Polls: Relationships

I consider myself a high functioning adult these days; I was a professional "Composer/Recording Artist" for a number of years after gaining a PhD in Music Composition from Birmingham Conservatoire. However the money was sporadic at best so I changed careers and became a Chef, quickly rising through both the ranks and up the quality spectrum over 10 years to eventually become a Sous Chef at a 2* Michelin Establishment in London. However due to relationship responsibilities picking up (my fiance is a doctor and we both work 16hr days). Which would make having Kids... tricky to say the least. So I changed career again so I could maybe work from home. So now I am training to be an Ethical Hacker (Cyber Security Engineer). Anyway, my point is, most out people out there whom I have worked with, have always considered me very capable/dependable. So when they eventually find out that I come from a highly abusive background, they get taken aback... and some have even accused me of outright lying about it...( I can only assume that this is because "in their mind" you can't come from that kind of background and be anything other than dysfunctional...) Unusually, it's also often Women who have accused me of lying about this... and I am really not sure why... Guys tend to take it at face value (or even give me "props for not letting it affect me"). To clarify, my mum was diagnosed with Cancer when I was about 3, and my father was away on business abroad a lot, so I was only ever with her (watching her slowly fall apart), she died when I was 6.. my dad remarried, who I can only describe as a sociopath, she emotionally/mentally and physically abused me, gaslighting at every opportunity to make me and my father think we were loosing the plot.. I spent a lot of time believing I was having "black outs" because I couldn't remember hurting myself in the way she said..(because it was her). To this day I struggle a lot with trusting women.. I have to force myself to not assume the worst

"Testing" your partner means that you aren't confident about their intentions and you deliberately stage a situation where they have the opportunity to reveal their true character. For instance, a girl is engaged but wants to know that her fiance won't cheat. So she gets the help of her younger sister. Future sister-in-law calls the guy and asks if he can come over to fix a leaky faucet. When he arrives, she is home alone, and wearing seductive lingerie. She tries to seduce him but he walks out of her house without touching her. When he exits the house, his fiance is waiting outside to congratulate him on passing the test.

If someone tests you even once, it strongly suggests that they don't trust you. And you might get tested again. Who wants to live knowing that everything that happens to you just might be a deliberately staged test? I think testing a partner - if they learn about the test - raises the possibility of a break up to a near certainty.

Have you ever tested a partner? How did that work? Have you ever been tested? How did you feel when yo learned that you had been tested?

I am 27 and never had a real girlfriend. I have always wanted to have a wife and family of my own. I don't know if this will ever become a reality.

Meanwhile, most of my peers I have known growing up are married and/or have kids.

My young adult church group mostly consists of married couples. One of my high school best friends is married. There is a guy at work that has Asperger's like me, and he is even married!

I am worried that all the good women are already taken and married. I fear that I will eventually be stuck with divorced women and single moms.

Kind of a part 2 to this question.

We were discussing why men hate being Friendzoned, and why some women don't understand why men hate being Friendzoned and why it IS a "consolation prize." Here is everything that I said before in the other question:

"[A friendship] has to be organic. Men and women see friendships/relationships differently. Most men will separate friendships and relationships. Men will have their guy friends social circle, and their one woman who they date/marry at home.

Most men won't want friendships with women]because chances are very high that nothing will eventually "develop," and his feelings of infatuation won't just 'go away.' IF he has a female friend, he won't EVER try to ask her out or turn her into a girlfriend. Men do not ever cross that line. While women sometimes do sometimes turn friends into lovers.

Men don't want to "just be friends" with women they romantically like. Not now, not EVER. Men who say otherwise are just simps and orbiters who can't admit it. But they are. Men will usually equate being a partner as much higher status than a 'friend,' with a 'friend' being low-value, easily replaceable, and ultimately meaningless in that person (the woman's) life.

So if a woman rejects a man's romantic advances and asks to 'just be friends,' to some of those men, that means she just told that man that she thinks of him as inferior or unworthy of her. This is also why SOME men lash out and get angry. Those issues are all on them though, not the woman."

Do you agree or disagree with the question?

There's no doubt being single is better than being in a bad relationship but I find it hard to believe you can be happy single all your life.

You might not even need anyone but after a while you feel lonely and empty. Just having someone by your side in support helps so much. Maybe a partner isn't everything but I don't see how you can't feel its effects.

This question is meant to focus on relatonships that BEGAN as a long distance relationship. Those are quite different from relationships that began when the couple had time together - in person - to develop a relationship, and they later got separated by someone going away to school, military deployment, moving due to a job, etc.

It seems to me that relationships that begin as a long distance relationship have the odds heavily stacked against them. I have been through that process - briefly - and it quickly fizzled out, the energy was gone, the excitement died a quiet death, and nothing was left. Have you ever began a relationship from a distance and eventually found a way to meet? How did that work out?