Tunes of the changing age

{ May 31, 2008 @ 11:54 am } · { "Body or Soul", Gender talk, Sexuality, age }
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I must admit, I have been very lazy these days, even on days where there is much going on my mind, thoughts flowing forcing me to scribble them on the notepad, I seem to ponder over them in mind, rather than over here on the blog.

The other day I was reading a book and an incident in the book set me adrift in this direction. Sexuality, one of the least discussed and the taboo subjects, one which is not meant to be discussed about, how does it change with the age?, does sexuality age differently in men and women?, at what age do we say that’s it, we are no longer interested, or is it really age which makes us loose interest.?. These questions plagued my mind for days together, as I began searching for answers, with least background, and even lesser experience.

In a way I was hesitant because I am not qualified experience wise to write about this, being in mid twenties I have hardly seen the world w.r.t to this subject to make any kind of observation or theorize, however this stubborn opinionated mind of mine is singing a different tune.

Lets begin with men. I have read many places, and spoken to many people who believe that men of all ages, at all times, think of only one thing, that’s sex. The day in the early teens when he begins his journey from boyhood to manhood, till the day he leaves this earth, he would never say enough, is what many people believe. Is it really true?, is it true that age has no effect on a man’s sexuality?. I think age surely does have an impact, in some cases age counts as the time spent on earth and in many other cases age can be considered as the maturity one tends to develop with time, the realization of the deeper meanings in life. I am not saying with maturity people become asexual, what I am thinking is people attach different meaning to the act.

Women on the other hand are said to start a little slow, you know idea of romance sets in first and then its followed by sexuality. In a more well defined journey, women are said to evolve sexually over the years from uninterested, to slightly interested, peak during mid thirties and then finally slowly begin to loose interest. I have never spoken to a woman regarding this, nor have I read many books on this, may be fellow bloggers can contribute their perspective here. From what I have perceived, I was surprised to get a feel a woman’s sexuality a couple of times, even though its very subtle, very figurative, but at the bottom of it, not much different from that of a male point of view.

Again whatever I said till now does not disprove the belief that men of all age think of only one thing. Lets consider a small journey of a boy. When kids grow up, until a certain age they do not see the difference in gender, live alone the idea of sexuality, as they grow up the idea of gender and its differences are instilled by we adults in them. Making groups of kids in school based on gender, forcing distinctive dressing sense on to the kids etc, slowly the distinction becomes apparent in the eyes of the kids. Preteens is an almost age of innocence, when the guys show keen interest in opposite sex, I think here all they want in many cases is just a friendship, and to be respected amongst the peers. Even at this stage the curiosity is not yet set in. Only in the mid teens/to late teens when the sexuality and curiosity plays havoc in a boys life, he is discovering many new things in himself, new feelings, new ideas and even new functions of his own body parts. Now Isn’t this a natural age to grow curios, also in a way age where one tends glorify sexuality in one’s own eye?.

A preteen or teenage girls are said to fantasize a lot about romance, the idea of an ideal lover, the one who will walk them to the moon, and they are ready to trade anything for it. I feel a lot of preteen/teen sexuality in girls is mainly in search of the romance, and also a thing they believe they have to do achieve what they really want. Its only later, years later they do realize the various subtleties of romance, and possible existence of a something like pure lust in their relation.

I think men in early twenties tend to have this bursts of animal extinct in them, more on the lines of bursts of erotic thoughts and then dwindle away, even fantasies too seem to be more in this age. However I think this age [number] is coming down, more and more teenagers or early twenties people exploring more of their sexualities in India now, and even abroad I think the average age has gone down a lot, and with that, the age to fantasize too.

Nowadays I ponder a lot on this thought, I wonder at some stage one will loose the curiosity in sexuality isn’t it?, at the end of the day its just a body, how much different can it be?. That makes it interesting, is it the age in me speaking when I get such thoughts?. I guess men entering late thirties and early forties take it easy, there is no longer the curiosity nor the peer pressure, and I think it may end up being more pleasurable at that age.

I think woman on the other hand discover lust at a slightly older age compared to men, even though biologically women are considered to peak much earlier than men, I think they become more adventurous when it comes to their sexuality a little later, may be I am totally wrong, but this is what I feel. May be some years down the lane, they really tend to discover themselves and their sexuality. In many cases, long after they become sexuality active. I also feel, they tend to develop a sense of urgency in them, I am not so sure as to what they are afraid of, whats going to end so soon?, why is their a sense of urgency?. Or is it that there isn’t any urgency?.

