WLTM...

[j4]

... the guy who wrote this personals ad. (Thanks kosai for the link!)

It's so hard to write personals ads. I wrote an ad on uk.misc a while ago which read:

WTD: well-off husband with no morals. Must be willing to buy large house & put up with me filling it with junk. I can offer: use of gigantic book collection, homely cake-baking, a collection of crap 8-bit computers, and unconditional love. GSOH essential (see attached photo).

Everybody pointed out that I'd forgotten to mention sex, so I suppose I should add "I have girl-bits and I know how to have sex". I'm fairly low-maintenance, really; I need food, water, sunlight and conversation (by email will do). I don't expect anything more from the world. I am in reasonably good health. I'd like to own cats one day. Is it too much to ask?

Comments

Morals and relationships

[liv]

I think there are two ways of doing morality (well, hundreds, but I feel like dividing them into two major groups). There are most likely proper names for them, but I think of them as top-down and bottom-up. You can start with a small set of absolute principles, like, I dunno, always tell the truth and don't hurt people and try to apply them as situations arise. Or you can start from the situations and try to work out how to deal with each individual circumstance in the most moral way on the basis of past experience and the prediction of outcome of the different choices and stuff. I don't know that either approach is intrinsically superior, and in the end most people probably use a mixture of both.

As for what I was biting my tongue on about the relationship thing: I think mainly stuff about how a relationship isn't necessarily a complete failure because it comes to an end, even if it ends unhappily. There's a sort of expectation floating about that a relationship is either perfect and life-long or a complete dead loss, and I just don't think that's the case. A relationship can, I think, be good on balance, or good some of the time, even if there are problems.

Also, relationships (particularly of the intimate, couple sort) are hard. I think most everyone who isn't actually lifelong celibate has had some bad relationships. But that doesn't mean they, and you, will never have a good relationship.

It's clear from your comment above that you do in fact know this, you're not actually saying that all your relationships have been terrible. May I express sympathy on the things being in flux and not knowing where you're going, though?