Who I was and what I wanted at 25 and who I am and what I want/need now at 46 are two opposite things.

Kick back, let life happen and enjoy then ride.

My biggest advice is make really great friends along the way, and don't burn your bridges. Some of my very best friends now are exes.

"pedestal couple" this is a first i have ever heard of this term....i mean i guess i am asking...do we label relationships now too??? what is the criteria to become a "pedestal couple"?? just curious

:) Thanks for the clarification!!! Ya know my mind wonders what extra kind of pressure that added to your relationship and if you were aware of it at the time or not till after? *totally get if you don't want to answer* For me it would add extra pressure!!!!!

I made my 67th birthday this past December. I've been gay & femme since I was 19. Have I had alot of relationships? Uh, yep. Have they all 'worked'? Nope. Some were very short-term, others a tad longer. My last ltr was about 8 years ago. We were together for 12 years, but should have thrown in the towel after the 3rd year - we stayed together for all the wrong reasons.

I have been single since then, with the rare date, or cyberspace 'romance' every once in a great while. I've only been truly in love once, when I was 28. It was a chaotic and stormy affair - we had little in common except we were both Latin, tempermental, stubborn, and had the 'my way or the highway' mentality. It was a lustful relationship, and I think sex was just about the only thing we had in common, or the only times we were not fighting. And yet, in spite of the fireworks, or because of them, she was the love of my life - and still is.

I have spent a lifetime trying to replicate those emotions - the passion, desire, and yes, the lust. Never happened again, and at this stage of my life, it's unlikely it will happen again.

What's the moral of the story?...stop looking for what's 'perfect for you' - it prob doesn't exist. That said, however, you are very young. And at the risk of sounding 'cliche-ish' and old-fashioned, you have your whole life ahead of you, and most likely that prince in shinning armor is still at large, but will find you. Work on you now. Become your highest potential, reach your goals and dreams. I'll bet anything that while you're concentrating on you, Mr. Right will be getting closer and closer. The rascal will pop his head into your life when you least expect it, and catch you completely by surprise.

The one important advise I do have, is don't become bitter and disallusioned like some people (me)...I wish you the very best in life - you will find what you are looking for - it may just take awhile, but don't settle just because you're lonely, whatever you do. It's such a waste of precious time. Trust me, I know this from experience.

I would say that if you find another ENFP--or an INFP--who also wants children and wants to be the breadwinner, then go for it.... but I will also say that if you get romantically interested in anyone right now, it will pay you to do the personality survey with them. If you are like most NFP people, you may be strongly drawn to NTJ people... and there lies heartbreak beyond measure unless you can both come to communicate easily. It is true that opposites attract. It is NOT true that opposites speak the same language.

I confess, Allison, I don't pay attention to the names of the personality types. I can't remember them easily. *sheepish smile* For me, I have a simple rule--if you are an FP person, look for another FP person; if you are a TJ person, look for another TJ person. The differences between E/I and S/N are not as great as the differences betwen FP and TJ.

In a nutshell, TJs tend to be linear, logical, dayplanner, on-time-is-late type people and FPs tend to be flexible, spontaneous, change-my-mind-in-midstream, deadlines-were-made-to-broken type people. The two have to really work hard at understanding each other--and at not driving each other up the wall.

Btw, from what you described about your preferences, I would think you are looking for someone whose personality type is INTJ.

Don't ride the white horse
 

Which I would have listened way back in 1984.:crap:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3KrL7BQBpc"]YouTube- 80's Dance Music | Ride The White Horse | Laid Back[/ame]


:cowboihorse:

I am generally speaking not specifically about one persons experince. Ohhhh and thinking of my own past experience. *i just realized i have been misspelling experience for a long time*

I have never had anybody say that to me after a breakup. I am not sure how that would make me feel. My first relationship was 7 years. My point to keep coming back is something in my mind tells me this form of thinking could be part of a social cycle that should be recognized and broken. Emotionally "keeping up with the joneses", so to speak, with prince charmings, rings, marriages, and babies. I am just thinking and typing.:scared:

You are so very, very right.

Prince Charming, Kissing a Frog, Knight on a White horse...

Those are all fictional characters that society has given to people to make them believe that anything is possible.

Love is like a river .. sometimes in flows slow and trickles over the rocks and its soothing at other times it runs fast and damages everything in its path..
but in the end the river is still the river and does not go anywhere but down the same path it always takes.. It has a direction in life that is determined for the rest of eternity.

