Confirmed Bachelors

[freshie247]

Dated a woman that made 3x's as much as I did, she never had money to do anything & still expected me to pay for everything.

[SkiCougar]

I'm single and I'll be 40 this year. I guess you could say I'm 'confirmed'.

No desire to have kids and no interest in the institution of marriage. That may come from seeing my parents' divorce as well as seeing how you can end up with a person so different than the one you started with. I also really value my alone time, and the freedom to be on my own program. I can train as much as I want and hop in the truck and take off to races or whatever, ski every day, no worries.

Sometimes I miss the deep connection and I'd be happy to settle down with someone pretty much any time but she hasn't come along yet. Until then, there are a plethora of women of all ages to be experienced. I just find that I like to be up front about what I want, and don't want right off the bat and don't encourage them to get attached. The worst part is letting them down when they do. Not that I have women beating down my door at all but you know, they come and go.

I think this 'life style' is becoming more common anymore.

I second most of this.

I crossed the 40 mark and I'll get married if I happen to come across,( I've given up actively looking); a woman similar to my mom; but those are few and far between. If I work 3-15 hour days straight, which I've done or worked 4 weekends in a row; I don't have any desire to come home to someone that's going to tell me to work on the house or be dragged somewhere when all I want to do is drink beer, smoke cigars and watch football; I did enough already.

And there's plenty of easy women out there if I'm lonely.

Congratualations feminism and sex culture; you won; but i'm keeping all my chips and using them on anything I want over the best thing for society; the nuclear/traditional family.

[freshie247]

Honestly, that is what hobbies are for. I get to be alone when I go hunting. However, everyone needs some space.

Most of my married friends get little or no time for "hobbies". They require a hall pass from their wives to do anything & they are always in short supply. One of my best friends is begrudgingly allowed to ski out west once every four years,& only after long drawn out, nasty fights.He's not allowed to do most anything without "adult" supervision. First his wife said they couldn't afford it even though she went on trips to visit friends & goes to Florida for 2 weeks while he works. When she found out that he had a free place to stay,free food, free plane ticket & gear, she moaned impotently about it, hacked her husband's email and sent me several rants about me being "so selfish" .He came out on the trip '10 & she has held it against me(and I'm sure him) ever since. While this isn't always the case,it sure seems to be prevalent.

[Gripen]

Most of my married friends get little or no time for "hobbies". They require a hall pass from their wives to do anything & they are always in short supply. One of my best friends is begrudgingly allowed to ski out west once every four years,& only after long drawn out, nasty fights.He's not allowed to do most anything without "adult" supervision. First his wife said they couldn't afford it even though she went on trips to visit friends & goes to Florida for 2 weeks while he works. When she found out that he had a free place to stay,free food, free plane ticket & gear, she moaned impotently about it, hacked her husband's email she and sent me several rants about me being "so selfish" .He came out on the trip '10 & she has held it against me(and I'm sure him) ever since. While this isn't always the case,it sure seems to be prevalent.

The problem there isn't that your buddy is married, it's that he married a crazy bitch.

[freshie247]

Why do so many of my married friends have similar, albeit less harsh situations? You can say it's the women, but I believe it's society.

[beaterdit]

Jeez, fuck all that noise.

[Meadow Skipper]

Dated a woman that made 3x's as much as I did, she never had money to do anything & still expected me to pay for everything.

Um, was she a hooker? From the description, she could be.

[freshie247]

Not quite, she's a senior marketing analyst at a very large company that made bottles & cans for the beverage industry.

[bklyn]

Sometimes people make poor choices. The warning signs are always there in the beginning.

I can't feel sorry for the ones that fell for the golden dick/pussy when crazy was evident from the start. They complain to their friends but never do anything about the serious underlying problems.

[stompinlines]

Sometimes people make poor choices. The warning signs are always there in the beginning.

I can't feel sorry for the ones that fell for the golden dick/pussy when crazy was evident from the start. They complain to their friends but never do anything about the serious underlying problems.

That being, a weak self-identity and lacking balls.

