Relationships are all about giving. So that comes with a dilemma, whom to give, and how much. And is it ever in the right spirit to hold out? Life is a finite resource after all.
Not necessarily materially, but as an investment of self. Time, ideas, creativity, trust, memories and life story, romantic gestures, words, etc.
What happens when you spare nothing and give it all to one person. And they squander it. How do you go on after that?
This past fall I toured coastal Alaska and witnessed the following scene at the totem park in Sitka. The weather was nice, I only wore a fleece jacket that day. There were bear activity signs at the entrance, and I had already smelled what is to come as I was walking along the coast. It was the tail end of the salmon spawning season. There were no bears in sight anywhere, they have long since eaten their fill by that point. A small river ran through that park. In places on the path along the river bank I couldn't help but gag from the brutal stench of rotting fish. Seagulls, inside the woods of the park, were lazily pulling dying fish out of the water, never bothering to eat the whole thing, they'd leave them half-eaten on the bank. Each one around 2 feet long (~60cm). I reached a low bridge over the water where I could stand over it and watch the water below, swarming with fish in their spawning positions, no more than foot and a half between each (<50cm). The fish slowly flexed their bodies, hovering in place against the slow current. They bobbed a little in the stream of water, neighboring fish aggressively rammed each other if another got too close. They were already finished with the spawn by then, they were just idling, burning off the last bit of energy before dying. Those fish are too damaged and exhausted from their long journey to and up the rocky river, they cannot live. What I was witnessing was a living graveyard.
Today I'm that dying fish, I've given everything that I had in me, sparing nothing. I'm completely used up and spent. I gave it a 1000% and there is nothing left to give. I guess I'm one of the ones that didn't reach the objective.
There are not that many good words, and once you've said them, how do you speak them again to someone else? How do you speak the same vows to someone else? It will never feel right. How do you take back a promise?
This is something I never understood about the dating activity that some others do. Surely they'd have to repeat themselves for all those different people, turning an intimate conversation about growing up into some kind of stage act. It's forced and not genuine. Some things can only come out once.
Us, the men from a place like this, we aren't exactly prime dating material. It's good when we're able to find jobs and meet basic needs, making us just barely marketable. But with a significant social handicap we have to make an effort twice, thrice, and tenfold even, to make it happen for us. You might not have the resource of life to have that level of exertion again, after you're completely spent.
I hate ugly gender generalizations but there's ugly truth in this. For any woman who is even remotely f***able there are always options in a dating pool. That's just the common sense reality of it. It's a relatively low effort activity for women.
It's too late for it to make a difference now, but I still wonder, how do you manage the dilemma of how much of yourself to give someone?
...And boy, I tell ya, they say there's a lot of fish in the sea. I went and saw a lot of fish... AND IT STINKS!! !
Last edited by r00tb33r on 12 Jan 2023, 7:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
12 Jan 2023, 7:11 pm
