Savage Love May 7, 2019 at 4:00 pm

Best Wishes

Joe Newton

Comments

217

@harriet, I have no idea how websites work but that's not what the LW talked about. She said she looked at staff listings. Schools do it differently, but most have teaching staff listed by department and that includes everyone teaching classes- tenured profs or full time profs or part time staff, etc. Most teachers on most campuses have no hope of ever getting tenure and something like half of them are not even full time or long term employees. I'm sure this changes by department and by school and by region, like everything else, but if we are going to make assumptions about someone's life details based on averages (which is wrongheaded in the first place but why not) then chances are highly unlikely that this guy is in a prestigious or well remunerated position since most teachers on the college level are not. But even if they are among the more secure and better paid, they are earning about as much as the same top tier employees in various vocational skilled labor jobs I mentioned and less than other wide professional industries (like tech or medicine) or even many small business owners (if you insist on talking about small towns). I'm just pushing back against the ludicrous assumption that a teacher at a university is somehow a good catch due to his prestige and money. He might be a good catch for a million other reasons, including his education and the other opportunities that you get in academia, but remuneration and prestige is not among them. Also as much as urban liberals love to think of small towns as full of struggling country bumpkins, it's not true that small town is synonymous with poor nor that it's considered wealthy or special to be able to afford a house. This is actually the opposite in a city where it is indeed the wealthiest only who can afford houses these days, all this irrelevant to the letter anyway since she never said they were in a small town.

218

@Harriet: "Dan presumably engages in email/messaging exchange with as many of his correspondents as he can, and tries to find out more about their situations. Often, it seems that would be the better course than just opining or shooting from the hip--but it isn't available to us."

I really wish that Dan would chime in and either confirm or deny this. It's my general impression that he doesn't correspond with letter writers much if at all, and when he does, he includes the correspondence.

219

That is so sad to hear nocute. I donā€™t know the play here for Uni positions, when I was there it was so different to what you describe. How to control a culture, dumb it down.
Well said EmmaLiz @213. Nice one.

220

@219: Lava, it's all about capitalism run amok and it is indeed sad. It was not nearly as bad as this when you were a college student, but even when more faculty were full-time tenured or tenure-line positions, they didn't pay huge salaries, although I would disagree with EmmaLiz and say it's still considered a prestigious job. The general public has no idea how poorly paid faculty generally are.

221

"In practice, I wouldn't say, though, that it's the m.o. of the commenters just to give thumbs-ups or thumbs-down to the lw s' suggestions e.g. 'should I contact this guy?' People don't just say, 'that is a spectacularly bad idea!'. They try to take into account the features of the situation (that they know of) that make it a real person's problem--or that make it problematic, not just a slam-dunk, for a specific person."

While this is absolutely true Harriet and also that we take off on tangents and that I contribute especially to that in some threads, what you do which is unique to you is entirely make stuff up for speculation that usually has more to do with your own view of things than with either reality or the facts as we know them. I mean, I'm sure we all do this to a certain extent, but sometimes it feels that you are taking the letter as a starting point for a screenplay in which you make up entire worlds around it - which could be amusing at times and might be for plenty of other people. For myself it would be really fun and amusing except that your screenplay world usually has a lot of class and gender assumptions in it which tend to get me personally worked up which is my own fault and not yours I know but I'm feeling particularly piqued today so... I mean most people would speculate about the potential outcomes of her actions while you speculate about the chances that she keeps a pet that gave her a parasite that's controlling her actions.

222

@214. Nocute. Correct--completely correct in all particulars. But the question (to the LW), 'why this guy?' has to be relevant here.

@218. Nocute. I thought (but could be quite wrong) that the email exchanges that Dan sometimes uses as the SLLOTD are characteristic of how he advises people, time constraints always permitting.

@217. Emma. Land and houses are cheaper in small southern and midwestern towns, surely? If there are fewer big corporations, surely there are fewer white-collar jobs--only traditional ones like 'lawyer', 'doctor', 'college professor'--and these professionals correspondingly have greater spending power?