[systemoverblow'd]

Sometimes people make poor choices. The warning signs are always there in the beginning.

I can't feel sorry for the ones that fell for the golden dick/pussy when crazy was evident from the start. They complain to their friends but never do anything about the serious underlying problems.

And I can't feel sorry for anyone that feels the need to be around someone all the time. It's actually almost gross to want to commit to spending the majority of your life hanging with a person most of the time. Sounds boring as fuck. I again bring it back to those so insecure that they need this "bond" of another person to feel fulfilled. Or so blinded by society that they feel they would be shunned if they didn't toe the line of status quo.

[Hugh Conway]

That being, a weak self-identity and lacking balls.

so, most of TGR? every damn relationship thread has the dads/husbands happier than shit they are cross alphabetizing the thong drawer and scouring the brand new lignum vitae salvaged from a bowling alley kitchen floor for the fifth time every weekend while the search out new ways to make sure that backyard lawn is just the right shade of green in the photos.

Jesus, who gives a shit?

[Chainsaw_Willie]

The problem there isn't that your buddy is married, it's that he married a crazy bitch.

And has no spine. How did American men get to be such jelly fish?

Fuck all that, I'll remain single rather than be the bitch.

[Hugh Conway]

meh, it's also the way american women have chosen to define themselves. Note the bolded bit.

[uglymoney]

It can be kind of interesting after 35. Of course there are the carp and serially BSC, but then there are some recently divorced and even some widows that are really prime women. Harder to locate, and the good ones tend not to be available for very long, but the search doesn't have to be over. The game changes, but chances are good that a bit of maturity and life experience can help a couple people make something good together in the later chapters.

But banging younger girls that are just attracted to your car and money sounds good too.

I was amazed at how many woman started freeing up at around 35. 30 to 35 I was single and picking over the scraps or dating the 22 to 24 year olds then at 35 the buffet was suddenly full. As it happens I met a good girl and went from confirmed bachelor night drinker to a married with kids day drinker that rarely sleeps past 6 am. I do more now than when I was single maybe...not sure.

I need my alone time as well as do all true assholes. Somehow I find it. Back in the day living alone was cool for awhile but after a year I had a friend move in and it was much better. Life is kind of bland without people around. Life with kids is always trying but never bland.

[Nobody Famous]

Interesting advice and insights.

All the 'how to understand men' articles in women's magazines in the supermarket check-out lanes should just point to this thread.

[stalefish3169]

This timing of this thread is impeccable. I decided to pull the plug on my relationship of almost a year last night with a really sweet girl. And by really sweet, I don't mean the typical b.s.; she spends her free time volunteering with terminal A.I.D.S. patients. This was either one of the worst decisions I've ever made....or one of the best. Only time will tell. I don't know if this makes me a confirmed bachelor, but I could have easily ended up marrying her, and she told me likewise last night.

Our day to day interactions were nearly perfect. Of course we had the occasional minor spat like all relationships do, but we got along so well and had similar outlooks on almost everything. Unfortunately, there was one thing I couldn't get past. Participation in her religious community is very important to her even though she is a self-described atheist.

Being forced to go to church every Sunday until I moved out at 18 didn't exactly leave me with the best impression of organized religion, to put it nicely. In other words, I generally despise the dominant forms of organized religion and see them as obsolete with a net negative impact on humanity. With that being said, I'm not opposed to the possibility of a higher power, and generally consider myself to be agnostic. I've been privileged enough to experience better outdoor adventures than I could've ever imagined to be possible and it's hard to fathom that there isn't some deeper meaning to them. I'm just of the opinion that an all powerful God wouldn't allow his representatives to.. ahem....fuck little boys or be the conduit for a state of perpetual war, among other abhorrent things.

I could've probably looked the other way if it was just her, but she wanted to raise our potential progeny culturally Jewish. Because of how much I cared about her, I did a lot of research into the subject and we even hashed out a framework of how things might pan out a little over a month ago. We agreed that she could raise the kids culturally Jewish and I would get an equivalent amount of "Dad" time to introduce them to the things I see as most important in the world, which would probably revolve around a connection with the natural world and sliding on snow.