Moving onto the old age, I have absolutely no clue about this period of one’s life, and this aspect of that age, may be some of my readers can give us more information about the thought process at that age.

Its been a while I wrote something for the body or soul series, and this topic made me think a lot on the subject.

Amateur thoughts

{ May 3, 2008 @ 12:37 pm } · { Attraction, Gender talk, opinion }
{ } · { Comments (7) }

My views on this topic are very amateur, with almost none or very little understanding of the topic, the post is just a creation of my thoughts and what I feel about the subject, lot of views are abstract and am not really sure if my views are correct, finally the post is incomplete I might continue this some day again, all I wanted to say was I do not mean to offend any person homo/hetro sexual, please do let me know your views or please feel free to correct me if my views are totally off reality.

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I once commented about homosexuality on one of the posts by Chennai ramblings over at her post “rant for the day”, it was long ago in February, I never got myself to think more on the matter, until today.

To begin with I was a lot like my grandmother, she just dismissed the possibility of a man marrying another one, in her books its impossible, well I started out very much like her, I could not imagine, how such a relation could exist, to imagine copulation amongst two men was something I couldn’t not even think off, same with women too. I know men are supposedly turned on by two women together, but believe me I could never imagine something physically meaningful between the two women or men. Anyways as my comment on the post, I feel there is a lot more involved in a gay relationship more than just sex.

One question that crossed my mind was “do people get into a same sex relationship as a result of a hetro sex relationship turning sour?, when people have had a bitter experience or a string of bitter experiences with people of opposite sex, do people give up?, or may be with a hope that people of the same sex may understand then much better do they change their orientation?. Do they end up searching for what they could not find in people of the opposite sex in their same sex partner?. It looks logical to me, may be in many cases it is true.

Physical proximity in many a cases could also influence one’s choice I guess, during times when one needs an emotional partner, and I am sure every one needs emotional support at times, and may be at times like such physical proximity to people of the same sex, may lead to mutual admiration and a lot of emotional bonding, which in some cases may end up turning sexual. I do know that there are a large number of platonic same sex relations everywhere, and I am part of some such relations too, and not all of them turn romantic, but may be in some cases people do develop a natural liking just like a hetro sexual platonic relation turns into a romantic one.

One question I would love to survey across the world would be, how many gay relationships have triggered of from a sexual attraction?, I will not be surprised if many of them are not triggered by sexual attraction, all people think about homsexuals are their “sexual orientation”, I believe there is a lot more to it, it’s not just lust, I do agree that just like hetro sexuals there will be cases where people sparked off relationships based on pure sexual attraction to begin with, but I think there is a lot more to it then just the physical act of love.

I once read somewhere that people never turn gay, they are born gay. I am not so sure if this is true. When I was a kid, I hardly knew about whom to get attracted to, nor today, I mean I cannot force myself to like a person, same way is attraction too, but what makes me yearn for a relation with the opposite sex but not same sex?, sometimes it puzzles me, what tells me or what prevents me. So if this can happen at this age, I am sure as a kid not many people can control who they get attracted to?, can a boy or a girl who has no idea what a relation or a physical relation means decide his/her orientation?, I mean can some young kid really get attracted?, let alone same/opposite sex. I somehow can’t get myself to believe that someone is born homo or hetro sexual.

more ramblings to follow… someday :)

A quick question

{ April 21, 2008 @ 4:06 pm } · { Uncategorized }
{ } · { Comments (6) }

I know I do not write quick posts over here..and prefer to write long debates..but today its a little different. I was answering a comment on my previous post and it kind of struck me. I wanted to find out hows it with you people.

When you have an emotion hardly felt, a statement ready to be made, a thought wanting to be shared what do you do?.

  1. Do you keep the thing with yourself?
  2. Do you share it with people close to you?.
  3. Or do you consider if the person is sensible enough for the thought before sharing?

Communication and Gender

{ April 14, 2008 @ 8:15 am } · { Gender talk, opinion }
{ Tags: , } · { Comments (10) }

One of my blogger friend asked me why I had not updated this blog for quite some time now, and I replied that may be I am not pursuing anything pure these days. The statement in many a sense is true, I am kind of blank these days when It comes to thinking, also the books I am reading haven’t sparked any debate in my wind worthy of finding its way into this blog. On Sunday, the national daily, Times of India carried an article about communication and gender, I mean how men communicate, and how women do, and what’s lacking when the two communicate with each other. Well they really did not sound the way I just said, the paper put in a lot more glamour and the ‘IT factor, what interested me is a block of pointers they put against each gender.
Here it goes.

