Lucy F-bombs for the first time!!! MULTIPLE times!!! Yippee!!!
This is very very very good development for her, giving up on the impossible goal of gaining Walky’s parents’ respect, instead focusing on her own self respect.
Finally, the [Adhesive Medical Strip] is ripped off!!! ???
I don’t normally do “hacked muzak” gags, although I appreciate them in others, but I swear “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia just actually came on the raido…
I see this as a bad development. Lucy has finally figured out part of the problem, and her immediate resolution is that it is everyone’s fault but hers. Especially to look at Walky and essentially say, ‘and this is your fault for letting me drive myself to hurt me’.
Yes. Lucy is young. But she’s washing herself of responsibility almost as fast as she identifies responsibility to be taken.
Well at the very least acknowledging that Jennifer was right about Walky’s parents’ moving goal-post is a really really good start.
But yeah, she has yet to become aware of her complacence to the culture that herds her and other cast members into living the result of other peoples’ thinking. In other words, dogma/.
How do you parse this strip as Lucy evading responsibility? Do you not see the first 2 panels? Just because those introspective revelations led her to also experience a bit of righteous indignation directed outwards doesn’t mean the acknowledgement of her own culpability vanished.
“and FUCK getting to know people and developing genuine love after months or years of devotion to each other instead of overinflating infatuation at first sight!”
Yeah, like… this might just be me being very, very demi, but developing feelings for somebody after spending a lot of time with them will always feel more genuine than a crush at first sight. He’s not really at fault here (though I appreciate Lucy saying “fuck your parents, they suck,” lol)
Why I have always had a hard time getting into relationships. I need to know a person and be friends before getting into that level of commitment and that is not how online dating systems work. Not that I can’t think that someone looks nice, it just isn’t the foundation for me wanting to be in a relationship. It is like looking at a piece of beautiful artwork, pretty but not what you are looking for with everyday tasks, if that makes sense. I want my computer to be functional, not a beautiful piece of art that drives me crazy with its functionality. If it is both, that’s fine, but support before beauty. Also tends to mean that people I might have wanted to be in a relationship with had already found a girlfriend by the time I knew them well enough to consider it (in places like college).
I wanna date someone I’m friends with first. I care way more about personality than I do physical appearance. But I’m bad at making friends so that’s also really hard for me. And so I kinda feel like I have no choice but to be up front about romance and the like.
Miri
*waves* Socially awkward demi introvert who lucked out and was friends for 2 years with a lovely guy before realising she like-liked him, round-about told him (“I like somebody, and this is like the third time it’s really happened. Guess who?” by text at stupid o’clock) – and have been with him since the next time we met up in person. That was almost 19 years ago…
I misheard my eldest describing me as being madly in love with him as me being mad to be in mad with him the other day though ? Sometimes, that would also be a totally fair description…
Adept
That is really sweet. I have a fair bit of demi-traits myself (for a straight bloke especially) and that’s not a million miles from what happened with me. I’ve never hooked up with anyone who I didn’t really like either, but I’ve had intimate relationships with several of my friends, and definitely stayed friends later on as well.
David DeLaney
so first demi relationship in real life that develops from Willis comment threads when?
–Dave, and will he be proud, or horrified?
Mollyscribbles
*joins the demi/ace crowd* Not 100% clear on if I’m demi or ace but my one attempt at dating mostly just confirmed my orientation doesn’t include that guy.
Walky . . . even if he didn’t feel the insta-love that she did, he’s trying. He doesn’t entirely know how to be a good boyfriend, but he wants to be one. And if he were wise enough regarding his parents to be able to tell her she didn’t need to win their approval, he wouldn’t be scrambling to maintain his own.
Honestly, I think a lot of us who are demi got to notice it more as the dating dynamic shifted over the last few decades.
Miri
I honestly just thought I was really slow about relationship things until I came across the term and realised being demi was a thing. Like, how could I not notice I like-liked him??
Although in fairness when I first met my now husband he was just about under the age of consent (3 years younger than me, so at that point the sort of age gap that would have been ooky for anything other than friendship, but that rapidly closed up), and dating a friend of mine (between us in age)… They’d been split up I think about a year and a half, and he’d had a few not serious girlfriends between seeing us, and she was living with the guy she was seeing after him by then, and confirmed that she was fine with it!
But yeah, genuinely didn’t notice I liked him like that until after it had probably been socially acceptable for a while, which I can live with!
I think of it as moving through the stages of a process of development.
(1) Initial infatuation brings you in for a closer look. So you learn more.
(2) Maybe you fall In Love for reals. It’s said that lasts about six months on average. It keeps you two together as you learn even more.
(3) Eventually the newness wears off and you find that either no, this isn’t someone I can commit to; or yes, I want this person by my side, faults and all.
Long-time friends can skip (1) and even (2) if that’s how it works out, because they found other reasons to learn each others’ characters and personalities.
Whatever works is good.
Ari
Yeah, I was raised in a culture that does arranged marriages and although I did Western-style dating myself I still think many of the things I was taught about arranged marriage growing up is super useful. Namely, that attraction is an emotion but loving someone is a choice you make. And ideally, yes, you’re attracted to the person you’re with. But ultimately loving them isn’t about attraction, it’s about doing the work of caring about them (and letting them care about you).