One morning, she asked me to attend a Bat Mitzvah before I'd had my morning coffee and I agreed without putting too much thought into it. So I ended up going last Saturday and it was just an awful experience for me. This wasn't the big party that is always portrayed in the movies an on television. It was a nearly two hour service in the temple.

On the way in the door I asked her if there was anything special I should know and she suggested I put on a yamaka. There was no way that was happening and luckily her brother quickly interjected that it was a reform congregation and wouldn't be necessary. Quickly following that, we were approached by a man who stated what a long time it had been since he had seen my gf in the temple. What a nice reminder of the bullshit religious guilt I had tried to forget. Now don't get me wrong, there were some beautiful components to the service and I don't think Judaism or any other religion is all bad, they are just not my jam.

The most twisted aspect of it was when it all sunk in what it would mean to put my own kids through a similar sequence. Becoming a Bat or Bar Mitzvah basically means that you take a pledge to continue a lifelong commitment. My gf was raised by interfaith parents, a Jewish father and Catholic mother who agreed not to raise her in an overly religious fashion, so under her own decision, she decided to have a B'nai Mitzvah with her brother as an adult. This was a lot different that the situation of the 13 year old girl who was basically there as the result of her parents' decision.

As I heard the little girl on stage describe the Torah passage she was responsible for reporting on, I wanted to vomit. It was all about a gross imbalance between the amount of blessings and curses that will be instilled upon Jews for following, or not following the dogma. She basically gave her own opinion of why there were so many more curses than blessings and it sounded to me just like a victim of domestic abuse sticking up for her husband that beats her. It was pretty much at that moment that I realized I could not put my own children through that type of brainwashing. I knew that if this was such a large part of my gf's life, we had a long term problem.

I feel like I could've suppressed my emotions for quite sometime and focused only on the positive aspects of our relationship. However, I knew deep down that this issue was going to bubble up again and again. I realized of course that each time it arose it would be harder to deal with than the last time. It sucked when we first talked about it a month into our relationship. It really sucked when the first time I had dinner with her parents and her dad, no shit, says, "So, I hear you're an atheist." Actually, "No, I'm an agnostic I replied." And I knew it would really blow if we ever decided to get married and she suggested introducing religious elements into the ceremony. I never wanted to deal with the circumstance of explaining to our children why daddy wasn't like mommy, or that everything they had been learning about at temple is probably completely made up by a bunch of greedy misogynistic assholes a few thousand years ago.

So in short, I'm a bachelor again. I kind of feel like an asshole for breaking the heart of the girl I love, but I feel like there is a pretty good chance I just mitigated a future divorce. Now that I'm 33, the waves of divorce are rippling through my social circle, and man that shit sucks! Overall, our breakup was pretty amicable and we agreed to be friends in the future after the dust settles, so at least it's not like I'm totally losing one of my best friends. It's just going to be different.

I'm not really worried about meeting another girl I will be able to love again. When I've lived in small mountain towns, it was a little scarier and girls that I wanted to go to the horizontal disco with, much less marry, were quite rare. Now that I'm in a real city, I feel like there is virtually an unlimited supply of awesome ladies that I could be happy with. So if I get lucky enough and find one, awesome. If not, I guess I'm going to be watching a lot more football and changing a lot less diapers than some of my friends.

[MTT]

Most of my married friends get little or no time for "hobbies". They require a hall pass from their wives to do anything & they are always in short supply. One of my best friends is begrudgingly allowed to ski out west once every four years,& only after long drawn out, nasty fights.He's not allowed to do most anything without "adult" supervision. First his wife said they couldn't afford it even though she went on trips to visit friends & goes to Florida for 2 weeks while he works. When she found out that he had a free place to stay,free food, free plane ticket & gear, she moaned impotently about it, hacked her husband's email and sent me several rants about me being "so selfish" .He came out on the trip '10 & she has held it against me(and I'm sure him) ever since. While this isn't always the case,it sure seems to be prevalent.

I have seen this type of Woman before.

