Casual Relationship Quotes

If a girl starts out all casual with a guy and she doesn't tell him that she wants a relationship, it will never become a relationship. If you give the guy the impression that casual is okay with you, that's all he'll ever want. Be straight with him from the start. If he gets scared and runs away, he wasn't right for you.

It was so good to be held. If only their relationship could be distilled into simple, wordless gestures of comfort. Why had humans ever learned to talk?

He gave her a quick, casual kiss on the cheek first. Then came the hug, and it was the hug that always made Laurel’s heart mush. Serious grip, cheek to the hair, eyes closed, just a little sway. Del’s hugs mattered, she thought, and made him impossible to resist.

Sometimes, if she simply remained quiet, and let the inadequacy of his excuses reverberate on the air, he became ashamed and backtracked.

You act young," he said, "because you are young. But you know things, Roza. Things people older than you don't even know. That day...." I knew instantly which day he referred to. The one up against the wall. "You were right, about how I fight to stay in control. No one else has ever figured that out- and it scared me. You scare me." "Why? Don't you want anyone to know?" He shrugged. "Whether they know that fact or not doesn't matter. What matters is that someone- that you- know me that well. When a person can see into your soul, it's hard. It forces you to be open. Vulnerable. It's much easier being with someone who's just more of a casual friend." "Like Tasha." "Tasha Ozera is an amazing woman. She's beautiful and she's brave. But she doesn't-" "She doesn't get you," I finished. He nodded. "I knew that. But I still wanted the relationship. I knew it would be easy and that she could take me away from you. I thought she could make me forget you." I'd thought the same thing about Mason. "But she couldn't." "Yes. And, so.....that's a problem.

He tried to give his wife pleasure in little ways, because he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. It was never intentional. They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life.

One thing I am certain of, I do not want to be betrayed, but thats quite hard to say casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It’s not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, and then being on somebody else’s.

Ronan’s expression was still incendiary. His code of honor left no room for infidelity, for casual relationships. It wasn’t that he didn’t condone them; he couldn’t understand

She seemed to think that one of the perks of marriage was that it gave you rights of comment and intrusion over single people's love lives.

His code of honor left no room for infidelity, for casual relationships. It wasn't that he didn't condone them; he couldn't understand them.

We treat our encounters with them with carefree casualness. We are certain that our relationships will naturally take care of themselves.

Both could feel the relationship crumbling to pieces beneath the weight of everything that Gavin refused to say.

Hope and God were buddies. Theirs was not a formal relationship steeped in ritual and tradition. It was more of a close yet casual friendship.

Since he was sixteen, he had been continuously sexually active, either with a girlfriend or through a series of casual flings. From the point of someone like Kibby, he considered, he would be regarded as highly succesful with women. But the real problem is relationships, which fucking social retards like Kibby can't grasp, because they're just so obsessed with getting their hole.

She re-read his email four times, feeling offended and breathless, like he had casually grabbed her head and stuffed it into a pile of wet leaves.

Faerie’s relationship to physics is often casual at best, and sometimes it consists of Faerie promising to call when physics knows it never will.

Her shoulder length hair was the color of pitch and looked like it only had casual relationships with the brushes it knew.

Casual acquaintances, co-workers, or neighbors are less likely to witness the borderline’s sudden shifts in mood, self-destructive behavior, paranoid distortions, and obsessive ruminations.

Just like I didn't dare tell Jack that I was falling in love with him when I was down in Texas, wanting to be a modern woman who's supposed to be able to handle the casual nature of these kinds of relationships. I'm never supposed to say, to Jack or anyone else, what makes you think I'm so rich that you can steal my heart and it won't mean a thing?

Men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.

Though at that time men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.

I’d never thought much about dating and relationships until the possibility of having them was gone. I wasn’t the type of person who could casually date someone while knowing there was absolutely no chance of more between us. I guess deep down I’d always believed that someday I’d meet the ‘one’ and we’d live happily ever after. Ever after held a whole new meaning for me now and it wasn’t a happy one.

The young women in all the YA books I loved were high-school age. By eighteen, the majority of them had saved the world, not to mention: kissed people, traveled, been in a relationship, had sex. At twenty I felt like a pathetic, unaccomplished, uncultured, virgin grandma. It sounds like a joke now, but at the time, around all these people my age casually discussing all of the above, I felt so small.

When you break up with someone, and I’m not talking casual breakups here, it’s hard to take the sudden absence of such an important person in your life. It reminded me of when I’d stopped going to school and the weird uneasy feeling I’d gotten afterward, like I was forgetting to do something. My life until that point had pivoted around some form of education, and all of a sudden, it was gone. Homework, classes, running around, and then – bam – nothing but a life of work stretching out before you. No one prepares you for that feeling or even mentions it. You just suddenly have a gap and have to decide how to fill it. A break up is like that gap, only much, much more painful. One day the person you talked to constantly or did stuff with is just absent. Gone. Poof. And even though I’m not one of those people who has to be in a relationship all the time, I was feeling at a loss.

Our relationship was too serious to forget and move on, and too casual to get upset over him fucking his…

I can’t quite shake this feeling that we live in a world gone wrong, that there are all these feelings you’re not supposed to have because there’s no reason to anymore. But still they’re there, stuck somewhere, a flaw that evolution hasn’t managed to eliminate yet. I want so badly to feel bad about getting pregnant. But I can’t, don’t dare to. Just like I didn’t dare tell Jack that I was falling in love with him, wanting to be a modern woman who’s supposed to be able to handle the casual nature of these kinds of relationships. I’m never supposed to say, to Jack or anyone else, ‘What makes you think I’m so rich that you can steal my heart and it won’t mean a thing?’ Sometimes I think that I was forced to withdraw into depression, because it was the only rightful protest I could throw in the face of a world that said it was all right for people to come and go as they please, that there were simply no real obligations left. Deceit and treachery in both romantic and political relationships is nothing new, but at one time, it was bad, callous, and cold to hurt somebody. Now it’s just the way things go, part of the growth process. Really nothing is surprising. After a while, meaning and implication detach themselves from everything. If one can be a father and assume no obligations, it follows that one can be a boyfriend and do nothing at all. Pretty soon you can add friend, acquaintance, co-worker, and just about anyone else to the long list of people who seem to be part of your life, though there is no code of conduct that they must adhere to. Pretty soon, it seems unreasonable to be bothered or outraged by much of anything because, well, what did you expect?

You and Tristan are easing into the whole relationship thing, right? Taking it slow?" Juliet asked a little too casually. "We have sex six time a day, and we're thinking of making a porno together," Lily said, poker-faced, while she rubbed almond oil on her bare legs. She glanced up to see Juliet glaring at her. "Yes! We're taking it slow. Maybe a little too slow.

We seem normal only to those who don't know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on an early dinner date would be; "And how are you crazy?" The problem is that before marriage, we rarely delve into our complexities. Whenever casual relationships threaten to reveal our flaws, we blame our partners and call it a day. As for our friends, they don't care enough to do the hard work of enlightening us. One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with. We make mistakes, too, because are so lonely. No one can be in an optimal state of mind to choose a partner when remaining single feels unbearable. We have to be wholly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to be appropriately picky; otherwise, we risk loving no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us that fate. Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for. The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn't exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently - the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the "not overly wrong" person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition. Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling. We end up lonely and convinced that our union, with its imperfections, is not "normal." We should learn to accommodate ourselves to "wrongness", striving always to adopt a more forgiving, humorous and kindly perspective on its multiple examples in ourselves and our partners.