Psychie
Yeah, that’s something that I feel a lot of our western culture is missing. If you want things to work, you have to put in the work to MAKE them work.
First, when you as a couple have an issue with one another, it isn’t you vs your partner, is you AND your partner vs the problem, simply reframing the conflict like that helps keep things civil and puts the focus on a negotiation to find a solution that ideally you can both be happy with, this is a major stumbling block for a lot of couples as it requires both parties to have that mindset to really work, otherwise it’s like trying to compromise with a wall.
Second, as you encounter things about your partner that you don’t like, you need to recognize that part of compromise is about deciding what you can live with, some things you can learn to like or at least not care about, but a lot of small annoyances are things that you just have to accept are going to annoy you, and you have to decide if the relationship as a whole is good enough to be worth dealing with that. Like, absolutely bring up any such issues with your partner and have a conversation where you see if they are willing and able to change whatever it is, but there will always be something or other inherent about them that bothers you, that’s just the reality of being with a unique individual with free will. Some things can be changed, some things cannot, and there are also some things that they CAN change but don’t want to, for instance I have a very unusual fashion sense, I dress like a weirdo, I love the way I look but I recognize not many people do, otherwise everyone would dress like me and they simply don’t, my GF likes my fashion sense, but if she didn’t, I wouldn’t change it for her and she’d have to decide if being with me is worth being with someone who dresses in weird fashion.
Third, bear in mind that perfect is the enemy of good. You will not find someone who treats you *exactly* the way you want, at least not without training, lol, and you will not find someone who doesn’t have *something* about them that bothers you. You will not find someone who loves every aspect of you, or does not wish some things about you will change. Everyone has flaws, everyone has aspects of their personality that will be in conflict with yours, and circumstances will inevitably arise that cause a fight of some kind. The goal shouldn’t be to find some mythical person that fits together with you like a puzzle piece with no gaps or friction or jamming. The goal should be to find someone good *enough* for you that they are worth the effort of bridging those gaps, dealing with the friction, and jamming the pieces together until they fit. They should be someone willing to be better for you, someone who makes you want to be better for them, someone you are happy to be with more than not, and someone who is happy to be with you more than not. Don’t get stuck on finding “The One”, find someone good enough and then put in the work to *make* them “The One”. The One isn’t destined, they are chosen, loads of people *could* be your One, but you have to decide to put in the work to make it work for one of them to *become* The One (and for you poly folks out there, obviously you can have multiple Ones at a time, just because you have multiple relationships doesn’t mean they aren’t each a singular individual of importance in your life, therefore “The One” still applies as a term, even if you have many, personally that sounds like too much work, but to each their own).
Western cultures seem to have a worse track record with figuring that stuff out, at least for the last few generations anyway. It would be easier to find someone with those values if we bothered to teach them the way cultures that still practice things like arranged marriages do. I think part of the issue is that stuff gets lumped in with “traditional family values” and a lot of those are fairly toxic stuff that I’m glad isn’t being passed down as much anymore, but sadly the positive parts are being excised with the negative, hopefully we as a society get a wakeup call soon and we relearn the parts that are good and start passing them down again so the future generations can be better off.
Suzi
I always cringe a little at the “love is a choice” but thats just because it sounds too close to the rhetoric I grew up claiming gayness was a sin you chose.
I do agree that the commitment to someone is more important than just initial infatuation, and i think western culture sometimes overglorifies the initial infatuation to the point where people ignore the important aspects that make a long term relationship work.
Psychie
Simple emotions, like attraction, are not a choice, they just happen. Complex emotions, like love, *can* be a choice, by continuing to choose to be in situations that cause those emotions to build, in the case of love, by choosing to continue to be in a relationship with the person and foster that relationship. I can’t choose who gets my dick hard, but of those people I did get to choose my GF, and I intend to continue choosing her.
I mean, I don’t think we can really accuse her of overvaluing love at first sight in the comments beneath a strip where she is asking whether what she feels for him is really love.
Exactly this, and saying she hasn’t done it the “right demi way” when they have known each other for four months and hung out a lot as friends, nothing has been rushed into, especially compared to other relationships exhibited so far.
eskimolos
Yes her feelings were bigger, because she misinterpreted what Walky had said, and he didn’t correct her and it snowballed into this situation. Again one of them knew where both of them were at and hadn’t corrected the other’s clearly mistaken impressions until like 5 strips go.
asmodai27
Well, to be perfectly factual, she did blush the first time she saw him (though it may or may not be because of what Jennifer was saying rather than actual attraction), and then admitted being interested in him shortly after their second encounter, which she rationalized as him having desirable traits for a life companion rather than sexual attraction.
Sooo… that’s not saying much in terms of sexuality, and my guess is the sexual attraction probably came after they started dating, which made it more acceptable in her mind : as of today (in-comic), Lucy would never actually consider having sex with someone she is not dating, so any of those lusty feelings would simply not be acted upon.
Adept
I still think what happened with Lucy is that she found Walky hot and wanted to get into his britches. Because this isn’t how she thinks a good christian girl behaves, she decided she loves him and made up an ideal in her head about what he is like.
Le sigh. Just be a college student and bang the hot guy because you want to.
