AWPATT VI: July 1-10 (Thoughts 31-40)

A Woman Provokes A Thousand Thoughts: Hub

 

31 Burning oneself through sun exposure is foolish and a repellent. The only point of cooking meat is to eat it, so why sear your shoulders and walk around with medium-rare leathery skin? If getting cancer is so important to you, then our interests are not aligned. I want my LIFE partner to stick around for a while, and myself for them also, and being fair-skinned is incidental to that. Someone who wants to live fast, die young, and doesn’t plan things out more than 20 years into the future is a fundamentally selfish person. Selfishness doesn’t translate well to healthy relationships.

32 Ditto for smoking. And seriously, with all the information there is about it, for someone to even start that, they’d have to possess a level of stupidity and/or arrogance that would put them in a completely different playing field than the one I’m in. I’d never consider a relationship with a current or past smoker.

33 Anyone who I would seriously consider a potential partner, I will at some point act noncommittal toward and push them away. Not to be self-destructive, mind you, but to weed out the insincerely committed. If I like you, I will not fail to try to make you doubt that I do. I want to see what happens when attractive qualities in the other person that could potentially motivate you are removed, and you are left with nothing but your own choice. Will you love without condition or expectation? This is where the rubber meets the road, and I believe that I won’t ever be married until I’ve put someone through this and they’ve persisted to say that they want me, “warts and all.”

 34 One way it’s important to have your theology straight is who you submit to. Daughteràparents, church memberàpastor, citizenàlaw enforcement/judges. Not womanàman. You don’t just act submissive to any ol’ guy, or guy you like, even. If  I never see you say no to anything, it’ll raise my alarm.

35 Because of the culture these days, someone who’s already had romantic relationships is probably not a match for me. On the one hand, they can give you the wisdom of experience, and teach you to treasure the good things, but they can also ruin a person’s understanding of what love is or looks like, and leave them jaded

36 I want to see that she’s passionate for evangelism

37 It can be attractive when someone lets you know that they’re aware that they’re attractive, just not if they make efforts to draw attention to themselves. One comes across as confident, the other as insecure and egotistical.

38 Using a smile to signal contempt or a touch to signal condescension cheapens and sullies the usually-benign meanings of those gestures. It’s too much like cruel sarcasm for my taste. It’s rude because it’s dishonest. It hurts more because it strings people along only to ridicule their trusting nature.

39 Like with touch, someone saying my name is something rare for me, and so when someone takes the special care to address me by my name, rather than just speak to me directly without the personal greeting, it makes my ears perk up. It strikes me as noticeably more formal or polite, and if it’s outside of a formal context, especially if it’s one-on-one, it makes me wonder if they’re saying my name to be more intimate, and telegraph interest.

40 Speaking of which, there was one time at college where I was killing time, hanging out with a freshman in her room while we waited for her friends/roommates, and she determined to say my name several times, dare I say seductively, after I had said I didn’t think of it as very special. ‘First time in my experience that I was aware of someone saying they liked my name, or for that matter showing that they liked saying my name. That would certainly be something that falls into the category of increasing desire but nevertheless superfluous in terms of whether I think someone would be a good wife. The memory is something my ears won’t soon forget.

~ Rak Chazak