Men,

  • they interrupt or speak over others to assert themselves and their role
  • establish less eye contact
  • use fewer facial expressions to convey emotions
  • rely on more open body positions [no crossed legs and crossed arms]
  • use more gestures body reactions
  • men touch others more, value touch less, and are touched less by others
  • men use more non verbal cues of power or status to indicate a degree of influence and control
  • men are better at map reading.

Women

  • they wait their turn to speak so talk can be shared among equals.
  • women ask questions to invite others into the conversations and show interest in other’s ideas
  • women establish more eye contact
  • women use more facial expressions, fewer gestures to convey emotions
  • women rely on more closed body positions
  • women touch other’s less, value touch more and are touched more by others
  • women are more sensitive to expressions, for example they are quicker to not even the twitch of an eyebrow

The rest of the article is about the way men and women should communicate with each other, and how one should pick up cues and subtleties of what the person of opposite sex is saying to us. Hmm frankly speaking, though the tips might be good, it did not interest me much as I was not looking for it. However these pointers of sorts generated a lot of interest. The post to content to follow, is just a theory, and totally biased by my own theories which are formed by observing a close group of people, so I do not know if it applies to people in broader sense.

Starting with the age old cliché that women talk more, so it appears the study revealed that women speak about 20000 words per day, where as men speak about 7000. Well I have seen both men and women who speak a lot and those who don’t speak at all. But one thing I have observed though is that many women are very descriptive in communicating, they give importance to smaller details, for example when my niece tells me a story of a prince, she many a times starts with where and how she heard the story, and sometimes when she is in full mood describes what she was wearing that day, and even the story part, she tells me more about the way the princess walked, and even her face is full of expression. When many of my nephews tell me a story, they are more interested in completing the story and moving on to the next activity. Even as adults, one of the biggest nags around is that women spend a way too much time on phone, even though I hate sexism, I kind of statistically agree on this one, I have seen many of women in our family way too much time on phone compared to men. If you ever try to decipher what they talk so much, you will be surprised, I mean the details communicated, is much more descriptive that a news paper, now is that detailing necessary is a totally different topic, but the levels of interest shown towards communicating and the detailing does differ a lot, men on the other hand seem to just convey rather communicate matters, now again both the parties, the conveyer and the conveyed do not seem to miss the lack of details, and more or less don’t bother the details as well.

The survey seems to say that men interrupt in the middle of a conversation where as women tend to wait their turn. I am not so sure on this one, I have seen many a discussions where women are as eager to put forth their theories even if it means interrupting the current speaker, I remember first tip I received as an in intern in one of the software companies, I was asked not to prompt the team member even if he/she is going wrong in what she is talking, may be its a soft skill which many of us lack, over the years I have struggled to learn to keep quiet when one is talking nonsense, or what’s nonsense according to me, my goal is to talk less, even If I know a thing, talk about it if and only if it is required. Coming back to men not waiting their turn, its really ironical, as
per the other cliche, men never get their turn t speak J. But I kind of agree a little on the about trying to assert, many a people both men and women do interrupt to assert what they have to say.

Establishing less eye contact, well is it?. Actually have never observed this one, I think most of us Indians do not make a lot of eye contact when speaking, or may be I am totally wrong on this one.

Use of facial expressions, I think men do use a lot of facial expressions, its only the men do not have elaborate expressions, for example displeasure might be indicated just by a grunt, or a quick expression, where as women seem to be more elaborate. But unfortunately the last post kicks in here, we men are very poor observers when It comes to facial expressions and body language, most of the times the person is speaking to me only through his/her words. I am really surprised at the small things my mom or my cousin sister pick up when I speak, without much difficulty they can find out if I am hesitant, lying, or happy or sad, I used to boast of wearing an iron mask, not giving out signs, there are few people like my friend S, or my mom, or even some of my cousins, who just read me so easily, my dad or my male cousins on the other hand, firstly do not care much, second do not seem to find out unless I give obvious hints, like not
Eating properly, or humming extraordinarily loud when happy.

Regarding body positions, and women closed body positions, I am not really sure if it is correct, men cross legs when listening attentively, so do women. Many men have the habit of crossing legs as a sign of power, even though its not crossing legs in the traditional sense, its more of one leg perpendicular to the other. Its a little surprising too, according to the old schools of thoughts, women in India did not cross their legs much, I mean as I said its kind of indicative of a class and supremacy, which women were not supposed to show in the olden times. And men on the other hands never crossed their arms, its more indicative of submissiveness, women too on the other hand never crossed their arms, they are supposed to be the open armed people, ready to hug their kin.