Adam Black
This.
She’s not demi. She’s just not assertive.
She roped Danny, vanilla salad, into her Christian pious kink, and nearly beat him up.
Li
Nobody was calling her demi, my dude. The mention of demi above was about her not being demi.
Li
Yep. Like yes for Walky the dating is new and her having feelings for him is new. And I think he’d be gun-shy regardless after the way his last “I love you” exchange went! This is Lucy’s first relationship, but it’s Walky’s third, and he’s used to being with women whose expectations for dating are…….
Well, I don’t want to say more realistic, especially wrt Amber; Amber’s dating history has probably been. Fraught. But certainly neither she nor Dorothy had starry eyed expectations of true love, the way I think Lucy did.
When you are that age, nobody tells you that those super powerful feelings that affect you even physically is infatuation and not love. And if you are so lucky to have someone to tell you that, you not only will not believe them but also feel very offended. No need to judge her for something that is the experience of most people when falling “in love” for the first time.
I find that’s more a failing of our vocabulary than anything else. For the record, there are many different and distinct feelings that are all called “love”, some have other terms also associated with them that can be used for disambiguation, but some of those terms are fairly obscure and I’m not sure that all distinct forms of love actually *have* other terms for them beyond “[qualifier] love”.
For there record, the term for the infatuation of a new relationship is called “limerence”, and as far as I am concerned that is technically a *kind* of love, just not necessarily the kind of love we often think it is. It’s kind of between what the Greeks called Eros and what they called Mania (and both can be translated as “love” into English, but inspired rather distinct terms via etymology that I feel are sufficiently obvious to indicate what the distinction is). Limerence is sadly generally temporary by it’s nature, there are ways to extend it and even to rekindle it later, but it naturally ebbs and wanes over time and it’s natural for it to calm into something else, ideally a more stable kind of romantic love, but unfortunately it often calms into something else.
Then there’s platonic love, familial love (which is often different depending on the kind of familial relation, so this one can be broken down further if needed), devotional love (often applied to objects of worship, such as a god, but technically can be applied to a person, and often is), lust (Eros proper), passion (this term *can* be treated as a synonym for lust, but in this case I’m using it to describe an interest or desire for knowledge and skill-mastery, this can be applied to a subject, an activity, a field, or a person), etc.
These various kinds and categories of love are pretty thoroughly overlapping and inter-connected, it’s not particularly common to experience only *one* of these, and part of the reason so many people disagree on what constitutes “true” or “genuine” romantic love is that romantic love is generally the most *complex* form of love, being any of a variety of combinations of some or all of those different kinds of love, to the point where it is entirely possible that *every* relationship with genuine romantic love has it’s own unique combination of loves composing the overall romantic love.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that limerence is *not* romantic love, and I get why people dislike having the sincerity of their feelings dismissed like that. I think it’s probably more accurate to say that it’s an unstable, *early* form of romantic love, and a big part of nurturing it *into* romantic love is to be aware that it can be destabilized before it can fully flourish into romantic love, this can happen due to time (the seven year itch is a common example), discovery of something so unattractive it bursts the bubble of limerence (The Ick), or simply recognizing that things will not work long-term due to deal breakers or other irreconcilable incompatibilities and ending them before the limerence actually goes away to minimize emotional damage. I think being aware of this instability and the common ways limerence can be lost can go a long way toward stabilizing it, hence why relationships that were built more slowly or between more mature individuals tend to be more likely to reach this more stable romantic love and go the distance.
Pylgrim
You are not wrong here. However, the point that I am trying to make is that for a teen/post-teen experiencing such feelings for the first time (beyond, say, silly crushes), they feel all-consuming and divine. Even if you ofer them 200 shades of nuance with proper, unique labels to define all the types and kinds of love and adjacent there are, they will always point straight out to whichever label you are using for the most sublime and pure kind of romantic love. They don’t have that many other examples to give them perspective nor do they wish to consider for a second that the way they are feeling is “inferior” to the presumed existence of “real love” as they would put it, childlishly.
Psychie
I don’t speak for all people in that demographic, but when I was *in* that demographic I was able to identify the distinctions, largely because I was educated that such distinctions exist.
And to be frank, I don’t think there is any one such thing AS “pure” love or “real” love or “true” love or whatever. Romantic love is a complex emotion, made up of several simple emotions, including things like lust, contentment, joy, attachment, adoration, the desire to help, platonic love, familial love, etc. Sometimes romantic love includes elements of devotional love, sometimes it doesn’t. The list of simple emotions that CAN combine into romantic love is significantly longer than the list of simple emotions that make up any one person’s romantic love, and even if yours is made of the same components as, say, mine, they could easily have different proportions, maybe mine has more lust, or more familial love, maybe yours is more about contentment and adoration. Either way, it’s still love, even if we are both experiencing it in entirely different, potentially in completely incompatible ways.
So, once again, the issue is in how it gets presented, by saying one kind of love is somehow better or more “real” than another, of course they are gonna say theirs is the “real” kind. The point is that you don’t try to tell people their feelings aren’t real or are lesser in some way, and then they won’t have an issue with the overall point you try to make about it. Who cares if their love is less stable than someone who’s been in a 50 year marriage that’s still going strong? Who cares if odds are good they’ll break up in a few months? Don’t go telling people their love isn’t real, because it IS real and it IS love, just a different kind of love than whatever it is you’ve decided is “true” love. It’s a vocabulary issue.