223

@NoCute, I guess it would depend on what you call prestige and what field you teach in. Harriet was talking about people in small towns by which I assume he actually means working class people since he referenced being able to afford a home as relatively wealthy. I think teachers generally still get some respect in society more largely, and in certain fields professors are still considered "wise" or "interesting" or even downright brilliant. But I don't see much prestige around people with grad degrees in liberal arts or maths teaching freshman level classes for 3K a semester- if anything I hear a lot of ridiculing jokes about getting degrees in basket weaving instead of real world fields, etc. But yea I guess in terms of reputations, teaching in any form is more prestigious than the better paid and more secure skilled labor jobs I mentioned which I guess is sort of my point too- though I'm apparently conflicted on this, wanting to defend college level teaching as important on the one hand and wanting to attack the elitism that thinks its somehow more prestigious than plumbing on the other. So I'm prolly being muddled.

224

"@217. Emma. Land and houses are cheaper in small southern and midwestern towns, surely? If there are fewer big corporations, surely there are fewer white-collar jobs--only traditional ones like 'lawyer', 'doctor', 'college professor'--and these professionals correspondingly have greater spending power?"

Yes but the fact that they are cheaper means that you are less likely to need a white collar job to afford them. Couple this with the fact that skilled labor jobs can pay as much if not more as professions in some areas but don't come with crippling student debt as do the professions. It's not uncommon in central Texas for working class people to own their homes. Though TX was not hit as hard by the crash and industry here is still alive in a way its not in some states so I'm not saying that's across the board, but sure homeowners in my home town include service industry workers, chemical plant workers, ag industry workers, state employees, skilled laborers of all sorts- people who mostly couldn't afford homes in Austin for example and definitely not in any of the coastal cities.

225

Yes Philo, it would be great if we didnā€™t have to war. Grievance Man had lots of room to air his stupidly before I cracked.
Coming at us, again, from all sides. What Iā€™m reading about the birthing sector, lots of bad baby birthing practices going on. Lots of deaths of mothers. Why are men involving themselves in womenā€™s business anyway?
Attitudes take a long time to change Philo, so it becomes a war like atmosphere.. because one gets sick of saying the same things over and over and over.
Woman are not playthings for men. Sure, there are gorgeous women around. They are there for themselves, so enjoy their beauty and respect their personal space. If they are interested in you, like Mr Dā€™s friend, they will let you know. Them enjoying you enjoying them, is not a come on. Itā€™s them being young, a bit vain. Above all respect they are their own person.

226

@222: I don't know what Dan's usual M.O. is. In the absence of him telling us, I don't want to assume anything. I know he sometimes assigns signoffs and sometimes changes identifying details and sometimes edits for length and clarity, but that's all I know. So if he edits for clarity, then I assume that all and only the relevant details are in the letter as published. Assuming he knows them all.

As to "why this guy?" The answer is right in the original letter: the sex was great.

Here is the relevant excerpt from the letter:
"Over the past three yearsā€”despite being as fat as everā€”I've consistently had fun, satisfying, exciting, creative, sometimes weird, occasionally scary, but mostly awesome sex. One guy I met on Craigslist was particularly great: awesome kisser, amazing dick. He came over, we fucked, it was excellent, we chatted, he left. This happened about four times."

We keep seeing letters--indeed we most of know ourselves--that all sex is not created equal and that people really, really, really hate to give up sex that we characterize as "particularly great," and about which we use words like "awesome," "amazing," and "excellent." I have certainly experienced my share of "awesome" or "excellent" sex, but I've also had mediocre or "just okay" sex, or "good, but not GREAT sex," or "meh" sex or "bad sex," or "cringe-y and awkward sex," or even "scary (not in a good way) sex." I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that many of us have had sex that was much better than other sex we've had. Of course CREEP wants to continue having the awesome sex instead of the just good sex.

The recent letter from the woman whose boyfriend didn't agree to her idea of an open relationship, but who cheated on her is a perfect example. She knows she should break up with him for a lot of valid reasons, but his "dick game was strong"--i.e. the sex was "particularly great" and he had an "amazing dick" in CREEP's words--and she's trying to justify staying in a relationship with him to get access to the sex. I still miss a boyfriend from 7 years ago, because the sex was so incredible. If I had thought that stalking him would have brought him and the amazing sex back to me, I might have considered it, even though I know it is wrong.

We are all of us, male, female, somewhere in between, or both, driven by our dicks (biological or metaphoric) from time to time. CREEP's situation is not more complicated than that.

227

If a barista really takes your fancy, the best way to get her attention is to ignore her sexually. Pure transaction, polite of course. Go sit down, with your back to her, reading/ being occupied. Set up a regular routine. If sheā€™s interested, she will start to come over and chat, as she picks up your coffee cup. Yes, leave your empty cup on the table. Each time, as you leave the cafe, catch her eye and say thanks. And wait. An attraction is only the beginning of a connection.
If every other man who gets coffee from this girl flirts with her, already you stand out because you donā€™t.

