rate, she’ll be annoyed if I change my plans so I show up earlier (because I’m apparently not doing it because I want to); and she’ll be annoyed if I show up later (because apparently it’s not important I got there sooner).

Doesn’t matter that it’s going to cost me right around 8-9k out of pocket to move in the first place. Nor that the only reason I’m moving is because of her/us.

Meanwhile, I also learned that my very clear statement for the last several months of “I’m moving at the end of August” doesn’t actually mean “I’m moving at the end of August”. I thought “end of the month” was, you know, the end of the month… not a week and a half before the end of the month. Who knew?

After an actually stressful day of cleaning and preparing stuff so the movers could estimate my moving costs, followed by an equally stressful day of work, getting a bunch of stuff in place so we can do some massive scale testing of how our code affects system stability… this “argument” left me mostly just amused.

(Also, annoyingly, a good chunk of my moving costs are because of the weight of my home gym.)

Oh, I don’t actually care. Don’t get the wrong idea. Things will be fine. Just ranting for a minute.

973

[quote]LoRez wrote:
I’m both amused and annoyed.

It would be really nice if women were better at using words to communicate and logic to reason.

I’m juggling about a million different things between stuff at work and home with the move, and the mere fact that I’m indifferent whether I show up a week earlier or later has apparently upset my girlfriend. She’s upset because she “wants me to want to come earlier”, and I’m really pretty indifferent. At this rate, she’ll be annoyed if I change my plans so I show up earlier (because I’m apparently not doing it because I want to); and she’ll be annoyed if I show up later (because apparently it’s not important I got there sooner).

Doesn’t matter that it’s going to cost me right around 8-9k out of pocket to move in the first place. Nor that the only reason I’m moving is because of her/us.

Meanwhile, I also learned that my very clear statement for the last several months of “I’m moving at the end of August” doesn’t actually mean “I’m moving at the end of August”. I thought “end of the month” was, you know, the end of the month… not a week and a half before the end of the month. Who knew?

After an actually stressful day of cleaning and preparing stuff so the movers could estimate my moving costs, followed by an equally stressful day of work, getting a bunch of stuff in place so we can do some massive scale testing of how our code affects system stability… this “argument” left me mostly just amused.

(Also, annoyingly, a good chunk of my moving costs are because of the weight of my home gym.)

Oh, I don’t actually care. Don’t get the wrong idea. Things will be fine. Just ranting for a minute.[/quote]

This sounds exactly like what Hockey said when I asked what he thought our first fight would be like: “You’re going to get mad at me about something and I won’t know what you’re talking about, even though you’ll explain it to me very well. Finally I’ll be like “you’re upset about THAT?” [see attached pic for accompanying face] and that will make you even madder.”

I still laugh about it, especially the part about “even though you’ll explain it to me very well.” Yes, I’m sure I will! We still haven’t had that first argument. Is that weird? We’re going on ten months now.

Back to your fight, “end of August” seems to me like it could reasonably mean any time after the third week. I’m glad that she’s excited to have you.

So, when are you moving? lol

974

End of August = August 31

I would assume you’d use the weekend, which would be anywhere between August 29th and the 31st.

I know what you mean about the argument though. Don’t you love catch 22’s :slight_smile:

975

So I guess I’m moving on the 25th, and driving out on the 26th. (And yeah, the 29th-31st is actually what I meant…)

I finally identified why we don’t see eye to eye on the planning thing. It goes back to some work I did years ago on various planning methodologies, and ultimately adopted the “Critical Chain” approach as a basis. But I’d internalized things so much, I’d completely forgot about it until tonight. (It’s worth reading up on, it’s good stuff. There’s also a processor scheduling algorithm that’s similar, but I can’t remember it off the top of my head.) Critical chain project management - Wikipedia

In effect, she prefers to plan in a way that she knows what she’s doing when, where, how, and she’s made all those decisions far in advance. Whereas I prefer to plan in a way where I have maximum flexibility built in, and push off the final decisions until as late as possible (but they do get made in a timely enough fashion to manage risk). It’s actually not at all the same as procrastination.

The end result is that things often don’t go according to her plans and it’s a source of frustration when that happens… whereas very rarely are there any failures with my planning approach, and there’s alternative plans and room for improvisation. Some way or another, things always work out [because it was planned that way].

Except, to her, my approach is clearly inferior, despite the results. Trying to explain why I do what I do how I do has gone nowhere, so I just sent her a link to Wikipedia… lol. But really, this is a legitimate source of frustration for me, when there’s a passive aggressive negativeness from her when the ways I do things are different than the way she does things. I feel no need to change the way she does things; why does she feel a need to change/pressure-me-to-change?

–

Other than that, I actually had my first true computer-nerd night in years yesterday… staying at the office writing code until the sun rose, on a Friday night.

I enjoyed it.

I’ve reached a point where i’m fed up with the way email works in Outlook and Gmail, and the complete misuse of all that “suggestive search” and semantic analysis technologies (e.g., google, facebook, youtube). For all the actually useful stuff they could have done with that technology, they decided to use it to deliver ads, and nothing more. Anyway, I’m thinking of building some of that useful stuff. I’ve got pieces of it already, but we’ll see if it all ever gels into something usable.

For the first time in years, I finally feel like I’m doing something useful with my time again. Something changed, not quite sure what yet.

976

[quote]LoRez wrote:
I feel no need to change the way she does things; why does she feel a need to change/pressure-me-to-change?[/quote]

Lack of respect? Trust? A need for control?

Or, more charitably, because you’re the one making the plans, she might feel like she’s at the mercy of (what appears to her as) your on-the-fly, seat-of-the-pants decision making.