Pylgrim
Speaking from my own perspective, I was very much educated on the different kinds of love but that didn’t help at all when those powerful feelings steamrolled over me the first time. I was too befuddled to think and as I said above, I didn’t want to consider that those overwhelming feelings were anything less than the highest ideal of romantic love. Stupid, I know, but I got it bad.
As I said, I agree with you and definitely if everybody could be well informed AND in perfect control and understanding of their feelings, they would spare themselves lots of pain and bad choices. I’m just not sure that everybody can? Seems like a special sort of psychological/emotional makeup and everybody is different.
In her defense on this, she’s calling out Walky not for leading her on, but for playing his parents’ (more accurately, his mother’s) game in trying to get their approval of her.
And in time she may come to realize that. But in the moment she’s realizing the disparity and so is lumping everyone together. I don’t get the sense that she’s mad at Walky in that second to last panel so much as incredibly sad.
Yep. There was a definite shift between anger and sadness in those panels. I could hear her voice losing steam between the gritted teeth of “fuck them” and the quiet despair of “fuck you too”.
eh, whatever
You can see it in her face.
Mark
She really hates what she’s saying, but had to say it.
i mean it’s not his fault she put him up on a pedestal but he probably should’ve communicated that he wanted to take things slowly or so
as far his parents i can get not being willing to cut them off/confront them, esp at a younger age where you don’t have a safety net versus being old enough to move out and get as much distance between them as possible and never deal with them again
It can be difficult to cut off abusive parents even when you ARE older and have that safety net (I speak from experience). Especially when they become elderly and start to rely on their offspring more and more; while their favourite offspring (no, that’s not me) lives 6 hours away and the second favourite offspring (and no, that’s not me either) lives close enough but can’t be bothered – leaving them constantly badgering their least favourite offspring (yes, that’s me, folks) and that offspring’s spouse who’s from the ‘wrong’ country.
They want stuff from me, nothing I can do for them is ever QUITE good enough, and they are GREAT at making me feel like that’s entirely my fault.
UrsulaDavina
Wow that was very close to my parents situation with their families like eairly so, it’s like a blend I mean my moms mother and father favored their male offspring over my mom and my dad’s mom didn’t like my moms religion, yet both relied on them to take care of them. So yeah that really sucks I’m sorry your in that situation I’ve seen it from the outside and it takes a toll.
Walky is doing Ok to just stand up to them a bit for his sister. He’s already struggling.
And you are right, is he supposed to disown his parents and drop out of college and be homeless for a girl he just met and didn’t want to introduce to them?
It’s probably helpful for Walky to be able to say “my parents will never tolerate me having a girlfriend who looks like my dad, dealing with them and their racism is a chore either she or I are going to have to do.” And it’s definitely helpful for Lucy to be able to dump him for some serious shortcomings on his part (perceived or real) instead of like thinking if she can stop idealizing him and idealizing her expectations of the relationship maybe it can work.
Not pushed it on him, but certainly not the other way around either. She did suggest the idea.
Li
Ehhhhh. It feels like they both had the idea at the same time and she happened to speak first.
Either way, the enthusiasm for the hijinx was very mutual. But only Walky had first-hand knowledge of Linda, so he should have been the one to realize it wasn’t going to work and say so.
Meh. F-bombs are overrated. I wish I had a cleaner vocabulary sometimes instead of swearing being a habit.
anon
i’m sure you can get creative with it if you tried lol
Mark
You have all the vocabulary you need. Profanity is so over-used nowadays that it’s lost its impact. “That makes me very angry!” is more likely to get your feelings noticed. You can even try to say it like Marvin the Martian if you want to take the edge off.
Seriously. Describe your emotions instead of just venting them. Try it and see.
yak
I profanity used more than it used to be? Seems like there are still lots of contexts where swearing is Significant.
My parents always swore a lot and I got in trouble at school because I talked like them.
506 thoughts on “One-sided”
NGPZ
Lucy F-bombs for the first time!!! MULTIPLE times!!! Yippee!!!
This is very very very good development for her, giving up on the impossible goal of gaining Walky’s parents’ respect, instead focusing on her own self respect.
Finally, the [Adhesive Medical Strip] is ripped off!!! ???
*plays “Rain” by The Seatbelts on hacked muzak*
anon
too bad the parents can’t be here to see it tho
Decidedly Orthogonal
The Walkertons don’t matter. The most important person to see Lucy find her self-respect is already here. Lucy.
John Campbell
Lucy coming out strong!
AndysDrawings
In the UK we just call them “plasters”.
Daibhid C
I don’t normally do “hacked muzak” gags, although I appreciate them in others, but I swear “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia just actually came on the raido…
“You couldn’t be that man that I adored…”
Mturtle7
*Scott Pilgrim noises*
“LUCY gain The Power of Self-Respect!”
Firseal
I see this as a bad development. Lucy has finally figured out part of the problem, and her immediate resolution is that it is everyone’s fault but hers. Especially to look at Walky and essentially say, ‘and this is your fault for letting me drive myself to hurt me’.
