Conference quark::mennotes-v1

>    What happened to the first woman you dated after your
>    divorce/seperation? Did you marry her, was she a rebound?
    
    Ha! That's a good one! ;-)  I just went through a very "good" (i.e.
    relatively painless) divorce, and I've dated over a dozen women since 
    my ex left (and am having a great time, BTW ;-), and have absolutely 
    zero intention of marrying...   (Not even sure I remember the name of
    the first date...   OK, yes I do...)
    
    Now, before you say I'm a scum, I make it very clear to all of them
    that I am "not ready to be a one-woman man right now"...
    
    But marry the first date????   I can't even imagine it...
    
    Dave

        .0

        >>>What happened to the first woman you dated after your
        divorce/seperation? Did you marry her, was she a rebound?

        She became a hooker.  Why are you asking?  Marry her?  Hell no.
        Rebound?  She was more like a "dunk."
            
        Would really depend on how you define "dated."  I had women coming
        at me, inviting me up to their rooms, (apartments), cooking for me,
        buying me pizza's, walking me to local taverns and buying me
        drinks, flocking around me by the pool, baking cherry pies for me,
        (i love cherry pie), from women in the complex... up to and
        including the apartment manager.  Hey, ".0" are you getting this? 
        Want me to draw you a picture???

        I could say lots more... but I won't.  My fiancee may be reading
        this!  :^)  
    
        What do you think Andrew Dice Clay would have done with these
        women?

        I was once told that a man should take off about 5 years after a
        divorce before marrying again.  My five years has expired and I'll
        be saying, "I dddddddddd..do" again before too long.

        The last time we both said, "I do," was the only thing we ever
        agreed on!  

        I use to go down to the county clerk's office every six months to
        see it the marriage license had expired yet!

        "Take my wife.... please."  - HY

    re.2
    
    One of the things I have noticed since I started to date again
    is that women have gotten aggressive. It had been over 8 years
    since I went on a date, and I have since learned to accept their
    aggression :)  As for my first date, she and I are good friends
    today, but she would like to be more than that.

    -1
    
    I agree.  Man, times had certainly changed for me!
    

    For me, I have dated a couple of times. Nothing to write home about.
    Guess I am still carrying the personal baggage of past. As Dwight
    pointed out, 5 years on good behaivor will get you a pardon from the
    governer. I can see where, in dates of recient past, that they are
    carring more baggage than I, or in appearnce. Funny, in a book called
    "Letting Go" by Phil Roth goes a passage something like this:
    "A terrible struggle goes on in the hearts of men and women where pitty
    can be mistaken for love." It was in passage of a man who had married 
    a woman who was sick, with colds and stuff. And he was obsessed with 
    the paper chace of a masters or Dr in english lid. The time and effort
    put forth in his quest made her lonely, and made him tired with no time
    for her. But the two of them hung on. It has been a while since I read
    this book. It apears that many seem to follow this rule of
    companionship over basic common interest. Funny also in times gone by
    we did not have the option of picking a mate, it was picked for us. I
    wounder what would life be like now if that practice was happening.

    I've heard that it takes a year to get over every
    three to five years of a marriage (no matter how
    it ended).  I was married for 23 years, so it should
    take me from 5 to 7 years to get over it.  It is six
    and a half years since we separated.  And I have
    changed a lot (she did too).
    
    I've dated five women in that time.  I'm still
    involved with the fifth one.  With each one, I
    thought, "This could be forever."  And with each
    one, I learned that it wasn't.  Three times it was
    my decision to break it off, one time it was hers.
    
    What I have learned in these seven years is that 
    the quest is to find myself, not to find the 
    "right woman."  I'm thoroughly convinced that when 
    I have found myself, the right woman will appear.
    
    In the meantime, I stay involved with a woman.
    That's a curse and a blessing.  I presume it is
    the same for her.
    
    Wil

    My brother was married for 25 years, and now six months after his
    divorce he finds himself spending all his time with one woman. They
    routinely violate their rule about not talking about marriage. He has
    heard the conventional wisdom about waiting a year before being ready
    to make any commitments. His problem is, this woman is very appealing,
    and he wonders if adherence to conventional wisdom is appropriate if
    the "right woman" happens to be the first. He's admittedly still insane
    from the divorce; each passing month actually adds to his frustration
    and anger, as his ex- violates more and more of their agreements, legal
    and otherwise. The new SO is made all the more attractive, since she
    has none of the personality defects which is so infuriating to my
    brother.

The "conventional wisdom" says that "transitional relationships", typically
those first following a breakup, rarely last any significant length of time,
but that these relationships are also very helpful to the healing process.

You'll also hear people talking about "the rebound syndrome", where someone
will jump at the chance to enter a new relationship quickly, so as to feel
comfortable again.  These are rarely healthy relationships and after the
self-delusion wears off, things often turn sour.

				Steve

    The Spanish proverb is:
    
       "Man is the only animal that 
        stumbles twice on the same stone."
    
    One has to maintain a sense of humor about this...
    
