no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I can definitely give you Excel anecdotes. Tell him you'd like to vlookup shared interests and rank them, or something. God, I am the worst. But yay, Abbs!

Also I don't think it helped that all we did was sit in a bar and drink. At some point I was drawing pictures of different table games like Scrabble, dominoes, cribbage – I was explaining the rules of cribbage and dominoes to him, because he asked. So I got to stare at my own depictions of that the whole time like 'look at the things we could be doing.'

Congrats on yr first date! You have survived and it wasn't terrible and different things will happen w other fellows!

But yeah, that boring, no chemistry is kinda blah but it is good practice to prove you can do it. Yay for taking a positive view!

(next time bring dominoes in yr handbag so you do that?)

Yeah I guess I never knew what "no chemistry" meant before then. I kind of convinced myself he had the mannerisms and accent of a sexy professor so that I could get myself mentally psyched for a makeout session that sadly never happened.

he talked a lot about different Excel spreadsheets he'd made about his life.

I know two men well that could have had this conversation on a first date. I might be married to one of them.

If you are staring wistfully at your drawings of board games, that is a bad sign, though. But it's like an job interview for a job you don't really want - good practice.

Yes I guess I learned the important lesson that there has to be some activity in addition to beer. I was getting the cranky restless hands feeling of a knitter without their knitting, which is bad. My fault for not suggesting anything else because I knew from the start 'meet for drinks' would make me bored.

congrats, abbs! but yeah meet for drinks would not work for me at all either, don't feel weird about that

if i were to go on a date, i would take him walking/talking as that is my favorite activity and we could walk to a place that we both wanted to go and then have a drink or a bite there or a nibble or whatever. that's more than enough activity for the first time i would meet someone! don't wanna overdo it/waste a good idea on a person who's boring.

It doesn't make me feel worse - I think it's good to talk about your anger, whether in a measures logical way or in an outburst of emotion - all good as long as long as we're owning the feeling and/or figuring out how to deal with it without hurting self or others.
xp

whoops many xps!

Also, I mean, WCC you're clearly not TRYING to make anybody feel bad and the idea of having to keep quiet about our anger to avoid making people feel bad is part of the problem.

Have an of you watched the show Boardwalk Empire? We watched the first season and I don't think I am going to watch any more because the sheer volume of emotions swallowed by the women in that show is threatening to choke me to death every time I watch it. Especially the poor wife of that horrible religious nut federal agent.

That's so interesting, Jenny. I think something like that will be too much of a problem for me to watch Mad Men, tbh. I've successfully avoided ever seeing it, so far.

Dates! I have one tomorrow. It is meeting for drinks. Haha.

Boardwalk Empire is very much a dude's show. which isn't to say that it's without merit (I think Breaking Bad is very much a dude's show, too, and I love the shit out of it) but a dude's show that's set in a time that was unkind to women has a pretty big hurdle to overcome for me to enjoy it. And the awesome hairstyles/hats will only get me so far.

I haven't watched the most recent season of Mad Men, but I actually think it does okay with women. V. disappointing re: race, though.

"meeting for drinks" would be my preferred date, actually.

Yeah I mean it allows me to do two and sometimes three of my favorite things: drink, talk, and occasionally also smoke.

I'm going to do those things all evening this evening with two of my really good friends, so tomorrow I will just be doing the same things with someone who I may or may not want to sleep with.

it also allows for a quick exit if the date goes badly. i learned this lesson after bad dinner dates.

I should do this thing, too. I should try to meet someone to talk and eat (tho prob not drink/smoke) with, with a view to maybe wanting to sleep with them.

But I just cannot get over that whole thing of thinking myself so disgusting + horrible + ugly that no one I would want, would want to meet or sleep with me. Or even just, you know, hug. I have hugged another human maybe twice this year. And I'm realising, my fear of being touched, it's as much a fear of my own self as disgusting as it is terror of being violated.

Maybe the booze is necessary after all.

IDK that has been the nice thing abt online dating site, for me, people who seem like reasonable non-creeps sending messages that include 'hey you're cute.' Like I feel that's totally awful to say? That I'm just enjoying attention from strange men? But there's a context for it and it's safe, and it's been nice, I won't lie. Because my image of 'I am sexually attractive' was totally shot to hell. There's also been a lot of "GODLESS GREETINGS, WHAT DO YOUR FEET LOOK LIKE" but at least nothing too awful.

(of course now you say that I am remembering the complete sociopath who sent me the weird messages documented way back on the OKC thread and feel creped out again.)

Yeah, it's the internet, it's sometimes just an id machine.

Bog standard crepes, weirdoes and ppl w too many Joy Division records who just wanna get laid = bring it on. But it's the damn mind games and the sociopaths I can't cope with. :-/

But I just cannot get over that whole thing of thinking myself so disgusting + horrible + ugly that no one I would want, would want to meet or sleep with me.

that is a horrible feeling - have been there off and on for a while - and I'm really sorry that you're feeling that way.

my issue - that has plagued me for well over a decade - is that I'm not good enough to get past the "friend zone"

I feel a similar self-loathing way sometimes and I've been partnered up with the same person for 12 years now (with acknowledgement that nothing other than the perniciousness of the feeling is the same here). That shit runs deep, is all I can say.

everyone i know (incl myself) has always felt that way -- it has always seemed like the natural state of things. sadly. lots of negative experiences early on take decades to get past, afaict.

ok maybe not everyone but many of my confidants

oops im so sorry, i didnt know WCC's first name was off limits and i said it upthread :/

Think I am going to call you k7, WCC, because it's close to what I used to type for your name. (That probably won't actually happen.)

