Dating games without frontiers

Gee, I'm mid-30s and single (really, truly single, not that "divorced-single" crap) - and I've never ever fornicated/"flung about".

Could *that* be the problem for *me*? Not letting'em ever get a peek?

We're not all idiot losers who find ourselves "old" and unmarried.

And I'd rather be that than young & married, several kids, then divorced by 43. Cuz you were too stupid (um, whose "brains"?) to think properly about what your mate would be like and what you really want and need.

"I did that too. Have to confess that I've often wondered if a hot single guy is available then there must be something not right with him, but thankfully, I have realized that that's not always true and it goes both ways. I'm free, others are as well, and people are in different phases of life all the time-so it's always good to keep an open mind."

(warning: nothing is meant to sound vain or conceited in this post)

The crazy thing is it seems esp. when you're young - people don't want to approach you cuz you "must be taken" or at least "out of their league" for being good-looking.

When you're older, the former may apply but it's also "what's wrong w/you that you've never been married" - corollary "you must be nuts/bitchy/scared of commitment".

Combine this w/demanding important things (and sometimes not so important) like politics, religion, morals and interests in common, and here we are 35+ and unmarried.

And this goes for every1, male and female.

"One rule to remember ladies is if you already have a boyfriend and if you meet another guy please somehow work that fact into the conversation within the 1st 2 minutes. If you don't we are wasting our time and if you bring it up later we think you are just lying to get rid of us."

Here's a clue for every1 - BOYFRIEND x= HUSBAND.

You are still free to hit on and ask out any1 w/a boyfriend. It's not a true commitment. Don't miss out on opportunities just cuz of that! (This goes for both sexes, BTW)

I think this is 1 of the great detriments of the sexual revolution - we tossed out marriage but NONETHELESS cling to this idea that "commitment" must exist at all stages of life or dating. It's like a substitute for marriage - to make it seem all important to be "true" to some girl/boyfriend. Even worse is the tied-down psuedo-commitment of "living together" - now you *really* have trouble "playing the field" and checking out all the best possibilities! You limited your choices hugely by being stuck on this "must be faithful to boy/girlfriend" even when you're 16!

The *goal* should be life-long real commitment in marriage to the *best* person you could find. Not having a date and sticking to them, missing great myriad opportunities to FIND the *best* match, just to say you are good at "commitment" by sticking to the 1st person who sort of gets along w/you. (Sex has added to this mass confusion and wrong-headed commitment.) Don't miss the boat! Your true love may have already passed you by cuz you were shacking up w/some pretender and didn't want to "cheat"!

Bottom line: It ain't cheatin' if you ain't married!

Forgive me for saying this, but I don't think you're ready to have kids yet. When you have a baby, your nightlife will consist of colic, teething, sleeplessness, and trying to get some chores done before you crawl into bed and start all over the next day. Then there's potty training and the terrible twos. My grandaughter is two, and she wears out my nine yr old. Next comes all the school functions and homework. Get the picture? It's not that bleak, but it sure is a full time job.

I don't blame you for not wanting to commute. I thought that perhaps there were trains into the city in your area. Here in CA, we have trains, but for most people it doesn't work. When my now ex, the kids, and me moved to the desert and bought a house, he did 3 hrs on the road both ways, until he was transferred. There were times that he would get home, eat and go to bed...then up again at 3 am. That's what you have to do to pay the bills. I don't recommend it, but sometimes you have to do things you don't like for the good of the family. My son in law spends approximately 300.00 a month driving to work. They don't have kids yet, but they're moving closer to his job where it will end up saving them money, as apposed to the insane rents down here.

You and your wife are young and newly married, and you still want to have fun. The minute you have your first baby, some internal switch will click and you'll both be yearning for suburbia and rural areas. You'll see ;-)

I'd have to agree w/you (altho I think they were clear they didn't really want to have children yet).

Re: trains. There are trains into DC - VA had the VRE, and MD has the MARC. However, there are only so many lines, so you have to be near them for it to be convenient. The Metro in DC is great but basically all points it hits are still high-priced places (or dangerous!).

Frankly, I hate the time wasted on commutes. Sure, sometimes you have to sacrifice (in this case, you're talking "for family") - but if you're only home late in the evenings and exhausted just from work + commute time, isn't that sort of neglecting your family? Shouldn't you have time for them? Both to do home chores and to be w/the children? Which is the sacrifice?

