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nyan_sandwich comments on LW Women Entries- Creepiness - Less Wrong
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Well-meaning? How in the stars can implying that so long as I'm a decent person and I'm attracted to someone it's irrelevant whether they're also attracted to me be well-mea... Wait. She grew up in a Guess Culture, so maybe her advice is sensible -- under certain assumptions that don't actually apply in my case.
(At least, she isn't asymmetric about that -- she also tried to shame me into dating someone who was attracted to me whom I wasn't attracted to.)
Have you considered not thinking of X being attracted to Y as an immutable property of X?
Yes, but IME there's usually much more variation among different X than among different time slices of the same X.
This was certainly less true in your mother's day when post people probably didn't go far from their village.
Wait... Ain't that backwards? I'd expect how much X is attracted to Y today to be a better predictor of how much X is attracted to Y if the two of them have known each other for ten years than if they have for ten minutes. (OTOH, people talking to one another decreases how much different Xes vary in how much they're attracted to a given Y, but probably that's a smaller effect.)
The point is you have fewer potential mates, so it makes sense to devote more effort to changing preferences.
She grew up near a major metropolitan area, whereas there are probably less than 10^5 people within 30 km of me, so whatever effects you might be thinking of probably apply more to myself than to her. (OTOH, she did get with my father, who lived within walking distance from her, when she was 15 and never dated anyone else.)
Right now, or throughout your life, e.g., did you go to college?
Most of my life, except the year I studied abroad (and stuff like holidays), and including time in university (I'm still here BTW, as a PhD student). (OTOH, given that this is a university town, the fraction of these people who are the appropriate age is a lot larger than the national average.) But especially when I grew up -- where (even if the population is not as small as what you probably had in mind when you said “village”) ISTM that most people only date people they have already known for years.
What would be the alternative to being well-meaning in this case--your maternal relatives conspiring to keep you single? I think well-meaning but clueless is the safer assumption.
edit: oh right. lost the train of reference
Yes, she's well-meaning towards me -- I meant, how could that be well-meaning towards my potential partners? (Anyway, that was more an expression of frustration than literal confusion.)