I know of enough cases in which a close and, as it seemed, indissoluble relationship was annulled by the casual arrival of a third party, and one of the pair, previously joined so beautifully, driven out into empty space.

Someone who loves us passionately is motivated to know and understand us to a greater depth than someone with whom our relationship is more casual.

For years, I had used these fractured men to justify my cynicism and workaholism, and the grief, insomnia and casual anorexia were no longer of any interest to me.

During fleeting casual sexual encounters, women and girls are expected to place a man’s physical and emotional interests above their own, to assume responsibility for ensuring that they are met. But in committed relationships, they are often expected to do this every minute of their lives.

Yet the heart of each burned from the other. They burned with each other, inwardly. This they would never admit. They intended to keep their relationship a casual free-and-easy friendship, they were not going to be so unmanly and unnatural as to allow any heart-burning between them. They had not the faintest belief in deep relationship between men and men, and their disbelief prevented any development of their powerful but suppressed friendliness.

You have soul ties with the people you sleep with and even when you are no longer in bed with them, they remain in your head. Your thoughts are consumed by their absence in your life. We feel disconnected from something when we give away our most prized bodily asset to a person that can’t even spell our last name correctly

There's only a casual relationship between human behavior and logic.

Fats and Andrew were perhaps equally aware that the admiration in their relationship flowed mostly from Andrew to Fats; but Fats alone suspected that he needed Andrew more than Andrew needed him.

He remembered well, with the curious patient memory of the celibate, the first casual caresses her dress, her breath, her fingers had given him…He remembered well her eyes, the touch of her hand and his delirium...

I will have a deeper and personal relationship with my life. I will not have a casual fling with my life. I will find peace in that. I want to contribute to the world around me. Casual debauchery is not fulfilling. I want to send good messages and good meanings along the way. The journey is about spreading love and understanding. Not using each other. Not distraction. Tools for presence in life. I want to bond with like-minded people who echo my appreciation and awareness for them.

Now I could see the ways my asexuality had protected me. Being ace spared me from sexual distraction, from slut-shaming internal or external, from bad hookups or any hookups at all, from casual relationships that ended in ghosting and confusion.

The hardest cases, I think--perhaps the most dangerous ones--are the friends of the Laffertys' (the evil ones). People like Sargeant Ahearn, who has possibly known for years about what goes on in Kensington. And he'll never be fired, never be questioned, never even be disciplined. He'll go on with his daily routine, showing up for work, casually abusing his power in ways that will have lasting effects on individuals and communities, on the whole city of Philadelphia, for years. It's the Ahearns of the world who scare me.

Someone who loves us passionately is motivated to know and understand us to a greater depth than someone with whom our relationship is more casual. What does one often hear from people who are in love? “He (she) understands me as I have never felt understood before.

Does your appearance accurately convey the message of who you are that you are trying to get across? When trying to make an excellent first impression in business but in doubt of what to wear, dress one level up from what is expected—if it's casual, dress in business casual, etc.

It would be nice if the story ended differently - if he had burst into tears and professed his love for me; if he had said the same three words back and hugged me; if he had given it thought and then asked if we could try a relationship. But you know what? I said those three words to a boy who didn’t love me back, at least not in that way. He casually dropped a “love you” later on, and in a platonic ‘you have impacted my life’ way, he was telling the truth. But I knew. He had given it thought, and we were not on the same page. I built up all this courage to say “I love you” for the very first time, and I said those words to a person that couldn’t reciprocate them. But guess what? I don’t regret any of it.

Have you read my emails before?" I ask. I try to keep my voice casual but I can hear the anxiety in it. The What the f*ck in it. When you're a stupid girl in love, it's almost impossible to see the red flags. It's so easy to pretend they're not there, to pretend that everything is perfect.

It was a casual, domestic scene. Nothing extraordinary. Yet it triggered a longing so fierce and unexpected I had to turn away. I firmly believed people didn't need a significant other to be happy. If someone wanted to be in a relationship, great. If they didn't, also great. The same went for children, marriage, etc. There were no universal barometers for happiness. A person's life could be just as fulfilling without a romantic partner as it was with one. But there were times, like now, when I yearned to experience that kind of unconditional love. To have someone care for me through the good, the bad, and the inevitable mistakes I made. What would it be like to be loved so deeply by someone that I wouldn't have to worry about every little move possibly driving them away?

A sexual relationship is an act of communion between body and spirit. This is a very important encounter, not to be done in a casual manner. In our soul there are certain areas—memories, pain, secrets—that are private, that we would share only with the person we love and trust the most. We do not open our heart and show it to just anyone.

Casual sex is one thing, but my relationship with Oliver is anything but casual. It’s everything. The risk of permanent damage is too great, and I refuse to cross that line.

Casual text can lead to a pun in the oven.

The masses live their lives as defined by terms given by society. For example: this is what it means to be married, this is what it means to be in a relationship, this is what it means to be dating, this is what it means to have a mutual understanding, sighs, this is what it means to be serious, this is what it means to be casual, this is what it means to be complicated, this is what it means to be Facebook official. These are all terms given by society. These are all invisible (and not so invisible) lines, drawn by society. These are are not God-lines. These are not borders created by highly enlightened individuals. These are not terms defined by you during moments of highly elevated consciousness. No. These are only shits. A pure soul, completely whole and void of constriction, will look out into the world with untainted eyes and say: "Where is the one whom my soul recognizes?" And you look for the one whom your soul is sired to, whom your soul recognizes, whom your soul loves. There are no laws, there are no lines, there are no borders. There is no shit. You are committed to the call of your soul, to the power that calls you beyond all the cloaks and the traps and the smallness created by small hands.

Once upon a time I thought a relationship meant having shackles on my wrists, binding me to the needs of another person. I thought I’d have to sacrifice the things I’ve wanted most to be half of a whole. But now I know it just means I’ve got a safety net. Someone to lift me up and hold me steady. Someone to nag me about the spare key under my potted plant and someone to cut my grapes into tiny hearts. A partner. A friend.

Ronan’s expression was still incendiary. His code of honor left no room for infidelity, for casual relationships. It wasn’t that he didn’t condone them; he couldn’t understand them. “So he’s a man-whore. It’s not your problem,” Gansey said. Ronan was not really Gansey’s problem, either, in Adam’s opinion, but they’d had this argument before. One of Ronan’s eyebrows was raised, sharp as a razor. Gansey strapped his journal closed. “That doesn’t work on me. She had nothing to do with you and Declan.” He said you and Declan like it was a physical object, something you could pick up and look underneath. “You treated her badly. You made the rest of us look bad.” Ronan looked chastened, but Adam knew better. Ronan wasn’t sorry for his behavior; he was only sorry that Gansey had been there to see him. What lived between the Lynch brothers was dark enough to hide anyone else’s feelings.