228

Congrats @200 on getting the double Hunsky.
Love how the attacks now are getting a little bit more retro. Words like Puritan slipping into the dialogue. Unbelievable. How do so many men wilfully stay ignorant? They hate their mothers and therefore all women? Control and Contain is all they know.

229

I donā€™t know nocute @226. To hunt him down like that, if feels she wants more than the good sex to me. The times I hunted men down, not like this, I wanted that man and a relationship with that man. Iā€™d say he got she was getting keen on him, and he was outta there. Not saying he didnā€™t enjoy her, he came back three times. He really is into nsa sex, and she needs to respect that.

231

BDF @63, Your story about explaining to an 18-year-old about barmaids getting hit on by hundreds of guys reminded me of an experience I once had that drove the point home.

I was on a very small commuter plane and one of the flight attendants was probably just about the most stunningly beautiful woman I have ever seen, including airbrushed models. Really, she was stunning and I was stunned. The captain made a point of announcing that this was her first flight working as a flight attendant, presumably to embarrass her and maybe flirt in some way.

Naturally, I was planning to say something witty and friendly when she arrived to take my drink order. I wasn't going to hit on her or say something overtly flirty, but it would have been something unnecessarily friendly. (Sadly, I no longer remember what I had in mind, so I can't let you judge whether it would have come out differently than I planned.)

BUT, I was in about the third row that she served and pretty much every single guy she spoke to was offering to push the drink cart for her, telling her what a great job she was doing on her first day, or trying to be helpful in some way. That really brought it home to me that, while none of these guys was being overt and nobody asked for her number or anything like that, every single man she spoke to was trying to endear himself to her for very obvious reasons and I realized how tiring that must be for her.

So, when it was my turn I just said "[name of some random drink], please" with the minimal amount of eye contact and minimal smile required to be polite.

Did I mention that this woman was really beautiful? I compared her to some famously beautiful actress I liked at the time if that actress was way, way prettier. Wow.

Yeah, so the moral of my story is sometimes pretty women must get tired of constant attention from men, even if the attention is superficially polite and non-sexual.

233

Oh dear! cockyballsup, are you sure we aren't the same person?!
You are living my life. Or I am living yours.

234

Ms Cute - I am sure you would no more seriously consider stalking an ex, however good the sex, than Emma would think of forming a musical club with Mrs Elton.

Ms Fan - I never walk to my car even in the middle of the day even in a crowded shopping mall without my key firmly in hand - and happily I've been able to escape due to superior speed any time I've been threatened with physical or sexual violence.

Mr Kara - "It's a shame all young people are such prigs. They pull down the old morality and put up a much more strict code in its place."

Ms Lava - I am in about 99% agreement. Birthing matters should be decided entirely by women, with my only caveat being no (effective) Gay Tax to pay for anything. I could express myself surprised by your thinking that there are many men out there who could give LW1 equally excellent sex, but won't.

M?? Harriet - Well, at least you aren't pushing Serena Williams for Overall GOAT, to which my response would have been that, in that case, the clear Overall Goat would be Esther Vergeer. It would be interesting to see your idea tried out in some less structured or minor sport. Curling? Archery? Snooker? I can't see it working at Wimbledon, but I'm willing to add a "yet" to that for now. I just want any such change to come from sports, not courts. You'll recall it was a court decision which let Casey Martin use a cart on the PGA Tour, and which got Renee Richards into WTA tournaments and Grand Slam events before tennis was really ready.

Mizz Liz - If you were in charge of setting norms for OS interactions, you would probably do quite a conscientious job of it.

(generally) It was useful to learn that there have been a great many female shoe fitters. To the woman who wanted to invite the inference that men don't see doctors annually out of some sort of masculine toxicity (a rather more neutral term, I find, than toxic masculinity), I avoid doctors in part because of having had a rather creepy family doctor when I was young, who supported my mother's determination on conversion therapy, in part because I strongly disapprove of the way the US manages the medical profession (and, not wanting to match my grandfather and live to 102, I've no objection to living a somewhat shorter life, especially if it means I shan't be ordered to give up something I particularly enjoy), and in part because I am too poor to be able to afford Obamacare, as was Mr Ophian, for those who remember him.