Guys you do know how uncomfortable I am with the touch, and I do know that not many men are like me in this regard, may be many men touch other while speaking, but I have seen women too touch a lot while speaking, even though its not with complete strangers, many of my friends and relatives who are women, do not mind patting my back, or holding my arms, or even a casual touch now and then when they speak, but I think the part of valuing a touch is true, women do value the touch more, and also restrict it to people who they are comfortable with. I don’t have a view about this from the men’s point of view mainly because I am still not over the shyness or obsessions or whatever you want to call it, touch still is not comfortable to me.

Communication, never thought there are so many things talking, and so many more things out there to be listened to, does communication really differ according to gender? What do you guys think?

Feminism and beyond

{ March 16, 2008 @ 7:53 am } · { Moi, opinion }
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I have wanted to write about this topic for quite some time, no topic has taken this long to find its way into one of my blogs as much as this one. As woman’s day happened just about a week back, many of the blogs I frequent had a post about the woman’s day and feminism in general. I did leave a comment in most of them saying my thoughts are on the way and will post soon on the topic.

Some days back when I was reading an article somewhere on the internet, the author [male] had an interesting view, he said that people today do not know the difference between femininity and feminism. Actually he was right, I really did not know the difference, may be I knew the literal meaning but never thought about the implications of the two words.

Let’s start with femininity; femininity is things/thoughts/emotions feminine in nature. Now this is a tricky definition, who categorizes them as feminine?. There are few things biologically feminine in nature, I don’t need to say what I am talking about in this regard, and we all know there are things which only a female can do. Is nature being a sexist here? Personally I feel nature wanted none of the species or living thing to feel ‘all capable’ or rather to be too independent, may be nature intended us to co-exist. Anyways it’s a totally different topic altogether. Coming back to the topic of femininity, apart from the obvious biological differences, there are certain thoughts/emotions/interests which are said to be feminine in nature.

So here comes the question, should one feel ashamed to be associated with such femininity?. Should one claim inequality for being associated with thoughts known to be feminine in nature?. Traditionally emotional sensitivity, patience, shyness etc have been associated with women, the most evident proof for this is the names we have in India almost all the qualities I mentioned above has manifested into a female name in India. Now should one protest for being tagged to femininity?.

Lets talk about the opposite, things which do not come under feminine, should women really worry about those things, why are those things/thoughts/interests are not considered as feminine in nature? Should one really fight for it?.

Feminism, as per definition is philosophy of believing in equal rights for woman, and making no gender bias.

Coming back to difference, In my opinion Ability to give birth to a child is femininity, it’s a unique distinction that women should be proud about, however providing a choice of if they want to, and when and how they want to have children is feminism,

When woman choose family over carrier, if it’s a unforced decision, then it counts as femininity to me, because men are never supposed to think about family first. However having the sole power of decision to choose between family/carrier or both is feminism.

Ideasmithy brought up a good question, are all woman feminists, unfortunately I would have to say no, no I don’t think all females are feminists, nor do I think all feminists are females.

Let me tell you where some woman are not feminists, to me when someone demands extra privileges because of their gender the feminism is gone, buses have reserved seats for women, special reservations in governmental positions etc. I know its really good to provide more opportunities to women, and its been a long monopoly of men in these areas, and we want to encourage women to come forward and take these places. But I find this totally anti-feminist in nature. Why do we think that women need extra boost?, do we think women can’t find their own seats, if men misbehave in the bus she is not powerful enough to defend herself?, in governmental organization is she not capable enough to find her way in?, are we not in a way doubting her credentials?.

Another question which came up was can men be feminists?, I had to really think on this terms, somewhere I did not want to say yes and be counted as a hypocrite. Just the other day when the topic of smoking woman came up, the fact that I was a little surprised tells me that I am still a sexist in ways. If I were to be surprised at smoking I would be happier, but then it was not at smoking I was surprised it was the woman smoker who surprised me. So we men, can we ever stop distinguishing between men and women, I would say yes but still many years down the line. The traces are still present in all of us. We still think there is a difference when it comes to responsibilities and interests between men and women.

Another discussion which interested me recently is what’s wrong in huddling up. So what if women group up?. Now I partially agree with this one, its true there is nothing wrong with huddling up, any day its good to work as a team towards any goal, and its easier in a team than individual. But why would you want to huddle up in a single sex group, why not form a team of people with similar goal, rather than just chose people because they are woman.

