My humble suggestion would be to sign up for a matchmaking site or just browse personals and start dating!
My experiences with love and relationships indicate that looking for love is the last you want to do if you want to find love. But I also know many people who seek it and seem to find it, usually over the Internet (how the world has changed, eh? I met my first girlfriend over the Internet in 1990 and that was considered SO crazy at that time and now it's okay. I've been married for 11 years to an awesome woman and the moment before I first met her (and for a few weeks after), you could get me to swear I'd never get married my whole life (I enjoyed being alone too much, even now I suppose in a sense). But as another person on this thread said, love has a way of hitting you when you least expect it. I've had the best luck in my life with relationships when I've let go, not over pursued or been desperate.
But way before I got married, I was involved in a 5 year relationship (we're still friends, now for over 20 years!). When that ended I found myself newly single and Yahoo! personals and free matchmaking sites had started to pop up. I went on more than a 100 dates in this manner over a span of 3 years, I'm serious. Was I looking? Yep. Was I desperate? Sometimes. Was I lucky? Yes and no. In the end the process didn't result in me being in a relationship (well, I was rebounding after all), but it was such a valuable experience. The breath and diversity of people I encountered was mind blowing to me and it taught me a lot about how to interact with different personality types, and so on. I'd say dip your feet in this process and start dating.
If you are going to pursue the search (and I suppose we're all searching), then think of it as a filtering process where you attempt to narrow down a pool of potential partners. Kerrigan talks about meeting strangers and bonding instantly. I call it chemistry. It's pretty obvious if you have it or not. If you don't feel the chemistry immediately it could happen later but it's unlikely in an Internet dating scenario. So preferred sex is the first filter. Then you could filter by "chemistry" (which is MUTUAL attraction) which probably takes out a lot of possibilities. And this continues. I personally tend to be attracted to people who share my overall philosophical worldview but are coming at it completely from a totally new direction. So I'm unlikely to have dated someone close to me who I work with for example (but some people prefer this). We all have some rough ideas of the person we want to be with, the type of relationship you want to have, at any given stage in your life. As you date, you'll understand what you want better and thus will be able to give better. Think about what the other person would want as others have suggested. Learn to put yourself in their shoes constantly.
Finally, let's say you do meet someone and you're in a great relationship. Don't rush it. Depending on your age, take things as they come. If it's meant to work out, it will, but relationships do take work and it is teamwork. (All relationships are teamwork.) My humble view from reading your posts is not that you want a relationship or that you want to curtail your addiction or anything specific like that, but rather you're searching. We all are. It's the nature of the human condition. Doing a lot of it is part of growing up IMO.
Just my two cents. Good luck man!
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I'm also an alcohol addict and I hope you introspect seriously about your use and misuse which could lead to addiction to alcohol. If you think your addiction to weed is bad, wait until you're addicted to a highly toxic substance! (Well, wait forever, but think about it.)
My experiences with love and relationships indicate that looking for love is the last you want to do if you want to find love. But I also know many people who seek it and seem to find it, usually over the Internet (how the world has changed, eh? I met my first girlfriend over the Internet in 1990 and that was considered SO crazy at that time and now it's okay. I've been married for 11 years to an awesome woman and the moment before I first met her (and for a few weeks after), you could get me to swear I'd never get married my whole life (I enjoyed being alone too much, even now I suppose in a sense). But as another person on this thread said, love has a way of hitting you when you least expect it. I've had the best luck in my life with relationships when I've let go, not over pursued or been desperate.
But way before I got married, I was involved in a 5 year relationship (we're still friends, now for over 20 years!). When that ended I found myself newly single and Yahoo! personals and free matchmaking sites had started to pop up. I went on more than a 100 dates in this manner over a span of 3 years, I'm serious. Was I looking? Yep. Was I desperate? Sometimes. Was I lucky? Yes and no. In the end the process didn't result in me being in a relationship (well, I was rebounding after all), but it was such a valuable experience. The breath and diversity of people I encountered was mind blowing to me and it taught me a lot about how to interact with different personality types, and so on. I'd say dip your feet in this process and start dating.
If you are going to pursue the search (and I suppose we're all searching), then think of it as a filtering process where you attempt to narrow down a pool of potential partners. Kerrigan talks about meeting strangers and bonding instantly. I call it chemistry. It's pretty obvious if you have it or not. If you don't feel the chemistry immediately it could happen later but it's unlikely in an Internet dating scenario. So preferred sex is the first filter. Then you could filter by "chemistry" (which is MUTUAL attraction) which probably takes out a lot of possibilities. And this continues. I personally tend to be attracted to people who share my overall philosophical worldview but are coming at it completely from a totally new direction. So I'm unlikely to have dated someone close to me who I work with for example (but some people prefer this). We all have some rough ideas of the person we want to be with, the type of relationship you want to have, at any given stage in your life. As you date, you'll understand what you want better and thus will be able to give better. Think about what the other person would want as others have suggested. Learn to put yourself in their shoes constantly.
Finally, let's say you do meet someone and you're in a great relationship. Don't rush it. Depending on your age, take things as they come. If it's meant to work out, it will, but relationships do take work and it is teamwork. (All relationships are teamwork.) My humble view from reading your posts is not that you want a relationship or that you want to curtail your addiction or anything specific like that, but rather you're searching. We all are. It's the nature of the human condition. Doing a lot of it is part of growing up IMO.
Just my two cents. Good luck man!
--
I'm also an alcohol addict and I hope you introspect seriously about your use and misuse which could lead to addiction to alcohol. If you think your addiction to weed is bad, wait until you're addicted to a highly toxic substance! (Well, wait forever, but think about it.)
