In the book I was recently reading, a man was forced to choose between the life of his daughter and that of his wife. It made me think – if, by some horrible horrible circumstance, I was forced to choose between the life of my (future) husband and my (future) child and I had less than one minute to do it, which would I pick?

I guess I can’t really speak with complete certainty as I do not have a husband, nor a child. In fact, I don’t even particularly want a child unless it involves adoption. So this is how I feel I would respond at this time. If (Life forbid) this actually happened, I’m not making any guarantees!

Right now, I definitely say I would choose the life of my husband. I mean – this is a life partner we’re talking about here. How would I possibly be able to choose the life of my child over that of my partner? I don’t think I could ever be as connected to a child as I would be to the man I chose to spend my life with.

First of all, we have to get one thing clear. There are so many types of online dating and online relationships that the actual term ‘online dating’ cannot possibly encompass one thing and one thing only. Let’s see just how many types of internet relationships we can define.

1. Online to Real Life

These are the regular dating site relationships. People introduce themselves to each other on the internet and things move to a real life date pretty quickly. In my opinion, these types of online relationships have a fair chance of working out. After all, the relationship doesn’t stay on the internet for long and soon, the hopefully happy couple is strolling on the real life beach with a real life bottle of champagne in hand, holding their real life hands and singing real life happy songs of love and romance (just describing the ideal situation here, guys ;) ).

I, for one, could see myself meeting a boyfriend online. However, I’d be less hesitant if I met him on a well known dating site rather than something like myspace…with a dating site, you know that both of you are interested in a relationship that is not strictly platonic. I imagine this would make the meeting a bit more comfortable as you don’t have to worry so much about where you stand. It’s a date and both people know it. (And regardless of what PUAs may say, dates are good and date does not have to mean that the guy has to dish out his wallet).

Online to Real Life dating receives 4 steaming soup mugs out of 5 in my book.

2. Mail Order Bride

I say ‘bride’, but I guess it could very much be a ‘groom’ as well. People born in the U.S., Australia, Canada, etc. or those living there from a very early age take their way of life for granted. Meanwhile, overseas, men and women from less fortunate countires are scrambling for a chance at that Green Card or Australian citizenship. They’re willing to do just about anything for a taste of the good ol’ U.S. of A. Including marrying a rich old alcoholic.Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely positive that not all women and men who marry people in countries that are better off than their own after meeting them on “MOB” dating sites are after that citizenship. But boy, I bet you many of them are.

Heck, here’s an example: a guy on mASF (a seduction community forum that gives you the best examples of the worst aspects of PU) openly admits marrying this woman in Australia (I think it’s Australia, anyway) just to get his citizenship and move there. The wife is a crazy person and he is using her only to get his citizenship or permanent residence. He admits to having every intention of sleeping around on her and she is carrying his baby. The relationship is dysfunctional on so many levels. The woman is a nut and the man is an abusive freak (apparently he gave her a black eye once or something). And yet they stay together – her because she thinks he loves her and because she is a needy lunatic and him for his citizenship.

But it isn’t only that – have you ever stopped to think about why an American man would want to sign up to one of those web sites advertising “Sexy Russian Women”? Why? If you can’t get a date in real life, there are plenty of dating sites out there for you to meet someone in your own country. Heck, in your own city. Heck, even in your own zip code. Why would a man be so eager to pay thousands of dollars in visiting fees (cause you know, in Ukraine, it’s basically impossible for a single woman to get a visa to the U.S. to visit a partner whom she is not married to – the partner has to come to her), gifts, letters, actual registrations to these web sites and e-mail addresses? Is it because he just loves Ukrainian women so much? Is it because he despises the attitudes of women in his own country? Because he absolutely adores Russian or Ukrainian or some other faraway country’s culture and way of life and wants to share his life with a woman of Russian descent? Or could it be because he can’t get anyone in his own country, heard myths about how compliant and great and caring Russian women always are, or just wants a sex slave or something?

I do not have a good feeling abot this Mail Order Bride business. Sure, a lot of relationships like these have worked out. Russian woman marries American dude with beer gut whose most attractive quality is his checkbook and they live happily ever after. Just kidding (sort of). Anyway, I’ve heard of these kinds of relationships that actually involve caring and love.But if I was a man looking for a life partner – would I really believe that all these women who are lining up for me want is love and compassion? That them looking for a man who is specifically in the U.S., Canada, or some other such country has nothing to do with finding an easy peasy life for themselves in a country that doesn’t stink quite as badly? No.

And if I was still living in Ukraine, would I really believe that a man sending me long ass letters in English or some crap form of Russian that I can’t decipher is a man of high quality, who is attractive and appealing to women? Honey, if he was as highly qualified as I like a man to be, he wouldn’t be writing letters (probably dozens of identical letters with the names of the womanchanged in each one, by the way), to women on the other side of the world whom he has never even met.