History has been a great evidence as to how gender bias has existed for long time, and how women were considered to be the weaker sex and have been the target for long time, Finally some of us men have woken up a little, and many women have come out being more confident and powerful. A man who claims to be more powerful, intelligent or more suitable for a job because of his gender, will surely be laughed at and criticized not just by women but also fellow men, so isn’t this what so called feminists set out to do?.

From here where do we go?. One thing I would hate to see, is people making feminism as nothing but male bashing, When many woman have proved how intelligent they are, by resorting to male bashing I think somewhere we are taking a step back, because ignorant men were thought gender has nothing to do with capabilities, now the same woman seems to claim a man is bad because all men are bad, or a man is incapable because he is a man. I think somewhere the main purpose of equality in feminism is getting lost somewhere. One of the main reasons as to why, I always say rant against a person not against “men”.

One of the debates that interested me in recent times is “has a man become unnecessary in a woman’s life?”. In today’s world where woman has become financially independent, socially powerful, emotionally and physically strong, does woman need a man?. Woman has never needed a man, and man has never needed a woman, I think it’s a wrong notion. We have always needed a partner, somebody who will complete each other. Some have gone and found partners within the same sex who seem to provide what we look out in a partner, and some find that in the opposite sex. Just because we are equal gender wise, does not make us equal as a person does it?, I mean all of us will continue to have things which we lack, and try to find that support and encouragement in a person who in-turn will continue to find the same in us.

This is not a topic, where one can find comprehensive answers within a single post, these are the topics which one needs to debate and discuss over a long time, and learn along the journey.

 P.S I wanted to link couple of posts from Twisted tales on life where we discussed on couple of things here, stupid me not seem to find the posts.. :( .

 Next one coming up.. is sexual orientation only reason to term a relationship lesbain/gay .. Guys any of you interested in the topic.. please do put up your opinions..

Platonic, what’s that?

{ February 23, 2008 @ 12:23 pm } · { "Body or Soul", Attraction, Friendship }
{ } · { Comments (8) }

Something bad seems to be happening these days, all my thoughts seem to be triggered by something or the other from the newspapers I read. Its been three weeks in a row now, an article in one of the local newspaper making me think on it. Am I in dearth of original thoughts?, or does it mean our newspapers have become more thought provoking?, or I have finally began to get the right message out of them.

As I opened todays newspaper, an article in the His/Her section caught my eye, I generally avoid that section of the newspaper because, most of the times it has some tips for dating which is almost useless to me. Today they had an article about platonic friendship. I really did not know what it meant, so went ahead and read on, the article was about how to make sure your relationship does not end up in a platonic friendship. The article was boring in content, but the idea struck onto me. How do I cope with this problem, if we ever get into one such. Firstly how often does one face this issue?, is it really common?, more importantly can one successfully convert a platonic friendship into a relationship of romantic nature, or the only way is to make sure you never let the relationship get into the platonic mood because there is no way out of it.

Interesting thoughts mainly because, I have written m any a times about cross gender friendship and how it need not mean its romantic in nature, how people misunderstand something very pure, and in a way make it harder for people to have such beautiful friendship. I had also experienced this recently when one of my friendships was in question, and so was one of my good friend’s and she was really upset with this.

I never thought about the other way around. What if both the people do not want it to be platonic but are wondering how to make the next move, who should make it, and how to give hints as to the other person knows there is a romantic interest in the friendship.

The topic is very close to the previous post I wrote about how to define flirting, unfortunately when one of the pair does not get the hints what does the other person do?. There are many of the stupid persons around like me, so unless things are made explicit we may not understand what the others are trying to say. Actually the worst part is, more than reading signs one is more worried about reading the signs wrong. I guess doubts must be there on the both sides, I mean no one would want to ruin an existing friendship by trying to bring in romance.

Actually I am feeling kind of stupid these days writing about these things, mainly because its on the lines of a blind man describing a beautiful scenery, all he says are things which he imagines it to be, so what all I am saying over here are things which I feel “what it must be like”.

Do people really get into this issue often, I always imagined that there must be a lot of clashes when it comes to friendship because more often or not one of them might develop the romantic interest and the other might resist. This might spoil the friendship. But again as I said I just am assuming this might be the case, listening to many of my friends and people I know who have experienced the one way traffic as I mentioned above. What would one do in that case, does he or she try to make the other person see the romance which they are seeing?.

Can one really convert the platonic friendship into a romantic relationship?. I am not sure on this regards, have not met many people who have successfully done this, or may be these aspects never come out for others, mainly because its too personal. Many of the platonic relationships might have moved on to romance, mainly because both of them had the inclination, but can it happen that one said no and other made him/her change his mind?.