Because honestly, to this day, I don't really know what made him interested in me. It's not that I hate myself, at least not most of the time - it's just that it wouldn't have been difficult for Jason to find a woman who was prettier, or more of a fighter for the underdog, or both. The one time I asked him about it, and I tried to ask as casually, as unpathetically, as possible, given that it's an inherently pathetic question, he said, "Because you had your act together." I think he was referring less to my career than to my not being anorexic or flat-out insane, in contrast to his previous girlfriends; one of them had literally weighed all her meals on a postage scale.

In the silence that followed, I was aware of just how much I wished things were different. I wanted to be able to talk to her, and tell her how afraid I was of what was going to happen, and have her tell me everything was going to be all right. But the way we'd always behaved stopped me, and all I could see were the barriers and walls I'd put up between me and my mother- casually, unthinkingly, not realizing that at some point I might want to take them down.

[W]e live in interwoven networks of terminally casual relationships. We live with the delusion that we know one another, but we really don’t. We call our easygoing, self-protective, and often theologically platitudinous conversations ‘fellowship,’ but they seldom ever reach the threshold of true fellowship. We know cold demographic details about one another (married or single, type of job, number of kids, general location of housing, etc.), but we know little about the struggle of faith that is waged every day behind well-maintained personal boundaries. One of the things that still shocks me in counselling, even after all these years, is how little I often know about people I have counted as true friends. I can’t tell you how many times, in talking with friends who have come to me for help, that I have been hit with details of difficulty and struggle far beyond anything I would have predicted. Privatism is not just practiced by the lonely unbeliever; it is rampant in the church as well.1

If you aren’t paranoid before you arrive in this city, give it a few weeks and you will soon notice it creeping in, dripping into your subconscious like a leaky tap. The trick is not to give a flying fuck what anyone thinks about you, and if you are in the right frame of mind this can be an easy trick to perform but if not you’ll soon notice that for a city full of people who do a great Stevie Wonder impersonation when it comes to the homeless and beggars and casual violence towards others, wearing the wrong kind of shoes or a cheap suit brings out a sneering, hateful attitude that can have weaker minded individuals locked in their houses for weeks before harassing their doctors for prescriptions of Prozac and Beta blockers just to make it out the front door.

We both already knew. Whether we admitted it or denied it. Just as light rain can still soak you to the skin if you stand in it long enough... this casual "relationship", whether we wanted or not, had made its way into our hearts. (From Hold Me Safe by Mocho)

It should have been awkward. They’d taken their relationship from casual to over-the-top intimate in six-point-two seconds, without all the typical steps in between. But all Dani could think, wrapped in Carter’s arms, was that finally she was right where she was supposed to be.

That life can be a rich place, comprised of the highbrow and the lowdown, the casual and the ambitious, private reading and public sharing. As a parent in that landscape, you'll need to be sometimes traveling companion, sometimes guides, sometimes off in your own part of the forest. A relationship between readers is complicated and cannot be reduced to such "strategies" as mandatory reading aloud, a commendable family activity whose pleasure has been codified into virtue, transforming the nightly bedtime story into a harbinger of everybody's favorite thing: homework.

In any case, Maya's efficiency of speech was extremely helpful in the maintenance of a relationship that I was subconsciously keeping on the knife-edge between casual and serious. She was capable of talking with her eyes and her body, but she mostly chose to use her mouth. I didn't mind this.

Jesus Christ is not a cosmic errand boy. I mean no disrespect or irreverence in so saying, but I do intend to convey the idea that while he loves us deeply and dearly, Christ the Lord is not perched on the edge of heaven, anxiously anticipating our next wish. When we speak of God being good to us, we generally mean that he is kind to us. In the words of the inimitable C. S. Lewis, "What would really satisfy us would be a god who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven--a senile benevolence who as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.'" You know and I know that our Lord is much, much more than that. One writer observed: "When we so emphasize Christ's benefits that he becomes nothing more than what his significance is 'for me' we are in danger. . . . Evangelism that says 'come on, it's good for you'; discipleship that concentrates on the benefits package; sermons that 'use' Jesus as the means to a better life or marriage or job or attitude--these all turn Jesus into an expression of that nice god who always meets my spiritual needs. And this is why I am increasingly hesitant to speak of Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. As Ken Woodward put it in a 1994 essay, 'Now I think we all need to be converted--over and over again, but having a personal Savior has always struck me as, well, elitist, like having a personal tailor. I'm satisfied to have the same Lord and Savior as everyone else.' Jesus is not a personal Savior who only seeks to meet my needs. He is the risen, crucified Lord of all creation who seeks to guide me back into the truth." . . . His infinity does not preclude either his immediacy or his intimacy. One man stated that "I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone." . . . Christ is not "my buddy." There is a natural tendency, and it is a dangerous one, to seek to bring Jesus down to our level in an effort to draw closer to him. This is a problem among people both in and outside the LDS faith. Of course we should seek with all our hearts to draw near to him. Of course we should strive to set aside all barriers that would prevent us from closer fellowship with him. And of course we should pray and labor and serve in an effort to close the gap between what we are and what we should be. But drawing close to the Lord is serious business; we nudge our way into intimacy at the peril of our souls. . . . Another gospel irony is that the way to get close to the Lord is not by attempting in any way to shrink the distance between us, to emphasize more of his humanity than his divinity, or to speak to him or of him in casual, colloquial language. . . . Those who have come to know the Lord best--the prophets or covenant spokesmen--are also those who speak of him in reverent tones, who, like Isaiah, find themselves crying out, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Isaiah 6:5). Coming into the presence of the Almighty is no light thing; we feel to respond soberly to God's command to Moses: "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5). Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained, "Those who truly love the Lord and who worship the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Spirit, according to the approved patterns, maintain a reverential barrier between themselves and all the members of the Godhead.

Women who don’t have kids are called “selfish” and made to feel that their life is a waste. Women in heterosexual relationships who earn more than their partners are labelled “controlling” or “bossy”. Women who reject sexual advances are called “frigid”, yet that same accuser will call a woman who enjoys casual sex a “slut”. When people make autonomous decisions about their bodies and their lifestyles they are met with a whole spectrum of resistance and this is particularly true for marginalized people. Anything that deviates from the narrative society has written for and about you is shamed and unaccepted.

Yet surely she was as culpable as he was; recalling her casual speculation about when Jasper's wife's grandmother might die and thereby free Jasper and Susan to divorce, Liz wondered if a stronger sign of a relationship's essential corruptness could exist than for its official realization to hinge on the demise of another human being.

There was a sage who was expert in herbal medicines. With great difficulty he once procured a rare seed which, as per his intuition, could cure any disease. He planted the seed. After 12 years of extreme hardwork, the tree yielded nothing but poisonous fruits. How could he let go of 12 years of investment? So he started nurturing the tree more and more in hope of turning it into the elixir it was supposed to be. The poison of tree started entering into his blood now. He was about to die. Luckily a disciple came to visit him and destroyed the tree. A couple of years later, during a casual walk into jungle, he found a full grown tree with fruits that could cure any disease. Let go of relationships or projects that turned out to be poisonous or dead. Your investment will come back to you in the form of luck.