Guess what life is not like that though .. Love yes can be that river have you have an idea of how you want that love to go .. and what path you want that love to take .. but unfortunately Everybody has their own love path ....
So it makes it hard to find that perfect person to share that love with...

My grandmother always told me never hunt for love ... let love hunt for you .. If you are worthy of being loved it will find you at your lowest point or highest point. Just do not be too selfish, let it into your heart and show you all the wonderful things that there are in store for you.

When i want to be with someone I do not look for a specific type of person .. I just have a few ground rules and those being honesty, integrity, unconditional love for me and my children and trust and respect.
Other than that you can like fishing and I may like 4wheeling .. its the differences between two people that allow us to grow into more well rounded people. If you only like people who are interested in the same things you are then how do you know if you might like fishing ..

Prince Charming and The knight on a white horse can stay in fairytale land for me ..I want someone who is real who has their own thoughts and ideals and who is willing to work as hard at the relationship as i am.

Love will find you when you least expect it, you might be walking down the street and someone bumps into you, or maybe you walk past that person everyday and your time to meet them just isnt right now.

Live life as if there will be no tomorrow
Love as if you have never loved before and
Dance as if no one is watching ...

I have had one true love in my life and I let her walk away from me. No questions asked no runnign after her.. I just watched as she walked away .. My theory was that if she didnt know how much she meant to me than Nothing I could say or do would ever change that .. If by chance we are meant to be together then life will direct us both back to each other .. But that does not stop me from living everyday to the fullest.

I feel blessed to have had a chance to love someone with not only my heart but my soul.

:twitch:

How about simply going on a date and seeing if things "click".

Just a suggestion .... :)

I just gotta say, I think this thread is a thing of beauty. A young woman put a thought out there that she is pondering and people responded in a thoughtful, positive, supportive, non-condescending way. How refreshing. Truly. :)


Jake...who loves it when people share their life experiences and wisdom in an open, honest way.

I would like to share a few quotes here to think on but first I must say...
If you have a mental list of what you can not live with out...They must be smart for example, very attractive, want to have children soon etc... etc... etc...Make sure you have the same things to offer a potential partner. Become what you are looking for in someone else.

“When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.”

Tom Robbins quotes

“Well, it seems to me that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is... suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with”
Gillian Anderson quotes

“A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself -- to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.”
Leo F. Buscaglia

how very true....its funny how some ppl femme and butch alike..expect a certain package deal...but they dont have what they expect from someone else...I like that BE what you are looking for.....friendship is important...they already love you for YOU...faults and all....

Even though I consistently get typed as a feeler (which, I suppose, should say something about how much these personality metrics actually matter), I know enough to understand that my short-term impulses rarely have anything to do with what will make me happy in the long run, and I don't want to get into junk relationships just because I'm lonely and can't control my emotions.

For all the things it does get right, the personality survey is also seriously flawed, and is based on notions of what action = what motive and "this trait, therefore that trait" associations that don't necessarily hold true. In my case, I've occasionally been placed as a J because I like orderliness and structure, but the problem is that I don't like them because I like to be decisive (which is the assumption); I like them because they free me from having to make decisions.


Guardian = SJ, Artisan = SP, Idealist = NF (my type, though I go against the grain in many places), Rational = NT. While I'm an INFP, you're right that I like Js; both of the serious relationships I had I ended because my partner wouldn't make decisions and left them to me, resulting in my deciding to walk. I, however, would say I'd lean not towards NTJs but STJs (if with the physical focus of the SP), which would put them in the Guardian category (necessarily masculine manifestation, given the way Guardians allegedly vary the most in behaviour depending upon gender role compared to the other types), not the Rational category. I don't want someone who's no better at controlling their emotions or making decisions than I am. That is the subject of my worst nightmares.

I guess it depends on how you take the test, Allison. You might already know this, but I probably should have mentioned it for everyone. People are supposed to blaze through it, yanno? It's most accurate when you don't think about it, when you just go quickly through and say, this fits better, that fits better, this fits better, etc.

The type inventory isn't meant to assign motives, btw; it's meant to discover how one processes information and makes decisions. It isn't a matter so much what a person likes as what a person sustains... I myself like being organized--LOVE being organized--but I cannot sustain it; I have to work at orderliness and it really IS work for me, because my brain just isn't wired to sustain it; I have other strengths instead.