LW1 - the risk far outweighs the reward.

LW2 - even if we were in Looking-Glass land and you were right beyond your fondest hopes, never reward mixed messages.

LW3 - It would serve the little snots right if you suddenly went limp on them after being called that.

235

I don't see it as such a big deal if CREEP send an email. If there is no abuse, it seems ok to send an email that says, "I enjoyed our relationship and would love for it to continue if your interested. If not, no worries and best of luck."

236

You can fuck off too Mr D. And thereā€™s nothing wrong with knitting. Sorry, not sorry, your sexist sleaseball crap doesnā€™t get a pass here. Find a more gullible audience.
Iā€™m sorry for you too cbu. Thatā€™s disgraceful that there is no decent pay and security for university jobs.

237

Mr Venn, I canā€™t imagine good sex alone motivating me to go searching thru how many Uni directories there are in CREEPā€™s town. The whole notion of nsa sex is you donā€™t intrude in their personal or work space, after the sex is done.

238

I donā€™t see why CREEP canā€™t find other good lovers out there, Mr Venn, sheā€™s only forty two.

239

Mr Venn, found a biography of Zola, who I didnā€™t know about, and though itā€™s going to join the books Iā€™ll dip into, I have been so ignorant of French history. So many revolutions and Napoleons. No wonder they want to keep the European Union. I studied Modern and Ancient Hudtory at school. Obviously the subjects covered didnā€™t cover enough. Or I didnā€™t listen. And Zola a close friend of Cezanne, a favourite Artist. Not fussed with novels at the moment, so still havenā€™t read George Eliot.
Whereā€™s Grizelda?

240

Funny; History.

241

Funny. Multiple women -- multiple sex-positive women -- are all saying the same thing, "Don't hit on women while we're working, we don't appreciate it," and yet it's the board regulars who Dadddy thinks are "refusing to listen." DCP @231, thank you for getting it!

Venn @234, obviously-gay men may have more experiences in common with women than they do with the cishet presenting men for whom safety is rarely a concern. Glad you've escaped harm but sorry (if unsurprised) to hear you were threatened in the first place.

NoCute @226, agree. I have had sex so good that years later I am still thinking about it, and if I were single, I would be sorely tempted to drop the person in question a message. Great sex produced oxytocin, a bonding hormone. As I like to say, cum is thicker than water! When the options are trudging through a succession of mediocre lovers, with the attendant risks of STIs and drama, versus great sex with no drama, I totally get where CREEP is coming from. Still a bad idea but it's no wonder she's pining for this guy.

242

*amended -- the attendant risks of STIs, drama and probably the most likely negative outcome, post-coital ghosting. A man who comes back for more is indeed a keeper.

243

Yeah nocute and Fan, you still didnā€™t stalk these lovers, didnā€™t hunt down their place of work and entertain the idea of contacting them.
Donā€™t know what threads Mr D reads, to say the regulars here speak with one voice is hilarious. He does get cross.

246

@226. Nocute. The sex was particularly great--but the LW has had other great sex in her recent period of fucking without dating. If the quality of the sex is all it is, the advice should just be, 'do what you did with that guy with other men; act round them like you acted round him, and (importantly) get them to do what he did to you'. Or 'if you've discovered you have a type, look out for guys of that type'. (It might not be possible to recreate just the chemistry they had). And of course 'don't bother the man who has no interest at his place of work'.

247

@234. Venn. Equestrian events, esp. racing. Male jockeys tend to be stronger, but women can do lighter weights and some have reputations for making intractable horses run.

248

@246: Harriet, I don't know about you, but I can't recreate incredible sex with a different person by "do[ing] what [I] did with that guy with other men; act round them like [I] acted round him, and (importantly) get them to do what he did to you'. Or 'if you've discovered you have a type, look out for guys of that type'.
It is indeed chemistry. And technique. And body shape, size, smell, taste, sound. And a zillion other things.

Different people are different all the way through, and so is the way they kiss, talk, approach sex. Some people have a lighter attitude/touch/feel, as if sex is a great romp; some are much more intense. Some are great dirty talkers, and some can't do that. Sex is so much more than 'insert part A into slot B,' and no two people approach it the same way, even if they're doing the very same thing. I've had a partner who made facial expressions during sex I found so off-putting that if we were in any sort of position where we could see each other's faces, I had to keep my eyes closed if I didn't want to get pulled out of the moment. I've orgasmed just from the way one partner licked my ear and neck, and with another guy, I couldn't come no matter what he did.