Yes. Lucy is young. But she’s washing herself of responsibility almost as fast as she identifies responsibility to be taken.
So, yeah. Not a positive development.
NGPZ
Well at the very least acknowledging that Jennifer was right about Walky’s parents’ moving goal-post is a really really good start.
But yeah, she has yet to become aware of her complacence to the culture that herds her and other cast members into living the result of other peoples’ thinking. In other words, dogma/.
Question: “What am I chasing?”
Answer: “Daniel, I don’t believe you realize the pretend, self-placed hoops a Christian woman will jump through to justify getting RAILED.”
Taellosse
How do you parse this strip as Lucy evading responsibility? Do you not see the first 2 panels? Just because those introspective revelations led her to also experience a bit of righteous indignation directed outwards doesn’t mean the acknowledgement of her own culpability vanished.
Ana Chronistic
“and FUCK getting to know people and developing genuine love after months or years of devotion to each other instead of overinflating infatuation at first sight!”
Jo_Cubstar
THIS^^ SO MUCH THIS
ian livs
Yeah, like… this might just be me being very, very demi, but developing feelings for somebody after spending a lot of time with them will always feel more genuine than a crush at first sight. He’s not really at fault here (though I appreciate Lucy saying “fuck your parents, they suck,” lol)
Kimi
Why I have always had a hard time getting into relationships. I need to know a person and be friends before getting into that level of commitment and that is not how online dating systems work. Not that I can’t think that someone looks nice, it just isn’t the foundation for me wanting to be in a relationship. It is like looking at a piece of beautiful artwork, pretty but not what you are looking for with everyday tasks, if that makes sense. I want my computer to be functional, not a beautiful piece of art that drives me crazy with its functionality. If it is both, that’s fine, but support before beauty. Also tends to mean that people I might have wanted to be in a relationship with had already found a girlfriend by the time I knew them well enough to consider it (in places like college).
Yotomoe
I wanna date someone I’m friends with first. I care way more about personality than I do physical appearance. But I’m bad at making friends so that’s also really hard for me. And so I kinda feel like I have no choice but to be up front about romance and the like.
Miri
*waves* Socially awkward demi introvert who lucked out and was friends for 2 years with a lovely guy before realising she like-liked him, round-about told him (“I like somebody, and this is like the third time it’s really happened. Guess who?” by text at stupid o’clock) – and have been with him since the next time we met up in person. That was almost 19 years ago…
I misheard my eldest describing me as being madly in love with him as me being mad to be in mad with him the other day though ? Sometimes, that would also be a totally fair description…
Adept
That is really sweet. I have a fair bit of demi-traits myself (for a straight bloke especially) and that’s not a million miles from what happened with me. I’ve never hooked up with anyone who I didn’t really like either, but I’ve had intimate relationships with several of my friends, and definitely stayed friends later on as well.
David DeLaney
so first demi relationship in real life that develops from Willis comment threads when?
–Dave, and will he be proud, or horrified?
Mollyscribbles
*joins the demi/ace crowd* Not 100% clear on if I’m demi or ace but my one attempt at dating mostly just confirmed my orientation doesn’t include that guy.
Walky . . . even if he didn’t feel the insta-love that she did, he’s trying. He doesn’t entirely know how to be a good boyfriend, but he wants to be one. And if he were wise enough regarding his parents to be able to tell her she didn’t need to win their approval, he wouldn’t be scrambling to maintain his own.
Koname
Honestly, I think a lot of us who are demi got to notice it more as the dating dynamic shifted over the last few decades.
Miri
I honestly just thought I was really slow about relationship things until I came across the term and realised being demi was a thing. Like, how could I not notice I like-liked him??
Although in fairness when I first met my now husband he was just about under the age of consent (3 years younger than me, so at that point the sort of age gap that would have been ooky for anything other than friendship, but that rapidly closed up), and dating a friend of mine (between us in age)… They’d been split up I think about a year and a half, and he’d had a few not serious girlfriends between seeing us, and she was living with the guy she was seeing after him by then, and confirmed that she was fine with it!
But yeah, genuinely didn’t notice I liked him like that until after it had probably been socially acceptable for a while, which I can live with!
Mark
I think of it as moving through the stages of a process of development.
(1) Initial infatuation brings you in for a closer look. So you learn more.
(2) Maybe you fall In Love for reals. It’s said that lasts about six months on average. It keeps you two together as you learn even more.
(3) Eventually the newness wears off and you find that either no, this isn’t someone I can commit to; or yes, I want this person by my side, faults and all.
Long-time friends can skip (1) and even (2) if that’s how it works out, because they found other reasons to learn each others’ characters and personalities.
Whatever works is good.
Ari
Yeah, I was raised in a culture that does arranged marriages and although I did Western-style dating myself I still think many of the things I was taught about arranged marriage growing up is super useful. Namely, that attraction is an emotion but loving someone is a choice you make. And ideally, yes, you’re attracted to the person you’re with. But ultimately loving them isn’t about attraction, it’s about doing the work of caring about them (and letting them care about you).
Psychie
Yeah, that’s something that I feel a lot of our western culture is missing. If you want things to work, you have to put in the work to MAKE them work.
