wispfox

As requested, ( the story of how I met, and then tracked down, R )

A reply to a comment in my journal way back with my indexing/faces/etc musings felt like something I ought to post, as well. (this did get quite a lot longer than the original reply, however)

The question was in terms of how I develop a sense of someone's core self, in terms of I get the whole thing all at once, or if I get more and more of it as I get to know them better.


( My reply, lj-cut because it was too long for me to be happy not doing so )

Random bit of information for those who haven't been reading me long enough to already know this:

Regarding me and in-person interaction stuff... basically, unless I've developed a pretty good sense of a person, I am amazingly unlikely to be attempting to find time to interact with them individually. This can sometimes be developed online, and other times be developed by random in-person group interactions at things I was at for other reasons. (and, for those who are wondering - if there is interest on either of our parts in getting to know each other better in-person, it will almost certainly have followed from conversations we'd been having and therefore make _sense_, and not be completely out of the blue)

[edit: this paranthetical had said "(and, for those who are wondering - if you are someone I want to spend more time with, I _will_ tell you. There are multiple people reading this who can confirm this fact. ;)" - which is still accurate, but I think my rephrasing is more clear and better words for the concept I was trying to convey]

The vast majority of the reasoning behind this is the fact that I just don't have _time_ - some of the people I already know really well and whose company I tend to seek out haven't seen me in at least a month, if not more (example being the friend I hung out with tonight - he had not seen my hair purple, and it _isn't_ purple anymore because it's faded so much). The other part is that people I have no sense of are not real in my head, and are not comfortable enough for me to be seeking their company.

[edit - the below added for hopefully more clarity]
For the most part, I am very much _not_ wired for getting to know people intentionally unless they have entered my awareness already via online or more-than-in-passing in-person interactions.

I realize that most people get a sense of other people much more easily and quickly than I do, and that for most people contacting someone that they met in passing or know only through reading their journal about wanting more interaction is reasonable. In my head, it's not really all that reasonable, and will likely weird me out a little, if the contact is much more than 'hey, want to try to get to know you better' or 'you seem neat, are you at all interested in chatting more through email?'. It's especially likely to weird me out if the contact mentions specficially attempting to obtain time in-person. Both the 'chatting via email' and the 'getting to know better' don't feel like someone is asking for a huge amount - the first is email, which I don't feel pressured about generally, and the second is very very general and therefore an excellent way of getting into my awareness without freaking me out (much - depending on how much I've seen of the person in other contexts).

If I haven't been interacting with you a fair amount through some meeting or another, and/or have not mentioned that I want to try to interact with you more in-person, suggesting the idea of in-person hanging out will confuse and disturb me - as I tend to interpret it as individually unless it's stated otherwise. This is simply _true_, and I say it because I prefer to help people avoid doing things pretty much certain to make me uncomfortable with getting to know them better.

(this is apparently all refering to non-in-person types of indicating this. I am probably better with in-person things like this because I have at least some hope of getting a sense of what you are trying to ask in-person.)

OK, I'm all introspective (ok, perhaps that isn't all that noteworthy...) and stuff.

The idea of 'going on dates', as I believe it is generally understood, seems to be a combination of getting to know someone new and determining potential for a sexual relationship. It seems... odd to me to combine those two goals, because getting to know someone is, in my head, a perfectly delightful goal all on its own, and adding in conscious thought about a possible sexual relationship only adds large amounts of stress, confusion, and nervousness. It also makes it much more difficult to get to know a person entirely on the basis of who they are, rather than on future possibilities.

For me, getting to know someone _is_ an end goal, and generally one sparked by in-person meetings (sometimes planned, mostly not - and usually in decent-sized groups). I'd want to know more about them, whether I'm coming from a base of just having met them, or from some amount of knowledge gained before meeting them (online for example).

Sometimes, from friendship, comes the potential for some sort of relationship with includes sexual activity or the possibility thereof - but, for me, it always follows the friendship, and does not happen while trying to _form_ the friendship. (although, sometimes, I feel compelled to note, there has not been a whole lot of time between the two states. I've gotten much better at separating the two more clearly, since that _is_ how I work.)

It's true that, if I meet people online, I can form some level of interest in meeting them - certainly! But, for the most part, this is a fairly passive interest, and takes a fair amount (usually at least a few months of actual interaction) of time - I develop interest in meeting a person eventually, and won't, for example, feel a need to attempt to seek them out. This type of thing tends to result in me meeting a person at some sort of social activity that we'd both have been going to anyway. The actively seeking out also does happen based solely on online interaction (to my profound surprise), but ridiculously rarely.

So... I think that I'm very, very curious as to why it might make sense to any of you to do what I believe to be the 'typical' kind of dating, where getting to know people is simultaneous with investigating possibility of a sexual relationship. It seems... time-consuming, stressful, and not terribly effective for forming good bonds. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding something?

Note: I _do_ realize that there are cases where people meet, have an instant connection, and therefore the getting to know is simultaneous with _everything_. But those are special cases. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking so-called 'typical' forms of dating (for those who don't understand the concept of dating in the US - I think I've explained what I'm talking about in enough detail? Especially since I don't really understand it, either... and considering that that word can mean entirely too many things).