“…She was not a bona fide…”
“Lesbian?”
“You like saying it.”
“I do”
“Keep going-”
“Lesbian, lesbian…….. lesbian. All together now…”
Almost everyone; “Lesbian.”
“I also like to watch. How many people-”
*Gets talked over by the Judge…*
“That’s enough…”
Daniel the Human & I both enjoy the silliness of this scene… https://youtu.be/zluIU7iAzr0
“In lust” is kind of a dismissive way that puritanical Christians frame a romantic interest that has a physical attraction part to it as just being horny.
I don’t know about that. It’s possible, but the way I’ve always thought of it, “lust” has nothing to do with romantic interest; you’re just horny for that person. You can know about someone’s personality, but you see them and think, “wow, I’d like to Fork that!” (and then they put a cigarette in their mouth and the lust flies away like it never was)
You kind of proved your point the wrong way. Lust is sexual attraction, which is a key component of love. If you don’t have it, romantic interest isn’t terribly likely. Cigarettes remove your attraction. Are you as likely to fall in love with a chain smoker as a non-smoker? Probably not.
and on top of that, like… the english word “love” is ridiculously broad. so technically it’s wrong on multiple levels, because parents love their children, you can love food… nothing sexual *or* romantic about many kinds of love.
Hi, I’m asexual, and sexual or intimate attraction is a key element of romantic love. It’s not the only component, and not everybody feels it, just like not everybody feels romantic love at all. Intimate attraction is really, really important, and being able to enjoy intimacy with someone is crucial to many relationships. We dismiss that as shallow, but it’s just another kind of love–the love of someone’s body and how they express their sexuality.
And once again, just to emphasize, not everyone feels it, and that’s okay! Their love can be just as deep and intense.
Anyways, I think calling Lucy “in lust with Walky” is maybe a little premature, but she is moving pretty quickly here. I think she feels underqualified for Walky liking her, so she’s moving quick to make herself feel safer. She doesn’t realize she can “do better”.
But you can fall in love with someone you aren’t physically attracted to; beauty is fleeting, but your personality/character is what causes someone to love another. I can see “attractiveness” being the thing that might make you initially want to know the other person, but lust is just a raw desire for sex; there’s no romantic intent behind it. *(I’m guessing that’s why Tinder exists; from what I’ve heard, it’s not a dating site, it’s a hookup site)
*shrug* IDK, I can only speak from own limited experience. Hell, I should probably just shut up since I’m one of the least qualified people to speak on this subject.
One can also be sexually attracted to someone for non-physical reasons. Hell I’ve lusted after people who I’ve only ever engaged via text and have no idea what they look like, usually because they have a sexy personality.
It has also been documented that people can maintain a sexual attraction, or lust, toward someone they love even if that someone’s body has changed to the point that they would no longer fit with the first person’s “strike zone” (for lack of a better term). Like, I’m not attracted to women who are too overweight (I would like to be, because then I’d have more options, but sadly I am not), but if I fell in love, got married, and my wife got fat over the years, I could maintain my attraction due to my love (I hope).
Personally, I consider sexual attraction to be a necessary component for romantic love to develop, but once it’s there it’s my understanding that it can be maintained even if the sexual attraction goes away for whatever reason. However, I have been informed that there are asexuals who still develop romantic feelings like love despite the lack of sexual attraction of any kind. I don’t understand how that works, but apparently it must, since I see no reason they’d lie about that and I can’t imagine they would be wrong about their feelings to that extent.
The best I’ve been able to find each individual seems to have their own unique criteria for what is necessary to fall in love, and to stay in love, with another person. Emotions are poorly defined at best, and since we cannot actually experience what’s going on inside another person’s head the best we can do is reach a verbal consensus of reported feelings, which is a terrible way to produce a system of terminology that can be ascribed to individual experiences. Humanity has been failing to adequately put the simpler emotions like anger into words, let alone the complex ones like love, for millennia, so the best we can do is assume others reports for how their emotions work are correct even when they don’t line up with our own experiences.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. “In lust” has a different connotation than just horny, it suggests that someone who wants to be sexually intimate can’t also want to be emotionally intimate, and often implies that they are incapable of knowing if they want to be emotionally intimate.
It’s the youth group way to say their feelings aren’t real. She’s both horny for him and infatuated with him. Her panel 1 reaction is not the face of someone who merely horny.
For me it doesn’t really have those connotations. I’d say more that lust can fool you into thinking it’s love and that if that’s what’s happening when the lust fades it won’t leave you with anything lasting.
But then I’d be more likely to describe her as infatuated than in lust. For many people the two are tightly linked.
Accusing someone of being “in lust” means that they specifically lust after the person without any actual deeper connection, and that the relationship would crumble without sex (or the promise thereof) to hold it up. It does not mean EVERY person who is sexually attracted to their partner is only in lust with them. It isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) an accusation made on the level of lust, it’s an accusation made on the lack of meaningful relationship-building.
If you are unhappy with puritanical types decrying lust as antithetical to love, no one here’s disagreeing with you, that’s bullshit. But some individual hormonal teenagers confusing lust for love (particularly when trying to justify ‘well obviously I wouldn’t have sex with someone I wasn’t genuinely in love with because internalized slut-shaming garbage’) is absolutely a thing.
No one here’s saying don’t find your partner hot. Just have a level of introspection to figure out if that’s all it is. And if it is, hey, go at it like bunnies for all I care, so long as you’re both on the same page that that’s what it is.
okay look everyone is getting too complex about this. being in lust means you want to fork someone. that’s it. it’s distinct from being in love because that might involve forking for some people sure but even so it is a lot more than just that. easy peasy.
I think she’s just fallen fast because I think Walky’s supposed to be her first actual boyfriend. It can be pretty easy to fall in to the trap of thinking your first partner is The One. Especially since she hasn’t had enough time for Walky to do anything to screw it up.
given how long we’ve seen her crush for beforehand i think it’s probably been restrained towards now
surprised she wouldn’t have said it on the first date even in a half joking way (be nice to hear it more platonically from friends too and normalize it even if it’s not ‘intense’ as a romantic relationship as opposed to friends who’d jokingly say it or butter someone up to get a gift from it lol)
I definitely tell my friends I love them (when I do) and I agree that should be more common! I’ve never actually run into anyone who minds it though, for whatever that’s worth.
i suppose it would be awkward if you haven’t known each other for too long or someone with a partner to get the wrong idea if you did say like “i love you” and only being friends for like a month though if i was still in high school or had gone to college i’d prolly say it more to my female friends (though my group was pretty affectionate overall, to the point we even sat in each othersl aps, surprised that wasn’t an issue/give any mixed signals to the teenage guys at the time )
Well, let’s just hope a recovery drive has been made just in he needs a drive swap. Hope someone kept the product key if the OS wasn’t factory preloaded.
I’ve been trying to figure out whether Walky (oblivious though he may be) should have seen this coming. I think the closest he came to catching on was this strip, but I still can’t decide whether or not he was being disingenuous or not. (That’s assuming Walky is even capable of such a thing. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/attheborder/
Y’know in retrospect I maybe should’ve seen it as more concerning that Walky was regarding Lucy with the same feelings one has for finding a 20$ bill in their pocket they didn’t know was there.
Walkys definatly having bad flashbacks right now but I could still see things being salvaged if a third party can help him and Lucy address the issue of relationship expectations.