Roxy, I had some shit go down last year WRT my job, a public scandal and the press. And someone from the press was able to put together 2 and 2 and found me in a way that made me feel v v compromised WRT stuff I've talked about on ILX when it was still just 20 ppl who met in the pub every month. I might have a common name, but the confluence of my name, in a male-dominated job, in a small country in a small industry left me v v exposed.

So I asked for ppl not to use that name - but clearly with not enough ~politeness~ for the Entitled of ILX so rather than accept I had reasons I couldn't talk about without making the situation worse (hello! Journalists of ILX! I'm hiding my identity to keep you away!) they just decided this was yet another reason I was "batshit" and this should form the basis of a yet another clusterfuck! Because that's what you want and deserve when there are tabloids outside your office.

So even though I no longer work in that job or industry, yeah, pls do not use anything like my government name to refer to me. Thanks, appreciate it.

I have taken this thread on such a massive downer. I'm sorry, I don't enjoy it when that happens. Anyway, here is a photo of Thom Yorke's belly, perhaps we can go back to discussing attractive men and their abdomen exposure.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7bj27ZV1y1qb7ynyo1_500.png

I do not know if he is sucking in his gut or if it's just the angle at which he is pulling off his shirt but the little convex bit of belly that usually drives me half mad with desire is not in evidence which is a bit of a shame but basically the barrel of his ribcage excites me so much I don't really care. He is a v v attractive man and when he displays his body it makes me happy.

Need all the happiness I can get right now TBH.

Please to discuss attractive men with that little convex belly thing.

We've been watching Homicide: Life in the Streets and Clark Johnson is my current time machine crush:

http://www.celebrity8x10s.com/photos/j/Johnson_Clark_Homicide__Life_on_the_Streets_23443l.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llfc2v7fhv1qaeogao1_500.png

He's still pretty handsome:

http://www.postcity.com/images/cache/6595a5d5903e3c68d9a83245e578e503.jpeg

once cute, always cute (with a caveat for ott surgery & dental work)

Also have a crush on Michelle Forbes although that is probably about 50% her awesome 90s hair in Homicide and 50% Ensign Ro.

http://michelle-forbes.ucoz.com/_ph/31/2/789974273.png
http://michelle-forbes.ucoz.com/_ph/32/2/540566514.png

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YBUUdTuhc9o/TwnqZSXdQoI/AAAAAAAADXw/n7A4U9-pndc/s640/Ro_Laren01.jpg

So I'm even being radical about fat in my sleep, apparently. Had a dream last night that a woman I went to law school with was conducting tests on mayonnaise packets and discarded soda cups in an attempt to show that all people who eat fast food are obese, diabetic, and have heart disease. I was having this huge argument with her in her dream, pointing out all of her bad science and logical fallacies and she kept saying, "Of COURSE fat people only eat fast food! Anybody who eats mayonnaise is going to be fat!"

I woke up very tired.

wcc, i was never super attracted to thom yorke, but that picture makes me rethink that!

Haha, Rayela, you are the second person I've spoken to today who is rethinking Thom Yorke's attractiveness after my showing them that pic.

I am the boycrush pusher!

I have managed to completely depress myself on the OKC thread again. Pls post things of awesomeness to remind me that the world really is OK, ladies.

It's like I use that thread to psych myself up, and get all happy and excited when I see other ILX0rs finding romance and excitement and makeout sessions. Like, this is a thing, this is a real thing that happens, in this world! And then there's this crash where I talk about how I feel and what my experiences are, and people stare at me like I have three heads. And that makes me feel a lot worse and negates all the feeling-better that just happened.

i am forcing myself to go out tonnight and my lovely ex R, bless him, is being a real pusher about it! He loves going out and is happy when I come with, so I'm all made up and hyped up and HERE I GO... full of nerves.

Well, it can be a massive booster to get all dressed up and go out just for funtimes with someone who is actually excited about going out, and keen to spend time with you. What are you going to do? Is this a sort of ~hunting~ expedition or are you just going out to have a good time?

Guys I sometimes worry that I shat out my gut brain. You know, the one that throws up red flags or tells you 'don't let this person talk to you like that.' No idea what to do about this? Or if I'm just making it up? Like oh I think there SHOULD be a red flag here but there isn't – how to tell if there genuinely shouldn't be one or if I'm just missing some other way of sensing things? It's like the paranoid multi-level thinking of being stoned without all the fun.

Oh wait you want reminders that the world is awesome. God, I'm so selfish. I gave a lot of high fives to sexy dudes this week? High fives are as physical as I get.

I haven't read it but people seem to like the book The Gift of Fear - http://www.amazon.com/Other-Survival-Signals-Protect-Violence/dp/0440508835. Although I understand some of the stuff about domestic violence is a little iffy (again I haven't read it).

I know exactly what you're talking about, and I feel like it has happened to me on multiple occasions. Like, losing your compass?

Crabbits, I don't believe we've been introduced. Are you new in these parts?

It's ABbott

Yeah I read and LOVED Gift of Fear – 'gut brain' is my idea of his idea to trust in your instinct + Gladwell's blink thing (lol). How do you even assess if you are trusting yourself? I'm so bad at this kind of introspection. I can't tell if I have low standards or if other people around me are just uptight. There's probably not just one standard for how others treat you, eh? Blargh.

Oh! You confused me with your new "cr". ::squints::

I don't know. My red-flag reader has basically been broken my entire life. Like, it's either set to "everything, all the time" or it's just off flapping somewhere on a tree that I don't even notice any more when it should be giving me signals of STAY AWAY STAY AWAY.

haha yes exactly