this reminds me of how a friend of mine took this girl to prom. I would describe her as quiet and seemingly normal.

anyway, by her mid 30s, she was posting on Facebook non stop about how Obama was in the Muslim Brotherhood and actively helping ISIS into the US. big Operation Jade Helm brain. like posting memes of Obama with like evil red eyes and stuff, unironically.

I can't even imagine what level of Q / JFK manifestation energy she is on now.

i spent highschool trying desperately to be attracted to men

so dear god yes

My standards are pretty much just

• wears a mask

• not literally a fascist

• not utterly bloodthirsty and completely opposed to veganism on principle

which limits my options in my area to a total of... 0 people. As far as I can tell. I have literally never met someone who meets these three criteria. death to america.

Dated someone for like 2 weeks, felt stuff for them. At one point they say they have something special to show me, something I'm going to like.

They pull out a wood carving of a swastika interlaced with a star of David. I'm immediately like "huh." They're all smiles asking me if I feel anything from it. They get confused when I ask if this is a weird joke or something.

Over the next hour I put together they're a deep level member of the Raëlian Church. UFOs, magical symbols, seraphins visiting and a weird amount of transphobia even though 1) I thought Raëlians were cool with that and 2) I'm very obviously non-binary. They tell me stories of how the covid vaccine gave them amnesia, how they believe they're a clone. After the second date I get a bunch of texts claiming that aliens had replaced them in the night, with some sounding panicked. I got pictures of their hair with things like "Abduction last night. Clear change in hair length on left side."

I should have noticed all the signs, but they were really into me and I was desperate for attention. Sometimes I think about what it could have been like, they were actually a vegan, seemed to have legitimate interest in me as a person too. I kept getting a "I can fix them feeling" but looking back now I realize I was just starved. They were one of only two people who ever expressed romantic interest in me.

I grew up in small-town Oklahoma so pretty much every person I ever crushed on back in the day falls into the 'what was I thinking' category.

Tbh I think most of the people I had major crushes on in my teens/early 20s ended up becoming communists, so young me was onto something subconsciously! Kindness has always been important to me, so that's probably part of it.

About masking, though... I don't technically know for some of them but I would be shocked if they were still masking. Unfortunately, the commies and libs in my life have been utterly indistinguishable on this front.

Not really because I know the answer to what was I thinking is always "I wasn't thinking, he was gorgeous and I wanted to fuck him."

The ones that I actually did fall in love with I still love and still see within them the things that made me love them.

I used to do this thing where I'd start a new job or someone would start at my job and I would have a crush on them just to the point where I got to know them. Every time this happened, I ended up completely turned off by their personality after a little while. Not that I would date a co-worker, but where else do you really meet people anyway?

I realized I would build up this version of the other person in my head based off of a couple friendly/flirty interactions, then they would shatter it. I was always glad when the illusion vanished, because I'd rather just go to work and do my job.

It made me realize why I had so many bad relationships though. Glad I met my wife. I didn't go through that process with her.

I have never been sexually attracted to anyone

Gonna go against the grain and say: not really...no. There are people I wouldn't pursue now due to incompatibilities and/or that know well enough now in hindsight to know their shitty qualities out way their positives...but I still kinda get what I was thinking at the time. In some cases, at the time I was interested it was because back then I was a different person.

I think if anything the way my perspective has changed is that I started to open myself up to people that back in the day I would have written off more quickly. Like with my current partner for example I think I probably would have just noped out the first time she talked about her obsession with skin care routines and how often she visits Sephora...but now that I'm not an angsty/shitty twenty year old I get that's just the thing she geeks out about in the way I geek out about nerd shit.

Oh my god being in my thirties, I still remember dating a guy who kept a katana in his bedroom. I'm so glad to have my standards where they're at now.

A vegan guy who respects masks and pronouns is the bare minimum.

To be fair I see myself back in the day and think "what was I thinking"

gamers

Not really. When I was younger I would give it a go with pretty much anyone who showed interest in me because I wasn't very confident, so a sure thing was very appealing. I only ever met two people I really clicked with. The first one I dated through most of college and the second one I married ten years ago this month

My first girlfriend is now married to a Baptist peacher, and one of the more recent ones is now married to a fairly well-known (he has appeared in the dunk tank) Dark Enlightenment trad weirdo, recently converted to Catholicism, and has 6 children under ten years old. Really dodged some bullets there. Luckily, I found a rad communist lady to settle down and get a bunch of cats with.

This is the energy I've been having about my former partner (I don't like saying the word "ex" for some reason) with whom I broke up with very recently. I was the one who asked her out, I was deeply into her, and I really appreciated how kind she was to me, but I started to realize that we were at odds in some ways, especially since she was rather libby. She ended up eventually being more in love with me than I was with her, but I couldn't take it.

With this in mind, I have a list of five things that I require my partner to have in common with me, and she missed the mark in some way, shape, or form on practically all fronts. I actually am so strict with my requirements that I had to conceptualize what all of the nuances around them look like on paper. This is my "dating requirements manifesto:"

I am strikingly weird—you don't have to tell me.

Nah, crushes just sort of happen. I can despise the person years later, but it's not like Dr. Doofenshmirtz fired a Crushinator at me or something.

I had a crush on this girl when we were in 8th and 9th grade. Fell for her the second she was introduced as the new girl for like 30 seconds before disappearing lol.

Long story short, she somehow was subsumed into our friend group by a mutual friend. At that age, I always thought the “friend zone” was a one sided thing affecting the rejected person, but I later found out she was angry then depressed after she found out I liked her because she considered me a good friend and it could no longer be the same, so our friendship would have to end.

Anyway, she moved elsewhere after, then in senior year of high school someone discovered she was posting nudes using my full name on social media (they thought I was the one posting pictures of her and other girls lol) and later got arrested for stealing and crashing a cop car

I have a thing for goth girls and bookworms. Most of my crushes or former flames became some variation of leftist with a few becoming liberals.

My last partner