He said “I love that about you” not “I love you”
He may be realising that Lucy was committed to this relationship before it officially started or simply freaking out about the too-soon-ness of this
He doesn’t love her. He didn’t say he loved her. Someone who he’s been dating for a very short time just said she loved him– which, I don’t think there’s a timer on how long you have to know someone to love them, but for most people, I’d say this would be considered pretty fast, and the fact that Lucy said “too,” the assumption that that was what Walky was expressing… yikes…
I think it’s also worth considering what happened when Dorothy told him she loved him for the first time. It was under very similar circumstances (i.e. extremely early), and he’s probably at this impasse of “I can’t not say it back but the last time I said it back I got in big trouble for it”
Well, it turned out he actually meant it when he said it back to Dorothy, even if he was being kind of a shit about it and trying to “avoid feels”.
Conversation with becky the same? next? day, I don’t remember. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/fart-joke/
I don’t think he feels that way about Lucy and he’s probably realised that just saying it is not a legit life hack since then.
They were super in love and honestly, probably still are. Lucy and Walky just aren’t there. Don’t know why, but they just don’t sync yet. Walky really just might not be that into her.
I mean smooching and twirling doesn’t mean love. They truly do like each other a whole lot. They also broke up because of Dorothy wanting to focus on her career. I just…can’t see that as love. If I love someone I wouldn’t leave them to do something that benefits MYSELF.
Dorothy did fall in love with Walky. She even told him so. It was shortly after their first fuck that I think she fell for him cause he truly believes she will be president one day.
I hold the belief they broke up for stupid reasons because they’re dumb kids who don’t know proper time management. Also Dotty is leaving for Yale or some shit one day and probably didn’t want to leave Walky in the wind for that .
I can’t get over the Keeners’ response about starting for funsies, then staying together. Good advice for nervous kids (we were all at that point, right?) wondering where things might go, but not pressuring.
He did NOT say that he loved her, he said he loved that she knew a thing about him.
So Lucy thinks they’ve mutually shared feels and Walky thinks AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
It is also, for this type of dating where you are just seeing where things go or have only started to develop deeper interest, very early in a relationship to say it.
We as the audience know Lucy has had a crush for a fair while so maybe she does love him but Walky only became aware of her interest pretty recently and started dating her pretty recently. His level of investment/interest does not match hers currently so it could easily go completely sideways by freaking him out but they could also talk about it and just take it slower/understand Walky needs more time to catch up to her interest/investment level.
Correct me if my recolleyis fuzzy, but didn’t her crush also start when Billie suggested he should rail her in a sundress on a hotel balcony overlooking a beach in Cancun?
As far as I can tell/remember, no, she just kind of felt he was attractive since meeting him. But she didn’t want to be insensitive by making a move on him too early and didn’t know how to make a move in general, so did not and told Jennifer at the time to shhhhhh.
Nah. Lyle’s gonna let this fester until they eventually breakup so he can swoop in and pick Walky up on the rebound! Dude needs a cartoon watching bro.
well he did bring up marriage even jokingly so he might unintentionally egg it on. or assume that lucy already said it with the amount of texts she spams him with lol
Until now, when she made clear exactly how “coming on strong” she is. She’s basically the new old Joyce, only, like most people from the other dorm, she hasn’t had the experiences that have grown Joyce into a more complex person with, among other things, the sympathy of the audience.
She’s been getting a lot more screen time since the break, so maybe she’ll have a chance to grow less 2-d, but she isn’t there yet. A messy break-up will probably help.
Ooh, that’s a good bet! Joyce and Jacob were actually a decent match, except then Joyce ruined it by being manipulative and toxic. (oops?) Someone LIKE old Joyce, without her baggage might be good for him.
I’d be tepid too if a girl I never even thought about dating was offered to me by my ex who I still had feelings for. This felt more like he was dating her out of convenience than interest.
He’s also had two relationships that mattered a lot to him fall apart or blow up in his face in the last few months. That can make you a bit more cautious about throwing yourself completely into a new one.
I’m pretty tepid about Lucy, too, so I get it. She’s sweet and all but a little desperate, and I feel like she’s sorta like… just fine? But not really more than that?
Also, obvious focus on the first and last panels, but the middle three kind of make my heart hurt for Lucy. Not as much as her heart is going to hurt from the fallout of this, but
The red background is making me really anxious over this. I’m just gonna assume yall are right on the money and he feels worse about it than I can describe. He wanted to not watch cartoons alone! 🙁
He’s a teenage boy at best, physically he’s closer to boy than man and emotionally he’s still a boy.
He looks for the easy way out, he still thinks of himself first (though this is changing), he has no built up resilience and is always looking for, and happy to be, mother’s
Being immature (and/or still developing as person) and being a man are not mutually exclusive. People put weird metrics on what makes one a man (and a woman, but for this type I see it more for men). Walky is, legally, an adult. He identifies as male. He’s a man. That’s all it takes.
Legally maybe (I’m not an expert on the age of majority) but emotionally he’s closer to a boy, physically he’s still a teenager and he still can’t (legally) buy a beer
But in this instance we’re talking emotions and how to deal with them and Walky is in no way shape or form, emotionally, a man because its only very recently he’s had to deal with adult emotions
He’ll be stronger, emotionally, and hopefully a little wiser for the fallout that will most likely follow but he’s not there yet
I’ve said my piece about why Walky is a boy not a man so people can either agree with it, disagree with it or ignore it but I won’t be adding to the discussion because I’ll just be repeating my own argument
Being a man, being a woman, being an adult– these things truly aren’t exclusive clubs or special accomplishments other than the fact that one has managed to survive that long.
There are people who have less emotional maturity than Walky and are way older. But just because some 40 year old never developed that maturity does not mean they are not an adult and, if they identify as male, a man.
If you want to bring in physical aspects, yes, Walky’s body and brain are still developing. But also, these things continue to change throughout one’s life. It seems quiet possible he will have more in common between his present self and his twenty-one year old self, for instance, than he will between his twenty-one year old self and his sixty year old self. But at sixty, he will be a man. At twenty-one, he will be a man, (These are both barring any possible gender discoveries on his part.) At present, he is a man.
You can be a man and not be mature. You can be a man and not know how to deal with emotions. This is, sadly, actually the case for too many. “You’re not a man until you x, y, and z” isn’t actually a great path to go down.
Yeah, this weird, pointless gatekeeping on what can or can’t qualify as a man, who’s it even serve? It’s a (smallish) part of why I can’t be added to identify as one despite being AMAB. Like, everyone seems to have a different definition of what a “man” is and isn’t, and they all get weird about it if you don’t match their personal criteria, so the term becomes meaningless and impossible. If I’m never gonna be considered a man no matter who I’m talking to, why bother calling myself one?
Do you actually think Walky thinks of himself as a man?
(I don’t; that’s part of why he shies away from anything that would imply actual maturity on his part).
“If you identify as male you’re male” is a perfectly reasonable approach (the only reasonable approach in the modern world, aside from rejecting gender entirely, and not in the craptastic “gender critical” TERF way).
But by the same sense, it’s reasonable to say “if you think you’re a man, you’re a man; if you think you’re a boy, you’re a boy.” That has huge problems too–and in fact it would be reasonable for people in Walky’s life to tell him “dude, you’re a man, not a kid any more; you can’t keep acting like a child.”
But unless someone has wacky fourth-wall breaking powers, none of us has the power to enter Walky’s life that way.
