Question, Curious About Responses!
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Question, Curious About Responses!
| Wed, 05-17-2006 - 9:28am |
Just from reading some of the posts and a discussion I had recently with a Singles Group I belong to:
During the beginning stages of a relationship, do you prefer to know all of a person's faults/flaws up front or do you prefer those faults/flaws to be manifested during the course of the relationship??
I've noticed that most find it weird or strange if a person is comfortable in talking about their faults/flaws up front, but at the same time are upset to have spent 6-8 months of dating only to break up because those same faults/flaws manifested and you don't want to deal with them.

Some of the things you mentioned are good things. Toupe, that's funny but some may have a problem with that.
Other things like having an STD, poor credit, irresponsible, procrastinator, lacks patience, other children, number of marriages, cheater, criminal record, lazy, alcoholic, takes drugs, poor health, refuses to go to a doctor, views on raising children, liar, etc.
The list is endless. Would you want to know or have discussed all these types of things before becoming exclusive or would you rather it be manifested during the course of the relationship??
Edited 5/17/2006 10:23 am ET by tstephnic
Well, people have different levels of self-awareness; and while with some things it si easy (I'll know I have poor money management skills if I am in debt), with others we ar enot necessarily aware of our flaws... (let's say I grew up in a family where everybody doted on me as a child and I am not very good at showing love and affection through small gestures of appreciation... i.e. "spoiling sb" ) so I am not even sure if this is an option (to tell and learn everything that there is to know about a person. Plus, honestly, how many of us are aware of being lazy (or would like to admit so, even to ourselves?) What makes it even more complicated is that sometimes we think of our flaws as our assets (and American culture actively encourages us to do so, how else are we supposed to love ourselves?) : a man I was dating for some time was convinced he was "no dramma" guy, while I thought he was cold, distant and incapable of emotional attachment... I know this is subjective, I am just putting it in extreme terms for the sake of argument.
In addition, one person's major flaw is somebody else's best feature (I have worked hard to be friends with a friend's wife -- initially, I found her to be very abrasive, annoyingly pushy and inconsiderate of other's feelings, while her husband told me that what initially attracted him to her was that she was a go-getter, a person that would push him do his best, etc.)
So, I guess beyond the criminal record, marital status and the immediately observable (employment status, credit history, etc.) I really don't believe one can reall know and/or tell all about flaws...
In my experience they come out naturally over time - I don't want a laundry list up front - seems odd to me anyhow? Plus for me maybe someone thinks a certain thing is a flaw and for me I don't see it that way at all, very individual.
I'm with SP...I don't think a laundry list upfront is really helpful. You need to see the flaws in action to know if they are dealbreakers or not, anyway, ya know ;-)? Someone can *tell* you something, but until you experience it, you're not really going to know how it's going to affect you.
Now, if there are certain things that are important to me, like whether he's still married rather than divorced, then I want to know those things upfront, and I would be upset if I asked about those things and he lied, or if I found out he'd lied in his profile about it. But if it's important to me, I'm probably going to ask about it sooner rather than later, anyway.
Sheri