To the more personal part of your post, I can understand completely the nightmare of being with someone who can never make a decision. I've been there, and it wasn't easy.

What strikes me is that you mention twice "uncontrolled emotions" and I'm not sure I understand that. Most people I know who are NFPs are pretty happy with their emotional life and don't seem to have problems with control, unless they are letting other people define their emotions as wrong or bad somehow... and also, most people I know who are NFPs don't have a lot of trouble making decisions unless they have unrealistic expectations of themselves--you know, that need to be perfect and get it absolutely right so you never make a mistake? But that plagues people of all personality types, I think, not just NFPs.

Anyhow, I'm just sharing my thoughts and I hope you don't feel like I'm putting you on the spot; I don't mean to. I figure you know yourself and you know what you're looking for. *soft smile*

I can't blaze through it. The problem is that it asks many questions for which I honestly have absolutely nothing to say off the top of my head. That, and so many of them are meaningless without context, like asking if you want a fork or a spoon without specifying what you're eating. It may as well be gibberish; I'd rather have a paper test where I can scribble in "I don't have an answer for this question; no, it's not that I don't want to say the answer I'm thinking; I have no opinion, and I'm not making one up for you." And no, I don't make decisions well; very trivial decisions paralyze me on a regular basis.

As far as emotions go, I'm very poor at controlling mine. I also consider feelings a fast track to making short-sighted, terrible decisions. Many descriptions I've heard of the thinking vs. feeling axis, however, have absolutely nothing to do with how a person makes decisions and only what they decide, which is a question of values, not rationality vs. emotionality.

The more I think about it, the more I want to finish my accountancy two-year, because bookkeeping is one of the few situations I've found in which I can stop intuiting, stop feeling, and stop needing to make decisions; it has a very zen quality to it.

It sounds like that's just not the right kind of tool for you then, Allison. That would be really frustrating to be unable to relate to so many of the questions! A few of them leave me saying "eh, next please!" but never very many, so it works pretty well for me. Maybe there is something out there that would work better for you.


About the emotions and decisions, coming out of an abusive childhood left me woefully inadequate at understanding and dealing with my own. I found a lot of help in therapy--which I really needed because of the abuse!--but even more help in assertiveness training classes. Then I was lucky enough to find a workbook that had a really helpful decision-making module. That was 1983; as far as I can remember it was called Choices for Women, but I cannot find it anymore. I remember they had a scenario with Cinderella dumping the lazy Prince and opening a shoe store with the Fairy Godmother, lol... (oh my gosh, a web search on that title mostly brings up abortion clinics today!)


Anyhow, since I cannot find it, I found a web site about decision making. I like this one very much, and this quote about the decision not being judged by the outcome is the same kind of quote that set me free in the Choices workbook. http://www.virtualsalt.com/crebook5.htm

I think that applies as much to the decisions we might make about choosing partners as it does to anything else, yanno? If we approach a potential partner with our eyes open and knowing what we both need and want in a partner, and they seem to be a perfect fit, if it doesn't work out down the road it isn't that we made a bad decision--we just had the equivalent of a car accident or flat tire. *some of mine were train wrecks, oy!*

I've been thinking about it while I was reading the decision making website, and something occurs to me. Do you think you might be a Highly Sensitive Person? Some of what you describe seems to fit that. Here's a link to learn more. http://www.hsperson.com/

I know! I appreciate everyone so much. My life isn't easy, but it's mine and I love it. I love my art, my career, my passions, my friends and my family... it's just that sometimes I wish I had that special person to share it with.

I have been single for 6 years now, and haven't even dated anyone in that time. I just can't see doing that right now, I do not have the time to put into the work it takes to make a relationship function. I am a full time student, and a small business owner, so my days are full to the brim with things that are important to me. I really can't say I have missed anything. And besides, I have Bob. With Bob around, you just can't help but be in a good mood.

You are over analyzing, and I must add - far too much.
But hey, whatever works for you.

:) Peace out.

I read this article in Ebony a while back. It really covers everything pretty well without over complicating things. It's the top ten ways to tell if he's the one ~ but it's a pretty universal list ~ I think it works for everyone in any direction.

This is the link to the article:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...g=content;col1

Analysis is my blessing. It's what keeps me from making the horrible decisions that my parents made before me (and that others around me continue to make, for that matter). Without it, I'd have nothing.

So yes, "over-analyzing" does work for me. It has yet to let me down. Fleeting emotions lead me to make bad decisions often--sometimes catastrophically.