Cool moving goalposts you got there. But yeah, I do think Walky thinks of himself as a man at least some of the time. But also, yet again, I think manhood, womanhood, adulthood is something achieved simply by age. I actually don’t think it’s reasonable that, for instance, the eleven year old who told me he was a man the other day be regarded as such.
A man a man a man – It’s really not a “man” thing, it’s a “struggles with emotional intimacy” thing and I’m sorry you experience that.
I’ve known and loved plenty of men who accepted declarations of love, compliments, and affection easily. If you feel like you’re really struggling to accept that kind of positive interaction then I would suggest you seek some answers either in therapy or through therapy books if you’re a self-starter.
Accepting the incorrect assumption that your gender makes you incapable of some very normal human interactions will only be bad for your mental wellbeing in the long run. Best of luck!
Oh hey, yet another factor in my personal rejection of any notion of personal masculinity! Not only the “you have to be/do X”, but also this, the outlandish “you can’t be/do Y”. Why limit yourself just because you were born a certain shape? It’s damaging to everyone, and to no one more than yourself. Into the bin with it, I say.
Oh no. I predict Walky will want to talk about this but wait too long and then Lucy will be like “we said the love thing, now we can have sex!” And walky will choose sex over difficult conversation and then the drama deepens.
Quick, everyone dogpile Walky for being sideswiped with something he wasn’t expecting to hear. Make sure to call him immature and childish and imply strange things about his moral character.
Substance abuse isn’t terribly funny, but the stigma surrounding it definitely has collateral damage. I’m going on two months without Adderall because of its scheduling.
If it helps Walky she probably doesn’t actually love you. She just thinks that she does due to possible loneliness. And the fact college hasn’t been as good or friend packed as she wished for as an also lonely nerd in high school which she probably wishes to ignore!
Neat.
(But seriously other than Booster who is Walky’s roommate and church buddies on Sunday does Lucy… have any friends).
Lucy took that way out of context and changed it to meet her need. Yeah, Walky got hit hard with that bit of unexpected shock.
Also, Lucy is the sort where her over-friendliness tends to push people away and in college where building social networks is pretty important, she has been doing very poorly. Lucy wants friends, but it’s showing now how her eagerness pushes others out.
Here’s a thought, honeys? Or… a question?
Have you ever been in a relationship where one of you had stronger feelings then the other? How did it go?
I’m asking cos I see everyone sucking air through their teeth like this ship is about to go Hindenburg. And I’m like… OK, yes, I can see how these two babies specifically might very likely not be about to deal with this situation optimally, they being 18 and this strip not being called Smarting Of Age… etc.
But what have y’all’s personal experiences with this sort of unbalance been like?
has it always been a reason to end or at least radically rethink the relationship?
Have any of you been in a reasonably stable relationship with someone who clearly had stronger or lesser feelings… without it being an issue and a source of constant insecurity?
Or has it been a serious problem… and if so, why, and what happened?
the majority of my relationships the other person liked me more than I liked them. idk if my situation is a good example to compare with, but I almost never find anyone attractive but sometimes once in a while I might start to after I get closer with them so I tend to do a lot of “giving them a chance”. pretty much all those relationships ended for unrelated reasons, but I usually wasn’t very happy in them anyway.
my current bf is really the first time the feeling has been mutual, but I also sometimes suspect I might be the one who has stronger feelings this time
It’s always been a problem for me if my partner and I don’t habe the same level of interest and commitment to a relationship. We need to have the same goals if it’s gonna work out.
There are two relationships I can think of where feelings imbalance was the major reason I ended things. Both times, the other party was the first one to suggest dating, and both times, they moved things too fast in directions I wasn’t confident about. One got very emotionally dependent on me very quickly and I didn’t handle it well.
I guess the problem boils down to communication more than anything. If my partner makes assumptions about my intentions instead of taking me at my word, things are gonna get rocky.
I fell in love a while before my nesting partner, and we’ve been married now for 15 years. He loves the shit out of me. Sometimes people are just slower to commit and slower to know their own feelings, for my partner he has Alexithymia which can make it difficult for him to put words to his feelings.
Because he was a wonderful partner, dedicated to me, and kind, it was easy to give him the time to catch up to me in love. I just happen to feel EVERYTHING more intensely and more quickly than the people in my life, I’ve never seen it as a flaw in them as long as they act in the way I want people to act toward me!
I have and from both sides of that. In my experience, it’s been best re-contextualized as “One of us was looking for something with more commitment than the other was” be that emotionally, physically, or in terms of exclusivity. It didn’t necessarily correlate to my feelings towards the other person (I can’t necessarily speak towards the opinions of my former partners/romantic interests), just what I wanted/needed out of a relationship, and I found it helpful to decouple (no pun intended) those two things when examining my relationships at the time.
Can’t really speak to your main point, but there are a couple things about what happened here specifically that feel more likely to end in hurt than just “one has stronger feelings that the other,” which I think has been evident in this relationship for a while…
-The “too”: Lucy’s experience is of Walky having said he loves her. That’s a miscommunication that’s likely going to be painful to clear up, but also not great to let go on existing.
-Lucy’s whole statement, really, being in response to what (she thinks) Walky said… this wasn’t like a more confident, “I know you might not feel this way, but I wanted you to know where I’m at” type of ILY. I think it’s very, very possible that this would not have happened at this stage of the relationship had she not thought Walky went first.
-Bonus! This has happened in front of an audience! Specifically, her brother. Yay!
Exactly this. I told my current partner “I love you” extremely early – earlier than Lucy, even! But context matters. We’d been close friends for a long time before we started dating. I was recovering from years of severe depression and publicly experimenting with radical honesty, so Big Feelings Conversations with me weren’t a surprise. I told them in private, via a written message, so they had time and space to process their own reaction. I made it very clear that I did not expect an “I love you” back, that mostly I just wanted to express how much I enjoyed and appreciated their company, and that above all else I wanted to expose the feelings to sunlight before they really did grow into a big scary secret imbalance in the relationship. Also, we were both 29 and looking ahead to our next life phase as capital-A Adults – so maybe not that much older physically than Lucy and Walky now, but certainly lightyears ahead in maturity.
We’re still together years later. Lucy and Walky? Somehow, I doubt it.
But y’know, to answer your question more directly, milu… I also knew with certainty that my partner was REALLY INTO me, even if they weren’t ready to say “I love you” yet or even if I was EVEN MORE into them. I had a dating experience much, much earlier, when I was around Lucy and Walky’s age, where one of the guys I knew girlfriend-zoned me pretty much immediately. We went on one date and it was the most painfully awkward experience of my life. He was super intense about me and it was a lot of pressure. When he nervously held my hand on the way home I had a panic attack so severe that for almost a decade afterward I thought I had a hand-holding phobia.
You could say this was a matter of imbalanced feelings, but to me, that understates the issue. The reality was that I was open to some casual dating but otherwise didn’t have any romantic feelings for him at all, and he was in love with a Manic Pixie Dream Girl version of me that existed only in his head. That’s what I see in Walky and Lucy so far.
None of my boyfriends have ever been as into me as I was into them. We still had plenty of good times together, maybe moreso when we both knew I wasn’t their ideal long-term partner and could simply have fun without the expectation of “This is the endgame for both of our romantic lives”.
I haven’t had that many S.O.’s, but I’ve had two fellows who fell in love with me before I fell in love with them. I was clear about my feelings — that I was slow to fall in love, but that I might get there, and indeed kinda hoped that I would!
