Seriously considering asking Boris out.  I have no idea which tiresome little Tory he is seeing at the moment, but chances are we would have more fun.  I will ponder this some more.

Today’s burning topic is healthy relationships.  The first question we need to ask is what constitutes a relationship?  The Sweet Somatic Narcissist I used to live with said after a couple of months he didn’t want one. Since this was unavoidable as we worked together 20 hours a day, I laughed at him.  You open your mouth, therefore you have a relationship.

So let us be more specific.  How does one express one’s esteem for another person?

Well, I would say it starts from your feelings about yourself.  If you do not hold yourself in reasonably high regard (a recent acquaintance certainly did not) then you aren’t offering anything to anyone and you are likely to end up in a sort of death vortex rather than a relationship with another person. In the event that you as the product aren’t worth anything, then you really shouldn’t even attempt to have a relationship in the first place.  I once had a lovely chat with Kerry Katona on this very subject.

So point one would be figure out what your product is – if your product is a negative, self-hating, whiny mess, then you need to go and do something else for a while until you are vibrating at a higher frequency, so to speak.

Once you have decided to be a reasonably pleasant individual, one who feels gratitude for nice things that happen rather than attempting to toxify them with your own bile, then you may find that you learn to appreciate it when you meet someone stupid enough to actually like you.

The next step would be to find someone you hold in reasonably high regard, rather than somebody you don’t actually like and find it incredibly hard to tolerate.  If a person annoys you within the first four weeks, it is likely that your feelings of irritation will be amplified to an unbearable degree within six months, and you will positively hate them within a year or so.  So your almost full tick list may become a kind of trap.  I have dumped quite a few perfectly nice people to avoid wasting their time on this basis.

So point two would be find someone you actually like, rather than someone you seek to control or torture to make yourself feel better about being an essentially crap human being.

Once you have located this marvellous person, you need to figure out what you are bringing to the relationship, rather than considering the matter of what you want to get out of it.  I realise that for many sad, grasping, negative individuals this will sound simply crazy, but even if your prospective partner is rolling about in dosh, they have needs too, and you should really be considering what you add to their life.  Otherwise, gender regardless, you are simply a cheap nasty whore out for what you can get.

So point three is to identify what you are actually offering and consider whether the balance is worth it. Unless you are in a Venus in Furs situation, which you may actually be, then having your shoes licked is pretty damn boring.  (been there, done that)

Assuming that we have made it this far, we now need to consider your horizon.  What is your growth potential within this relationship?  If there isn’t one, then it is game over at this point.  If there is one, then you need to actually communicate to make sure your long view is compatible.

So point four is to identify your mutual growth space and ensure that you are singing the same song.

Of course, there are many self-hating people out there with mummy and daddy issues, and they can be perfectly happy to tear lumps out of each other, involving other people and their time and money in the process.  These people are to be avoided at all costs, as they are inevitably not much smarter than the average toddler in an emotional sense.  They are timewasters who do not even consider that they are less than charming to deal with.

Many people actually imagine that they do not have to be honest, straightforward and generous in their interactions with others.  These, regardless of income, are tragically unhappy individuals who are not worth your time or energy.  They are incapable of saying please and thank you and lead pretty unhappy lives.

It is far better, and far happier, to devote yourself to personal growth until you meet someone else who works as hard.  Leave the imbeciles to jealousy, petty fighting, dishonesty, pique and wholly imaginary superiority.  It is all they have.

Since my true love (Wolfe) is rumoured to have at least 50 wives, it was particularly interesting to recently meet another polygamous person, although he was more directly from the Middle East and had an entirely different take on it.

Both methods are quite far from the Mormon idea of being ‘blessed by sharing.’

In Wolfe’s case, his business blossomed via his astute hiring policy, and I fully appreciate that things have worked well for him.  It is not particularly appealing as a prospective life however.

In the recent acquaintance case, although he was very informative, I became aware that my ideas about polygamy do not fit with the Muslim ideal either.

From my albeit scanty knowledge of Asian polygamy, it is pretty similar to the Muslim ideal, and follows many of the same precepts.  Here is how my recent polygamist described the lifestyle:

1. There has to be some kind of agreement, in the case of the specific episode, it was explained that wives are often assigned the task of finding the next wife.  The dude in question has to be physically capable of keeping his wives satisfied.  It is not a completely male-centric thing.
2. Wives do not interact terribly much and either have their own houses and families, whilst the male moves between them, or in the event there are sufficient resources, their own floor of a large house.  Sometimes a room each will do, the idea being that the room represents the ‘space for the love.’
3. Everybody does a whole lot of communicating to solve problems.

The model had not worked at all well for this person, because he did not let it.  He is not a good example of a polygamist at all.  Having experienced polyamory – well at least in my case it would have been more like polyandry really, since my partners were friends before and after as I spend little time with women and don’t fall in love terribly often – it all seems a bit like prison.

My friend in Eastern Europe was surprised to learn that I am not entirely against polygamy, but I have a completely different perception of it to most people due to previous experience.  I am not terribly maternal, for example, as I have little to no experience of children and am obsessed with work.  Had I engaged in a polygamous relationship at some point, I would have been more confident in my ability to maintain my other obsessions whilst having kids.  My feeling, however, is that most people in Western countries are too selfish, vain, jealous and self-serving to make the effort.  We have lost our ability to adapt readily.  I informed her that there was no danger of my getting involved with this person as I would expect to be at the very least a family friend before there was any question of it.  You aren’t marrying the dude, you are marrying the couple, so to speak.

So, I realised, my ideas about polygamy are a bit like my ideas about management.  You have to be emotionally expansive, mature and generous to make it work.  You have to have an open personality and be ready to change if necessary, and from a personal perspective, separate houses would seem to be an invitation to jealousy and paranoia, both of which are a waste of your time.  If you cannot manage this, or for some reason, such as money or mean-spiritedness,  seek to obliterate the perceived competition, then you have no business being involved at all and are actively harming the family.

Well, since Twisty was too frightened to participate in No Glass Walls, and despite making every effort to meet useful people in the last year and a half or so I have thus far failed to find anybody or get to know them well enough to ask, I have decided to abandon it and start a new project.

This is not for want of effort, I am a nice person,  despite being a very large personality with great leadership skills, I seem to frighten little people.

The inspiration behind my latest work Haram Bawbag, was a case in point.  He made a series of erroneous assumptions, and when these all turned out to be incorrect, attempted to depress me into playing the little woman.

Those readers who have met me, and quite a few who have not, will know that this strategy is not likely to meet with much success.  All he has achieved is making himself look sexist and racist.

Apparently women are not to use power tools for some reason.  Why a penis is required to use a sander is anyone’s guess.  It could have something to do with the owner of the penis making that assertion, but I couldn’t possibly say.

Anyway, it looks as if campaigning against racism should really be focusing on non-white communities as far as I can see and from recent experience.  There is still a lot of work to be done on women’s rights as well, so why we have to insult ourselves looking at free the nipple campaigns when many countries view women as basically punch bags for poor male self image I do not know.

Joy is Power.  When someone tries to take your joy, they are trying to take your power.  Don’t let it happen.