Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I find myself single.
This was inevitable, and the writing was on the wall that the two of us weren't compatible, even if I loved her dearly right from the start.
Little fights would snowball into battles, she had a hair-trigger temper and you'd swear her name, which incidentally could have passed as Latina, made her one. As lovely as she could be, as smart and talented as she was, it wasn't meant to be.
I'm at fault. I'll gladly shoulder the majority of the burden for it all. I could make excuses about ADHD, depression, the enormous amount of stress I'm under as the knives chop away inexorably at the strands of the future, but for all that they're true excuses, I was a pretty crappy boyfriend. I'm very lucky I'm smart and funny enough, that I could make her laugh and temporarily forget my myriad flaws. It's not like I didn't care about her, even if I struggled to show it in the way she craved.
She'll be fine. She always was a fighter.
I think I'll be too. After all, this was a shared decision. Like two cacti hugging in the cold desert winds on a moonless night, the sweetness of the dripping nectar couldn't keep at bay the building pain from all the pricks and scabs we couldn't help but scratch at.
On to more practical things.
I've given enough (good) dating advice here that I know the ropes. Currently, work and exams makes even the apps appealing, for all that they're meticulously designed by psychologists (and the incentives of mammalian evolution) to be a gauntlet of suffering for the male of the species, all to squeeze out your hopes, dreams, and more importantly, money.
But I've aged like wine. I've got a dozen good pictures carefully curated. With a dog. In scrubs. With friends, so women can rest assured I'm not a psycho. In decent clothing and proper lighting. I might not be as handsome as my brother, but I'm certainly not repulsive either. Most importantly, I'm older, and for a man, that's a good thing, right till the male pattern baldness or the paunch hits. Two matches in less than two hours, whereas the last time I tried, as a med student, it took days or weeks.
I'd love to date more in person, but I'm not going to hit the clubs alone. Most of my friends have long since fled to fairer shores. Thankfully flirting with patients (or at least their family members, I don't swing towards 70 year old ladies with cancer) is not illegal in India, we haven't cucked our doctors that badly, but that's not really something I'm inclined to do either, let alone how fucking tired I am at work. Oh well, at least I know I can slide into DMs like I was lubed, 7 years of steady relationships don't lie about that. They didn't pick me for my sterling good looks after all.
But if anyone has any advice. I'm all ears. I'm tired of dishing it out and could actually use some myself.
Before anyone suggests the usual, I am, or intend to:
Lawyer upfor our shared investment of a cellphone charger and a vape pod. Well, she does owe me a sizeable amount of money, but I trust she'll pay me back.I'm tall, charming, with a beard that's far less scraggly after some (poorly adhered to) minoxidil, in a promising career (hahahaha), so please skip the kind of blue pills (psychiatric variant) you'd feed the dearly departed Skookum and the like.
Go on ahead, hit me with your best or worst. I have a beer in hand and a flint in the other to strike and light Tinder. I'm receptive. I have time to kill and the things I need to do can wait.
(The biggest motivator to study for me now has become the observed fact that hot young med students and interns love them an older Resident or Consultant. Time to grind and get that bag.)
I have a years supply of Costco brand minoxidil I got got free. How long till you actually saw results ?
I don't really need a more dense beard, but I might as well use it before it goes bad. Thanks for the reminder.
The standard consensus is that it takes 3 months or more of regular, twice daily use to get a respectable beard.
I think the maximum I've used it that consistently is about a month, and then intermittently whenever I can remember to. It is still a noticeable improvement over what it used to be, and I was already old enough that if I was going to grow a respectable beard it would have happened.
My brother has been using it for at least 6 months now, maybe even longer, and he's been religious about it. He keeps his beard trim, but barring a small patch below the chin that just won't go away, it's denser than mine is, and he's both younger and started worse off.
Just to be clear, you have liquid, topical minoxidil right? I mean, the pills will grow hair. You just won't like where.
(Dosage is about 3 drops or 1 ml per cheek, rubbed in. Trim your beard if you want to maximize the amount making it to the skin, though once again I haven't done that because if keeping my beard short is required to make it bigger, that's (temporarily) defeating the point.)
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You may have the clothes, but do they fit well?
I won't go and dox myself by posting pictures, but I have a sense of style that is above average. Note this is accounting for the abysmal fashion sense of the average man.
So I do have outfits that look good on me, and fit well, especially when layered. Some very experimental ones too, who says straight guys can't wear zebra print? (My mom and brother, but then again half his college suspects he's gay, and I don't even know for sure).
The biggest issue with fashion in India is that this place is abysmally hot and muggy.
Now, I'm usually too lazy to dress up, but I am perfectly capable of it. I've lost some weight, so if I want to, I can get some of the shirts adjusted.
Typical outfit:
(With just the floral prints I look like I'm in Hawaii or a very drunk dude who walked into the favela for the wrong reason. Hence the layering.)
Genuinely a burden on fashion. The best fits are pretty much all at their most comfortable when it's pretty chilly.
On the flip side, it's a great excuse for linen.
You bet I was very fucking fly in London.
I must thank my ex for all the pictures I can now use on Tinder. I can thank her a little less because she was the fifth person I swiped on in Bumble, today.
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Do people use minoxidil to grow hair on their face? I've never heard of that before.
Uhh, I hesitate to ask what this means. Do you mean departed like he's not on the Motte, or do you mean departed like he died while attempting to do the Scag (or whatever that wilderness thing was called that he was doing)?