Then again, I guess they could be doing it for the adventure, excitement, and thrill of fusing together with a partner of another culture. Despite the suspicious nature of the whole business, the Mail Order Bride way of online dating gets 2 out of 5 soup mugs from me.

3. Long Distance Relationships

So you dated in real life and one of you had to move for one reason or another. Maybe it’s in another state, maybe it’s in another country, maybe it’s on another continent. Instead of giving up on your happy rainbowy relationship, you decide to keep dating – using the internet and the phone as your main means of communication. You promise to send e-mails, talk on MSN, and call each other every day, with the hope – nay, knowledge – that you will one day be reunited, get married, and have superbabies. Because your love is so strong.

I wish it always worked this way. And I have faith (and evidence) that this actually happens! Sometimes. There is no way to know if your relationship will last. Who knows, maybe you’ll meet a dashing young man who just happened to move onto your street and your boyfriend (who is now in South Africa or some other such place) will meet a nice foreign girl whom he just falls head over heels with. But we hope that this doesn’t happen. And maybe it won’t.

When deciding to go ahead with a long distance relationship, please, don’t waste anyone’s time. If you’re not head over heels in love with each other, why bother? Do you really think that the relationship can still have potential to be that once in a lifetime true love while your partner is miles and miles and miles away if you don’t feel that way already? Doubt it. Make a clean break.

But what about if two people are really, really, really convinced that they are meant to be together? Call me naive, but I believe in this type of love. I believe it happens. Maybe a long distance relationship, based primarily on online and phone interaction can work in this case. In the end, I guess you’ll never know until you try. Relationships take effort and, like it or not, work, to be successful. And I definitely think that sufficient (and then some) effort should be put in to stay together or move together before resorting to long distance dating in the first place.

I don’t believe in the “Women will cheat. They WILL. It’s how they’re ‘programmed’” bullcrap that some PUAs believe. Women have brains and functioning thought processes. We don’t have to be ruled by our instincts and can certainly remain devoted and loyal to the man we care about.

I would definitely be willing to have a long distance relationship with the right person.

Becacuse I have faith that long distance relationships can and do work, but are just as (if not more) likely to end in tears, I’m giving Long Distance Relationships 3 out of 5 steamy soup mugs.

4. Strictly Online

Actually I didn’t know what to even call this one, so ‘Strictly Online’ it is. I think that these relationships just plain suck. You meet online, date online, and stay online. These relationships could also involve long distances. The difference between #3 and #4 is that with Online Purism, you never dated in person before having to separate. Usually these relationships involve dreams of meeting one day, starting a family, etc. etc. It can even get to the point of one person proposing to the other online – before ever even seeing their face in real life. Some people may be able to deal with the lack of physical affection, but I don’t think I can. Not when I’ve never even gotten a chance to see the person…well…in person. This is different from regular long distance relationships because really, all you have to remember your partner by is pixels and maybe phone conversations.

This might work out for some people. But for others, relationships based solely on the internet are just too impersonal no matter how much they might want it to work. Strictly Onlinerelationships get 1 out of 5 steamy soup mugs.

I believe that online dating really can be successful whether you’re looking for a long term relationship or a fling. But, of course, everyone must be careful when interacting with strangers on the internet. You never really know who’s on the other end of the chat window.

After the JB shift tonight, the supervisor (who is awesome) was dropping me off at home. It was quite a long way from Mandurah to Cockburn, so we had a chance to talk. She lives with her boyfriend and she was absolutely shocked to find out that after a year and 3 months of dating, HHRay and I haven’t said ‘I love you’ to each other. She’s been dating her boyfriend for less than a year and they already live together and have plans to buy a house in the country in the upcoming future.

I guess after mostly hanging out with people who are 2 and sometimes even 3 years younger than me (people from school), I was a bit clueless about the goings on of people who are my age. And now that I work with girls who are my age and in their early 20s, it’s kind of hit me…wow…most of them have been with their boyfriends for ages and there are only a couple of single girls in the whole group. Several live with their other halves and are ridiculously happy and even have plans for marriage! These girls are my age and in one case even a year younger!

It makes me remember that I’m not too young for a serious, committed relationship and thinking about something bigger, that there is nothing wrong with wanting something more at my age. I’m happy right now, but I’m not sure for how much longer I’ll be able to stay in the ‘whatever happens happens, one day we’ll break up because we’re too young’ stage in my relationship. After a while, you kind of want to know if it’s going anywhere or not. I’m sure not everyone feels like this at this age, but hanging out with these girls and getting to know them and their relationships let me know that there are people who do.