One would say “I love you”, and I’d reply “thank you” — which sounds rough to some people I’ve mentioned this to, but it seemed to work for us within this context.
(I did eventually fall for one of them! The other, we broke up for unrelated reasons while I was still in the process of falling, but we still think well of each other. Hooray for honest communication.)
I think she means she tends to see romance that isn’t there – like she just did, by hearing ‘I love that you know that about me’ as ‘I love you’ – but thinks that because the boy she likes is dating her and knows he’s dating her, she’s grown past that. (Obviously her blind spot is still firmly in place though.)
Y’know, if you flip the order of the panels around, replace all the dialogue except the bolded words with the gibberish squiggles, and keep Panel 1 as-is, it’s a pretty good representation of delayed auditory processing. If that’s an existing term, I’m not aware, that’s just what I call it.
What I don’t understand is how Lucy lacks friends at all. She looks before she leaps, but generally just in positive emotional direction. She’s helpful, friendly, kind, nerdy but not obsessively so, genuinely interested in other people…maybe it’s a hint of desperation that drives people away?
Sometimes you’re just not around the right people. Sometimes the people around you are just the Malayas and Jennifers who act like you are an annoying naive idiot for being kind/friendly or an embarrassment for being open about nerdy interests.
Like, Lucy is not a character I love, yet in real life, I would probably be much better friends with her than other characters I like more.
This is what I thought. For a longtime.
But then she inserted spyed on her rommates old floor to get material to manipulate her, inserted herself in he middle their relationship, meddled in it where she had no right, and did the same to beboss of her roommates popularity
Lucy is Nice but shes far from good.
had she ever met a personal boundary she wouldnt jump over?
Lucy and Walky both made mistakes here, and nobody’s in the wrong. Lucy misread Walky’s “I love that about you” remark, and Walky went into a relationship he wasn’t really interested in out of a sense of obligation. No bad guys, just a messy situation.
It is possible Walky *does* love Lucy, and just hasn’t realized it yet. Hope springs eternal. But I don’t know about that.
Walky is now suffering the consequences of the squinty meme eyes
…that, or sticker shock?
OTHER L word?
…
Loss?
Lesbians
“…She was not a bona fide…”
“Lesbian?”
“You like saying it.”
“I do”
“Keep going-”
“Lesbian, lesbian…….. lesbian. All together now…”
Almost everyone; “Lesbian.”
“I also like to watch. How many people-”
*Gets talked over by the Judge…*
“That’s enough…”
Daniel the Human & I both enjoy the silliness of this scene…
https://youtu.be/zluIU7iAzr0
Lesbians. She’s in Lesbians with them.
As am I.
I am often in lesbians.
….
You’ve been a wonderful audience. Thank you. Goodnight.
NICE.
*Applause*
[Cole Porter voice]
When I fall in lesbians
It will be forever
Or I’ll never fall in lesbians
It’s a reference to this movie scene.
DontExplainTheJoke.jpg
Limerence.
excellent ? it’s my favorite not-as-well-known-as-it-should-be word
Becky and Dina.
I’m assuming it means tomorrow’s strip is cutting to Becky.
He can move past it, and heal.
Lasagna!
Legos.
League of Legends
YUP that’ll smack your two week boyfriend right in the face.
Bad things happen to people who love Walky.
And then Walky DIED
The end
So who gets Brain!Walky?
Lucy, obvs.
Welp… Lucy is up for a rude awakening. “I love that you know that about me” is not the same as “I love you” in the sense she’s thinking.
Yeah, that was quite the leap she took. She’s probably more in lust with him, then in love anyway.
You would think her brother would have caught that.
i’m sure he’ll have something to say about it tomorrow lol
“In lust” is kind of a dismissive way that puritanical Christians frame a romantic interest that has a physical attraction part to it as just being horny.
I don’t know about that. It’s possible, but the way I’ve always thought of it, “lust” has nothing to do with romantic interest; you’re just horny for that person. You can know about someone’s personality, but you see them and think, “wow, I’d like to Fork that!” (and then they put a cigarette in their mouth and the lust flies away like it never was)
You kind of proved your point the wrong way. Lust is sexual attraction, which is a key component of love. If you don’t have it, romantic interest isn’t terribly likely. Cigarettes remove your attraction. Are you as likely to fall in love with a chain smoker as a non-smoker? Probably not.
Okay allosexual.
Right? My eyebrows met my hairline for a sec as an asexual who’s been in long term relationships.
Yea wow.
Yeah, this whole thread is full of people saying some pretty ace-erasing things. I apologize for my fellow allos :X
and on top of that, like… the english word “love” is ridiculously broad. so technically it’s wrong on multiple levels, because parents love their children, you can love food… nothing sexual *or* romantic about many kinds of love.
Hi, I’m asexual, and sexual or intimate attraction is a key element of romantic love. It’s not the only component, and not everybody feels it, just like not everybody feels romantic love at all. Intimate attraction is really, really important, and being able to enjoy intimacy with someone is crucial to many relationships. We dismiss that as shallow, but it’s just another kind of love–the love of someone’s body and how they express their sexuality.
And once again, just to emphasize, not everyone feels it, and that’s okay! Their love can be just as deep and intense.
Anyways, I think calling Lucy “in lust with Walky” is maybe a little premature, but she is moving pretty quickly here. I think she feels underqualified for Walky liking her, so she’s moving quick to make herself feel safer. She doesn’t realize she can “do better”.
But you can fall in love with someone you aren’t physically attracted to; beauty is fleeting, but your personality/character is what causes someone to love another. I can see “attractiveness” being the thing that might make you initially want to know the other person, but lust is just a raw desire for sex; there’s no romantic intent behind it. *(I’m guessing that’s why Tinder exists; from what I’ve heard, it’s not a dating site, it’s a hookup site)
*shrug* IDK, I can only speak from own limited experience. Hell, I should probably just shut up since I’m one of the least qualified people to speak on this subject.
One can also be sexually attracted to someone for non-physical reasons. Hell I’ve lusted after people who I’ve only ever engaged via text and have no idea what they look like, usually because they have a sexy personality.
It has also been documented that people can maintain a sexual attraction, or lust, toward someone they love even if that someone’s body has changed to the point that they would no longer fit with the first person’s “strike zone” (for lack of a better term). Like, I’m not attracted to women who are too overweight (I would like to be, because then I’d have more options, but sadly I am not), but if I fell in love, got married, and my wife got fat over the years, I could maintain my attraction due to my love (I hope).
Personally, I consider sexual attraction to be a necessary component for romantic love to develop, but once it’s there it’s my understanding that it can be maintained even if the sexual attraction goes away for whatever reason. However, I have been informed that there are asexuals who still develop romantic feelings like love despite the lack of sexual attraction of any kind. I don’t understand how that works, but apparently it must, since I see no reason they’d lie about that and I can’t imagine they would be wrong about their feelings to that extent.
The best I’ve been able to find each individual seems to have their own unique criteria for what is necessary to fall in love, and to stay in love, with another person. Emotions are poorly defined at best, and since we cannot actually experience what’s going on inside another person’s head the best we can do is reach a verbal consensus of reported feelings, which is a terrible way to produce a system of terminology that can be ascribed to individual experiences. Humanity has been failing to adequately put the simpler emotions like anger into words, let alone the complex ones like love, for millennia, so the best we can do is assume others reports for how their emotions work are correct even when they don’t line up with our own experiences.