Shall I stop in to check on Bella before I go?” “Not dressed like that. You would give her palpitations if she knew you were going into danger for her benefit.” “Luckily, I am mostly immune to Bella’s powers and could cure such palpitations with a thought,” Gideon mused. Jacob raised a brow, taking the medic’s measure. He could not recall the last time he had heard the Ancient crack wise about anything. It was not a wholly unpleasant experience, and it amused the Enforcer. “I . . . am aware of what is occurring between you and Legna, as you know,” Jacob mentioned with casual quiet. “I am only recently Imprinted myself, but should you require—” He broke off, suddenly uncomfortable. “Of course, you probably know far more about Imprinting than I ever will.” He is reaching out to you. Legna’s soft encouragement made Gideon suddenly aware of that fact. It was one of those nuances he would have missed completely, rusty as he was with matters of friendship and how to relate better to others. “I am glad for the offer of any help you can provide,” Gideon said quickly. “In fact, I had wanted to ask you . . . something . . .” What did I want to ask him? he asked Legna urgently. I do not know! I did not tell you to engage him, just to graciously accept his offer. Oh. My apologies. Still, you are clever enough to think of something, are you not? Legna knew he was baiting her, so she laughed. Ask him why it is you seem to constantly irritate me. I will ask him no such thing, Magdelegna. Well then, you had better come up with an alternative, because that is the only suggestion I have. “Yes?” Jacob was encouraging neutrally, trying to be patient as the medic seemed to gather his thoughts. “Do you find that your mate tends to lecture you incessantly?” he asked finally. Jacob laughed out loud. “You know something, I can actually advise you about that, Gideon.” “Can you?” The medic actually sounded hopeful. “Give up. Now. While you still have your sanity. Arguing with her will get you nowhere. And, also, never ever ask questions that refer to the whys and wherefores of women, females, or any other feminine-based criticism. Otherwise you will only earn an argument at a higher decibel level. Oh, and one other thing.” Gideon cocked a brow in question. “All the rules I just gave you, as well as all the ones she lays down during the course of your relationship, can and will change at whim. So, as I see it, you can consider yourself just as lost as every other man on the planet. Good luck with it.” “That is not a very heartening thought,” Gideon said wryly, ignoring Legna’s giggle in his background thoughts.

Shanti picked up her glass of red wine. “For now, we let Adele go back to Sydney, where she will no doubt find someone who sees exactly how beautiful and wonderful she is, sweeps her off her feet, and makes her forget that our Peter ever even existed. Why, he’ll be nothing but a dim, sad memory to her in no time. Meanwhile, Peter can go back to having meaningless relationships based on almost casual sex with women he barely even likes.

People who think that queer life consists of sex without intimacy are usually seeing only a tiny part of the picture, and seeing it through homophobic stereotype. The most fleeting sexual encounter is, in its way intimate. And in the way many gay men and lesbians live, quite casual sexual relations can develop into powerful and enduring friendships. Friendships, in turn, can cross into sexual relations and back. Because gay social life is not as ritualized and institutionalized as straight life, each relation is an adventure in nearly un-charted territory—whether it is between two gay men, or two lesbians, or a gay man and a lesbian, or among three or more queers, or between gay men and the straight women whose commitment to queer culture brings them the punishment of the "fag hag" label. There are almost as many kinds of relationship as there are people in combination. Where there are -patterns, we learn them from other queers, not from our-parents or schools or the state. Between tricks and lovers and exes and friends and fuckbuddies and bar friends and bar friends' tricks and tricks' bar friends and gal pals and companions "in the life," queers have an astonishing range of intimacies. Most have no labels. Most receive no public recognition. Many of these relations are difficult because the rules have to be invented as we go along. Often desire and unease add to their intensity, and their unpredictability. They can be complex and bewildering, in a way that arouses fear among many gay people, and tremendous resistance and resentment from many straight people. Who among us would give them up? Try standing at a party of queer friends and charting all the histories, sexual and nonsexual, among the people in the room. (In some circles this is a common party sport already.) You will realize that only a fine and rapidly shifting line separates sexual culture from many other relations of durability and care. The impoverished vocabulary of straight culture tells us that people should be either husbands and wives or (nonsexual) friends. Marriage marks that line. It is not the way many queers live. If there is such a thing as a gay way of life, it consists in these relations, a welter of intimacies outside the framework of professions and institutions and ordinary social obligations. Straight culture has much to learn from it, and in many ways has already begun to learn from it. Queers should be insisting on teaching these lessons. Instead, the marriage issue, as currently framed, seems to be a way of denying recognition to these relations, of streamlining queer relations into the much less troubling division of couples from friends.

You finished?” he asked casually. “You know what?” I fumed, “I’m not. From here on out, the only way I’m doing another damn coffee run for you is if you give me enough money to buy myself one as well. And if you aren’t being a complete asshole, I might consider giving you back your change when I’m done.” “Now you finished?” was all he said. “Yes,” I bit out. “Good. I need coffee.” And with that, he turned and headed back into the kitchen. I was pretty sure my head exploded.

Evolutionary psychologists have also hypothesized that men seeking short-term sex would prioritize women’s bodies, since a body cues provide possibly the most powerful cues to her fertility (Confer et al., 2010; Currie & Little, 2009; see Chapter 5 on WHR, BMI, and other bodily cues to fertility). In one experiment, participants viewed an image of an opposite-sex individual whose face was occluded by a “face box” and whose body was occluded by a “body box” (Confer et al., 2010). Participants then were instructed to imagine themselves having either a one-night stand or a committed relationship with the person and were then asked to decide on which box they would remove to inform their decision—they could only remove one box (see Figure 6.3). Compared to the long-term mating context in which men prioritized facial information, men considering casual sex shifted significantly in the direction of prioritizing body information—a finding also discovered by Currie and Little (2009) using a different methodology. Women, in contrast, do not show this shift and tend to prioritize a man’s face in both short-term and long-term mating contexts. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that men prioritize cues to fertility in short-term sex partners.

I want more with you, Emmy. I want to come home to you every night and I want to take you out to dinner in the city. I want to hold your hand on the sidewalk and I want to kiss you in the rain. I want all that shit they talk about in the movies. I’m going to be honest with you, though. I don’t have a fucking clue how to be in a relationship or how to be a boyfriend, but I’m going to learn. I’m going to try, and you’re the only person I’d ever want to try with. This isn’t just sex to me, and it hasn’t been for a while. If keeping it casual is the only way I get to keep you, then so be it. But I think you want something more too.

Cheaters only cheat when they are missing something. There is a loss going on and it is up to you to figure out what that is. Their reason might be stupid to you but to them it was more important than you realize. Because cheaters know the risks they are taking. They know cheating is not a casual thing. There is something so intense inside of them to drive them to that point. You might not like what that thing might be, but you must accept it is there and either fill that need or move on. This loss could be anything: attention, someone more attractive, control, dominance, boredom...you name it. You will never heal a relationship unless you accept that there truly is a "why" that the cheater is not willing to share with you.