As for "type," I assume that refers to things like general body size/shape, hair color, beard vs. clean-shaven, etc. Those things don't begin to predict how the sex will be. Maybe you've been successful at getting people to completely change their approach, attitude, the things they like, but I cannot; I have to take each man as he comes (pun intended).

Plus, I am different with each person I'm with, and I appreciate different things with different people. I have a couple of long-standing FWBs, and I've had a few threesomes with them. Not only do they have different techniques and styles, but I respond to them differently--it's like they bring out different aspects of myself. When the three of us are together, each one of them sees me act and react in a way completely different from the way he usually sees me, because I respond to each of them and their different techniques differently. And there's things like nipple sensitivity, how they like their blow jobs (very differently), timbre of voice (for some reason, very important to me), penis length, girth, curvature--all those and more differ from man to man.

If I could simply recreate the sex I had with that boyfriend from 7 years ago with other men, I surely would have. I can have the same kind of sex, act for act, with different people, and it's a totally different experience. It's not merely a matter of my saying, "do ---- like this; do ------ like that."

Why do you keep ignoring the lw's own words to insist that there is something more going on?

249

Hunter @244: And who is killing those men? I repeat, women have reason to fear men, men have no reason to fear women.

Contradicting myself yet again, I'm going to say that the fact that it's been more than a year since their last encounter means it's more appropriate -- or less inappropriate -- to contact him than it would have been if they'd lost touch just recently. Assuming that he did tell her his first name and which university he worked at (again, if either of these facts are not true, do not contact him), it's far more likely he did lose her e-mail address, or just moved on because of the platform closure rather than a four-and-done policy on his part. So yes -- she has his full name now. Find him on Facebook, send a friend request and take it from there.

251

I liked the discussion this week. Now that it's gotten into the difference between lust and love...
Romantic love =platonic love(care for individual's happiness/health) + lust(sexual attraction, perception as source of good sex)?

252

Not everyone uses Facebook. Originally I was thinking if CREEP was going to be stalkery she could be better at it.. Find a place to run into him "naturally", play it cool, and if she gets some good signals ask for his preferred contact info or for a visit.

But unless she feels ready for love, better to use the experience to make better choices with men in the future imo.

253

Philo @252: I thought this, but if he's not on Facebook, he's probably a pretty private person and does not want to be contacted.

Another thought I had, after changing my mind yet again, is that she should probably trust her instincts. She knows this man (somewhat -- at least biblically), we don't. Was her sense that he wanted to keep his identity secret? How did he react when she offered her e-mail address, or when (if) she asked him for his? She probably has a gut feeling about whether he'd be flattered or distressed, and she should heed that.

254

Even though CREEP provided SOME information, we're still left guessing. So let's TRY to do some math. She was celibate during her 30s. Presumably because she didn't have confidence that any men would want to fuck her in her current body. Then she got back in the game 3 years ago. TERRIFIC. She gets bonus points for finding self-confidence. But - BUT - CL shut down around a year ago. Yet she says she's been having and enjoying sex "consistently" over the past three years, even -after- CL was gone, meaning she's been fucking with new dudes or ones she met via CL but had their contact info. Good for her: she found there are guys who will fuck her so she can give her vibrator a rest.

So, it's been ONE year at least since she fucked this anonymous dude who took every precaution to protect his identity (except for letting slip "a" university).

Let's lay out the numbers:
2019: (43) fucking random dudes without CL
2017-2018: (41-42) fucking CL dudes, including Mr. Mostly Anon.

Conclusion: Mr. M.A. and she met a TOTAL of FOUR times more than a year ago - possibly as long as TWO. We don't know if it was once a week for four weeks, once a month, or spaced out sporadically.

Whatever it was, he was satisfied with what WAS, not needing or wishing to fuck her again. It's NSA, and both have the right to never hook up again. Conditions may have changed for him; he may even have found someone for a LTR.

But CREEP doesn't understand that. It's as if her social skills were stunted during her celibate decade. Even if she got her physical game back, her head's not figured out the new rules. She's been OBSESSING over the one guy and just KNOWS that he'd want to fuck her again. IF ONLY CL hadn't shut down, etc., etc. But we KNOW that's not true.

CREEP, Let. It. Go. His is not the only dick in the sea. Do NOT contact him at the university (for all the excellent reasons given by other commenters).

