Reconsideration

A response to my earlier post, "Everyone Wants the Same Thing."

I've thought about it some more and I decided that I disagree with Jack W all together. First of all, "Happiness" is such a non-descript category. Of course people want happiness, not just in relationships, but in everything. Besides, happiness is not something you can "want," as in, "I want that Haagen Daaz bar." It's something you sort of discover in yourself (unless you happen to define happiness AS a Haagen Daaz bar...yum).

So much for that.

I was in the computer cluster the other day talking with a friend who describes himself as anti-social, and yes, he's a bit of a hater. When he left the room, Marcus F, my long-time mentor, turns to me and says, "He likes you." I had kind of suspected the same thing myself, but after eight months I just assumed that because I was so easy to talk to, and because he was a little hard to talk to, that he naturally gravitated toward me as a friend.

Lesson learned? I think it's pretty transparent when a person wants it with YOU - and sometimes you need a third party to confirm - but it's harder to tell if a person wants IT with you. Translation: Jack has it totally backwards. The question is not whether or not he or she likes you; that part is fairly obvious, if you listen to your instinct. The question is, WHAT does that person want, and what is it that he wants MORE that is stopping him from wanting YOU? Sometimes the answer's a no-brainer, like a girlfriend. Sometimes it's that he can't handle the emotional baggage or the abstinence, or that he thinks he can do better, or that you don't fit in with his life, or simply that he doesn't want the same thing as you.

Which begs the original question: what does the other person want? A casual screw? A buddy? True love? Anything to push away that feeling of piercing lonliness? Whatever it is, that's what you need to figure out. "Does he like me?" is a useless question; if you're asking it, the answer is probably yes.