So if they *had* kids, I can't blame them for wanting to be close for that reason, either. Never seeing Daddy - and geez, often Mommy too - stinks.

I think you have pretty much nailed it perfectly. I have tried to keep an open mind about various things lately (as you have mentioned, politics, religion, interests in common), but sometimes find myself still too rigid in some areas. No one person can be all things and sometimes when you meet someone say (for example), "wow, she is a good conservative Republican Catholic" you find out not only may it not be true, but there are others which make a relationship non-conducive from the start, and perhaps the Protestant next door is really the one to be interested in. (Sorry for rambling).

She is even one of the few mainstream authors I've seen who also points out the economic advantages of homeschooling (it frees the family from having to live in a "good school district," with accompanying premium-price housing.)

Meaningless, given the strong correlation between "good school district" and other requirements (low crime rate, good infrastructure, etc) and the resulting rock-bottom criterion (expectation of hefty increases in property values).

Actually I think you misunderstood. I think those things are vitally important (it's a matter of degree even w/in the subject, tho) and must be adhered to. Because I know me. I'll get mad at moderates not to mention leftists. I'll never get along culturally w/some1 who says they're non-Christian. Etc. "Icing" some people call interests, but I think it's very important. I don't believe in opposites attract - the very "opposite" in fact. I have to have something to tie me to the man so we can be truly intimate - brain-wise as well as everything else. It's a turn-on to boot to share things. (I think I may have found 1 now, but we'll see for sure.)

Maybe you're talking *really* rigid - but for me, all I say is "Christian", eg. Not Lutheran, but Catholic, LDS, etc. Maybe you're talking perfect political unison. Well we all disagree on a point or 2. He doesn't need to be perfectly in "Republican" unison w/me. Just 90%! And interests - I have many, but all I ask is maybe 2. Again, cuz I know me. I'll get bored and even frustrated.

These days the only difference between "good" and "bad" school districts is.....income levels and criminal activity(and concommitant tendency for *completely* out of control classrooms).

I lived all my life in a "good" school district - realtors (which my mom also had a stint as) are now hawking it as 1 of the best in the nation. My mother is/was a teacher - primarily in this district. I went to school here. My nieces and nephew go/went to school here. I know the truth. It's just as much nonsense as any other public-pablum "education". It's garbage. The difference to the city (where my mother has also worked) is that we have high-end income levels and the families are together and sort of expect a) good behavior (relatively) and b) learning effort.

Just because our kids here get "good grades" doesn't mean they're *learning* anything great. They're not. It's a bunch of feel-good baby propaganda garbage in this overrated district just like they give the city students. The kids are just under better self-control. It's a smoke&mirrors effect that alot of people buy hook-line-sinker.

These days the only difference between "good" and "bad" school districts is.....income levels and criminal activity

That's what I said in the previous message. The "advantage" proposed by the author I was critiquing would exist if one could find a house in a neighborhood with low crime, well-maintained infrastructure, and otherwise pleasant surroundings, but with a discounted price because of poor (in either sense of the term) local schools. One rarely, if ever, finds such a thing.

Yes, I think I misunderstood you a little and probably presented my posting in a wrong light (or just flat out presented wrong, LOL). I agree with you on the Christian portion, being a convert to Catholicism I know the traditions of some Protestant churches through experience and therefore can fit comfortably in a relationship with another denomination. An agnostic, atheist or a different religion would not work for me though. Similarly, I have to agree with a notion I heard best explained by Dennis Prager, and that is that liberals and conservatives do not make compatible mates. Opposites certainly don't attract in that regard. Finally, as far as interests, I agree with you that there needs to be a few. I know that I have some quirky interests that probably no one would have, and that is a part of my "charm", LOL. Similarly, I have always found the quirks in a woman I may be intereted in to be a mystery worth exploring and often amusing.

I checked out the sample pages from the book you recommended. There are just some people who do not understand what happens when someone loses their job these days. It all falls apart. There is a poster here(not on this thread) who seems to believe that anyone who files bk should be burned at the stake. Sometimes you have no alternative.