You say semantics. I’ll say semiotics.
Let’s call the whole thing off.
Booooo! Get off the stage! ???
> sexual attraction, which is a key component of love. If you don’t have it, romantic interest isn’t terribly likely
LOL that’s a funny yet terrible take
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. “In lust” has a different connotation than just horny, it suggests that someone who wants to be sexually intimate can’t also want to be emotionally intimate, and often implies that they are incapable of knowing if they want to be emotionally intimate.
It’s the youth group way to say their feelings aren’t real. She’s both horny for him and infatuated with him. Her panel 1 reaction is not the face of someone who merely horny.
For me it doesn’t really have those connotations. I’d say more that lust can fool you into thinking it’s love and that if that’s what’s happening when the lust fades it won’t leave you with anything lasting.
But then I’d be more likely to describe her as infatuated than in lust. For many people the two are tightly linked.
“I’d say more that lust can fool you into thinking it’s love”
This is literally the attitude that I’m talking about.
I guess I don’t understand then.
I don’t, for example, see that as barring wanting to be emotionally intimate.
As I said, I think infatuation is a better word, but it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking it’s more serious than that.
Accusing someone of being “in lust” means that they specifically lust after the person without any actual deeper connection, and that the relationship would crumble without sex (or the promise thereof) to hold it up. It does not mean EVERY person who is sexually attracted to their partner is only in lust with them. It isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) an accusation made on the level of lust, it’s an accusation made on the lack of meaningful relationship-building.
If you are unhappy with puritanical types decrying lust as antithetical to love, no one here’s disagreeing with you, that’s bullshit. But some individual hormonal teenagers confusing lust for love (particularly when trying to justify ‘well obviously I wouldn’t have sex with someone I wasn’t genuinely in love with because internalized slut-shaming garbage’) is absolutely a thing.
No one here’s saying don’t find your partner hot. Just have a level of introspection to figure out if that’s all it is. And if it is, hey, go at it like bunnies for all I care, so long as you’re both on the same page that that’s what it is.
okay look everyone is getting too complex about this. being in lust means you want to fork someone. that’s it. it’s distinct from being in love because that might involve forking for some people sure but even so it is a lot more than just that. easy peasy.
I think she’s just fallen fast because I think Walky’s supposed to be her first actual boyfriend. It can be pretty easy to fall in to the trap of thinking your first partner is The One. Especially since she hasn’t had enough time for Walky to do anything to screw it up.
given how long we’ve seen her crush for beforehand i think it’s probably been restrained towards now
surprised she wouldn’t have said it on the first date even in a half joking way (be nice to hear it more platonically from friends too and normalize it even if it’s not ‘intense’ as a romantic relationship as opposed to friends who’d jokingly say it or butter someone up to get a gift from it lol)
I definitely tell my friends I love them (when I do) and I agree that should be more common! I’ve never actually run into anyone who minds it though, for whatever that’s worth.
i suppose it would be awkward if you haven’t known each other for too long or someone with a partner to get the wrong idea if you did say like “i love you” and only being friends for like a month though if i was still in high school or had gone to college i’d prolly say it more to my female friends (though my group was pretty affectionate overall, to the point we even sat in each othersl aps, surprised that wasn’t an issue/give any mixed signals to the teenage guys at the time )
Walky.exe has encountered an error. Abort, Retry, Fail?
It might be worse then that it may require looking in bios check to see if the hard drive is still showing up he may need to be reformated.
Reinstallation in progress: insert McNugget 1 of 20.
Well, let’s just hope a recovery drive has been made just in he needs a drive swap. Hope someone kept the product key if the OS wasn’t factory preloaded.
user may must push Reset button in order to restart it
you done fuck up walky
Not sure I can really put this one on Walky…
Yeah, I’d say this is on her
I mean he didn’t have to date her. Nah but for serious this one’s on Luce.
I’ve been trying to figure out whether Walky (oblivious though he may be) should have seen this coming. I think the closest he came to catching on was this strip, but I still can’t decide whether or not he was being disingenuous or not. (That’s assuming Walky is even capable of such a thing. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/attheborder/
Y’know in retrospect I maybe should’ve seen it as more concerning that Walky was regarding Lucy with the same feelings one has for finding a 20$ bill in their pocket they didn’t know was there.
No comma in that sentence.
he could have spoken more precisely but that would have only delayed the problem
He spoke pretty precisely, he said he loved something fairly specific and she extrapolated.
Well it IS the third date…
I don’t think he messed up, but he is scared this will go the same way as with Dorothy now.
The small bit of confidence I had from yesterday’s strip that this relationship was starting to progress to mutual desire just eroded.
Eroded is a very gentle word for what happened to my sense of the relationship, I think.
Same. I wasn’t really feeling it before, but now…oof. She’s into him in a way he does not return, and that will make for a rude awakening.
More like taken out back and beaten with a baseball bat I think
This seems more like a catastrophic landslide
This relationship is about to be relationsunk. :T
I had to reread it twice for my brain to fully accept what had just happened
Walkys definatly having bad flashbacks right now but I could still see things being salvaged if a third party can help him and Lucy address the issue of relationship expectations.
an eight-day relationship relationship can be lifechanging
Whoops.
Any time, any day, you can hear the people say
“Love is blind”
I don’t know but I think Love is kind…
Wait why does Walky have those eyes in the last panel? Social cues does not compute -_-
Lucy dropped the L-word and he’s freaking out.
She dropped the L-word.
That’s anaphylaxis. Walky’s allergic to feels.
He said “I love that about you” not “I love you”
He may be realising that Lucy was committed to this relationship before it officially started or simply freaking out about the too-soon-ness of this
He doesn’t love her. He didn’t say he loved her. Someone who he’s been dating for a very short time just said she loved him– which, I don’t think there’s a timer on how long you have to know someone to love them, but for most people, I’d say this would be considered pretty fast, and the fact that Lucy said “too,” the assumption that that was what Walky was expressing… yikes…
I think it’s also worth considering what happened when Dorothy told him she loved him for the first time. It was under very similar circumstances (i.e. extremely early), and he’s probably at this impasse of “I can’t not say it back but the last time I said it back I got in big trouble for it”
Well, it turned out he actually meant it when he said it back to Dorothy, even if he was being kind of a shit about it and trying to “avoid feels”.
Conversation with becky the same? next? day, I don’t remember. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/fart-joke/
I don’t think he feels that way about Lucy and he’s probably realised that just saying it is not a legit life hack since then.
Ah. Thank you for clarification.
Lucy is not alone, for these days, it seems all too easy to lose one’s sense of time. ?
Lucy said “she loves him” They’re not there yet. It’s way too early to be throwing out the “I love yous”.
The sad thing is it’s actually not. This is Walky and Dorothy after dating for like two weeks. (Don’t hold me to that exact time frame)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/wheeheeheehee/
They were super in love and honestly, probably still are. Lucy and Walky just aren’t there. Don’t know why, but they just don’t sync yet. Walky really just might not be that into her.
I mean smooching and twirling doesn’t mean love. They truly do like each other a whole lot. They also broke up because of Dorothy wanting to focus on her career. I just…can’t see that as love. If I love someone I wouldn’t leave them to do something that benefits MYSELF.