He called it the Hock.
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If you take too much minoxidil orally, you grow hair everywhere that hair can grow.
Applied topically, it works just as well for beards as bald patches on the scalp. Check out /r/Minoxbeards , I can personally vouch for it, and my brother who was a stickler to the routine had even more startling results from a worse start. My family is kinda bad at growing beards naturally and we're no different. My aunts never grew one, nor did my grandma, though a great aunt managed a moustache once before a misandrist cow mistook her for a man and kicked her in the head.
The former. Someone here was claiming that he did something far more sensible like climb a mountain first instead of the Hock (or at least to prepare for it). He's still alive, or at least that's where the smart money is.
I don't know what a Scag is, but if it's as suggestive as it sounds, you'd need an entirely different blue pill ending with -fil to make it work.
I mean, I definitely know that rogaine will do that, which is why bald people are usually careful to not let it drip onto their foreheads. But I didn't know that anyone actually deliberately puts it on their face to grow beards, that it would have desirable effects.
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I stumbled upon SkookumTree commenting in PoliticalCompassMemes, but didn't have an unbanned account with enough karma to inquire how he has internet and enough time to participate while dying in Alaska.
Your situation is surprising for me only in that she ditched you before gaining access to the non-Indian sexual marketplace. Want to take bets she pops up in the West before you do?
She failed the exam we gave outright. I'm in limbo with a small chance I'll squeeze through and get something. We could have both been in the West if we didn't happen to prioritize exams that lead to career progression instead of dead end jobs in the NHS.
Dude, India isn't Qatar. If a middle class professional woman wants dick, we've got Tinder too. Bars. Sleazy nightclubs. I'm sure Western men would align with her feminist ideals better than the average Indian in our social class, but I'm about as egalitarian as it gets. I did dishes, the laundry and cleaned. When I slacked, it's because I'm lazy, not because it's beneath me or something.
No, I wouldn't have dated her for 1.5 years if I thought she was what you're implying. Our differences were irreconcilable, falling apart because neither of us could fix our character flaws, not because she was out for an upgrade. It's probably easier for me to get laid in the UK than it is here, but for an attractive woman? You couldn't schedule the time. And it's not like there aren't liberal men here too, if you seek a more longterm relationship. We were together and eyeing a future together because our plans aligned, I can't date someone who expects something more than a hookup without lying about how I intend to fuck right out of this country as quickly as possible, and I know she's honest, often excessively so, and wouldn't do the same.
A fate worse than death. He should have gone on the Hock instead.
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I like the Dan Savage heuristic for breakups: one month of mourning for every year of the relationship (I'd round up the year, so if you're at 8 months just call it a year). If you're feeling down, that's a good rule of thumb for when you should be forcing yourself to put down the booze and get back on the horse. If you're feeling up-and-excited, it's a good rule of thumb for the time period during which you should question your own judgment on getting into anything new. Rebounds are a bitch, don't get caught up in something that isn't good for you.
It's been a year and a half now. Like, I am sad it didn't work out, but much of the pain and devastation I'm used to from previous breakups was frontloaded, used up in all our endless battles over the pettiest bullshit.
I'm mostly numb. I only shed enough tears to wet a toothbrush.
Two months is far too long to mourn. I have exams. Work, that frowns strongly on me turning up with a hangover. And I suspect my parents would be rather miffed if I spent two months in a drunken haze.
Not even at my worst did I feel tempted to hit the bottle that hard, and my liver thanks me.
Sure, don't get drunk every day and fail out of your job regardless. But also don't be surprised, despite your perception of have pre-grieved, if you aren't actually ready to date for two months. Or if you generally aren't in a great mood.
I appreciate the advice. Sadly I haven't been in a good mood for the past 10 years, so that isn't anything new haha. Well, not at a stretch at least.
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Go get drunk if you haven't already. It won't help, but it's tradition.
Just take some time being single. Depending on how strong the pair bond was, it can take a fair bit of time to be ready to seriously date (up to several years if you were in high limerence/engagement). In the meantime, feel free to either stay away from girls or date unseriously and messily. Be honest with the girls that you aren't seriously available. You'd be surprised how they react.
Way ahead of you chief, already got that beer bottle in hand. Funnily enough I'm not nearly as depressed as I was in past breakups, I crave a stiff drink, but I'm not inclined to drown my sorrows in wine just yet. Several of those breakups weren't initiated by me, so the sense of crushing inadequacy was far more overwhelming. These days, I'm older and (maybe) wiser, I know I've got game and while I am simply too lazy to be a fuckboy, I can charm women into committed relationships, to our mutual detriment.
As a minor consolation, I've matched with an absolutely amazonian fashion designer on the apps, and while her literacy is questionable, with thighs like that, she could crush my skull till our IQs match and I wouldn't complain. 🙏 Inshallah I'm going straight to heaven
So I'm going to finish my beer, which has gone flat since I'm arguing on the Motte. I'm going to pop a Ritalin, because I'm a terrible doctor who doesn't listen to advice about avoiding mixing stimulants and sedatives (well, with one beer it isn't that bad), and then I'm going to read up more on calcium metabolism, which is paradoxical enough that maybe a brain compress will help me understand it better, or at least it'll make more sense when I'm drunk.
Alcohol actually improves memory, at least from before you began drinking it.
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