Nudity is a gray area. We certainly don’t think kids are harmed by growing up in households where casual nudity is the norm. But children who have never been around nude adults may be upset if nudity is suddenly introduced into their living room. Kids can be very sensitive to issues like sexual display, and flashing is clearly a violation of boundaries. Certainly, if a child expresses discomfort with being around your or your friends’ nudity, his or her desires should be respected. And we hope it goes without saying that no child should ever be required to be nude in front of others—many children go through phases of extreme modesty as they struggle to cope with their changing bodies, and that, too, deserves scrupulous respect. What

We're in her bedroom,and she's helping me write an essay about my guniea pig for French class. She's wearing soccer shorts with a cashmere sweater, and even though it's silly-looking, it's endearingly Meredith-appropriate. She's also doing crunches. For fun. "Good,but that's present tense," she says. "You aren't feeding Captain Jack carrot sticks right now." "Oh. Right." I jot something down, but I'm not thinking about verbs. I'm trying to figure out how to casually bring up Etienne. "Read it to me again. Ooo,and do your funny voice! That faux-French one your ordered cafe creme in the other day, at that new place with St. Clair." My bad French accent wasn't on purpose, but I jump on the opening. "You know, there's something,um,I've been wondering." I'm conscious of the illuminated sign above my head, flashing the obvious-I! LOVE! ETIENNE!-but push ahead anyway. "Why are he and Ellie still together? I mean they hardly see each other anymore. Right?" Mer pauses, mid-crunch,and...I'm caught. She knows I'm in love with him, too. But then I see her struggling to reply, and I realize she's as trapped in the drama as I am. She didn't even notice my odd tone of voice. "Yeah." She lowers herself slwoly back to the floor. "But it's not that simple. They've been together forever. They're practically an old married couple. And besides,they're both really...cautious." "Cautious?" "Yeah.You know.St. Clair doesn't rock the boat. And Ellie's the same way. It took her ages to choose a university, and then she still picked one that's only a few neighborhoods away. I mean, Parsons is a prestigious school and everything,but she chose it because it was familiar.And now with St. Clair's mom,I think he's afraid to lose anyone else.Meanwhile,she's not gonna break up with him,not while his mom has cancer. Even if it isn't a healthy relationship anymore." I click the clicky-button on top of my pen. Clickclickclickclick. "So you think they're unhappy?" She sighs. "Not unhappy,but...not happy either. Happy enough,I guess. Does that make sense?" And it does.Which I hate. Clickclickclickclick. It means I can't say anything to him, because I'd be risking our friendship. I have to keep acting like nothing has changed,that I don't feel anything ore for him than I feel for Josh.

Going to school takes a lot of work. I know you stay up late studying, but if you can’t make it to work on time let me know now. Maybe I can schedule you for closing shifts.” Just as Kyle had done, Pete stared at Derrick like he was speaking a foreign language. “I appreciate you wanting to work with me,” the young associate said. “But it would cut into my time with Wendy.” Derrick had no idea who Pete was talking about. “Who’s Wendy?” “She’s my girlfriend. She doesn’t believe I take our relationship seriously, so I’ve been crashing at her place this past month, to be with her.” Derrick was more than perplexed. “You mean you’ve been tardy these past weeks because you’re staying up late with your girlfriend?” Pete nodded casually. “What can I say? She’s hot!” Derrick suppressed a groan.

But without Emily, Greg would feel—paradoxically for such a social creature—alone. Before they met, most of Greg’s girlfriends were extroverts. He says he enjoyed those relationships, but never got to know his girlfriends well, because they were always “plotting how to be with groups of people.” He speaks of Emily with a kind of awe, as if she has access to a deeper state of being. He also describes her as “the anchor” around which his world revolves. Emily, for her part, treasures Greg’s ebullient nature; he makes her feel happy and alive. She has always been attracted to extroverts, who she says “do all the work of making conversation. For them, it’s not work at all.” The trouble is that for most of the five years they’ve been together, Greg and Emily have been having one version or another of the same fight. Greg, a music promoter with a large circle of friends, wants to host dinner parties every Friday—casual, animated get-togethers with heaping bowls of pasta and flowing bottles of wine. He’s been giving Friday-night dinners since he was a senior in college, and they’ve become a highlight of his week and a treasured piece of his identity. Emily has come to dread these weekly events. A hardworking staff attorney for an art museum and a very private person, the last thing she wants to do when she gets home from work is entertain. Her idea of a perfect start to the weekend is a quiet evening at the movies, just her and Greg. It seems an irreconcilable difference: Greg wants fifty-two dinner parties a year, Emily wants zero. Greg says that Emily should make more of an effort. He accuses her of being antisocial. “I am social,” she says. “I love you, I love my family, I love my close friends. I just don’t love dinner parties. People don’t really relate at those parties—they just socialize. You’re lucky because I devote all my energy to you. You spread yours around to everyone.” But Emily soon backs off, partly because she hates fighting, but also because she doubts herself. Maybe I am antisocial, she

limoncello I had made. We casually sipped our coffees and made the decision to get married that week: Let’s just do it! There was no downplaying the seriousness of this relationship anymore. It had found its way to a new, undeniably real level the day Jaim piped up with this little, nearly four-year-old voice calling Tom Dad. He had heard Tom’s girls call him that over and over again, the one night a week they were with him, and picked up the term for himself. It was real now, not a game we could play or a fling we could just keep casually engaging in for years. What Tom and I were doing held more weight than I had realized, and the weight of this one word, “Dad,” woke me up to the reality of what I was doing. Every decision I was making was impacting Jaim. As his mother, every big and little decision I made was shaping his world. This fling had become something greater and the responsible thing to do was to make it real, make it everlasting, make it right. Jaim liked Tom well enough, and Tom was kind enough to Jaim. Tom wasn’t

When He Needs to Understand the Power of His Own Words Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. PROVERBS 18:21 MANY MEN DON’T FULLY COMPREHEND the power and impact of their words. Just by reason of being male, a man’s voice has the strength to be intimidating. A man can say something casually, carelessly, or insensitively without even realizing that he has frightened or hurt someone. Not all men use their voice to that degree, but many do. A man has the power to heal or harm the heart of those to whom he speaks, and never is that more true than within his marriage and family. What your husband says to you or your children—and the way he says it—can build up or tear down. His words can strengthen family relationships or break them apart. You cannot have a successful and fulfilling marriage when your husband is careless or thoughtless in the words he speaks or the manner in which he speaks them. When a husband speaks hurtful words to his wife, he strikes her soul with a damaging blow far greater than he may realize. If your husband ever does that, pray he will understand his potential to intimidate or even wound. Ask God to help your husband hear what he is saying and the way he says it even before he says it. The book of Proverbs says, “He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction” (13:3). Pray that God will fill your husband’s heart with an abundance of His love, patience, kindness, and goodness so that they overflow in the words he speaks to you and your children. If your husband has never hurt another with his words, then thank God for that and pray he never will. Pray that his gentle spirit will rub off on the other men around him. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would lead my husband in the way he speaks to me and our family. Help him to build up with his words and not tear down. Teach him to bless and not curse, to encourage and not discourage, to inspire and not intimidate. I pray when he must speak words that are hard for others to hear, help him speak them from a kind heart. Your Word says that out of the overflow of our hearts we speak (Matthew 12:34). If ever his heart is filled with anger, resentment, or selfishness, I pray he will see that as sin and repent of it. Fill him instead with an abundance of Your love, peace, and joy. Help him to understand that “life and death are in the power of the tongue” and there are consequences to the words he says (Proverbs 18:21). Where my husband has been abusive or hurtful in the words he has spoken to me, I pray You would convict his conscience about that and cause him to see the damage he is doing to me and to our marriage. If I have spoken words to him that have caused harm to our relationship, forgive me. Enable me to speak words that will bring healing. Help us both to think carefully about what we say to each other and to our children and how we say it (Proverbs 15:28). Enable us to always consider the consequences of the words we speak. I know we have a choice about what we say and the way we say it. Help us both to always make the right choice. In Jesus’ name I pray.