One thing which still amazes me is that, people who have moved on from strong platonic friendships for long time, can they really get physical in the relationship?. I somehow cannot picture being physical with many of my female friends, mainly because they have been such good friends, and you know personally what they like and don’t, and what things in a guy they hate, so one refuses to get the thoughts of that nature involving them. I am sure there must be hurdles related to these in such relations.

I really wanted to type a part of the article here, mainly because I found that really funny, and kind of surprised if one can really do it. The article was titled “Platonic relationships preclude more interesting things, we tell you how to avoid the trap“

“An out of town trip where only two of you end up going is a sure sign that nothing is going to happen between the two. A dangerously high comfort level has set in already. This means that you need to break the pattern urgently. Don’t accept the invitation for an out of town picnic unless he has naughty intentions“

On a totally funny side, a Father of a daughter should get to read this. I would love to see his reactions.

A confusion called flirting

{ February 16, 2008 @ 8:14 am } · { "Body or Soul", Flirting, opinion }
{ } · { Comments (8) }

This topic has come back to my mind after quite some time, and I have been wondering about this one for last couple of days. What constitutes flirting?.. what really counts as
flirting.

I began to read few things on line, the first place I went to was wikipedia. It says “Flirting is a form of human interaction, usually expressing a sexual or romantic interest in the other person. It can consist of conversation, body language, or brief physical contact. It may be one-sided or reciprocated.”. You can read rest of it here

First impression I got was that its very subjective, I mean I might have some really wild ideas about romance which the other person may have no clues about, so when she does these things I might feel that she is showing romantical interest in me. Does this mean she is flirting with me?..

Actually the whole topic started when one person asked me why I was trying to flirt with
her, where the truth was that I had not tried to do that, and I was kind of surprised at
what kind of wrong signals I was sending. Also in a totally different instance one of my friends felt that a girl whom we both knew was totally trying to flirt with me. Again there too I failed to recognize this. Mainly because I did not have such an inclination towards her.

Does this mean that, we tend to see things when we feel its there?, I mean we want to see romance thats when we tend to give more importance to what the other person is doing and end up trying to read signals from that, and see he/she ids flirting?.

Is it  based on experience?, I mean If I have used a particular way to be noticed by the other person, say try to strike a conversation every now and then, now when I see someone else doing it to me, I feel that she is flirting?. Or may be the media too has a hand in it, I mean when they keep showing in the movies that say smiling at you always is a form of flirting, and both the parties know about it, one who wants to flirt may end up using the smile as a means, and the other person might recognise its flirting when others do it.

There are few obvious things, which I think should not be called flirting, say trying to call one person for no reason, talking for hours together on no subjects, or trying to send text messages often, or even giving uncalled for gifts. I think these are extreme steps, and more of wooing rather than flirting. Flirting I guess is more a subtle way of letting know you have romantic interests.

How bad is flirting?, I mean is it bad when some tries to show a romantic interest in you?, hmm i don’t think its bad, but I also see that it depends on my mood, and the person, I mean if you find a person whom you don’t like trying to flirt with you obviously you might get upset, or angry. I think on the whole innocent flirting might be a very natural thing in humans, in fact I think this must be natural in other forms of life apart from humans as well.

Guys you tell me what you think is flirting, what people do makes you feel they are flirting, how serious offence do you think it is?

Would you call it dedication?

{ February 9, 2008 @ 7:35 am } · { "Body or Soul", Gender talk, Virginity }
{ } · { Comments (10) }

Dedication, thats how I see it, no I am not talking about the dedication towards your studies, nor towards one’s carrier, nor towards one’s girl friend or wife. I am talking about the dedication towards one’s body. I think virginity is dedication to one’s body, and making sure you respect your body more than anything else.

As with all the posts over here in my pure pursuits, this as well is a bundle of contradictions and confusions. To be frank, I honestly do not think of virginity as a virtue in a women, I mean not just woman. I might be not a complete believer of the traditional “hymen” being the proof, however I will be lying if I say, I do not value one waiting for a right single partner, both men and woman.

I do not want to talk about whether hymen must be the point of concern, instead I was thinking about how much should one give importance to monogamy, and making your better half the only sexual partner for life.

I know monogamy itself is debatable, many believe that at any given point of time in life, if you are making sure you are not being with more than one particular partner thats monogamy. Unfortunately I do not believe in that, and still continue to believe that one should give a fair thought before one enters a physical relationship. I know this is heading to the old debate of body or soul.