My ex was similar, so I’m probably overly sensitive to the scenario.

[quote]
Other than that, I actually had my first true computer-nerd night in years yesterday… staying at the office writing code until the sun rose, on a Friday night.

I enjoyed it.

I’ve reached a point where i’m fed up with the way email works in Outlook and Gmail, and the complete misuse of all that “suggestive search” and semantic analysis technologies (e.g., google, facebook, youtube). For all the actually useful stuff they could have done with that technology, they decided to use it to deliver ads, and nothing more. Anyway, I’m thinking of building some of that useful stuff. I’ve got pieces of it already, but we’ll see if it all ever gels into something usable.

For the first time in years, I finally feel like I’m doing something useful with my time again. Something changed, not quite sure what yet.[/quote]

What language do you program in?

977

[quote]LoRez wrote:
Other than that, I actually had my first true computer-nerd night in years yesterday… staying at the office writing code until the sun rose, on a Friday night.

I enjoyed it.

I’ve reached a point where i’m fed up with the way email works in Outlook and Gmail, and the complete misuse of all that “suggestive search” and semantic analysis technologies (e.g., google, facebook, youtube). For all the actually useful stuff they could have done with that technology, they decided to use it to deliver ads, and nothing more. Anyway, I’m thinking of building some of that useful stuff. I’ve got pieces of it already, but we’ll see if it all ever gels into something usable.

For the first time in years, I finally feel like I’m doing something useful with my time again. Something changed, not quite sure what yet.[/quote]
Awesome. I’ve actually had a similar idea lol.

978

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:
I feel no need to change the way she does things; why does she feel a need to change/pressure-me-to-change?[/quote]

Lack of respect? Trust? A need for control?

Or, more charitably, because you’re the one making the plans, she might feel like she’s at the mercy of (what appears to her as) your on-the-fly, seat-of-the-pants decision making.

My ex was similar, so I’m probably overly sensitive to the scenario.[/quote]

I could see that being the case if it were something like vacation plans which affected both of us.

In this case, it’s all the various pieces leading up to me moving, which affects just me. Stuff like contacting moving companies, getting things pulled together so they could make a decent estimate, talking to HR to see if we have any discounts I can take advantage of. Etc.

Every time I mentioned doing something or finishing something, I get a bunch of stuff in the vein of “I don’t know why you didn’t do that two months ago”, presented with the subtext of “why do you have to be so horrible at this stuff”. If I ever dig, it expands into “I don’t feel like I can rely on you”. And much more recently morphed into “I don’t know how we’re going to be able to live together.”

Any sort of logical discussion about things just goes nowhere… e.g., “did it get done?” “yes” “did it get done when I said it would be done?” “yes” “then what’s the problem?”. If I pursue that any further, reaching any sort of logical conclusion supported by actual facts, it turns into “why do you always have to be right?”

Obviously there’s something bugging her, but I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. I’ve tried the “look, see, it worked” demonstration way. I’ve tried the logical reasoning approach. I’ve tried patiently explaining things. I’ve tried actually teaching her the concepts (since maybe she just doesn’t have the concepts to understand).

No evidence, reasoning, education seems to make a difference.

Fortunately, while this is a recurring problem, it’s not a frequent problem. In person this usually goes a lot better, and can usually be resolved with some combination of sushi, ice cream and sex.

She feels something is true, therefore it is. Any evidence to the contrary is treated as a personal attack. Not really sure what else to do about it other than straight-up diversion.

C# mainly, almost 10 years doing that pretty exclusively.

A month ago, they announced they’re transitioning us to Java. It’s probably going to be close to the most significant change in my career.

It’s not quite, but like telling a chemist and saying “we’re short on astronomers, so we’re going to have you do that. You know science, so it should be easy for you”.

At least they’re doing it smart… same pay, same job titles, same management, same teams, and retraining us on their dime. Just a new language and slightly different company culture – even more laissez-faire and collaborative than where I am now.

–

I’m just a tiny bit frustrated. A lot of cards up in the air right now.

979

[quote]LoRez wrote:
In this case, it’s all the various pieces leading up to me moving, which affects just me. Stuff like contacting moving companies, getting things pulled together so they could make a decent estimate, talking to HR to see if we have any discounts I can take advantage of. Etc.

Every time I mentioned doing something or finishing something, I get a bunch of stuff in the vein of “I don’t know why you didn’t do that two months ago”, presented with the subtext of “why do you have to be so horrible at this stuff”. If I ever dig, it expands into “I don’t feel like I can rely on you”. And much more recently morphed into “I don’t know how we’re going to be able to live together.”[/quote]

That sounds like unnecessary blaming mixed with contempt with a subtle undercurrent of resentment. Probably should unpack that sooner rather than later. And you won’t be able to power your way through it with logic.

When did you learn c#, in school? How long before you were fluent in it?

980

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
When did you learn c#, in school? How long before you were fluent in it?[/quote]

No, I learned C# on-the-job. Fluency is all relative, and even more so since the language itself has evolved and expanded over time. Mainly, it’s adopted a number of additional paradigms over the years; e.g., the stuff I write now I wouldn’t have really understood 5 years ago, even though it’s the same language.

I was writing stuff for customers within a month or so of first learning it, and I’d probably say I had a pretty good level of competence within a year.

But… I was writing BASIC since 1989 (learned at home, from books), Visual Basic since 1996 (same), C++ since 2001 (learned in high school), then C# in 2005. With a couple minor languages in there… HTML, JavaScript, CSS, ActionScript (Flash), tcl/tk, SQL.

So, I mean, it’s all relative.