But among those 150 people, Dunbar stressed that there are hierarchical "layers of friendship" determined by how much time you spend with the person. It's kind of like a wedding cake where the topmost layer consist of only one or two people—say, a spouse and best friend—with whom you are most intimate and interact daily. The next layer can accommodate at most four people for whom you have great affinity, affection, and concern. Friendships at this level require weekly attention to maintain. Out from there, the tiers contain more casual friends who you see less often and thus, your ties are more tenuous. Without consistent contact, they easily fall into the realm of acquaintance. At this point, you are friendly but not really friends, because you've lost touch with who they are, which is always evolving. You could easily have a beer with them, but you wouldn't miss them terribly, or even notice right way, if they moved out of town. Nor would they miss you. An exception might be friends with whom you feel like you can pick up right where you left or even though you haven't talked to them for ages. According to Dunbar, these are usually friendships forged through extensive and deep listening at some point in your life, usually during an emotionally wrought time, like during college or early adulthood, or maybe during a personal crisis like an illness or divorce. It's almost as if you have banked a lot of listening that you can draw on later to help you understand and relate to that person even after significant time apart. Put another way, having listened well and often to someone in the past makes it easier to get back on the same wavelength when you get out of sync, perhaps due to physical separation or following a time of emotional distance caused by an argument.

at Mike and then back at me. “I really don’t’ want to talk about this, but I have to say something. You know, my ex, Vanessa? Well, she would’ve never been okay with ordering food from here. She’d always say it was beneath her to eat anywhere that didn’t have a Michelin star. Said it was ‘uncouth’” “Well…that’s not very nice,” I responded. The warmth I’d been feeling from Tristan’s praise faded a little at the mention of his ex-fiancée, though I tried to keep my voice steady. He’d only mentioned her casually, and it wasn’t to praise her, so that had to be a good sign, right? At least, he was feeling comfortable enough to open up about his past relationships. It wasn’t as if the twit had bulldozed herself into his house like Brad did. “She wasn’t a very nice person now that I really think about it,” Tristan replied. “Mike warned me about her so many times. I really should’ve listened to him.” “Why didn’t you?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Coz he’s a bloody wanker!” Mike’s voice chimed in from the back seat. I didn’t realize he could hear our low voices, and the look on Tristan’s face said he’d probably rather talk about something else, but he continued on. He blew out long breath and continued. “Lots of reasons, none of which sound very good to me now. My parents liked her, though now I know a few more things… I think my father only liked the idea of her. My mum probably faked it for me.” I didn’t know what to say to that. I mean, I knew Tristan’s dad didn’t like me. The man called me a freakin’ strumpet for Christ’s sake! But I didn’t even know if his mom knew anything about me or if I even existed for that matter. I was a little worried maybe Tristan was trying to hide things, well, maybe trying to hide me. “I hope, maybe one day in the future… she’ll actually like me and not have to …to fake it.” My words tumbled out and seemed to plunge the car into an awkward silence. The only sound I could hear was my own breathing. The silence stretched past the point of comfort and just as I was about to take it all back, Tristan finally spoke. “My mum will adore you.” The remainder of the drive was made in silence and soon enough, we found ourselves at the door of Mike’s flat. Even Tristan seemed to need a moment to brush off the seriousness

What about you? I know you’re not married. Are you seeing anyone or anything?” An image of Brooke sleeping in his bed popped into Cade’s head. Then a second image came to mind, of her giving him the “text me” speech at his front door. “Nothing serious.” “Really? ’Cuz you paused there.” If one more person commented on these damn alleged pauses . . . “Just eat your lunch,” Cade said. With a grin, Zach threw Cade’s words back at him. “If you’re having trouble talking to some girl, maybe you need to find another way to tell her how you feel.” “I know how to talk to her just fine.” “Maybe you’re not saying the right things, then.” “Can we change the subject?” Cade ran his hand through his hair. “You’re sixteen years old. Trust me, relationships get a lot more complicated when you’re an adult.” “Is this a friends-with-benefits situation?” “Aren’t you a little young to know about friends-with-benefits situations?” “I didn’t say I was partaking in them myself,” Zach said. “But shockingly, yes, I have heard of scenarios in which adults engage in intercourse without riding off into the sunset together.” Cade tried to decide how best to sum up the situation with Brooke. “There is a woman. We are friendly. There have been benefits.” “Do you like her?” Cade gestured with his burger. “Of course I like her. She’s, like, the smartest, wittiest, woman I’ve ever met. And hot, too.” “Yeah, I can see why you’d be confused about that,” Zach said. “Smart, witty, and hot. Sounds like a real complicated situation to me.” Okay, fine. To youthful, unjaded ears, it probably did sound odd. Cade tried a different way to explain. “She and I are on the same page. We’re just keeping it casual.” “Hey, you’re an intelligent guy, you obviously know what you’re doing,” Zach said. “But casual or not, if this girl’s that great you probably need to follow your own advice.” “What advice is that?” “Up your game.” That said, Zach took a big bite of his cheeseburger. Cade thought about that. Up his game? Pfft. If he had been thinking he might want to try to change Brooke’s mind about their just-having-fun situation—which obviously he did not, since no man of sound mind and body ever messed with a just-having-fun situation—maybe then he’d worry about upping his game. He scoffed. “You’re a teenager. What do you know?” “I’m wise beyond my years,” Zach said, his mouth full of burger

Then he took my arm, in a much softer grip than the one he’d used on our first date when he’d kept me from biting the dust. “No, c’mon,” he said, pulling me closer to him and securing his arms around my waist. I died a thousand deaths as he whispered softly, “What’s wrong?” What could I possibly say? Oh, nothing, it’s just that I’ve been slowly breaking up with my boyfriend from California and I uninvited him to my brother’s wedding last week and I thought everything was fine and then he called last night after I got home from cooking you that Linguine and Clam Sauce you loved so much and he said he was flying here today and I told him not to because there really wasn’t anything else we could possibly talk about and I thought he understood and while I was driving out here just now he called me and it just so happens he’s at the airport right now but I decided not to go because I didn’t want to have a big emotional drama (you mean like the one you’re playing out in Marlboro Man’s kitchen right now?) and I’m finding myself vacillating between sadness over the end of our four-year relationship, regret over not going to see him in person, and confusion over how to feel about my upcoming move to Chicago. And where that will leave you and me, you big hunk of burning love. “I ran over my dog today!” I blubbered and collapsed into another heap of impossible-to-corral tears. Marlboro Man was embracing me tightly now, knowing full well that his arms were the only offering he had for me at that moment. My face was buried in his neck and I continued to laugh, belting out an occasional “I’m sorry” between my sobs, hoping in vain that the laughter would eventually prevail. I wanted to continue, to tell him about J, to give him the complete story behind my unexpected outburst. But “I ran over my dog” was all I could muster. It was the easiest thing to explain. Marlboro Man could understand that, wrap his brain around it. But the uninvited surfer newly-ex-boyfriend dangling at the airport? It was a little more information than I had the strength to share that night. He continued holding me in his kitchen until my chest stopped heaving and the wellspring of snot began to dry. I opened my eyes and found I was in a different country altogether, The Land of His Embrace. It was a peaceful, restful, safe place. Marlboro Man gave me one last comforting hug before our bodies finally separated, and he casually leaned against the counter. “Hey, if it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I’ve run over so many damn dogs out here, I can’t even begin to count them.” It was a much-needed--if unlikely--moment of perspective for me.