For many a people who still believe marry only once in life phenomenon, shouldn’t one make efforts to dedicate their body to just one individual?. shouldn’t this be something exclusive and personal between the two?.

Again the thought might be something thats being churned out in the hypocrite traditional part of my mind, while the other side is screaming, asking why?, why should one dedicate?, can one make sure that their mind had never strayed away towards another individual before marriage?, can one result in abstinence in that regards. We can be fairly sure, either of the individuals might have had thoughts of romantic nature before, so why not the same wrt body, for many a people consider mind and soul more important than body, so when you can live with a non virgin mind, why not a non virgin body.

I somehow have the feeling that every relationship begins with a trust and hope that this is going to be “IT”, my relation for the lifetime, he/she is going to be my partner for life, so at that point what do one do?, should he or she abstain from the physical act because he is not sure about the end result, no one can be sure right. If one considers marriage as the point which confirms, ok now nothing else can happen that can drift the couple apart, so thats the right time to move forward. Its still possible that it might end up in a divorce, or god forbids death of one of the partner.

So for what should one wait, steady relationship?, engagement?, marriage?, few years of marriage?.. till when?.

Someone once asked me a great question once.. not sure where, must be in one of the blogs. so just because you want to dedicate, what would you do if your partner turns out to be not a virgin. Really tough question that was. You know that question made me wonder, will I be in a stage where my love for the person would be so much that I will not care about one’s past life, more importantly the past life of one’s body.

I still do not have an answer, sometimes the logical mind of mine says I would ignore, and sometimes the practical mind of mine doubts of a wilder reaction. That takes us to the square one, so should one really value virginity.

As I said before, I feel everyone wants to do this I suppose, or I might be totally naive in believing so, but I was thinking of those extreme cases, where one totally stops caring about their body, and the sanctity of exclusiveness. I feel there can be many influences in this regard.

Lets take the case of external influent like Drugs, Alcohol things which can put people so high that they do not care about who is using there body to do what. Sometimes the addiction becomes so strong that they do not care if they end up sacrifising their own rules and body to get a gram of hash. I think this is shows a little bit of weak mind, if one cannot control their addiction, or begin to loose control of themselves under the substance abuse, I do not think there is a lot of thinking going on in there.

What I am more weary about is when, people reach a mental stage where they do not care about their body, and it becomes a way of getting back at people who have troubled them, or kind of rebelling against the society which makes certain things forbidden. In most of these cases, the other person in such a act, is not even aware of how he/she is being used, or what implications it is going to have on the person’s life.

Coming back to the questions,

Do I value virginity?, I think yes both in men and women,

Why? not so clear,

Virgin till when?, I guess till that one person whom you can’t think of moving onto someone else,

So what If I did a mistake in choosing that person?, mistakes do happen, but should that affect what we value? mistakes are meant to be forgiven/ignored when you value the person much more.

What do you guys think??

Extremes

{ January 31, 2008 @ 4:31 pm } · { Fake, Marriage }
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Every day, different people we meet can give you so much information, more importantly so much thoughts to wonder about. Same with two people I meet almost everyday, they are my coworkers, and both married, and both with  one kid too. As we share the same mode of transport to get to work, I get to see them very closely and observe.

Let me start with one of them, he is late into 30’s, must have got married at a late age, and he does care a lot about his wife. I have seen him get a call everyday as soon as he reaches half way to office, thats when his wife would have reached her workplace, its her “got there safely” call, every single day he tells her that, we are on our way, and promises her he will call back once he reaches office. Its the same story in the evening as well, he will call her to let her know that he has left the office, and would be at home at such and such a time. He also admits that he calls once in the afternoon after his lunch to update he has finished his lunch, and also ensure if she has done with hers. The interesting thing, is to hear his tone when he speaks to her, I don’t think I have seen a person more polite  and respectful then him when on phone with his wife.

The second of them must be in early thirties, who must have got married in his late 20’s. He is generally a little mean and rude when he speaks normally, and he almost never gets call from his wife, but when he does get it, we can easily make it is from his house because, he becomes extra rude and extra mean. We all have, jokingly how he can speak to them in such a tone, but he continues to speak that way. He speaks to the point, and makes sure they would think thrice before calling him up again. In a way totally opposite to the first person.

First person sounds all so romantic, but the truth is when he speaks normally otherwise he is not that polite, nor so respectful either, and somehow I have a doubt he fakes the politeness a little too much, so when we tease him about this, he always says I don’t know about all this as I am not marries, and he claims that it requires to be like this, in a relationship, to keep the other one happy.