Americans are being increasingly penalized for having children. My plan is to homeschool my youngest, and work from home. We'll see. I get child support and alimony, but I need to supplement this. This great school district that we're in, and it is top ranked, has completely taken away all my daughter's enthusiasm for learning. They will hold her back a grade also. I'm in the middle of probating my mom's estate, so as soon as that's finished we can get out of this insanity, and move back to the desert. The housing prices are climbing in that neck of the woods, and I want to invest in some land and build a house...if I can. No comment about the stupid probate laws. I also know that the housing market in Southern California is going to crash soon.

I'm a tightwad, but that doesn't cut it anymore.

He wasn't into the father thing. The older girls were 9 and 6 at the time, and the boy was a baby. We actually liked him being gone for most of the time.

I'm talking about normal families, however. My father was a mailman, and he took on extra routes, parcel post, whatever to make extra money. I remember one Christmas eve, sitting on the front steps waiting for him to come home. He and I still had quality time. I helped him do yard chores, passed him tools when he was working on the car. That is imo, quality time.

This is a different day and age. There are no such things as starter homes. I've lived in the ghetto, but not many people can deal with those kinds of neighborhoods. You'd be surprised, though...most of the people there are nice. Some people can't make themselves downsize. They feel entitled to all the bling bling they see on TV. I don't have a cell phone, beeper, or cable TV. I buy day old bread. I'm tighter than the bark on a tree, but it's hard.

St. Louis is full of neighborhoods that have great houses, relatively low prices (even for the Midwest), and relatively low crime, yet the public schools in some of those districts are not good. In our metro area, it's because there are so many private schools (and so many homeschoolers in some geographic regions), which tend to siphon off the "better" students. In addition, there are many neighborhoods with intermediate quality schools - not considered all that great - but the houses are far cheaper relative to the five or so districts considered to be extremely good.

The competition for *private* schools is even greater. The Catholic K-8 schools vary widely in quality out in the county (away from the inner city), and those that are considered very high quality have caused the real estate in those areas to be more expensive for *comparable* houses, comparable neighborhoods, same public school districts. In the city of St. Louis, some parishes are considered very desirable over others as well, and these areas have premium housing costs as well. Meanwhile, the public schools are almost all minority and in very bad shape, yet these particular *parishes* have good quality but expensive houses, as well as low crime *within the parish.*

Homeschoolers are well aware of this, too. It's very possible to buy a house in a neighborhood with "bad schools" and low crime - the resulting combination makes it so that homeschool families are able to have a mother at home.

Americans are being increasingly penalized for having children. My plan is to homeschool my youngest, and work from home. We'll see. I get child support and alimony, but I need to supplement this. This great school district that we're in, and it is top ranked, has completely taken away all my daughter's enthusiasm for learning. They will hold her back a grade also.

I agree that Americans are penalized for having kids. It's no coincidence that many homeschool families are large, because the #1 biggest detractor - having a big mortgage payment - isn't usually the case when people buy a cheaper house in a district that is perceived as "worse."

I hear what you're saying about your daughter's loss of interest in learning. Just because a school district is perceived as "good" doesn't mean that it really is, or that a particular child will like it there. I probably should have been clearer on that point: *perception* plays a big role in this whole real estate price thing. But it makes no sense to pretend that the perceptions aren't out there, not with an investment as big as a house.

Since you are thinking of moving anyway, have you thought about moving outside of CA? Most of the country is *way* cheaper.

Have you also considered homeschooling the child who's having a bad time in school? It doesn't work for everyone, but it's a thought.

My plan is to go out farther into the Mojave Desert where it is less populated. Right now, land is reasonable. There is electricity and phone service, but you're looking at septic tanks and propane gas. I've never lived outside of CA, but I've thought about moving. I would have to go to court and request permission to move, because it would effect their father's visitation. Too much hassle, plus my second oldest is expecting another baby around Christmas.

I've had inquiries about this house, and we haven't gotten anywhere near auctioning it off. One realtor didn't care what kind of shape this place is in, he just wants his kids in this school district. I didn't bother telling him that this is probably the last school district he'd want his kids to attend. They developed an old oil field and planted 20 or so houses on it. We were overrun with possums and racoons last spring, because their habitat was destroyed.

The goal as reported in the local birdcage liner, is to get as many kids as possible in the schools...for more revenue, of course. The houses are not on their own land, and there isn't enough room for a clothesline. Prices are starting from 600k.

I plan on homeschooling my youngest. I hope things work out so that I can.

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