255

I think the present tendency we have for viewing ANY human interaction as potentially threatening is extremely bad for a social species like humans. So many people are absurdly terrified of other people reacting badly despite hundreds of thousands of years of genetic and social evolution promoting harmonious interaction and coexistence. I blame the Internet (and phones more generally - for most of human history, certainly before writing systems, walking up to someone in person was the ONLY way to get in touch, and thus couldn't be interpreted as inherently threatening) and notabity bias (we fixate on the statistically rare cases of interactions going badly, with mass media allowing us to know about every bad case, while we don't account for the millions of cases where nothing bad happens, the much, much likelier outcome).

E-mail the guy, CREEP. Tell him that you're only contacting him at work because you have no other way to reach him, and that if he doesn't respond or turns you down, that's fine, and you won't try to contact him again (and stick to that if you don't hear from him or are turned down). You're acting badly if you won't accept "no" at face value, not for asking in the first place. Him not contacting you might be a sign he doesn't want to hear from you, or he might have lost your e-mail address in the digital fog and be unable to find you w/o Craigslist, or be similarly paralyzed by unnecessary social anxiety. We CANNOT adopt a cultural norm where non-threatening communication to clearly determine boundaries, relationship status, etc. becomes normally forbidden. If asking isn't okay, then there is no hope for a consent culture, because asking is necessary for establishing consent, and people cannot read minds (further, not everyone exhibits the same behavioral patterns or interprets non-verbal signaling the same way, and using words is how we can resolve non-verbal or otherwise implicit miscommunication). We should be basing our norms on normal human behavior and responses, not trying to account for every potential disordered response someone might have (see also: trauma trigger warnings - good idea for content that is likely to trigger large groups of people traumatized by harmful social systems, bad idea applied to literally everything, as just about anything could be a trigger for a small group of people, like people who have phobic/dysphoric reactions to images of eyes or people who have a personal history of trauma attached to an otherwise-innocous word).

Similarly, CREEP, you might want to work on re-framing how you would view similar behavior from others so that you stop feeling threatened, stalked, etc. by anyone who contacts you in a non-threatening manner and respects any boundaries you set. You have direct evidence - yourself - that such people are not harassers, stalkers, etc. People attempting to communicate with each other isn't a problem; not respecting boundaries is the problem with things like harassment, stalking, and assault. Work on internalizing that difference for yourself as well as noting it for others.

256

After reading some of the other coments, to clarify my own suggestion: CREEP shouldn't send an explicit "Wanna fuck?" message, but something that would reasonably be interpreted as a casual friend trying to get in touch. He'll then have her e-mail address (again), and can contact her with more explicit info from another secondary/burner e-mail address in response if that's necessary. (Also, why so much cover for a CPOS, if that's what he is? Sex between consenting adults - she 's not his student with a serious power imbalance - is legal and not a reason for dismissal, so the concerns over professional impact are seriously misplaced IMO. If he's cheating and his life blows up, then it's because he was cheating - and, also, good, natural consequences for shitty behavior are a good thing - not because a sex partner contacted him.)

257

@195 is that were the plan, the human race wouldn't survive another century

258

@slinky 27: Yup, gay men have the same issues. There is a LOT of social psych research that shows that, in general, men over-read signals of sexual interest and women under-read them (the degree of inaccuracy is about equal for populations of men and women, and not syrongly related to the gender of the person whose signals one is interpreting, nor whether one is oneself the potential target of those signals; men read sexual interest into interactions between other people at a higher rate than those people self report, and women read sexual interest into such interactions at a lower rate than the people self report; whether biological, social, or both, this is a major factor in a lot of our debates over norms, harassment, etc. and it's not the case that men are worse than women at reading non-verbal signals, rather both groups are about equally goid/bad on average but biased in opposite directions).

@nocute 96: Your example isn't less extreme than the letter (I assume that's the comparison, since you didn't reply @ anyone). The letter is asking if it's okay to contact someone through PUBLIC information. CREEP didn't pressure someone to give out private info like this guy did in your case. A pre-internet comparison would be if he came to the store again and asked you out again, or, better yet, if the store closed the next day (so the existing.point of contact was gone) but you had mentioned that you liked to hang out at the cafe down the street on Fridays, so he stopped by there to ask you out the following Friday. If you said no, he wished you well, and that was it, would that have been a problem? Maybe you DO think that would have been a problem, but in that case, I disagree that your proposed social norms work well for human beings' cooperative social interactions.