First, when you as a couple have an issue with one another, it isn’t you vs your partner, is you AND your partner vs the problem, simply reframing the conflict like that helps keep things civil and puts the focus on a negotiation to find a solution that ideally you can both be happy with, this is a major stumbling block for a lot of couples as it requires both parties to have that mindset to really work, otherwise it’s like trying to compromise with a wall.
Second, as you encounter things about your partner that you don’t like, you need to recognize that part of compromise is about deciding what you can live with, some things you can learn to like or at least not care about, but a lot of small annoyances are things that you just have to accept are going to annoy you, and you have to decide if the relationship as a whole is good enough to be worth dealing with that. Like, absolutely bring up any such issues with your partner and have a conversation where you see if they are willing and able to change whatever it is, but there will always be something or other inherent about them that bothers you, that’s just the reality of being with a unique individual with free will. Some things can be changed, some things cannot, and there are also some things that they CAN change but don’t want to, for instance I have a very unusual fashion sense, I dress like a weirdo, I love the way I look but I recognize not many people do, otherwise everyone would dress like me and they simply don’t, my GF likes my fashion sense, but if she didn’t, I wouldn’t change it for her and she’d have to decide if being with me is worth being with someone who dresses in weird fashion.
Third, bear in mind that perfect is the enemy of good. You will not find someone who treats you *exactly* the way you want, at least not without training, lol, and you will not find someone who doesn’t have *something* about them that bothers you. You will not find someone who loves every aspect of you, or does not wish some things about you will change. Everyone has flaws, everyone has aspects of their personality that will be in conflict with yours, and circumstances will inevitably arise that cause a fight of some kind. The goal shouldn’t be to find some mythical person that fits together with you like a puzzle piece with no gaps or friction or jamming. The goal should be to find someone good *enough* for you that they are worth the effort of bridging those gaps, dealing with the friction, and jamming the pieces together until they fit. They should be someone willing to be better for you, someone who makes you want to be better for them, someone you are happy to be with more than not, and someone who is happy to be with you more than not. Don’t get stuck on finding “The One”, find someone good enough and then put in the work to *make* them “The One”. The One isn’t destined, they are chosen, loads of people *could* be your One, but you have to decide to put in the work to make it work for one of them to *become* The One (and for you poly folks out there, obviously you can have multiple Ones at a time, just because you have multiple relationships doesn’t mean they aren’t each a singular individual of importance in your life, therefore “The One” still applies as a term, even if you have many, personally that sounds like too much work, but to each their own).
Western cultures seem to have a worse track record with figuring that stuff out, at least for the last few generations anyway. It would be easier to find someone with those values if we bothered to teach them the way cultures that still practice things like arranged marriages do. I think part of the issue is that stuff gets lumped in with “traditional family values” and a lot of those are fairly toxic stuff that I’m glad isn’t being passed down as much anymore, but sadly the positive parts are being excised with the negative, hopefully we as a society get a wakeup call soon and we relearn the parts that are good and start passing them down again so the future generations can be better off.
Suzi
I always cringe a little at the “love is a choice” but thats just because it sounds too close to the rhetoric I grew up claiming gayness was a sin you chose.
I do agree that the commitment to someone is more important than just initial infatuation, and i think western culture sometimes overglorifies the initial infatuation to the point where people ignore the important aspects that make a long term relationship work.
Psychie
Simple emotions, like attraction, are not a choice, they just happen. Complex emotions, like love, *can* be a choice, by continuing to choose to be in situations that cause those emotions to build, in the case of love, by choosing to continue to be in a relationship with the person and foster that relationship. I can’t choose who gets my dick hard, but of those people I did get to choose my GF, and I intend to continue choosing her.
Needfuldoer
Yeah, Lucy definitely over-hyped the relationship to herself.
Li
I mean, I don’t think we can really accuse her of overvaluing love at first sight in the comments beneath a strip where she is asking whether what she feels for him is really love.
Lanie
I’m actually really happy that she’s openly examining her feelings here. It’s going to be god fr her.
Lanie
*good for her.
Sorry, apparently I can’t spell after 3am.
Li
Me too. ?
eskimolos
Exactly this, and saying she hasn’t done it the “right demi way” when they have known each other for four months and hung out a lot as friends, nothing has been rushed into, especially compared to other relationships exhibited so far.
eskimolos
Yes her feelings were bigger, because she misinterpreted what Walky had said, and he didn’t correct her and it snowballed into this situation. Again one of them knew where both of them were at and hadn’t corrected the other’s clearly mistaken impressions until like 5 strips go.
asmodai27
Well, to be perfectly factual, she did blush the first time she saw him (though it may or may not be because of what Jennifer was saying rather than actual attraction), and then admitted being interested in him shortly after their second encounter, which she rationalized as him having desirable traits for a life companion rather than sexual attraction.
Sooo… that’s not saying much in terms of sexuality, and my guess is the sexual attraction probably came after they started dating, which made it more acceptable in her mind : as of today (in-comic), Lucy would never actually consider having sex with someone she is not dating, so any of those lusty feelings would simply not be acted upon.
Adept
I still think what happened with Lucy is that she found Walky hot and wanted to get into his britches. Because this isn’t how she thinks a good christian girl behaves, she decided she loves him and made up an ideal in her head about what he is like.