Dorothy did fall in love with Walky. She even told him so. It was shortly after their first fuck that I think she fell for him cause he truly believes she will be president one day.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/sharedmoment/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/incident/
I hold the belief they broke up for stupid reasons because they’re dumb kids who don’t know proper time management. Also Dotty is leaving for Yale or some shit one day and probably didn’t want to leave Walky in the wind for that .
He said it at least once, waay back before he considered it could have ever meant anything.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/proselytize/
I can’t get over the Keeners’ response about starting for funsies, then staying together. Good advice for nervous kids (we were all at that point, right?) wondering where things might go, but not pressuring.
“Be sure that it’s true when you say ‘I love you’.
It’s a sin to tell a lie.”
Lucy told Walky she loved him.
He did NOT say that he loved her, he said he loved that she knew a thing about him.
So Lucy thinks they’ve mutually shared feels and Walky thinks AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
It is also, for this type of dating where you are just seeing where things go or have only started to develop deeper interest, very early in a relationship to say it.
We as the audience know Lucy has had a crush for a fair while so maybe she does love him but Walky only became aware of her interest pretty recently and started dating her pretty recently. His level of investment/interest does not match hers currently so it could easily go completely sideways by freaking him out but they could also talk about it and just take it slower/understand Walky needs more time to catch up to her interest/investment level.
Correct me if my recolleyis fuzzy, but didn’t her crush also start when Billie suggested he should rail her in a sundress on a hotel balcony overlooking a beach in Cancun?
*if my recollection is fuzzy.
Recolleyis sounds like a JRPG protagonist.
As far as I can tell/remember, no, she just kind of felt he was attractive since meeting him. But she didn’t want to be insensitive by making a move on him too early and didn’t know how to make a move in general, so did not and told Jennifer at the time to shhhhhh.
Taffy’s exaggerating, but it was an offhand suggestion by Jennifer that seemed to catch her attention the first time.
Okay, whoops. Maaaybe Lyle will notice and steer his sister away from the path of ‘too-soon’?
I think the “Too-Soon” iceberg has already ripped an enormous hole in the bulkheads. It’s a little late to steer away.
Neeeeeear
Faaaarrrr
Where EEEEEVVVERRRR YOU AAAAAARREEE
Nah. Lyle’s gonna let this fester until they eventually breakup so he can swoop in and pick Walky up on the rebound! Dude needs a cartoon watching bro.
well he did bring up marriage even jokingly so he might unintentionally egg it on. or assume that lucy already said it with the amount of texts she spams him with lol
Yup, I knew this relationship was doomed!
I don’t get why Walky is so tepid about Lucy. On the surface, she seems made for him!
sometimes someone just doesn’t feel the same chemistry.
She really does, doesn’t she? But I think that even though they like each other, they’re on different levels of liking each other.
I mean, he wasn’t tepid about her per se.
Until now, when she made clear exactly how “coming on strong” she is. She’s basically the new old Joyce, only, like most people from the other dorm, she hasn’t had the experiences that have grown Joyce into a more complex person with, among other things, the sympathy of the audience.
She’s been getting a lot more screen time since the break, so maybe she’ll have a chance to grow less 2-d, but she isn’t there yet. A messy break-up will probably help.
She is basically new old Joyce which is why I think she and Jacob will end up together.
Ooh, that’s a good bet! Joyce and Jacob were actually a decent match, except then Joyce ruined it by being manipulative and toxic. (oops?) Someone LIKE old Joyce, without her baggage might be good for him.
“new old Joyce” – thank you for putting this so succinctly.
Eh. She’s nice and supportive but “made for him” seems a bit much.
I’d be tepid too if a girl I never even thought about dating was offered to me by my ex who I still had feelings for. This felt more like he was dating her out of convenience than interest.
He’s also had two relationships that mattered a lot to him fall apart or blow up in his face in the last few months. That can make you a bit more cautious about throwing yourself completely into a new one.
I’m pretty tepid about Lucy, too, so I get it. She’s sweet and all but a little desperate, and I feel like she’s sorta like… just fine? But not really more than that?
Can be the sweetest peach and people still won’t like peaches.
Ain’t a failing on either party.
Now for a new, revamped TV show: I Don’t Love Lucy.
Okay but this is an excellent pun
Very good.
Lucy does have some explaining to do.
OH NO
Been there, Walky. You got a lot of thinking to do.
Oh, dear.
I’m sure only good things can happen from here. (On the real though I’m VERY interested to see how Walky will respond to this. Bring it on, Willis)
Konosuba witch theme plays
Fuck! I meant Re Zero!
UWEHUUUUUUU
lol it’s not like he hasn’t heard it before but good luck unpacking all that
oops
I take that as she heard what she wanted to hear.
OHHH NOOOOOOO
oh no
Ohhhhh nooooOOOOO
OH YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAH
sickos.jpg
Lucy may be overcompensating a bit here…
Not so freed from the word’s tyranny now, are you, Walkerton. 🙁
I understood that reference
Also, obvious focus on the first and last panels, but the middle three kind of make my heart hurt for Lucy. Not as much as her heart is going to hurt from the fallout of this, but
I ? ? you, too
But it’s just the price I pay / Destiny is calling me / Open up my
eagereyesWalky.exe has stopped responding.
Will Walky snap out of it and have an honest talk with Lucy? Will Lucy stop comparing herself to Jennifer? What did Walky, Lyle, and Lucy order?
All these answers and more, next time on Dumbing of Age!
The Joyce’s Eyes effect on Walky…
it’s seems so uncanny today….
Ah, yes, the other L word…
Glorious Latveria!
She took what he said wrong.
Woof
Been there buddy, good luck!
An exception has occurred.
Ctrl + Alt + Del !!!!!
I dunno, ending the walkerton.exe process in Task Manager seems a little harsh. It’d feel like a miscarriage of justice.
No need. Right-click, set priority to High, and let him do his thing 🙂
I’m sure it won’t be any loss.
The red background is making me really anxious over this. I’m just gonna assume yall are right on the money and he feels worse about it than I can describe. He wanted to not watch cartoons alone! 🙁
Yeah. Walky’s stated goals for this relationship very much do not match Lucy’s.
Uhoh, Lucy said the trigger word. Now Walky needs to assassinate Dorothy.
-desperate whisper-
Oh no.Walky has stopped working, looks like he needs a restart.
This is very well-written character-driven stuff. Also the timing is great: Walky taking damage off-camera until the last panel.
…oh no…..
Has anybody made a “She hit Walky out of the park” joke yet?
“It’s out of the ball park!!!!”
Wii Nostalgia FTW <3
Real talk, I don’t think Walky knows how to respond to that kind of statement
someone telling you they love you can be quite a shock for a man.
y’all know how bad we are with receiving compliments, now imagine how it is with a no frills/innuendo/jokes declaration of love.
that kind of thing can overload a man.
Men sound weak, if that’s true.
Masculinity is complicated.
Except that Walky isn’t anywhere close to being a man
Walky is absolutely a man.
Not even close.
He’s a teenage boy at best, physically he’s closer to boy than man and emotionally he’s still a boy.
He looks for the easy way out, he still thinks of himself first (though this is changing), he has no built up resilience and is always looking for, and happy to be, mother’s
He’ll get there eventually but he’s not there yet
Being immature (and/or still developing as person) and being a man are not mutually exclusive. People put weird metrics on what makes one a man (and a woman, but for this type I see it more for men). Walky is, legally, an adult. He identifies as male. He’s a man. That’s all it takes.
