Moving away from Histocompatibility for now, the next Google hit to explore in the world of new dating paradigms shows up in a comment to a livejournal posting. 30-year-old featherynscale asked her readers:
If you are friends with someone, and they break it off with a person they are dating/sleeping with/married to/whatever, is it okay for you to pursue their ex?
She broke her question into sub-questions and created several polls that 32 of her readers responded to. She also invited her readers to leave comments expanding on their answers and to describe circumstances that would make it okay or not okay.
Her first commenter, saffronhare, replied:
This is one of those areas where it always depends on some other shading of relationships. If both people of the deceased relationship (dating or married) still travel in the same social circles, then one would perhaps want to maintain some amicability in any new dating paradigm. You know, and *talking* to the people involved. But I bet you already knew that. :)
4D Analysis: Saffronhare is using the phrase "new dating paradigm" to refer to a new dating situation that a person might be in, in this case, with a person who used to be involved with a friend, not to a whole new model for dating. You might assume that, because Saffronhare and Featherynscale are not endorsing this model as a new paradigm, I also wouldn't endorse it. But let's not sail away from this port before seeing all the sights.
2 out of a non-random sample of 32 people say it's not okay to date a friend's ex even if the friend is dead. I hope these two are in happy relationships that last until they die and if after their death their widows or widowers get involved with a friend, there really is no afterlife so they won't ever know about it.
A majority (20/32) say it can be okay in certain circumstances, but this also means they think it is not okay in other circumstances. I assume that they are all referring to it being morally not okay. Not to it being practically not okay.
Because let's face it, while dating a friend's ex may have pitfalls like possible fistfights, slashed tires, and late night hangup phone calls, it also has benefits like already knowing the person you're dating and knowing what you can do to compare favourably to the last paramour. And you can date a stranger and get the pitfalls anyway.
If you've got a screening list like Kirshenbaum, Coyote and Milan do, you might be tempted to add not a friend's ex to it, or if you're not a hardliner, not the ex of a friend who says it's not okay.
What I ask if you have a screening list is, do you actually want to date? Or are you trying to come up with reasons to justify not dating? Sure we don't want you getting involved with an ax-murderer or somebody you'll come to despise, but at the pre-dating stage, where you are trying to find somebody to go out with, a list of criteria that removes people from consideration may just keep you from getting involved with somebody wonderful.
American stand-up comedian George Carlin died yesterday in Santa Monica of heart failure. He was 71. The creator of the Hippy Dippy Weather Man ("the whole country is high, man") and Seven Words You Can't Say on Television was a unique contrarian whose humour pointed up the absurdities (some pretty damn unfunny) of living on this planet. He was smarter (and funnier) than most of the politicians who ran his country.