259

Missed Connections is a well-known phenomenon exactly because people frequently DO want contact from people with whom they lost contact or failed to give contact info, and it's not like it ever was or is only men trying to track down women who want to be left alone. I really do think that many people have not adapted well to smartphones and the internet when a message that arrives through the least invasive channel possible after one's previous means of.communication disappears is seen as invasive, threatening, or whatever.

260

Fan@249, yes, a year later. This man knows where she lives, how hard is it to drop a note in her letterbox? If this thread has taught us anything, again, itā€™s that a lot of straight men know how to pursue women, and they want to be able to do it everywhere. A year later and sheā€™s still pining for his dick, thatā€™s not the nsa way.

262

M?? Harriet - As equestrian events are already ungendered, I didn't include them. I was thinking that it would be interesting to see your system tried in a sport where it has been generally considered that the difference is consequential.

Ms Lava - That was rather the point. Best case scenario is that a dead NSA arrangement revives and doesn't cause any conflict in either of their lives. The potential harm of this sort of contact is far greater (I could probably live with something indefinite). And we all know who else was 42 - Shirley Valentine.

Mr Horstman - Please leave gays alone.

Ms Fan - Thank you.

264

Griz, back from vacation, is late in the game this week, but:
@69 Congratulations, CMD. on scoring this week's Lucky @69 Award! May a shower of goodness come your way soon.
@100 EricaP: Congratulations on winning this week's coveted Lucky Hunsky Award! Savor the riches.

265

@169 Harriet_by_the_Bulrushes: Congrats on scoring this week's Double WHammy @169=@69 + Hunsky Award! Cha-CHING!
@200 Mikara: Congrats on hitting the Double Hunsky this week.

WOW--have I missed a lively comment thread! Griz has some reading to catch up on, back from vacation.

266

@71 CMD: Oh, yeah, that's right. I had forgotten you have politely declined from the Lucky Numbers Game. By default, Chris111 @70 wins this week's Lucky @69 honors.
@70 Chris111: Major congrats on scoring this week's Lucky @69 Award! May good fortune come your way soon.

267

@263: Spoken like a total CREEP.

268

And this week's Double Hunsky + @69 Award goes to.............

270

Mr Venn@262, you all seem to overlook this manā€™s very clear message. He did not give the LW his contact details. He has her contact details, and hasnā€™t contacted her in over a year.
Shirley valentine? I donā€™t remember her crimes.

271

Ms Lava - My apologies for typing something backwards. I am not taking the side against you here. And Shirley Valentine reclaimed herself at age 42.

272

Hunter my guess was anime.

273

@269: Congrats on the lucky number: Double HUnsky + @69. I know you're savoring the wealth, HUnter.

274

Dickful thinking. Another bullet for Griz to dodge.

275

So no one can explain what "I've taken good care of myself (sexual frustration + gym)" means?

277

@bdf

I thought it was a joke, double entendre. He takes care of himself = staying fit at the gym. He also "takes care of himself" = wanking.

But now I see he might have simply meant he goes to the gym as a method for both staying in shape and working off that sexual frustration or that the sexual frustration is what gets him to the gym. Because this is a dude in a relationship, and if he's got all this frustration, then that indicates either they haven't been having much sex or else the sex they've been having didn't stop him from being frustrated (perhaps for others). Either way sounds good that they aren't monogamous anymore.

278

Who's up for a Three Hunsky? Lava?

279

@269 Hunter -- He won it from her in a poker game?

280

Google says Mikara is "a created name," which is apt. I thought perhaps the name was chosen so as to conceal his gender and avoid assumptions being made, as some folks on this board have done, and which I myself might have done if I'd thought of it at the time. Cat's out of the bag now!

282

Here's a turn-up. This afternoon I happened to notice that my extremely Republican stepmother, who grills her cleaners and repair/lawn staff about politics with the unspoken assumption that they are supposed to agree with Pres Trump, has been resorting to the use of some medicinal cream with cannabis as a primary ingredient. I doubt I'll ever actually have a serious opinion about this until those on the pro side become insufferable again, but it was amusing that she and Mr Savage finally turned up on the same side of an issue.

283

"mikara" is Maori for yogurt, according to GT. FWIW. I don't think "ćæć‚«ćƒ©" means anything in Japanese, but I'm pretty rusty.


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