Tag: men and women

Hedonist

Rob Says4 Comments

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Matt wrote a great post the other day about getting his tastebuds back. It’s a great post, do him and me a solid and go check it out.

I’m many things in life, there is no one thing that defines me in totality. I’m educated both in the classical, classroom, book sense, and I’m also educated from the school of hard knocks. I’m a Man first and many other things second, third, and so on.

One thing I am is a Hedonist.

Hedonism is a school of thought that argues seeking pleasure and avoiding suffering are the only components of well-being.[1]

I understand that there are periods of time in life where things don’t go the way that you want and that makes us uncomfortable and to even suffer. I accept that and I deal with it when it comes, maybe that’s also the inner stoic in me, but mostly I want and strive to either get back to pleasure, or to pursue pleasure in its myriad of forms.

Pleasure isn’t just about sex, although it’s one of my most favorite forms of pleasure. Eating food is another pleasure as well as a means of survival. Eating foods that many would consider “bad for you” is also one of my favorite things to do. Life is too short to not eat the good food. Life is too short to not drink the good drinks, and that includes alcohol for me.

I take great pleasure in writing and so I write. I take great pleasure in the sound of my own voice and so I run my mouth constantly. I take pleasure in being on camera and so I have my YouTube channel as well as being on other people’s shows.

hedonism

Many people online and in real life choose to “struggle” and “resist” so-called “temptation.” I understand this although I consider it somewhat masochistic to do so, but then again, masochists are known for taking pleasure in their own suffering. Perhaps people who choose to not drink and to not eat all the decadent foods gain pleasure from not doing so. Maybe they take pleasure in making necessity a virtue. Maybe they take pleasure in virtue itself. If it doesn’t fill my belly, alter my mind in some form, or empty my ball sac, I’m generally not interested.

Take a couple of ice cold beers, some delicious, greasy bacon and add a highly stimulating conversation to the mix and I’m on cloud nine. That’s what happened when Matt showed up and we talked about damn near everything under the sun and then some. It was a great time and it was a truly pleasurable moment for me. 10/10 I would do it again.

When I was younger, I took more pleasure in the things I abstained from, or at least that was what I was told to do. That’s the key here. It was what I was told to do. This was me living someone else’s life and doing as they wished. It wasn’t me living my life and doing what I wanted.

When I decided to try out different foods, drinks, clothes, and yes, women, I realized that I was happy. I was happy being me because I was doing what I wanted to do. Not everybody liked what I had become, not everybody liked the choices that I have made. That’s okay, they don’t have to. It’s my life, my choice.

I find seeking pleasure in all of its forms far more interesting and far more gratifying than abstaining from those pleasures. I would rather partake than not. I believe that we have only this one life and so I might as well enjoy it as much as possible.

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I don’t expect anyone to follow me down this road because we all get to choose our own paths in life. Just don’t tell me about the virtues of abstinence because I’ve already been down that road. It’s not for me. For those of you who haven’t indulged yourselves, my question to you is this: Why not?

We could all die tomorrow in a variety of ways in a variety of pain. The truth is that we all die sooner or later because it’s unavoidable and it’s inevitable. I would rather die sooner while enjoying my life and experiencing as much as possible with a ton of intensity than die 50 years from now in my bed or from falling down a flight of stairs, scared silly of the grim reaper. The reaper comes for us all eventually.

Who really wants to live forever?

Abstaining wasn’t just what I was told, it was what I was told to fear. “Don’t do that! You’ll get a disease!” “Don’t go there! You’ll get in trouble!” “Don’t say those things! You’ll offend someone!” Yeah, none of those things have happened to me so far, and if they do, I’ll deal with them when they happen.

The two great motivators in life are pleasure and pain. We all have both to one degree or another. Most people are motivated to move away from pain. We are motivated more by what we stand to lose than what we stand to gain. Which one motivates you more? Pleasure? Or pain?

christian-hedonism
Indeed.

Most of the people who cry “Moderation in Everything!” have never truly gone down the road to excess. Most of them haven’t done anything to excess except to say that everything should be done in moderation. Think about that for a moment. How do you even know what excess is unless you’ve actually experienced it? It’s amazing what we can do when we push ourselves enough. This includes experiencing pleasure in all of its forms.

It’s okay if you want to talk about the virtues of being virtuous. It’s okay if you want to abstain. Do it long enough and you will have truly never lived and that’s okay too. That’s your life.

I’ll be eyeballs deep in it though, right up to my brow. I’ll be in it so deep that I’ll set every nerve ending in my body on fire.

Life is beautiful and it is absurd. Life has no inherent meaning to it. The only meaning that life has is what you give to it. I choose pleasure. The meaning of life to me is to experience as much pleasure as I can in the time that I can. Life is pleasure. Pleasure for the sake of pleasure.

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The Mystical and the Pragmatic

Rob Says1 Comment
storm clouds in sky
Looking down on you from Heaven.

