5181

LOL, the woman I’ve been dating for the past few months just let me know her daughter was just diagnosed with mono. So now we get to see if we can go several weeks without seeing each other (we only do weekends anyway as she lives 150 miles away).

Pisser…

5182

You shouldn’t really be seeing the daughter of the woman you’ve been dating anyway, you know.

5183

What’s the maximum debt a potential life partner could be in and still have you consider marrying/life committing to them? Assuming you have none, or little, so basically you incur ther debt if you commit to them.

Edit: yeah divorced, why’d you give that poor girl mono?

5184

There’s no hard number on that, but I would need to be satisfied that I was marrying someone at least moderately financially responsible. In a long term couple, disagreements over money are fairly common from what I heard. Certainly my wife and I had have had our share of arguments on that topic. Having similar perspectives on how money should be managed, or at least an ability to compromise between disparate perspectives, is a lot more important than people think for the long term stability of a relationship.

5185

Pisser indeed, Divorced, but I assure you, mono sucks. Hard. Especially when you didn’t even get it by making out.

5186

See, your last sentence doesn’t necessarily follow from the first one. Their debt is their debt, and if it’s a problem, then life commitment doesn’t even enter into the equation.

So I suppose, uh, zero.

5187

Are you referring to that article that came out a few days ago about the dude who called off the wedding when he found out his fiancé had $170k in student loans?

There’s no price to put on love.

And kinky sex. Lots of kinky sex.

5188

I assume that you are talking about stupid debt. Reasonable student loans, car payment, or mortgage don’t really count.

If 1) she is no longer accruing debt and 2) she is committed to paying the debt off as quickly as possible, I’d be comfortable with something that we could pay off in 12-18 months with no serious hardship. Depending on how much the girl makes, this is probably something in the 10-20K range.

I’ve actually gone through this with a previous girl. She had something like 12-15K worth of credit card debt. By the time she moved in with me, she had paid it down to about 6-7K, I think. A lot of that money came from one-time or infrequent events (yearly bonus, tax return, sale of her house) but she also dramatically cut back her living expenses and paid a serious chunk of her monthly income which indicated to me that she was serious about paying it off.

When she moved in, our agreement was that I paid all common living expenses (mortgage, utilities, food), she paid for her personal expenses (car, insurance), and most of the rest of her money went to paying off the debt. It worked really well, and she was debt free in just a couple of months.

The relationship, unfortunately, did not work as well. But we’re still friends and she is, as far as I know, still debt free.

5189

Yep. If she’s responsible now, that’s what really matters. Depending on the size of the debt it might be beneficial to have her declare bankruptcy before the marriage, or some other sneakiness.

H.

5190

That’s crazy. Anyone that racks up $170K in school debt while pursuing something that isn’t going to get them a six-figure salary is a dip.

5191

$170k in student debt? Pfft. Amateur.

5192

Yes, we aren’t talking like $10K. We are talking (theoretically) like $100K.

5193

That’s an argument for debtor’s prison, not commitment.

5194

That was kinda my thought. But so many people are in so much debt nowadays! If you counted “being heavily in debt” like “having been in the porn industry” as a disqualifier for serious commitment, then so many people would drop out of the dating pool.

5195

It isn’t about the debt, but the debt/income ratio. I see nothing wrong about avoiding potential love interests who are stupid with money, since money problems are the number one cause of most divorces anyway.

5196

I met with Older Guy. He showed up with a cast on his left arm. Bad previous date? No, apparently he took a spill on his bike. We chatted about various things (mostly writing, natural talent vs. practice and such) and then in a show of grace, I knocked my (paper) cup of tea off the table. It was mostly empty, but the spot on the floor beside us was left smelling vaguely of blackberry sage (yes, gay, I know).

We then went for a bit of a walk and traded stories about how we each arrived in Vancouver. He’s a dual US/Canadian citizen who came over 10 years ago via North Carolina, though he originally hails from a small town an hour away from San Francisco. He didn’t name the town, for some reason, but gave the impression that they are stamped all over the place there. He said it was still very ‘west coast’. He did not share any tales of being brutally shoved aside on downtown sidewalks by roving bands of Asians.

At the end he asked if I wanted to meet again and I said yes, because I’m too much of a weenie to gracefully say no and besides, he seems nice enough. I’m not expecting nor wanting anything to come of this, but he’s a pleasant guy and may have interesting stories to share.

However, he had never heard of The Alan Parsons Project. This is equally weird and unforgivable.

5197

Ahahahahahahahahahaha!

5198

But in ElGuapo world, isn’t everyone magically wealthy in their early 30s? Just pay off the debt and don’t buy the Maserati while you date the bank manager while having threesomes in your hot tub and renting sports cars in Vegas while people pay you to just be awesome.

Right?

H.

5199

Okay, so due to the coolness of these OKTrends articles, I registered an account to check it out, even though I’m very skeptical of online dating in less urban areas. First, I just signed up and answered a bunch of questions to see what kinds of people it would suggest to me. The results were… interesting, but better (more people) than I expected. I answered some more questions, uploaded a couple photos, and went about my day

But what’s the deal with quick matches? I got an email saying somebody gave me a high rating and if I give her a high rating then our hearts will explode or something. But it wouldn’t tell me who it was, it gave me 9 people who will also see me rating them. Is this just a never-ending cycle of gambling by rating profiles, who then rate profiles, until you come up matched? I mean, I didn’t even intend to act on any of this stuff just yet and my profile is barely filled out.

5200

If you look at your visitors, you can probably see which one of the 9 it is — only way you wouldn’t is if she’s browsing anonymously.