    Do you suppose "man" in the proverb can also
    be translated as "woman"?
    
    Wil

    I don't see anything wrong with talking about marriage
    with a woman right after your divorce, as long as you
    pick a time that is some number of years away (say 1995),
    and then you precede all statements about marriage with,
    "In 1995, ..."  
    
    For safety's sake, you could pick some number of years,
    (say four years) and then precede all statements about
    marriage with "In four years, ..."  This has a built-in
    advantage over a fixed date, in that it keeps the
    remarriage date permanently out there in the future.  ;-)
    
    Wil
    

    Was divorced in 1985. Haven't dated anyone yet since the divorce.

.6>    What I have learned in these seven years is that 
.6>    the quest is to find myself, not to find the 
.6>    "right woman."  I'm thoroughly convinced that when 
.6>    I have found myself, the right woman will appear.
    
    Wil,

    How will you know when you have found yourself?  What signifies the end
    of the "quest"?  How will you (or anyone) know that you (they) have found 
    the "right woman"?

    After reading Henry David T., about living alone, about learning about
    your self stuff. It seems logical to take that time out. In one of my
    dates that started off rockey and ended on the rocks, it seemed that
    we were both carring baggage from our past. And all of the outside
    professional help doesn't help or didn't help. I write her once in a
    while hoping to try to get a new start, she seems busy. Guess its a
    dead deal. My ex ran from one set of arms to another, I will agree
    to the fact that it will not be long before she is on the run agian.
    I guess the only good piece of info to pass on is what Dr. Brown from
    "Back to the Future (2 or 3)" said that now that he has mastered
    time travel he would divote the rest of his life to one of the biggest
    misteries of all times,...... Women. :)
    
    George
    

    RE:  .12
    
    I'm not sure how I know when "I'm ready" and "this is the
    right woman."  I guess it will feel right.  
    
    But it will have to feel right after a few crises, after 
    I see whether I am still in the same old patterns or whether
    I've managed to really change  and whether we can work
    on the relationship during and after the crises.  I'm 
    assuming that we're good sailors in fair weather.  It's
    getting along in a storm that matters.  
    
    Which means living together for awhile.  Which means making
    a big investment,  and facing the chance that it may not 
    work out.  As Jody said in 605, when you're both giving 200%, 
    and you're out there on the edge, and you realize that it 
    isn't working...   yeccchhh.

    
    You never know who is right for you.  You can't know.  It's like going
    to Vegas and throwing dice.  It's a gamble.  Many people will crap out.
    
    Who ever invented marriage anyway?  It certainly wasn't a man.  Why
    would he?
    
    "OK honey, we'll get married, making all kinds of promises before God,
    and if it don't work out, heck.... we'll forget about the promises and
    you can have half of everything I own."

    My favorite Groucho Marx quote;
    
    "Women, you can't live with them and you can't live
    without them"

    Two divorced guys sitting on a bench:
    
    "Joe, I met this great woman and I'm
     planning to get married again."
    
    "Bob, I'm surprised.  Why would you want
     to do that again?"
    
    "You got a better idea?"
    
    "Sure, getting married again is doing it the
     hard way.  The easier way is to find a woman 
     that you don't like and buy her a house."
    

Maybe men didn't invent heterosexual marriage, but gay marriages 
are...ummm...interesting constructs.  First, there's no one pattern 
for a gay relationship, so you get to make it up as you go along.  
Second, a lot of male couples aren't monogamous.  I just got back from 
a gay softball tournament in Atlanta (won 1, lost 2, the rest was 
vacation), and I noticed at least two couples shopping around for a 
third for the night.  It's men creating relationships outside of the 
influence of women (kinda).

But then again, with cases like Martina Navratilova's, the courts 
might start applying the "half of everything you own" rule to gay 
relationships, as well.  Ugh.


							--Gerry

    Sounds like, agian, a loosing game Gerry. Sounds like the only thing to
    do  is to become a hermit in the woods and own a large shotgun to bag
    trespassers!:) As in a shallow grave in the back yard and the guest
    will be late for dinner.:)

    I thought that saying was:
    
    "Women: can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em..."
    
    I like the idea of mutual communal polygamy, myself ;-)
    
    Dave

.12> How will you know when you have found yourself?  What signifies the end
.12> of the "quest"?  How will you (or anyone) know that you (they) have found 
.12> the "right woman"?

I am presently reading (savoring) T.H. White's THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING	and am
going to use the following excerpt to answer my own questions from .12>.  I
hope you all can enjoy this as much as I have.  I see this as having a definite
relevance to this discussion...