“My husband and your wife wanted us to be together…” – My Dad’s girlfriend on how and why she and my Dad got together.

I remember talking to my Dad a little while ago, and we got on the subject of his new girlfriend. Now by new, I mean that she and my Dad have been seeing each other for about a year now and she is the first woman that he took a shine to since my Mother died.

My Dad’s girlfriend is a year younger than my Dad, so she will be 69 in September. She’s been widowed not once, but twice. One of her husband’s died several years ago due to health complications and her last boyfriend before my Dad died from a heart attack after he had just finished shoveling snow during a winter storm a few years ago.

I joked with my Dad and told him that he needs to stay away from her since she is a “black widow” as she tends to kill the men that she is with. I don’t honestly think that she is killing the men in her life, since she isn’t receiving any sort of death benefits, especially from the last guy, but then again, I guess time will tell. Maybe she is killing them. Maybe they died to get away from her. Maybe it’s a series of unfortunate events. I tend to believe the latter.

I remember talking to my Dad, not only about her, but also about the strong possibility that there is no afterlife and therefore, there is no heaven or hell except what we make for ourselves here during our lives. He tends to agree with me. Both my Father and I aren’t “spiritual people” in the sense of believing that we have “souls” and that we go on with some form of existence after death. We’re both pretty pragmatic in that sense. Show me empirical proof of an afterlife and I’ll gladly change my mind. Until then, nah.

My Dad’s current girlfriend told him the quote that I mentioned at the beginning of this post, and from what I can tell, she firmly believes it. She honestly believes that her dead husband and my dead Mother got together wherever dead people go and decided that her and my Father needed to be together. That’s her story and she’s sticking to it.

I find it funny, not only because I don’t believe in all of that stuff, but also because I do believe in the power of proximity and “social game.” One of the things that my Dad’s current girlfriend tends to overlook or completely ignore is that they both run in the same social circles. They both share the same circle of friends and everyone there knows everybody else. All of their mutual friends practically pushed the two of them together, and why not? They are both single, they are both in reasonably good shape and health, and they both share a lot of the same values and goals. They have a lot of the same interests and have many things in common.

To me, it’s a no-brainer. He’s looking for company, she’s looking for company, they both like the same shit, why not? While it’s not the life I would choose for myself, he likes her, she likes him and they both like doing a lot of the same things together, so go for it.

It’s funny to me that women in general tend to put so many things in life out to “fate,” “God,” “the Universe,” and even “Karma.” It’s funny to me because if they only knew. If they only knew that I planned the date down to some of the most minute details and the only truly random variable was which woman was going to show up. Will it be this woman? Or will it be a different woman? Either way I’m going to go here, eat this, drink that, go see this, and then ultimately go do that.

Then again, maybe they do know, and they just don’t want to actually “see it” and admit to it. And why would they? Once you’ve seen how the magic trick is done and you realize just how simple it really is, all of the magic is gone.

Rian Stone had a great answer to a question on Twitter a little while ago. The question was: “Men, what’s one of the ways in your realm where she can earn sex with you?”

Rian answered: “Be available.”

Beautiful, simple, and to the point.

It’s not much different from “the other side” as well. A lot of guys talk about their game and how they dress and how they look and their wealth and what interesting and cool lines they used on a woman.

What if most of the time it was because you were the “right guy at the right place at the right time” though? It honestly didn’t have much to do with you except that you were there, you were available, and you didn’t step on your own dick?

Guys, let’s be honest with ourselves. We aren’t the Casnova’s that we think we are and that we want women and other men to believe us to be. We ain’t shit, and that’s okay.

We are opportunists.

We learn to recognize that she’s interested and we ideally strike while the iron is hot. We learn to give her the show without revealing the man behind the curtain. And ultimately we learn how to do this while keeping our fucking mouths shut so that we don’t give her a reason to not fuck us.

So when you are out with a woman and she’s waxing poetically about the sun and the stars aligning and that it was the Universe that brought you two together, you know in your own mind, that no, it wasn’t Karma. It was you setting the stage and dealing with the details and the logistics. All she needed to do was show up.

But you tell her with a twinkle in your eye, “I know right?! We were meant to be. It was fate.”

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What Online Dating Body Types Mean in 2020

Rob Says2 Comments

three women s doing exercises
This is “Thin” or “Athletic.”

I wrote a post about an experience I had with a friend of mine while at a couple of bars, and today I want to expand on that with some other observations and information.

The last time that I had seriously done “the bar thing” was over 20 years ago. Probably closer to 23 years ago. I started going back to the bar in late 2019/early 2020 before the pandemic hit and put that on pause. The bar I would go to had an eclectic mix of people and a wide demographic of ages.

Everything from the early 20-somethings up to the early to mid 60-somethings if I had to guess, was there. I’ll be honest and say right now that guessing someone’s age has never been my biggest strength. So there was roughly an equal ratio of men to women and the age groups were pretty much all represented at this particular bar.