I didn’t know who sang this song when I first heard it and HHRay refused to tell me (bastard :P), but I found it and am I glad I did!

I just don’t understand some people. I was recently reading a field report and the author stated explicitly that he was going out with the intention of making the woman he sarged fall in love with him. What is the point of this? Does he like hurting people? Why would you want to come up to a woman whom you’ve never spoken to before, not even knowing if you’d like her, and make her fall in love with you? What’s going to happen after you leave, if you do succeed? Are you just going to forget about her and go after more women while she suffers from withdrawal and waits for you to magically show up again? Or do these people not even care about anyone but themselves? I mean come on, how much of an insensitive bastard can one be?

Everyone should read this post. It is about 50 fighting pit bulls who were rescued from Michael Vick’s kennel estate.

“Less than six months after his rescue, Hector is one of the first to find himself living life as a “pet”; sharing a home with two humans and three other dogs. He’s given to raiding one of his human companion’s underwear drawer and gallops around the house with the other dogs, engaging in all their games without incident.

His new owners have discovered he loves to snuggle his blanket at bedtime, has a peanut butter fetish, is mesmerized by classical music and whimpers with joy when he is hugged.”

The friend zone is such a self-inhibiting belief. rAFCs and PUAs constantly talk of being in the ‘friend zone’, of breaking out of the friend zone, of being careful not to go into the friend zone. There’s no such thing as the friend zone. There is only attraction and the lackthereof.

A girl doesn’t say ‘let’s just be friends’ because she’s too ‘used’ to you as a friend and can’t see you as anything more. She says it because friendship is a good excuse to give someone to whom you’re not attracted to. It’s easy because, in her mind, she’s not blatantly turning you down, but saying that she wants to keep some kind of relations going with you – just not the kind you want.

I’ve read an unbelievable amount of FRs where the guy talks about how he escalated with a good female friend, everything was going great, and at the perfect time…he didn’t pull the trigger because, as he described it, being in the friend zone caused him to hesitate (this isn’t about any particular FR, but about ALL of them).

If this same woman was someone that he just met that night, do you think he’d worry so much? No. Do you think he’d go for it? Of course. The situation would be the same, it’s the guy’s mindset that would be different. And do you think she’d go along? Yes, if he built attraction as he said he did! Nothing changes if this is someone who’s your friend. You build attraction – you escalate. You don’t build attraction – you don’t escalate (successfully, anyway). Whether you’ve known her for a year or a minute doesn’t matter. Just build attraction the same way you’d build attraction if it were anyone else. In fact, being her friend often gives you advantages as depending on the level of friendship, you have more of her trust than a random stranger. I wish men would stop putting up barriers for themselves.

Hairspray is such a feel-good movie. I don’t care what anyone in the PU community says – I love mushy love stories. And I believe that the kind of love that is portrayed in them does exist. Everyone’s just too busy worrying about being too ‘beta’ and AFCish to experience it. I may be hurt a thousand times before I find it, but when I do, it’ll be worth it.

Anyway, Hairspray is funny, inspiring, and fuzzy all at the same time. Its main themes and issues include segregation and conformity. Basically, popular guy with a shallow blonde girlfriend meets kind overweight girl, dumps the blondie and is happy. Also, black guy meets white girl, they fall in love and live happily ever after. Plus there’s protests and marching in between (the movie is set in the 60s).

In the end, integration and happy couples sing and dance. Oh and John Travolta did an excellent job. He/she was hilarious :)

Hearts that don’t love can’t be broken
A dream stays a dream if not woken
If you never bleed then you won’t understand
Come pick the red roses with your bare hands

- Delta Goodrem – Bare Hands

I absolutely love this song. It makes me think about people who are in denial about love because they’re afraid to let themselves feel it for one reason or another. In the end, I think it’s better to take a chance and throw caution to the wind than to miss out because you’re scared. It’s easier said than done, I would know >.<. In fact, I feel very hypocritical writing this. But it’s my blog so stuff it.

Love takes on a different definition for each person.  To me, love means wanting to spend the rest of your life with a person and caring about their happiness as much as, if not more, as you care about your own. It means not caring about the statistics of how many relationships actually last and trusting a person with everything you have.  Some people don’t believe in love and some people believe in it to an extent. I don’t think love has extents. I might be naive, but who really cares, right? People who are able to love can lead such emotionally fulfilling lives. I don’t think that a person you love is meant to fill a void in your life when you meet him or her – but a person you love creates a void if they disappear. We may ‘move on’ or ‘get over it’, but the void will never close up completely. There will always be a part of us that we can never give away to anyone else. And thinking about it, a little part of me is taken by someone other than the person I used to say I loved.