-----------------------------------------------
Chapter 13 from the section THE ILL-MADE KNIGHT

    There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have 
until they are middle-aged.  It is something which cannot be taught to younger
people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant.
It has no rules.  Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of
life, a sense of balance develops.  You can't teach a baby to walk by explaining
the matter to her logically - she has to learn the strange poise of walking by
experience.  In some way like that, you cannot teach a young woman to have
knowledge of the world.  She has to be left to the experience of the years.  And
then, when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she
can do it.  She can go on living - not by principle, not by deduction, not by
knowledge of good and evil, but simply by a peculiar and shifting sense of
balance which defies each of these things often.  She no longer hopes to live by
seeking the truth - if women ever do hope this - but continues henceforth under
the guidance of a seventh sense.  Balance was the sixth sense, which she won
when she first learned to walk, and now she has the seventh one - knowledge of
the world.
    The slow discovery of the seventh sense, by which both men and women 
contrive to ride the waves of a world in which there is war, adultery, 
compromise, fear, stultification and hypocrisy - this discovery is not a matter
for triumph.  The baby, perhaps, cries out triumphantly: I have balance!  But
the seventh sense is recognized without a cry.  We only carry on with our
famous knowledge of the world, riding the queer waves in a habitual, petrifying
way, because we have reached a stage of deadlock in which we can think of 
nothing else to do.
    And at this stage we begin to forget that there ever was a time when we
lacked the seventh sense.  We begin to forget, as we go stolidly balancing 
along, that there could have been a time when young bodies flaming with the
impetus of life.  It is hardly consoling to remember such a feeling, and so it
deadens in our minds.
    But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, 
confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and
passionately concerned.  There was a time when it was of vital interest to us to
find out whether there was a God or not.  Obviously the existence or otherwise
of a future life must be of the very first importance to somebody who is going
to live her present one, because her manner of living it must hinge on the 
problem.  There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a 
question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped
to our heads.
    Further back,there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the
world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.
    All these problems and feelings fade away when we get the seventh sense.
Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the
commandments, without difficulty.  The seventh sense, indeed, slowly kills all
the other ones, so that there is no trouble about the commandments.  We cannot
see any more, or feel, or hear about them.  The bodies which we loved, the
truths which we sought, the Gods whom we questioned: we are deaf and blind to 
them now, safely and automatically balancing along toward the inevitable grave,
under the protection of our last sense.  "Thank God for the aged," sings the 
poet:
      Thank God for the aged
      And for age itself, and illness and the grave.
      When we are old and ill, and particularly in the coffin,
      It is no trouble to behave.

    This question intriques me in that typically men will remarry faster
    than women.  Any insight?

Re: .20

That was comedian Steven Wright's version.

		Steve

>    This question intriques me in that typically men will remarry faster
>    than women.  Any insight?
        
        What proportion  of  men  are competent in the kitchen, able to
        wash and press their clothing, keep the house clean and the bed
        changed and made up regularly?  I don't know, but it could have
        something to do with it...
        
        

    
    
    If that's all there is too it, chances are that I'll never have a
    domestic need for a wife. :-)
    
    TC
    

>    This question intriques me in that typically men will remarry faster
>    than women.  Any insight?

Ellen Goodman said, "Women mourn and men replace."  I understand that 
this is overly simplified, but I continually see a lot of truth in it.


							--Gerry

re: .24

 So men remarry to get a housekeeper? Seems pretty silly to me. I think it has
more to do with emotional needs than domestic ones, myself.

 The Doctah

    re: .26
    
    I'd like to endorse Gerry's statement.
    
    Staying in the grief of the end of a relationship means
    dealing with the feelings and that is damn hard work for
    men (me) to do, but very rewarding.  It's hard to believe
    that it is rewarding when in it, but it is indispensable
    to moving on without the baggage.
    
    Putting feelings in a chest, locking it up and throwing
    away the key (sometimes called "just putting it behind
    you"), means that you drag around one (or more!) big heavy
    chests.
    
    (This applies to all endings of course, not just relationships.
    Ending with a job, ending with a home, ending with a car,
    ending with a worn out, but favorite, article of clothing, etc.)
    
    Wil
    
    One could make a case that the reason that men have more
    muscle mass, and are generally bigger than women is because
    they have more grief that they carry around with them and
    never work through.  They never figure out to lighten the
    load.  Are they bigger because they carry more, or do they
    carry more because they are bigger?  (And for those who
    carry more fat than they want:  what does that fat represent?
    It may not be a simple case of fat cells...)

    
    Ref .28
    
    Not so easy to do where kids are concerned in the relationship.
    Visiting etc. still means you're exposed to a lot more contact, than
    simply keeping in touch.
    
    Steve

    Personally, I'm a very optomistic person, and when faced with the
    choice of either wallowing in self-pity, making desparate attempts to
    repair an unrepairable breakup, and generally feeling sorry myself; or
    swallowing my pride, learning from my mistakes, looking at the positive
    aspects, and moving on with my life...
    
    
    I chose to date and party like crazy in celebration of my new-found
    freedom! :-)
    
    Dave               

    Men tend to marry women that have some charms of their moms, and women
    tend to marry men that have their dads charms. And some tend to marry
    because they are lonely, want to get out of the house, want someone to
    take care of them, or be taken care of and some actually marry like in
    movies and other fairy tales. What drives me?? Don't know any more.
    Too hard to tell the forest from the trees. :) 
    
    George