The last bar that I went to though, the age demographic was almost entirely the early to mid 20-somethings. There might have been a few in their late 20’s and a very, very small handful of people in their early 30’s. Definitely what you would call the “college crowd.” And then there was me and my buddy, the two “old” guys in the bar.

I’ll be honest when I say I was a little hesitant to going to this particular bar. My buddy told me about it as he had been there a few times before and he really enjoyed it. “Lot’s of eye candy” as he put it. I was hesitant because I remember what it was like being in my mid 20’s and there was always “that one creepy old guy in the bar.” Everybody would look at him and roll their eyes and wrinkle their noses up at him. Girls would laugh and not in a good way. That guy was tolerated at best and pitied and avoided at worst. I definitely did not want to be “that guy.”

As things would have it though, I didn’t have to worry about it. Everyone was very friendly with me. I can see why for some of it. The bar was happy for the patronage and when you’re the “new guy” everybody is interested in you to one degree or another. Whether it’s intrasexual competition from the other guys in the bar, or it’s the possibility of an encounter with the women, you’re being sized up. Especially when you’re new.

Nobody had an issue with my buddy and me being there and honestly I didn’t care. Being comfortable in your own skin will do that. A couple of beers doesn’t hurt either.

So here’s what I’ve observed and don’t worry, I’m going to take these observations and apply them to online dating because they are applicable:

  1. Men and women as a whole are fatter now than 20 years ago. Applying this to online dating means that the category of “Average” today isn’t what “Average” of yesterday was. Average from 20 years ago meant that you were neither thin or fat. You were just, average. Kind of like Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Average from yesterday doesn’t exist today, not anymore. Average today means you are fat. You may not be obese or morbidly obese, but you are fat. Think 20 pounds plus. There literally wasn’t any women that were like 5 pounds overweight. They were either thin (which I’ll get to next) or they were 20+ overweight.
  2. Thin women still exist. Most of the guys were thinner and in better shape than the women as well, compared to 20 years ago. Thank god for thin women since this happens to be my personal preference. There were plenty of skinny girls there, plenty of “eye candy” for me to see. I’ve seen plenty of women that would describe themselves as thin in online dating as well, they just aren’t the majority anymore.
  3. Athletic as a type definitely exists. I would consider it a “sub-category” to thin. The only major difference to me at least, is that athletic women tend to have more muscle definition and tend to be more toned. Otherwise they are thin, hence the “sub-category” classification.
  4. Lots and lots of tattoos on everybody for the most part. I have a lot of tattoos but the younger crowd is either giving me a run for my money or they have me beat hands down. Nothing wrong with this per se, just an observation. The women and the men who had no visible tattoos tended to stand out, that’s how many people have tattoos in the bar today.

I made a tweet a few days ago that has summed up my experience when it comes to online dating and “body types” or “body descriptions:”

Average = Fat

A Few Extra Pounds = Fat

Curvy = Really Fat

BBW = Really Fat with an extra dose of attitude

Thin = Thin (but only if there is a fully body shot, otherwise = Fat)

Athletic (see Thin)

This may be hilarious to some degree, but it’s true unfortunately. I’ve encountered far too many women who say they are “average” when it comes to their body type and I have to admit that it’s my fault for not actually seeing them that way. That’s because I was holding on to what “average” was 20 years ago. Average today is overweight. Curvy used to be what Madonna was back when she did “Lucky Star.” Think hourglass. Curvy today is obese. A few extra pounds 20 years ago, was a tiny bit of a tummy. A few extra pounds today is 20 pounds overweight. Not obese and definitely not morbidly obese, but definitely pushing into obese territory.

The one that I have the most conflict with today is Athletic. Athletic to me and probably to most guys is a person who has low body fat and has muscle definition and tone. I’ve seen women who say they are “athletic” and sure they are in a selfie pic at some gym somewhere, wearing a yoga top and yoga pants, but they are far from having an athletic body. A muffin top body isn’t athletic. Nor should counting that one time you went hiking over a year ago count as athletic. That’s why I say, full body shots in the pictures or they are fat.

I’m not saying any of this as a condemnation of women being overweight. I’ve dated plenty of women over the years who genuinely were “a few extra pounds.” There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But “a few extra pounds” was just that. 5 or 10 extra pounds at the most.

If we are going to keep the body types “honest” with today’s standards and averages, there should be only 2 choices with one possible sub-category:

Thin or fat. There’s no need to have an “average” category anymore since “average” as it once was doesn’t exist. The sub-category would be “athletic” and that would only be applicable if you were actually “thin” first.

There’s no need for a “curvy,” “a few extra pounds,” or “BBW” anymore, since it’s all basically just one degree of fat or another. Actually, I’ll take that back. There should still be a BBW category. That’s because most of the women that I have encountered that identify as “BBW” also tend to be the most entitled and have the most bitter of attitudes. At least the bigger girls who didn’t consider themselves to be BBW had more pleasant demeanors and personalities.

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