Le sigh. Just be a college student and bang the hot guy because you want to.
Adam Black
This.
She’s not demi. She’s just not assertive.
She roped Danny, vanilla salad, into her Christian pious kink, and nearly beat him up.
Li
Nobody was calling her demi, my dude. The mention of demi above was about her not being demi.
Li
Yep. Like yes for Walky the dating is new and her having feelings for him is new. And I think he’d be gun-shy regardless after the way his last “I love you” exchange went! This is Lucy’s first relationship, but it’s Walky’s third, and he’s used to being with women whose expectations for dating are…….
Well, I don’t want to say more realistic, especially wrt Amber; Amber’s dating history has probably been. Fraught. But certainly neither she nor Dorothy had starry eyed expectations of true love, the way I think Lucy did.
Pylgrim
When you are that age, nobody tells you that those super powerful feelings that affect you even physically is infatuation and not love. And if you are so lucky to have someone to tell you that, you not only will not believe them but also feel very offended. No need to judge her for something that is the experience of most people when falling “in love” for the first time.
Psychie
I find that’s more a failing of our vocabulary than anything else. For the record, there are many different and distinct feelings that are all called “love”, some have other terms also associated with them that can be used for disambiguation, but some of those terms are fairly obscure and I’m not sure that all distinct forms of love actually *have* other terms for them beyond “[qualifier] love”.
For there record, the term for the infatuation of a new relationship is called “limerence”, and as far as I am concerned that is technically a *kind* of love, just not necessarily the kind of love we often think it is. It’s kind of between what the Greeks called Eros and what they called Mania (and both can be translated as “love” into English, but inspired rather distinct terms via etymology that I feel are sufficiently obvious to indicate what the distinction is). Limerence is sadly generally temporary by it’s nature, there are ways to extend it and even to rekindle it later, but it naturally ebbs and wanes over time and it’s natural for it to calm into something else, ideally a more stable kind of romantic love, but unfortunately it often calms into something else.
Then there’s platonic love, familial love (which is often different depending on the kind of familial relation, so this one can be broken down further if needed), devotional love (often applied to objects of worship, such as a god, but technically can be applied to a person, and often is), lust (Eros proper), passion (this term *can* be treated as a synonym for lust, but in this case I’m using it to describe an interest or desire for knowledge and skill-mastery, this can be applied to a subject, an activity, a field, or a person), etc.
These various kinds and categories of love are pretty thoroughly overlapping and inter-connected, it’s not particularly common to experience only *one* of these, and part of the reason so many people disagree on what constitutes “true” or “genuine” romantic love is that romantic love is generally the most *complex* form of love, being any of a variety of combinations of some or all of those different kinds of love, to the point where it is entirely possible that *every* relationship with genuine romantic love has it’s own unique combination of loves composing the overall romantic love.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that limerence is *not* romantic love, and I get why people dislike having the sincerity of their feelings dismissed like that. I think it’s probably more accurate to say that it’s an unstable, *early* form of romantic love, and a big part of nurturing it *into* romantic love is to be aware that it can be destabilized before it can fully flourish into romantic love, this can happen due to time (the seven year itch is a common example), discovery of something so unattractive it bursts the bubble of limerence (The Ick), or simply recognizing that things will not work long-term due to deal breakers or other irreconcilable incompatibilities and ending them before the limerence actually goes away to minimize emotional damage. I think being aware of this instability and the common ways limerence can be lost can go a long way toward stabilizing it, hence why relationships that were built more slowly or between more mature individuals tend to be more likely to reach this more stable romantic love and go the distance.
Pylgrim
You are not wrong here. However, the point that I am trying to make is that for a teen/post-teen experiencing such feelings for the first time (beyond, say, silly crushes), they feel all-consuming and divine. Even if you ofer them 200 shades of nuance with proper, unique labels to define all the types and kinds of love and adjacent there are, they will always point straight out to whichever label you are using for the most sublime and pure kind of romantic love. They don’t have that many other examples to give them perspective nor do they wish to consider for a second that the way they are feeling is “inferior” to the presumed existence of “real love” as they would put it, childlishly.
Psychie
I don’t speak for all people in that demographic, but when I was *in* that demographic I was able to identify the distinctions, largely because I was educated that such distinctions exist.
And to be frank, I don’t think there is any one such thing AS “pure” love or “real” love or “true” love or whatever. Romantic love is a complex emotion, made up of several simple emotions, including things like lust, contentment, joy, attachment, adoration, the desire to help, platonic love, familial love, etc. Sometimes romantic love includes elements of devotional love, sometimes it doesn’t. The list of simple emotions that CAN combine into romantic love is significantly longer than the list of simple emotions that make up any one person’s romantic love, and even if yours is made of the same components as, say, mine, they could easily have different proportions, maybe mine has more lust, or more familial love, maybe yours is more about contentment and adoration. Either way, it’s still love, even if we are both experiencing it in entirely different, potentially in completely incompatible ways.