Speaking of the second person, he says openly that the only way to dominate a relation is to claim the dominance before the other person has chance to think about it. He says the right way to speak to one’s wife is to make sure, they do not get the idea of possible weakness, and try to be as unapproachable as possible. He is not all that mean to others, and not that rude to others on phone, still he kind of fakes dominance over phone.

When I get to see extreme actions such as this, what makes me wonder is that, is this faking really required?, how stupid the respective wives must be to not recognize that their partners are faking?, I am sure they would have known, but they must be behaving as they haven’t found out. In a way faking, that they do not know their husbands are faking.

How difficult is it to remain honest in marriages?, do one need to resort to these tactics?, I know the obvious answer is no, but then still why does it happen in so many cases, why do one go out of their way to please others? or in some cases please themselves.
Simple things like these can say a lot about one’s marriage, I get a feeling that most people tend to live a pseudo relationship, where each one knows the truth, but never want to show the fact that they know. When did we become this, when?

Friendship Talkies

{ January 10, 2008 @ 4:32 pm } · { Friendship, Gender talk }
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Anna Garlin Spencer who was an American feminist, speaking about man/women friendship, once quoted saying “The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed“. What I recently discovered not only rare men and women are needed for that kind of a friendship, but even rare people needed to understand one such friendship.

I generally don’t believe in keeping contact with people, whose views I cannot appreciate, or rather cannot stand. Unfortunately when they become a business liability, you end up keeping interface with them, even though you hate their presence. “Falling in my eyes” was an instance of such horrible person, with whom I still have to interact.

When you meet a person, you really can’t know his/her real attitude, and thus may sometimes end up being friends with people whom you later discover, to be really bad, or incompatible with your ideologies. I generally distance from them slowly, just hoping that they don’t feel totally left out suddenly. Still over the years I have maintained contacts with all such one time good friends. Recently, on the occasion of the new years, I pinged a one old friend on gtalk, mainly to wish him a happy new year. Its been almost more than 6/7 months since I had talked with him, or emailed. After the pleasantry exchanges, the usual hows work stuff, he started to loosen up, and things which I hated started to come up. Its surprising how people keep track of what you are upto, even without talking to you directly, he seem to know whom I am spending time what, whats happening at my workplace, and with whom I was generally in good terms with.

When you are not aware of a relationship, I guess the best thing you can do is not to talk about it, because you never know how you are affecting the other person. He started commenting about a nice friendship I have developed over the recent times. I could not stand it. He had absolutely no right to talk about a friendship, in such a bad taste. Firstly I doubt if he has ever understood how a friendship can exist between opposite sex. More importantly I don’t think he understood what friendship means in general. I gave an excuse and logged off the gtak, but I was pretty pissed the whole day.

The next day my reader showed up this post from a friend No place for friendship.
Its strange how often the friendship gets misunderstood, sometimes from the people involved and many times from people outside. When there are sentiments involved, it makes it all the more sensitive topic to be dealt with.

As I do not have much insight about how women misunderstand the friendship, I will chose to write my views from the male perspective. People always accuse of the men to misinterpret friendship to a relation of romantic interest. I think I agree to this partially. I do not know if it only happens wrt males, but in some cases, I have seen myself, and felt in a odd occasion, that I misinterpreted the intention in a friendship. I guess this is inevitable in a non established relationship, when each have their own agenda, or probably they haven’t even set up their minds as to what to expect in the friendship. Do you think the one who misunderstood is guilty?, I am not so sure on that one. One thing is for sure, when the misunderstanding comes out, in most of the cases, thats the end of the friendship.

Talking about the more damaging part, people not knowing anything about the relation, people who see that from a distance, many times have something nasty to say, hurting the sentiments of the people involved, especially if it is about a person whose friendship you really care about. As it happened in my case, my respect for the person further deteriorated, more importantly put in a doubt in my mind, what if all people are looking at the friendship with a bad perspective?, more importantly what if the other person has other ideas more than friendship. Basically ruined something which was doubtless.

I agree this does indicate a weak friendship, what some one says or does should not have any effect on your strong friendship, thats ideal situation we are talking about, and it takes time for all friendship to reach that stage, and in the mean while, someone makes such a comment, and it really effects you.

For a long long time, I did not believe in pure friendship, not with the same sex, specially not with the opposite sex, but perceptions do change, for some sooner and for less fortunate ones like me later. Why is it that common a notion that “Man and a woman cannot be just friends”.

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