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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 24, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I find myself single.

This was inevitable, and the writing was on the wall that the two of us weren't compatible, even if I loved her dearly right from the start.

Little fights would snowball into battles, she had a hair-trigger temper and you'd swear her name, which incidentally could have passed as Latina, made her one. As lovely as she could be, as smart and talented as she was, it wasn't meant to be.

I'm at fault. I'll gladly shoulder the majority of the burden for it all. I could make excuses about ADHD, depression, the enormous amount of stress I'm under as the knives chop away inexorably at the strands of the future, but for all that they're true excuses, I was a pretty crappy boyfriend. I'm very lucky I'm smart and funny enough, that I could make her laugh and temporarily forget my myriad flaws. It's not like I didn't care about her, even if I struggled to show it in the way she craved.

She'll be fine. She always was a fighter.

I think I'll be too. After all, this was a shared decision. Like two cacti hugging in the cold desert winds on a moonless night, the sweetness of the dripping nectar couldn't keep at bay the building pain from all the pricks and scabs we couldn't help but scratch at.

On to more practical things.

I've given enough (good) dating advice here that I know the ropes. Currently, work and exams makes even the apps appealing, for all that they're meticulously designed by psychologists (and the incentives of mammalian evolution) to be a gauntlet of suffering for the male of the species, all to squeeze out your hopes, dreams, and more importantly, money.

But I've aged like wine. I've got a dozen good pictures carefully curated. With a dog. In scrubs. With friends, so women can rest assured I'm not a psycho. In decent clothing and proper lighting. I might not be as handsome as my brother, but I'm certainly not repulsive either. Most importantly, I'm older, and for a man, that's a good thing, right till the male pattern baldness or the paunch hits. Two matches in less than two hours, whereas the last time I tried, as a med student, it took days or weeks.

I'd love to date more in person, but I'm not going to hit the clubs alone. Most of my friends have long since fled to fairer shores. Thankfully flirting with patients (or at least their family members, I don't swing towards 70 year old ladies with cancer) is not illegal in India, we haven't cucked our doctors that badly, but that's not really something I'm inclined to do either, let alone how fucking tired I am at work. Oh well, at least I know I can slide into DMs like I was lubed, 7 years of steady relationships don't lie about that. They didn't pick me for my sterling good looks after all.

But if anyone has any advice. I'm all ears. I'm tired of dishing it out and could actually use some myself.

Before anyone suggests the usual, I am, or intend to:

  1. Get a good haircut (already done).
  2. Hit the gym.
  3. Buy clothes? Nah, I haven't bought new ones in like a year, and I've got enough good fits to make it work.
  4. Lawyer up for our shared investment of a cellphone charger and a vape pod. Well, she does owe me a sizeable amount of money, but I trust she'll pay me back.

I'm tall, charming, with a beard that's far less scraggly after some (poorly adhered to) minoxidil, in a promising career (hahahaha), so please skip the kind of blue pills (psychiatric variant) you'd feed the dearly departed Skookum and the like.

Go on ahead, hit me with your best or worst. I have a beer in hand and a flint in the other to strike and light Tinder. I'm receptive. I have time to kill and the things I need to do can wait.

(The biggest motivator to study for me now has become the observed fact that hot young med students and interns love them an older Resident or Consultant. Time to grind and get that bag.)

I'm tall, charming, with a beard that's far less scraggly after some (poorly adhered to) minoxidil, in a promising career (hahahaha),

Do people use minoxidil to grow hair on their face? I've never heard of that before.

so please skip the kind of blue pills (psychiatric pills) you'd feed the dearly departed Skookum and the like.

Uhh, I hesitate to ask what this means. Do you mean departed like he's not on the Motte, or do you mean departed like he died while attempting to do the Scag (or whatever that wilderness thing was called that he was doing)?

the Scag

He called it the Hock.

Do people use minoxidil to grow hair on their face? I've never heard of that before.

If you take too much minoxidil orally, you grow hair everywhere that hair can grow.

Applied topically, it works just as well for beards as bald patches on the scalp. Check out /r/Minoxbeards , I can personally vouch for it, and my brother who was a stickler to the routine had even more startling results from a worse start. My family is kinda bad at growing beards naturally and we're no different. My aunts never grew one, nor did my grandma, though a great aunt managed a moustache once before a misandrist cow mistook her for a man and kicked her in the head.

Uhh, I hesitate to ask what this means. Do you mean departed like he's not on the Motte, or do you mean departed like he died while attempting to do the Scag (or whatever that wilderness thing was called that he was doing)?

The former. Someone here was claiming that he did something far more sensible like climb a mountain first instead of the Hock (or at least to prepare for it). He's still alive, or at least that's where the smart money is.

I don't know what a Scag is, but if it's as suggestive as it sounds, you'd need an entirely different blue pill ending with -fil to make it work.

If you take too much minoxidil orally, you grow hair everywhere that hair can grow.

Applied topically, it works just as well for beards as bald patches on the scalp. Check out /r/Minoxbeards , I can personally vouch for it, and my brother who was a stickler to the routine had even more startling results from a worse start.

I mean, I definitely know that rogaine will do that, which is why bald people are usually careful to not let it drip onto their foreheads. But I didn't know that anyone actually deliberately puts it on their face to grow beards, that it would have desirable effects.

I stumbled upon SkookumTree commenting in PoliticalCompassMemes, but didn't have an unbanned account with enough karma to inquire how he has internet and enough time to participate while dying in Alaska.

Your situation is surprising for me only in that she ditched you before gaining access to the non-Indian sexual marketplace. Want to take bets she pops up in the West before you do?

She failed the exam we gave outright. I'm in limbo with a small chance I'll squeeze through and get something. We could have both been in the West if we didn't happen to prioritize exams that lead to career progression instead of dead end jobs in the NHS.

Your situation is surprising for me only in that she ditched you before gaining access to the non-Indian sexual marketplace. Want to take bets she pops up in the West before you do?

Dude, India isn't Qatar. If a middle class professional woman wants dick, we've got Tinder too. Bars. Sleazy nightclubs. I'm sure Western men would align with her feminist ideals better than the average Indian in our social class, but I'm about as egalitarian as it gets. I did dishes, the laundry and cleaned. When I slacked, it's because I'm lazy, not because it's beneath me or something.

No, I wouldn't have dated her for 1.5 years if I thought she was what you're implying. Our differences were irreconcilable, falling apart because neither of us could fix our character flaws, not because she was out for an upgrade. It's probably easier for me to get laid in the UK than it is here, but for an attractive woman? You couldn't schedule the time. And it's not like there aren't liberal men here too, if you seek a more longterm relationship. We were together and eyeing a future together because our plans aligned, I can't date someone who expects something more than a hookup without lying about how I intend to fuck right out of this country as quickly as possible, and I know she's honest, often excessively so, and wouldn't do the same.

SkookumTree commenting in PoliticalCompassMemes

A fate worse than death. He should have gone on the Hock instead.