Legally maybe (I’m not an expert on the age of majority) but emotionally he’s closer to a boy, physically he’s still a teenager and he still can’t (legally) buy a beer
But in this instance we’re talking emotions and how to deal with them and Walky is in no way shape or form, emotionally, a man because its only very recently he’s had to deal with adult emotions
He’ll be stronger, emotionally, and hopefully a little wiser for the fallout that will most likely follow but he’s not there yet
So still not a man
Fucking hell. This is so fucking dumb.
About as dumb as suggesting Walky is man?
Shrub? Walky counts as a man.
Joy?
I’ve said my piece about why Walky is a boy not a man so people can either agree with it, disagree with it or ignore it but I won’t be adding to the discussion because I’ll just be repeating my own argument
How can you repeat what isn’t there? “Nuh-uh” isn’t an argument. There’s no discussion to be had, your mind is already closed on the matter.
Being a man, being a woman, being an adult– these things truly aren’t exclusive clubs or special accomplishments other than the fact that one has managed to survive that long.
There are people who have less emotional maturity than Walky and are way older. But just because some 40 year old never developed that maturity does not mean they are not an adult and, if they identify as male, a man.
If you want to bring in physical aspects, yes, Walky’s body and brain are still developing. But also, these things continue to change throughout one’s life. It seems quiet possible he will have more in common between his present self and his twenty-one year old self, for instance, than he will between his twenty-one year old self and his sixty year old self. But at sixty, he will be a man. At twenty-one, he will be a man, (These are both barring any possible gender discoveries on his part.) At present, he is a man.
You can be a man and not be mature. You can be a man and not know how to deal with emotions. This is, sadly, actually the case for too many. “You’re not a man until you x, y, and z” isn’t actually a great path to go down.
Yeah, this weird, pointless gatekeeping on what can or can’t qualify as a man, who’s it even serve? It’s a (smallish) part of why I can’t be added to identify as one despite being AMAB. Like, everyone seems to have a different definition of what a “man” is and isn’t, and they all get weird about it if you don’t match their personal criteria, so the term becomes meaningless and impossible. If I’m never gonna be considered a man no matter who I’m talking to, why bother calling myself one?
People are silly.
…
Do you actually think Walky thinks of himself as a man?
(I don’t; that’s part of why he shies away from anything that would imply actual maturity on his part).
“If you identify as male you’re male” is a perfectly reasonable approach (the only reasonable approach in the modern world, aside from rejecting gender entirely, and not in the craptastic “gender critical” TERF way).
But by the same sense, it’s reasonable to say “if you think you’re a man, you’re a man; if you think you’re a boy, you’re a boy.” That has huge problems too–and in fact it would be reasonable for people in Walky’s life to tell him “dude, you’re a man, not a kid any more; you can’t keep acting like a child.”
But unless someone has wacky fourth-wall breaking powers, none of us has the power to enter Walky’s life that way.
Cool moving goalposts you got there. But yeah, I do think Walky thinks of himself as a man at least some of the time. But also, yet again, I think manhood, womanhood, adulthood is something achieved simply by age. I actually don’t think it’s reasonable that, for instance, the eleven year old who told me he was a man the other day be regarded as such.
as a man, speak for yourself
Also, he did have at least one ‘love’ conversation with Dorothy. This obviously blindsided him a bit but he can figure it out
A man a man a man – It’s really not a “man” thing, it’s a “struggles with emotional intimacy” thing and I’m sorry you experience that.
I’ve known and loved plenty of men who accepted declarations of love, compliments, and affection easily. If you feel like you’re really struggling to accept that kind of positive interaction then I would suggest you seek some answers either in therapy or through therapy books if you’re a self-starter.
Accepting the incorrect assumption that your gender makes you incapable of some very normal human interactions will only be bad for your mental wellbeing in the long run. Best of luck!
Oh hey, yet another factor in my personal rejection of any notion of personal masculinity! Not only the “you have to be/do X”, but also this, the outlandish “you can’t be/do Y”. Why limit yourself just because you were born a certain shape? It’s damaging to everyone, and to no one more than yourself. Into the bin with it, I say.
Oh no. I predict Walky will want to talk about this but wait too long and then Lucy will be like “we said the love thing, now we can have sex!” And walky will choose sex over difficult conversation and then the drama deepens.
Quick, everyone dogpile Walky for being sideswiped with something he wasn’t expecting to hear. Make sure to call him immature and childish and imply strange things about his moral character.
(That’s a prompt, by the way, not an accusation.)
I heard Walky is a pill popper.
I don’t think we’re supposed to put a negative connotation on substance abuse, anymore. I got told off for it recently.
Substance abuse isn’t terribly funny, but the stigma surrounding it definitely has collateral damage. I’m going on two months without Adderall because of its scheduling.
Left Speaker : Lucy In The Sky With Walky
Right Speaker : Everybody’s Thinks Lucy’s In Love Except For Me And My Walky
No Lucy you don’t love Walky but you think you do and it’s going to hurt so badly when you work this out for yourself
If it helps Walky she probably doesn’t actually love you. She just thinks that she does due to possible loneliness. And the fact college hasn’t been as good or friend packed as she wished for as an also lonely nerd in high school which she probably wishes to ignore!
Neat.
(But seriously other than Booster who is Walky’s roommate and church buddies on Sunday does Lucy… have any friends).
I thought she had a possie when Jen first moved in, what happened to them?
I assume they all got absorbed into the Jennifer cult.
Lucy took that way out of context and changed it to meet her need. Yeah, Walky got hit hard with that bit of unexpected shock.
Also, Lucy is the sort where her over-friendliness tends to push people away and in college where building social networks is pretty important, she has been doing very poorly. Lucy wants friends, but it’s showing now how her eagerness pushes others out.
Here’s a thought, honeys? Or… a question?
Have you ever been in a relationship where one of you had stronger feelings then the other? How did it go?
I’m asking cos I see everyone sucking air through their teeth like this ship is about to go Hindenburg. And I’m like… OK, yes, I can see how these two babies specifically might very likely not be about to deal with this situation optimally, they being 18 and this strip not being called Smarting Of Age… etc.
But what have y’all’s personal experiences with this sort of unbalance been like?
has it always been a reason to end or at least radically rethink the relationship?
Have any of you been in a reasonably stable relationship with someone who clearly had stronger or lesser feelings… without it being an issue and a source of constant insecurity?
Or has it been a serious problem… and if so, why, and what happened?
the majority of my relationships the other person liked me more than I liked them. idk if my situation is a good example to compare with, but I almost never find anyone attractive but sometimes once in a while I might start to after I get closer with them so I tend to do a lot of “giving them a chance”. pretty much all those relationships ended for unrelated reasons, but I usually wasn’t very happy in them anyway.
my current bf is really the first time the feeling has been mutual, but I also sometimes suspect I might be the one who has stronger feelings this time
It’s always been a problem for me if my partner and I don’t habe the same level of interest and commitment to a relationship. We need to have the same goals if it’s gonna work out.
There are two relationships I can think of where feelings imbalance was the major reason I ended things. Both times, the other party was the first one to suggest dating, and both times, they moved things too fast in directions I wasn’t confident about. One got very emotionally dependent on me very quickly and I didn’t handle it well.
I guess the problem boils down to communication more than anything. If my partner makes assumptions about my intentions instead of taking me at my word, things are gonna get rocky.