Fascism rested not upon the truth of its doctrine but upon the leader’s mystical union with the historic destiny of his people, a notion related to romanticist ideas of national historic flowering and of individual artistic or spiritual genius, though fascism otherwise denied romanticism’s exaltation of unfettered personal creativity. The fascist leader wanted to bring his people into a higher realm of politics that they would experience sensually: the warmth of belonging to a race now fully aware of its identity, historic destiny, and power; the excitement of participating in a vast collective enterprise; the gratification of submerging oneself in a wave of shared feelings, and of sacrificing one’s petty concerns for the group’s good; and the thrill of domination. Fascism’s deliberate replacement of reasoned debate with immediate sensual experience transformed politics, as the exiled German cultural critic Walter Benjamin was the first to point out, into aesthetics. And the ultimate fascist aesthetic experience, Benjamin warned in 1936, was war. Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program. Mussolini exulted in that absence. “The Fasci di Combattimento,” Mussolini wrote in the “Postulates of the Fascist Program” of May 1920, “. . . do not feel tied to any particular doctrinal form.” A few months before he became prime minister of Italy, he replied truculently to a critic who demanded to know what his program was: “The democrats of Il Mondo want to know our program? It is to break the bones of the democrats of Il Mondo. And the sooner the better.” “The fist,” asserted a Fascist militant in 1920, “is the synthesis of our theory.” Mussolini liked to declare that he himself was the definition of Fascism. The will and leadership of a Duce was what a modern people needed, not a doctrine. Only in 1932, after he had been in power for ten years, and when he wanted to “normalize” his regime, did Mussolini expound Fascist doctrine, in an article (partly ghostwritten by the philosopher Giovanni Gentile) for the new Enciclopedia italiana. Power came first, then doctrine. Hannah Arendt observed that Mussolini “was probably the first party leader who consciously rejected a formal program and replaced it with inspired leadership and action alone.” Hitler did present a program (the 25 Points of February 1920), but he pronounced it immutable while ignoring many of its provisions. Though its anniversaries were celebrated, it was less a guide to action than a signal that debate had ceased within the party. In his first public address as chancellor, Hitler ridiculed those who say “show us the details of your program. I have refused ever to step before this Volk and make cheap promises.” Several consequences flowed from fascism’s special relationship to doctrine. It was the unquestioning zeal of the faithful that counted, more than his or her reasoned assent. Programs were casually fluid. The relationship between intellectuals and a movement that despised thought was even more awkward than the notoriously prickly relationship of intellectual fellow travelers with communism. Many intellectuals associated with fascism’s early days dropped away or even went into opposition as successful fascist movements made the compromises necessary to gain allies and power, or, alternatively, revealed its brutal anti-intellectualism. We will meet some of these intellectual dropouts as we go along. Fascism’s radical instrumentalization of truth explains why fascists never bothered to write any casuistical literature when they changed their program, as they did often and without compunction. Stalin was forever writing to prove that his policies accorded somehow with the principles of Marx and Lenin; Hitler and Mussolini never bothered with any such theoretical justification. Das Blut or la razza would determine who was right.

Not that Alan was being particularly subtle. Mallory was somewhat bemused to find herself, for the first time in her adult life, on the traditionally male side of things in their relationship: she was the one who was perfectly happy with casual sex a couple of times a week, no strings or promises. Alan wanted more.

Being Sarah’s sidekick was normal for me. I didn’t have trouble with finding decent men to talk to for the evening but my issue was making any sort of connection that would last longer than just one night. The men in New York were more finicky than the women. Not many of them wanted a real relationship and instead were typically looking to get laid as quickly as possible and then drop the girl. I’d seen it so many times that I totally understood Sarah’s outlook on casual dating, I just wasn’t sure I could manage that much longer. I really did want to find someone who I could have more with and was willing to wait it out and find them somewhere down the road.

About page warm and casual on her blog, The Pioneer Woman: Howdy. I’m Ree Drummond, also known as The Pioneer Woman. I’m a moderately agoraphobic ranch wife and mother of four. Welcome to my frontier! I’m a middle child who grew up on the seventh fairway of a golf course in a corporate town. I was a teen angel. Not. After high school, I thought my horizons needed broadening. I attended college in California, then got a job and wore black pumps to work every day. I ate sushi and treated myself to pedicures on a semi-regular basis. I even kissed James Garner in an elevator once. I loved him deeply, despite the fact that our relationship only lasted 47 seconds. Unexpectedly, during a brief stay in my hometown, I met and fell in love with a rugged cowboy. Now I live in the middle of nowhere on a working cattle ranch. My days are spent wrangling children, chipping dried manure from boots, washing jeans, and making gravy. I have no idea how I got here . . . but you know what? I love it. Don’t tell anyone! I hope you enjoy my website, ThePioneerWoman.com. Here, I write daily about my long transition from spoiled city girl to domestic country wife.2

The problem with my casual friend was that we didn't have any real relationship. He's a sweet guy and a true lover of Jesus, but we were never close enough to speak meaningfully into each other's lives. He hadn't gotten to know Constantino and had never spent time with us to see the fruit borne of our relationship. So when he wrote me with his Scripture-spattered disapproval, my heart had little generosity to listen. Furthermore, his message consisted of nothing more than the same tired clobber passages from the Bible with which I was all too well acquainted. I had wrestled with the issue of homosexuality for twenty years — through agonizing therapy, scholarly books, thoughtful discussion, Bible study, and endless prayer. I doubt he had been so diligent about the issue. So when he asserted my wrongness with so much confidence, it felt to me like an insolent kindergartner criticizing a PhD's solution to a calculus problem.

We’ll show that human beings evolved in intimate groups where almost everything was shared—food, shelter, protection, child care, even sexual pleasure. We don’t argue that humans are natural-born Marxist hippies. Nor do we hold that romantic love was unknown or unimportant in prehistoric communities. But we’ll demonstrate that contemporary culture misrepresents the link between love and sex. With and without love, a casual sexuality was the norm for our prehistoric ancestors.

Among the most firmly established facts about criminal offenders is that their distribution of IQ scores differs from that of the population at large. Taking the scientific literature as a whole, criminal offenders have average IQs of about 92, eight points below the mean. More serious or chronic offenders generally have lower scores than more casual offenders. The relationship of IQ to criminality is especially pronounced in the small fraction of the population, primarily young men, who constitute the chronic criminals that account for a disproportionate amount of crime. Offenders

You were sharing me with Richard, and he certainly wasn’t just dessert.” “Very true, but he also had ties to me. He is my wolf to call, and that is a different . . . relationship to me, to you, than some stranger.” “I know it was the ardeur, but damn, I’ve never . . .” “You are not a woman of casual lusts. No, ma petite, you are not. And I fear that this Nimir-Raj is no more casual than the rest of your lusts.” He looked so serious when he said it, solemn. “What do you mean?” “If you are truly his Nimir-Ra, then you will be drawn to him. There is no help for it. And truthfully, I cannot fault your taste. He is not as fair of face as our Richard, but he does have certain compensations.” The look on his face made me blush again. I turned to the sink and started brushing my teeth, and he took it as a dismissal. He went out laughing.

