My old housemate referred to the 'fuckwit crossroads' as a big point of change that people reach, when they think 'Right - will start treating people decently, not follow crowd, work out who I am' and so forth.
Like Mister Disco, I'm completely latching onto this expression. (I have no proper attribution for it, so it's being treated as creative commons for the moment.) Before, I called this phenomenon "getting a soul," but I was never quite comfortable with that (obvs.) and this is so much better.
A friend of mine is in a serious LTR/getting ready to be handfasted with someone twice his age. They have a really cool relationship, despite some rocky areas. But what weighs heavily on his mind is that his partner is not in good health and is having increasing trouble doing things for himself (he has fibromyalgia and recently had a heart attack, among other things). I tend to do better in LTRs with people older than myself, but I would hesitate to put myself in that position.
I'm uncomfortable with the "no angel" argument, I have to say. It's perfectly probable that your dewy youth is a blithe lothario with healthy desires, of course, but heavily sexualised behaviour in teenagers is not necessarily just what it is, you know?
Your point is well-taken, and it's certainly something I've been considering myself. The potential for this is still pretty fresh—he came on to me at a party while we were both relatively sober; we got increasingly (not decreasingly) sober as the night went on, we put the friend we were both taking care of safely to bed, and he stayed the night in my bed (we didn't have sex, but not for want of his trying). We've been casual friends before that. This was last weekend. Since then, we've hung out, talked a bit, and made out, and then I sent him home. I'm making him do the chasing. I'm a bit younger than many and less Asian than most of his previous partners. As far as the "place in our lives" theory goes, we're both students, in student housing; he drinks/goes to parties a bit more than I do; neither of us is expecting an LTR out of the other.
One concerns me is his tendency to date older men. It's not a lack of opportunity in his own age group. Depending on the guys he's been dating, it could point to a certain willingness to be objectified which could (not necessarily) indicate a low self-esteem issue, which hasn't been obvious to me at this point. But as I say this hasn't been clear to me either from our recent interactions or our previous friendship. He may just have the idea that experimenting with a trans guy is the thing to do, which I don't particularly have a problem with; I've seen no evidence of a tendency to angst over what my body parts mean to his identity. I would characterise him as: impulsive, willing to introspect but it's not the first thing that occurs to him, a little racist (he's being called a rice fetishist, which doesn't apply in this particular case), caring (he and I both found ourselves taking care of our friend at this party, and he evidenced quite a willingness to put off his own interests to sit with hir for two or more hours), highly sexual, independent, opinionated (see also racist), intellectual, pragmatic, egotistical at face value (not sure about his underlying sense of himself), not traditionally attractive, with unfounded concerns about his weight.
What characterises a blithe, healthy lothario to you, Haus? I'd really be interested in having some more objective opinions on this situation, since most people I have to occasion to talk about sex with are also people who know him to varying degrees. |