I would lay odds she is sneaky and unfaithful to your friend.
That lack of trust and desire to keep track and control. Is because she does not want him to do the things she does when he is out of sight.

[freshie247]

I have the emails & am torn about posting them as they are hilarious both from her perspective & my retorts, but for now discretion is the better part of valor.

[bklyn]

Doooooo ittttttt!!!

[freshie247]

All Right T,just for you! Names have been changed to protect the guilty!

Hi Freshie,

There really isn’t any comfortable way for me to start this email, so I’ll just get right into it.

There is no way E can come skiing with you. You conveniently forget that E is not single anymore and that taking a vacation like that is something that we (me and him) discuss together. How dare you presume that you are entitled to make that decision for him? You have NO idea what it means to be an adult and have responsibilities. E and I, as parents, have to sacrifice all the time and give up things that we want to do for the sake of our children. Regardless of whether or not you offered to pay for his trip, now is not the appropriate time for him to go. The business is going bankrupt, our parents give us money just so we can buy food and pay the bills, and it would be in extremely poor taste for him to take this kind of trip right now. Because you are so immature, you make it seem as though E is pussy-whipped or has no balls and that couldn’t be further from the truth. E is an adult and therefore can make his own decisions, but I would appreciate you giving up your 5th grade antics of peer pressure and making him feel guilty for not being able to go.

There is no way E can go away and leave me alone with the kids for that period of time without hiring someone to help. We don’t have the money to do that right now nor is it something I want to do.

I hope you haven’t booked his ticket yet. If you have, I hope you can get a refund.

******




Hey ******,

Well I don't know where to start, but lets try here. No I haven't booked E's ticket because E NEVER told me he was coming.I'm not making or trying to make E do anything, he's his own man. I'm impressing no guilt trip or anything else upon him & presume nothing except for the fact that he most likely won't be unable to make it. I've tried to get E to come out every year since he left, this year is no different. E & I have 18 + years of interaction & have our way of going about it, I don't expect others to understand it. E is like a brother to me, he is one of my favorite people in the whole world. He has been very influential in not only my life ,but in the lives of others that are important to me.

How dare I want to see one of my friends every couple of years, what in the world could be wrong with me? How presumptuous of me wanting to do something nice for some one that has been very good to me over the years, obviously I should stop being so self centered. Do you dress down others that do nice things for you or is it only when they offer to do things for E? I've seen E 2'xs in the last 12 years, once in '04,& once in '06 ,with '06 being the only time we really got to hang out.That doesn't strike me as excessive or overbearing, but hey, perception is everything.

I guess I'm childish;wanting to connect with, catch up with, or hang out with my friends is something I'm brazenly, utterly,& wantonly unrepentant about. I'm been around for a while & seen & done more than most folks. Maybe I've been unlucky, misguided, delusional or sheltered, but E is one of the best people I've ever met & everyone's life is less rich without him in it.Perhaps with the trials & tribulations of raising a family & running a business ,that's a notion that should be revisited.

It's no secret that my style is threatening to or disliked by some, but the fact of the matter is ,at my worst, with all of my short comings, I'm harmless. I'm not looking to create any havoc, discord, or problems with E, you, your children or your family. I asked E to come out west to ski for a few days, not plan a bank heist, rob the mafia, or do hookers & blow in Vegas. I could be wrong, it certainly would not be the 1st nor the last time, but did it occur to you that getting angry at me might be counterproductive to your cause? E's the guy you need to talk to about this, not me, I have exceptionally little sway over him or such matters. If I did, I'd see E a lot more often!

Have a good day. Ciao,

Freshie

*****
With all due respect, your email is a load of crap.

You’re on your soap box professing how little you’ve seen E over the years and how dare I deny you doing something nice for him. It is clearly less complicated for you to come here then it is for E to go out west, but you are completely self-centered and one-track-minded. If you really wanted to see him as much as you say you do, then you could have come here to visit (Unless the existence of your friendship is only predicated upon the opportunity to go skiing together.) Our door has always been open and you could have visited at any time. You might not believe this, but I have always encouraged E to keep in touch with his friends. As I’m sure you know, he is not good at that. It is a part of him that I have had to get used to since I have many, many long time friends that I make an effort to stay in touch with and can’t imagine my life without.