Just because two things happen in sequence, doesn't mean there's a casual relationship

Then I saw an answer staring me in the face. I knew he wouldn’t come on The Kelly File, but I was preparing for my Fox Broadcasting Special, which was by its nature a more casual, less aggressive venue. Trump would be a natural lead interview—he had already done Barbara Walters’s 10 Most Fascinating People series three times. (“A record!” he once told me.) Talking to him face-to-face could reestablish a sane relationship. If

Turning Rejection Around What if your friendly, hopeful conversation starter is not met with signals of approval or interest? If the person you approach is fidgety, avoids eye contact, appears uneasy, and exhibits none of the signals of welcome, chances are he or she is not interested in interaction—at least not at that moment. The first thing to do is slow down. Be patient, and give the person time to relax with you. If you present yourself as relaxed and open to whatever develops (whether a good conversation, a valuable working relationship, even friendship or romance), your companion may in time relax too. Use your verbal skills to create an interesting conversation and a sense of ease to break the tension. Don’t pressure yourself to be able to define a relationship from the first meeting. Keep your expectations general, and remember the playfulness factor. Enjoy someone’s company with no strings attached. Don’t fabricate obligations where none exist. It may take several conversations for a relationship to develop. If you had hoped for romance but the feelings appear not to be reciprocated, switch your interest to friendship, which has its own rich rewards. What if you are outright rejected? Rejection at any point—at first meeting, during a date, or well into a relationship—can be painful and difficult for most of us. But there are ways to prevent it from being an all-out failure. One thing I like to tell my clients is that the Chinese word for failure can be interpreted to mean “opportunity.” And opportunities, after all, are there for the taking. It all depends on how you perceive things. There is a technique you can borrow from salespeople to counter your feelings of rejection. High-earning salespeople know that you can’t succeed without being turned down at least occasionally. Some even look forward to rejection, because they know that being turned down this time brings them that much closer to succeeding next time around. They may even learn something in the process. So keep this in mind as you experiment with your new, social self: Hearing a no now may actually bring you closer to the bigger and better yes that is soon to happen! Apply this idea as you practice interacting: Being turned down at any point in the process helps you to learn a little more—about how to approach a stranger, have a conversation, make plans, go on a date, or move toward intimacy. If you learn something positive from the experience, you can bring that with you into your next social situation. Just as in sales, the payoff in either romance or friendship is worth far more than the possible downfall or minor setback of being turned down. A note on self-esteem: Rejection can hurt, but it certainly does not have to be devastating. It’s okay to feel disappointed when we do not get the reaction we want. But all too often, people overemphasize the importance or meaning of rejection—especially where fairly superficial interactions such as a first meeting or casual date are concerned. Here are some tips to keep rejection in perspective: -Don’t overthink it. Overanalysis will only increase your anxiety. -Keep the feelings of disappointment specific to the rejection situation at hand. Don’t say, “No one ever wants to talk to me.” Say, “Too bad the chemistry wasn’t right for both of us.” -Learn from the experience. Ask yourself what you might have done differently, if anything, but then move on. Don’t beat yourself up about it. If those thoughts start, use your thought-stopping techniques (p. 138) to control them. -Use your “Adult” to look objectively at what happened. Remember, rejecting your offer of conversation or an evening out does not mean rejecting your whole “being.” You must continue to believe that you have something to offer, and that there are open, available people who would like to get to know you.

Seven Steps of Relationship Development For people with social anxiety, dating can be particularly stressful. There are many unknowns: “Does this person share my interest?” “Will it work out?” and so on. Here are a few guidelines to help keep you on track through the initial stages of a potentially romantic relationship: 1. Develop conversation that explores areas of common interest or experience. 2. Make it clear that you like the person, and make plans to meet again. 3. Make a follow-up call to arrange your first date, and plan an interesting or enjoyable time. Be prepared with suggestions, but be flexible. 4. On your first date: -Be yourself—and be attentive. -Continue exploring areas of mutual interest. -Determine if there is positive chemistry and if a relationship is worth pursuing. If a potential relationship is developing, both individuals usually drop hints about doing other things together. Each expresses enthusiasm through eye contact, voice qualities, body language, and a developing conversation that expresses a sincere desire to learn more about each other. 5. Continue to see each other and share your feelings. Let the other person know how you are feeling about him or her. The frequency of contact is usually a good indicator of whether a romantic relationship is developing; less intensity is likely to mean it is something more casual. 6. Consider being romantic—sending flowers, having a candlelight dinner, and so on. 7. If the chemistry develops, you may be ready to become involved physically. Take it slowly. Good things are not rushed.

Any activity such as dancing which involves frequent, long-term interaction with another person creates a great deal of mental, emotional, and physical memory in our being.

If we’ve positioned ourselves as the guide, our customers are already in a relationship with us. But making a purchase isn’t a characteristic of a casual relationship; it’s a characteristic of a commitment.

I liked my women the way I liked my relationships—fast, dirty, and casual.

Cheaters only cheat when they are missing something. There is a loss going on and it is up to you to figure out what that is. Their reason might be stupid to you, but to them it was more important than you realize. Cheaters know the risks they are taking. They know cheating is not a casual thing. There is something so intense inside of them to drive them to that point. You might not like what that thing might be, but you must accept it is there and either fill that need or move on. This loss could be anything: attention, someone more attractive, control, dominance, boredom...you name it. You will never heal a relationship unless you accept that there truly is a "why" that the cheater is not willing to share with you.

Cheaters only cheat when they are missing something. There is a loss going on and it is up to you to figure out what that is. Their reason might be stupid to you, but to them it was more important than you realize. Cheaters know the risks they are taking. They know cheating is not a casual thing. There is something so intense inside of them to drive them to that point. You might not like what that thing might be, but you must accept it is there and you need to either fill that need or move on. This loss could be anything: attention, someone more attractive, control, dominance, boredom...you name it. You will never heal a relationship unless you accept that there truly is a "why" that the cheater is not willing to share with you.

The theory is, in any heterosexual relationship it takes guys eighty-eight days to fall in love, and girls a hundred thirty-four. So if you keep it casual, you won’t have to be extra with it. He’ll fall right in your lap.

and even worse to hear Sirius’s name thrown out casually by Slughorn. “It was cruel,” said Dumbledore softly, “that you and Sirius had such a short time together. A brutal ending to what should have been a long and happy relationship.” Harry nodded, his eyes fixed resolutely on the spider now climbing Dumbledore’s hat. He could tell that Dumbledore understood, that he might even suspect that until his letter arrived, Harry had spent nearly all his time at the Dursleys’ lying on his bed, refusing meals, and staring at the misted window, full of the chill emptiness that he had come to associate with dementors. “It’s just hard,” Harry said finally, in a low voice, “to realize he won’t write to me again.

Develop an intentional relationship building with people that matters in your life. Never be casual about your relationships except the relationships that adds no value to your life.