Sometimes I'll read an article about Asperger's syndrome and I'll think "hey..." but then I think, no, if that were my problem I wouldn't be self-aware enough to identify it as such.

Normally I'd ask if anyone else does this, but I don't need to because I can use my serious empathy skills to guess that they do.

That actually doesn't have much to do with the topic at hand, except that it all fits into the larger theme of my lack of people skills.

I was thinking more about having a type and how it can affect one's love life, or not.

Somebody I work with has had at least two, possibly three, different girlfriends this year (it is either A-B-C or C-B-C. I am too polite to ask), but I didn't realize this until last week because I thought they were all the same person. Specifically, they all look like his ex-wife. I would think that after all the drama and breakups one would want to try something new, but apparently not. I think he just really, really has a type and can't do anything about that.

On the other side, two guys I know from high school both ended up with girls who are nothing like what their type was back then. (Thank you, internet!*) I don't know if their type changed, or if it just turned out not to be so important in the end. A lot can change in a few years, but neither of them was the type to settle, and I seriously doubt that that is the case.

I always say, with six billion people in the world, you can certainly find someone (or a lot of someones, if my student is any indication) who is your type. But six billion people is a lot. I suppose you could also find someone inexplicably attractive enough to make you not care that you have a type.

My own situation, like most things in this world, had more to do with me than with other people: Andrey tells me a girl is pretty, I look at her and see that she has darker skin than me and no hips to speak of and conclude that she looks nothing like me and we should break up. But people actually have more than two features, so who knows what he looks at?

So I might be his type after all, but at the same time it might not matter if I am or not. That should be the end of it. Of course, it isn't.


* Don't judge me! My serious empathy skills tell me that you stalk people on the internet, too.

Screw you?

It's been a while since I've done one of these:

Arkady (arguing with someone else): F*ck you!
Me (looking suitably horrified): You can't talk to people that way.
Arkady: I'm sorry, Marin. I don't know the polite way to say this.

I thought you'd know this already

When Andrey and I started seeing each other, I told him that I was not going to lose weight, I was not going to get a tan, and I was planning on aging like a normal person and that if that bothered him he could find someone else who met his standards. He thought it was weird that I felt I had to make such a declaration.

Someday I might post the tale of this photo. Now I'm posting the photo because Andrey said that the blonde girl standing next to me was pretty and, while I couldn't disagree with that, I resolved to break up with him when there was a good opportunity to do so. My reasoning? If she is his type, then I couldn't possibly be. And why waste time with someone you're not attracted to?

But then later I remembered that a person can find a number of different "types" attractive.*

And, if I weren't appallingly insecure, that would be the end of it.

But now Andrey works with a girl who he thinks is really beautiful and who looks nothing like me. And they also like the same books. So, once again, and even moreso this time, I'm not sure why I should even bother sticking around. Right now I just avoid her, but it is hard to do this without being rude. If I don't avoid her, I feel uncomfortable around her, which makes me more shy and withdrawn and un-charming than usual, which makes it even more clear that, if we are competing, I will lose.

I guess I can take comfort in the fact that apparently I'm not the only one with this problem.

I'm just assuming that the problem is that she looks nothing like me. This makes Andrey the bad guy for wasting the time of a perfectly nice girl who is just not his type.

But the problem might be that I'm really insecure, in which case I'd feel bad even if the girl looked exactly like me.

The obvious solution, then, is to clone myself, send the clone to work with Andrey, and see how that makes me feel.

(Seriously, though, I feel really bad about this and I could use some advice on whether it's worth it to stick around or if I've already lost).


* You know, this doesn't prove anything other than that celebrities tend to be attractive. I just had fun making the list.

You got to help me out

Happy Easter! I meant to post something on Easter, but I was too busy celebrating.

See, there were two things I decided to do for Lent:
1. try to understand people, especially the ones I dislike
2. go to church every Sunday

The second was easy, the first not so much. On the one hand, now I am far more likely to look at other people and try to see where they're coming from. And this makes me more forgiving. On the other hand, it doesn't work perfectly. There are some people I can forgive a little but still dislike a lot. And on the little-known third hand, I should not actually have to understand people in order to forgive them. I should just be forgiving. But I won't beat myself up over that last point because conditional forgiveness is better than nothing.

I also had to face the fact that I'm polite but not nice. I worry too much about making a good impression on people and not enough about actually improving their lives. More often than not, those two go hand-in-hand, which is why I never thought about it before.

Anyway, the problem with those first two Lent things is, they're what I'm supposed to be doing year-round anyway. I intend to keep up with the first, and I intend to do better with the second, but it takes an hour and a half to get to church, so I'd be lying if I said I planned to go every Sunday. Maybe every other Sunday.

Since the first two weren't really sacrifices, exactly, I decided that the third thing would be to read the whole Bible. In order to do this, I had to give up other books. Even at that, I did not read the whole Bible, just most of it, and I skipped around a bit. But I seriously, seriously missed just being able to read whatever. To make matters worse, I was in the middle of a novel when Lent started.

So you can probably guess what I've been doing since Easter.

Incidentally, the Bible thing might have been a bit counter-productive, since I came away from it with no understanding whatsoever of fundamentalists. It is not actually physically possible to take everything the Bible says literally.

But that, my friends, is a problem for next Lent. I'm going to go finish Middlemarch.*

* One of the characters in Middlemarch objects to dog ownership. I am not sure how I feel about that.

It's a really big problem when purchasing soylent green

Having lived with my brain for the past few decades, I've grown quite accustomed to it. So there are certain things I do without thinking and without realizing that they're weird until somebody tells me that I'm being weird.

Not that that inspires me to change my ways or anything.

So, recently, it's come to my attention that my grocery shopping habits are weird. Specifically, I do not buy food with photographs of people on the package. I avoid food with drawings of people, but I can overcome that if the food is really good and/or on sale. But photos? Forget it.

I made some comment about this to a friend and she looked at me like I was insane. You could argue, though, that it's unnatural to have people on food labels. The label should show you the contents, right? When I first moved to Russia, I certainly relied more on the pictures than the words. So the simplest, clearest picture always won out. You could argue that I'm just exercising brand loyalty now.

You could argue that. Except that this isn't a new thing. And it's not just food. I'm the same way with books. Photos of things? Fine. Illustrations of people? Fine. Photos of people? No.

I was going to say that I probably get this from my mother, as it seems like something she'd do, but last summer she bought me a copy of Atonement with photos of the actors from the movie on the cover. So, not from her. Also, I'm a weirdo for remembering that.

I'm not a total weirdo, though. I'll buy DVDs and magazines with photos on the cover without giving it a second thought. So far it's just food and books. And cosmetics. And picture frames.

I can't be the only one, can I?