Anonybrit

For those of you here on a break, don't go NC until all the rules and conditions are set and you've both dicussed your feelings thoroughly, and even then give it a week or two to mull over via. LC. You'll be able to tell when NC is needed after that, it's when you start communicating your ups and downs to each other, and that's going to ruin everything very quickly - that, you have to deal with without them, that's the point.

Beginning of Day 2, easier than Day 1. Called my mobile phone provider to block her number but evidently didn't work, will try again and leaving my phone off for now. Could O2 be any more useless? Keeping busy. My aim is to move on and I can tell NC is the only way.

Day 1, broke NC yesterday, which was also day 1.. Feel terrible, hate life. Wrote her a letter so when she gets that and replies I will have to reset, but that should be it from then on. Other than that she won't contact me, I am sure of that, she could go weeks without caring even when we were together so.. Going through the worst time in my life right now.

But some people seem to think that relationships are only possible between two such people. Ridiculous. They would be less possible.

No I don't think that's necesserily the case. There are people like you that would perhaps rather the finished-product - a self-contained little box you can enjoy for yourself. But I know I, at least, would rather a partner with her share of problems - something to fix, something to grow with, and for her to find the same in me. There's nothing interesting about someone completely confident in every aspect of their life. I can't imagine anything more boring than such a person.

Well, I can tell you that I'd I've never been in a relationship so I'm almost weary of falling in love to quickly - I imagine if I met someone compatible it could happen really easily. It feels as if I'm almost obligated to have a few flings before looking for something more real.

My knowledge of philosophy hasn't done me any favors in the poontang department to be quite honest with you

This is the best post I have ever read on this site. I know what you mean - though not strictly from experience. Sometimes there's that girl, and the normal rules of the universe don't apply to her - every flaw is absolute perfection - you're in love with this miraculous, mortal, fleshy, pulsating, sweating, living human body because it's yours, you can touch it, you can feel it, share it, watch it change and age. Powerful stuff.

This is pretty immature. Look, you can have your personal preferences, fine, but this "nice guy" concept is about as shallow as it gets - this has absolutely nothing to do with finding love or a soulmate, concepts which require emotional attacthments that transcend the social trophyism of finding a partner that looks or behaves in a certain way. If you're worried about ending up with a "nice guy", you're not even close to being ready for a true intmate relationship anyway. I suggest you take a few years to mature and then reconsider what it means to love. What irritates me though, is that this entire debate is only happening because it's from a female perspective and thereforeeee appropriate. If a guy made a topic claiming that it was impossible to fall in love with a girl with small breasts or who didn't behave subserviently, it would be locked and he'd be banned - and rightly so. Girls, feminism doesn't mean treating men like objects too. Imagine the roles reversed and then make your mind up.

To be honest, I've never found life in the west particularly rewarding. What's changed is that upon working in the third world, I didn't find much meaning to my life there either. The result is I'm relying on these cheap thrills to tide me over until I figure out how to fill that hole. Actually, I really do know how to fill that hole, but finding her is a whole different kettle of fish.

I recently spent some time in the third world where I found the extreme poverty eye-opening. Since returning though, I've felt rather empty in my life. Life back in the west feels ultimately unrewarding to me, and yet I don't actually have anyone to see or be with abroad. Over the last few days I've found I've been spending an increasing amounts of cash on gadgets and consumer items - a TV, DVDs, cinema tickets - it amounts to a lot of money. I'm genuinly enjoying these things, but I realise they are ultimately superficial and that this hole I feel will never truly be filled by any of this. I don't know what I'm asking really... I was just wondering if anyone has any advice or has experienced anything similar?

I generally agree with your points, but you've got to understand the mentality of someone who feels that their happiness is a matter of trading in what they consider to be their personality. Sometimes, shyness, anxiety, insecurity, when they are so severe as to gneuinly dangerous and harmful, should be considered as valid a part of our identity as anything "positive". Or alternatively, this could just be a psychological defense mechanism arising from the fear of confronting these issues - I can't figure out which it is. But I'm Irish, as the saying goes, I'll deal with something being wrong the rest of my life.

My philosophy is that if I have to change to be loved, I am not truly being loved at all. Life is about striking a balance to being shaped by our environment and shaping our environment ourselves. But when our very identity is what's at stake, more often than not we'd rather take the cards we've been dealt, no matter how bollocks we may think they are, and try our luck anyway.

I actually disagree with everyone else. I think you should keep on feeling the way you do until you solve your own problems by your own means, because that's what life's about, winning no matter what cards your dealt. So maybe you have a needy personality, or maybe you can't let go of your past - so what? Don't fix it, defeat it. I'm insecure about a lot of things, but I've decided to give the middle finger to the mainstream attitude to that problem - I'm insecure and that's the way I am and you know what? I'm going to find my soulmate anyway, and my partner's going to love me insecurities and all. Love is about being in the right place at the right time. There are too many people on this planet for any of us to truly be alone. Just keep trying.

Doesn't it just put you in your place? Isn't it incredible the way love puts us all back in our places? How it humbles us and resets our perspective on life? We've come along way the last 6 million years - from caves to communities, through thousands of years of philosophical evolution, building bridges, laying roads, overcoming obstacles our ancestors could never even concieve of. We've landing on the moon for christ's sake! We've split the bloody atom! We've turned the spotlight of science on the universe and the only thing more incredible than what we saw then was what we saw when we turned that spotlight back on ourselves. In the next 50 years we face threat of extinction at the hands of our own doing, and we're coming to terms with the fact that unless we play guardian to other species on the planet, they'll simply cease to exist - and even more phenomenal, we're beggining to embrace that responsibility. We've consistently overcome every obstacle in our path - disease, ignorance, war... we've even overtaken biological evolution, controlling our very genetics and refusing to accept death without a fight. We're not perfect, but we're close. Thanks to the combined development of human understanding within a single person's life we've elavated ourselves to such dizzy heights our humble past is but a spec on the horizon. And yet... despite all of this, there's one relic of our past that still defies us, the one relic that we consciously, willingly submit to. Love is the product of psychological defense mechanisms programmed by genetics and expressed through hormones and behavioural reactions with the ultimate aim of proliferating an individuals genetics into the next generation, preserving the species. There's no mystery, it simply exists because without it, we wouldn't exist in the first place. There's nothing divine about why we are attracted to one another, you can't pick your partner with a quadratic equation. We fall in love in the same way the first human's did as they stepped out onto the African plains. Which is why that's our mark. Our birthmark. No matter where we go or who we meet in the future, we carry that relic with pride because there's nothing that represents our species more than that. We may never unlock the final secrets of the universe before our sun burns out and our species is snuffed out, but that's alright, because I love you.