So, once again, the issue is in how it gets presented, by saying one kind of love is somehow better or more “real” than another, of course they are gonna say theirs is the “real” kind. The point is that you don’t try to tell people their feelings aren’t real or are lesser in some way, and then they won’t have an issue with the overall point you try to make about it. Who cares if their love is less stable than someone who’s been in a 50 year marriage that’s still going strong? Who cares if odds are good they’ll break up in a few months? Don’t go telling people their love isn’t real, because it IS real and it IS love, just a different kind of love than whatever it is you’ve decided is “true” love. It’s a vocabulary issue.
Pylgrim
Speaking from my own perspective, I was very much educated on the different kinds of love but that didn’t help at all when those powerful feelings steamrolled over me the first time. I was too befuddled to think and as I said above, I didn’t want to consider that those overwhelming feelings were anything less than the highest ideal of romantic love. Stupid, I know, but I got it bad.
As I said, I agree with you and definitely if everybody could be well informed AND in perfect control and understanding of their feelings, they would spare themselves lots of pain and bad choices. I’m just not sure that everybody can? Seems like a special sort of psychological/emotional makeup and everybody is different.
Stu
In her defense on this, she’s calling out Walky not for leading her on, but for playing his parents’ (more accurately, his mother’s) game in trying to get their approval of her.
Animedingo
This is hardly walkys fault
Matthew Davis
And in time she may come to realize that. But in the moment she’s realizing the disparity and so is lumping everyone together. I don’t get the sense that she’s mad at Walky in that second to last panel so much as incredibly sad.
Dante
Yep. There was a definite shift between anger and sadness in those panels. I could hear her voice losing steam between the gritted teeth of “fuck them” and the quiet despair of “fuck you too”.
eh, whatever
You can see it in her face.
Mark
She really hates what she’s saying, but had to say it.
Illjwamh
It’s not, but he could have handled the whole thing better
DarkoNeko
everyone involved alike.
anon
i mean it’s not his fault she put him up on a pedestal but he probably should’ve communicated that he wanted to take things slowly or so
as far his parents i can get not being willing to cut them off/confront them, esp at a younger age where you don’t have a safety net versus being old enough to move out and get as much distance between them as possible and never deal with them again
Ste Baker
It can be difficult to cut off abusive parents even when you ARE older and have that safety net (I speak from experience). Especially when they become elderly and start to rely on their offspring more and more; while their favourite offspring (no, that’s not me) lives 6 hours away and the second favourite offspring (and no, that’s not me either) lives close enough but can’t be bothered – leaving them constantly badgering their least favourite offspring (yes, that’s me, folks) and that offspring’s spouse who’s from the ‘wrong’ country.
They want stuff from me, nothing I can do for them is ever QUITE good enough, and they are GREAT at making me feel like that’s entirely my fault.
UrsulaDavina
Wow that was very close to my parents situation with their families like eairly so, it’s like a blend I mean my moms mother and father favored their male offspring over my mom and my dad’s mom didn’t like my moms religion, yet both relied on them to take care of them. So yeah that really sucks I’m sorry your in that situation I’ve seen it from the outside and it takes a toll.
Vanessa
Walky is doing Ok to just stand up to them a bit for his sister. He’s already struggling.
And you are right, is he supposed to disown his parents and drop out of college and be homeless for a girl he just met and didn’t want to introduce to them?
Amelie Wikström
It’s probably helpful for Walky to be able to say “my parents will never tolerate me having a girlfriend who looks like my dad, dealing with them and their racism is a chore either she or I are going to have to do.” And it’s definitely helpful for Lucy to be able to dump him for some serious shortcomings on his part (perceived or real) instead of like thinking if she can stop idealizing him and idealizing her expectations of the relationship maybe it can work.
Lars
Well, the plot of pretending that Amber is his girlfriend again came from him. That was the time he was “Going along” jumping their hoops.
thejeff
The plot came from her. He did pick Amber, but the idea started with Lucy.
Mark
True. She may be thinking, “you should have stopped me.”
jpnr
oooh no, Lucy is right. She shouldn’t have accepted the whole Amber shenanigan
Cait
The shenanigan that Lucy came up with and pushed on Walky?
Li
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/commended/
I’m sorry, she pushed it on him?
Good grief yall.
thejeff
Not pushed it on him, but certainly not the other way around either. She did suggest the idea.
Li
Ehhhhh. It feels like they both had the idea at the same time and she happened to speak first.
Either way, the enthusiasm for the hijinx was very mutual. But only Walky had first-hand knowledge of Linda, so he should have been the one to realize it wasn’t going to work and say so.
TrueVCU
Haters gonna make good points
Schpoonman
Aw, jeez, Lucy.
Schpoonman
Lucy beat Joyce to dropping a “fuck”. Is Willis trolling us with the possibility, and Joyce will never drop one?
Sirksome
Meh. F-bombs are overrated. I wish I had a cleaner vocabulary sometimes instead of swearing being a habit.
anon
i’m sure you can get creative with it if you tried lol
Mark
You have all the vocabulary you need. Profanity is so over-used nowadays that it’s lost its impact. “That makes me very angry!” is more likely to get your feelings noticed. You can even try to say it like Marvin the Martian if you want to take the edge off.
Seriously. Describe your emotions instead of just venting them. Try it and see.
yak
I profanity used more than it used to be? Seems like there are still lots of contexts where swearing is Significant.
My parents always swore a lot and I got in trouble at school because I talked like them.
Vanessa