I fell in love a while before my nesting partner, and we’ve been married now for 15 years. He loves the shit out of me. Sometimes people are just slower to commit and slower to know their own feelings, for my partner he has Alexithymia which can make it difficult for him to put words to his feelings.
Because he was a wonderful partner, dedicated to me, and kind, it was easy to give him the time to catch up to me in love. I just happen to feel EVERYTHING more intensely and more quickly than the people in my life, I’ve never seen it as a flaw in them as long as they act in the way I want people to act toward me!
I have and from both sides of that. In my experience, it’s been best re-contextualized as “One of us was looking for something with more commitment than the other was” be that emotionally, physically, or in terms of exclusivity. It didn’t necessarily correlate to my feelings towards the other person (I can’t necessarily speak towards the opinions of my former partners/romantic interests), just what I wanted/needed out of a relationship, and I found it helpful to decouple (no pun intended) those two things when examining my relationships at the time.
Can’t really speak to your main point, but there are a couple things about what happened here specifically that feel more likely to end in hurt than just “one has stronger feelings that the other,” which I think has been evident in this relationship for a while…
-The “too”: Lucy’s experience is of Walky having said he loves her. That’s a miscommunication that’s likely going to be painful to clear up, but also not great to let go on existing.
-Lucy’s whole statement, really, being in response to what (she thinks) Walky said… this wasn’t like a more confident, “I know you might not feel this way, but I wanted you to know where I’m at” type of ILY. I think it’s very, very possible that this would not have happened at this stage of the relationship had she not thought Walky went first.
-Bonus! This has happened in front of an audience! Specifically, her brother. Yay!
Exactly this. I told my current partner “I love you” extremely early – earlier than Lucy, even! But context matters. We’d been close friends for a long time before we started dating. I was recovering from years of severe depression and publicly experimenting with radical honesty, so Big Feelings Conversations with me weren’t a surprise. I told them in private, via a written message, so they had time and space to process their own reaction. I made it very clear that I did not expect an “I love you” back, that mostly I just wanted to express how much I enjoyed and appreciated their company, and that above all else I wanted to expose the feelings to sunlight before they really did grow into a big scary secret imbalance in the relationship. Also, we were both 29 and looking ahead to our next life phase as capital-A Adults – so maybe not that much older physically than Lucy and Walky now, but certainly lightyears ahead in maturity.
We’re still together years later. Lucy and Walky? Somehow, I doubt it.
But y’know, to answer your question more directly, milu… I also knew with certainty that my partner was REALLY INTO me, even if they weren’t ready to say “I love you” yet or even if I was EVEN MORE into them. I had a dating experience much, much earlier, when I was around Lucy and Walky’s age, where one of the guys I knew girlfriend-zoned me pretty much immediately. We went on one date and it was the most painfully awkward experience of my life. He was super intense about me and it was a lot of pressure. When he nervously held my hand on the way home I had a panic attack so severe that for almost a decade afterward I thought I had a hand-holding phobia.
You could say this was a matter of imbalanced feelings, but to me, that understates the issue. The reality was that I was open to some casual dating but otherwise didn’t have any romantic feelings for him at all, and he was in love with a Manic Pixie Dream Girl version of me that existed only in his head. That’s what I see in Walky and Lucy so far.
None of my boyfriends have ever been as into me as I was into them. We still had plenty of good times together, maybe moreso when we both knew I wasn’t their ideal long-term partner and could simply have fun without the expectation of “This is the endgame for both of our romantic lives”.
Love this question.
I haven’t had that many S.O.’s, but I’ve had two fellows who fell in love with me before I fell in love with them. I was clear about my feelings — that I was slow to fall in love, but that I might get there, and indeed kinda hoped that I would!
One would say “I love you”, and I’d reply “thank you” — which sounds rough to some people I’ve mentioned this to, but it seemed to work for us within this context.
(I did eventually fall for one of them! The other, we broke up for unrelated reasons while I was still in the process of falling, but we still think well of each other. Hooray for honest communication.)
Poor Lucy. Poor Walky
How many characters have done a zombie face at some point now?
Six.
To the mouse over comic comment: Limerick! Lucy is going to do a limerick next!
Well, at least he hasn’t thrown any toy monkeys at her head.
Yet.
What does she mean by “I had a blind spot about romance”? That she didn’t have any romantic experience? Or something else?
I think she means she tends to see romance that isn’t there – like she just did, by hearing ‘I love that you know that about me’ as ‘I love you’ – but thinks that because the boy she likes is dating her and knows he’s dating her, she’s grown past that. (Obviously her blind spot is still firmly in place though.)
Aha! Thanks!
Good thing Walky doesn’t think the phrase “I love you” is a big deal
Er, Lucy, you might wanna dial it back a few paces.
Also Billie really isn’t someone you should want to emulate.
Who will change school faster than Dorothy? Walky!
Classic Schmosby
DavidWalkerton.exe has experienced a severe error, and has shut down. DavidWalkerton.exe will reboot shortly.
Lucy is such a sweetheart. I really want things to go well for her.
I think they are about to go very poorly in the short term.
Y’know, if you flip the order of the panels around, replace all the dialogue except the bolded words with the gibberish squiggles, and keep Panel 1 as-is, it’s a pretty good representation of delayed auditory processing. If that’s an existing term, I’m not aware, that’s just what I call it.
Actually, looking again, a simple horizontal mirror would do it.
It’s called auditory processing disorder sometimes! Yes this is a real thing that’s already been medically documented and stuff.
Ooooof
Saying you love someone is always a risk, to say it so soon is just oooof
She thought he said it first, because he said he loved something *about* her.
Absolutely understandable but still a big mistake nonetheless
What I don’t understand is how Lucy lacks friends at all. She looks before she leaps, but generally just in positive emotional direction. She’s helpful, friendly, kind, nerdy but not obsessively so, genuinely interested in other people…maybe it’s a hint of desperation that drives people away?
She’s also shy with people she doesn’t know.
Sometimes you’re just not around the right people. Sometimes the people around you are just the Malayas and Jennifers who act like you are an annoying naive idiot for being kind/friendly or an embarrassment for being open about nerdy interests.
Like, Lucy is not a character I love, yet in real life, I would probably be much better friends with her than other characters I like more.
She also lives in a dorm full of pod people.
“not obsessively so” Obsessively friendly is exactly how I’d describe her
This is what I thought. For a longtime.
But then she inserted spyed on her rommates old floor to get material to manipulate her, inserted herself in he middle their relationship, meddled in it where she had no right, and did the same to beboss of her roommates popularity
Lucy is Nice but shes far from good.
had she ever met a personal boundary she wouldnt jump over?
ADHD mood sometimes
Love that, “WTF did I just say?” look.
Poor Lucy. She’s a good if desperate egg who just wants to love and be loved.
Walky wants to love, too. Love nuggies. And tacos. And naps.
Walky becoming uncanny
Awesome artistic depiction of that exact feeling.
Lucy and Walky both made mistakes here, and nobody’s in the wrong. Lucy misread Walky’s “I love that about you” remark, and Walky went into a relationship he wasn’t really interested in out of a sense of obligation. No bad guys, just a messy situation.
It is possible Walky *does* love Lucy, and just hasn’t realized it yet. Hope springs eternal. But I don’t know about that.
I came back to see if this strip was some horrible hallucination. Unfortunately it is real and Walky is about to do something to escape the situation.
holy shit lucy