Of course I’ve already talked to E about this. He mentioned it a couple of days ago and I made it very clear to him how I felt.

Again, the opportunity has always been there for you to visit us at any time.

You only have yourself to blame for not seeing E as often as you would have liked.

*******

Hey *****,

Pardon me, I don't mean to be contrary, but you respect me in what way that it's due? You stated your point (derogatorily attacking me), I counter stated mine, exactly how's that proselytizing? I'm not on the soapbox, I simply replied to you, you're the one that wrote me if you recall. FYI, you might want to try & keep the gloves up, but that's just a suggestion.Any reference to how dare you was strictly satire. Any reference to talking to E was strictly rhetorical. No, our friendship isn't predicated on skiing, but it is a strong bond between us. I've trusted E with my life on way more than one occasion & vice versa. You make it seem like E is the only family man in the world to have ever conceived of having a skiing vacation with a buddy of his. OH the shamelessness of my naked narcissism, where is the ball gag, cat of 9 tails & the dominatrix when one so desperately needs a proper thrashing!

I should come there to visit ,I'm sure I'd be most welcome & it would obviously be completely devoid of any complications. Let's make a date shall we? I'm sorry to state the superfluously over obvious, but not everyone thinks CT is the bee's knees as far as vacations or destinations go. If you just take a step back and really think this through, in all honesty, you should be thanking me for not visiting & besmirching the family enclave!

But of course, I'm always to blame for everything, women keep telling me that & it's remarkably foolish for me to continually be forgetting it. I'll put it on my daily "to do" list,# 38, right behind learning Esperanto, but in front of experimental bowel surgery. You're hardly the 1st woman to think I'm a danger to the status quo, but I'll leave you with a quote from Frank Herbert.

"Without change something inside sleeps & seldom awakens. THE SLEEPER MUST AWAKEN!"

I guess my point is: loosening your grip on the reins just might give you more control & make for a more enjoyable ride. That and a little levity never hurt anyone. SMILE! Freshie

P.S. Thanks for making my world a little brighter ,I've really enjoyed the inspiration.

[uglymoney]

This timing of this thread is impeccable. I decided to pull the plug on my relationship of almost a year last night with a really sweet girl. And by really sweet, I don't mean the typical b.s.; she spends her free time volunteering with terminal A.I.D.S. patients. This was either one of the worst decisions I've ever made....or one of the best. Only time will tell.

One of the best. This looks like a no brainer to me. My stepson went to some Catholic classes last year and I openly call them fairytale classes and my wife shrugged and agreed. Now that church sends mailings to our house asking for money with my name on the envelope. The same church that (thankfully) won't babtize my daughter because I am an athiest. These are crazy people running that church. Now that he has learned about his grandparents cult we use the threat of more fairytale classes to encourage him to participate in worthwhile programs.

[MTT]

Stalefish, i read your blog here.

On a serious note it looks like you made a hard but honest decision.

Your not going to be Friends later.

Let us know who drunk calls who first?

[MTT]

Freshie247.

So funny Connecticut!
So I lived with a Nurse for 6 Years (Common law wife)? In Rocky hill CT.

Her Family were mostly from Rocky hill, Weathersfield , Newington Area. (Since the 1700's)
When its all said and done I was never really welcome
By year two Leslie had me an a pretty tight schedule, a Bridge night with friends, Bowling league, endless weddings and receptions. Family gatherings at the shore, up in main, ect ect.
I had to lie and sneak to get in rounds of weekend golf.
In hindsight what a frikin nightmare.
No wonder they all keep a couple (BOXES) of wine in the Fridge.

Such nice people in that part of the world, that is, until you really get to know them and start to become part of the family. not what i would call a trusting open minded group of people.

Needless to say after the exchange with the wife, you cannot really be friends with him anymore.

[bklyn]

All Right T,just for you! Names have been changed to protect the guilty! ...

Zing!!
What a kook!