I'm glad I checked back in or I would have missed your response!
Musette said:
Yeah, it's amazing how broad shoulders can complicate finding clothing that fit properly. From the times that I have worn dresses, I know full well how hard it is to find a dress that flatters broad shoulders (strapless dresses especially). I love my broad shoulders, but the women's fashion industry doesn't seem to!
I wonder if it's just something that's difficult to design clothes for or if they really don't recognize that some women have broad shoulders? My wife is a bit more comfortable if she uses a shawl with a dress to compensate for the dress not accommodating the shoulders. Makes her feel more old fashioned but it does work. But she's generally in jeans and a t-shirt on any given day so that's not something she has to put up with very frequently.
Thanks! I certainly try not to take my family for granted. I'm actually familiar with all the stores you've mentioned. (In fact, I have a bunch of fantastic formal collared shirts from Costco that were quite reasonable.) Strangely though, I don't remember the last time I've bought pants from any of those places. I will certainly keep that in mind next time I go searching for pants!
Costco is where my wife got those jeans she loves. Pants are very specific to the individual, of course, but I hope you find something you like.
(I'm also kinda putting up my own unnecessary barriers by not wanting to explain why I would specifically want men's pants yet also not wanting to just purchase them with some of my own money and appear as if I was trying to hide information since my family is so transparent/honest with each other. It's a pretty ridiculous reason, especially with such an accepting family, yet it's probably my biggest block.)
Do you want to wear them because they're more comfortable? If so, shouldn't that be enough information to give? As a man, I certainly wouldn't like jeans that squeeze my ass.
Success stories like what you've shared are always nice to hear! (In fact, one of my parents grew up in pretty extreme poverty and had a similar drastic shift for the better.) It's amazing how much things seem to change for the betters or you in 10 years time! Would you say it was mostly gradual, or did certain events sort of punctuate the change (such as going to a two-income household), if you don't mind my asking?
Hmm, it was somewhat gradual as far as five years can allow but with several certain events serving as significant steps up. The most significant change was actually having an income/job. I know that sounds dumb of me to say but really, the moment I actually had a job with reasonable pay, everything changed because of the way I used them.
I got a business administration degree in addition to that religion degree I mentioned. With the business degree I got two things: 1. A decent job in mid-2009 with a decent wage where I live (not great by any means, but fair middle class). 2. A wonderful education on how to manage my finances.
Personal finance is absolutely vital to making the most of what you have. Please let me know if you have any questions about this because I have helped several friends and family members get out of particularly sticky financial conditions. I strictly budgeted myself and allocated funds directly to certain accounts the moment my pay check came in. Retirement, investment accounts, etc. I paid down my debt faster than normal by addressing any debt I had by APR first rather than principle (though people who have trouble motivating themselves have higher level of success by paying off the low principle amounts first to gain early and easy successes at the cost of more money lost to interest later). I had a checking account and a savings account that I used religiously to budget by paying my bills, making my allotments and then moving any excess to savings so that only my regular spending amount was left in checking.
From there my debts went down and my savings went up. My investments performed pretty well and so I found myself in a weird situation where my income was drastically outweighed my debts. This was the first "step" up.
Once I got married we had two decent incomes and lived in a dirt cheap $400/month apartment. That was another season where our pay shot up and our means were very low. An especially beneficial part here is that my wife is low maintenance and is just as fiscally conscious as I am if not more. So spending hundreds on a single dress or shoes didn't hold us back. I would strongly recommend anyone to not insist on getting a several thousand dollar ring to start off their marriage. The wedding itself was a beautiful beach wedding that was also cheap, less than $5k. I got lucky and had worked as a professional blacksmith in college so I ran across a $250 ring that appraised for several thousand and had snapped it up. These low-price hurdles, the dual income and lower living expense, was the next step up.
After about half a year of that, we'd built up enough credit to purchase our first home. That was about 3.5 years ago. It was a starter home but a drastic improvement over that dirt-cheap apartment we'd had. Due to the current market the monthly price of the home ended up being cheaper than if we'd purchased a two bedroom apartment.
This year I purchased our dream home. The non-retirement accounts I'd invested in when I first got this job had improved to just enough for the down payment. My wife, whom I trust and rely on for many things, was casually looking for cheap homes for sale for about 6 months after I'd asked her to since she's pretty good with those kinds of long term projects. She found a very large house in town on a lot of acres just 9 minutes from work. We visited it and the land looked beautiful but the house looked like garbage from the outside (bad siding) and we couldn't see inside. I gave up on it but my wife insisted we set up a realtor appointment to go inside. From the inside, it was amazing. Newly renovated kitchen and there were about four rooms that weren't even listed or photographed to help the sale (dining room, master bathroom with corner tub, a study with built-in shelving, a spare room for... stuff I guess, it's now our music room/spare room). There's even a pond with a dock they failed to mention. Since it was already priced at less than a typical 3 bedroom/2 bath of much smaller size and no acreage, we jumped on it. Once our lending bank appraised it we learned that we really had found a deal and that the selling bank had drastically undervalued the house so us purchasing the house actually gave us a net-positive in equity without actually doing anything. So if we wanted to resell the house, we would likely profit significantly from it (especially now that I repaired the outside of the house and the plumbing).
We also successfully rented out the first house for a mild profit that we're just putting away for future repairs.
So that's the last step.
During all this time I've been getting promoted or getting raises in my company. I switched to a computer tech job and have excelled at it despite not having a degree in it. I literally call into major companies every day and tell them what is wrong with their network in minutes when five of their IT employees hadn't been able to figure it out (or had even caused the problem). I'm still not "well paid", but for where I live it's a nice salary. Combined we're well under six figures if that gives you any perspective on how well we've done with how little. But again, I live in a smallish city so the pay doesn't need to be six figures.
Now... under 30, I'm in a really weird position. I'm where I hoped to be in my 50's and have nothing to do financially except pay down any remaining debts and continue storing up for a retirement that actually seems feasible at a reasonable age. I really scratch my head at it all. I mean, my shoes had holes in them when I was a kid. It is absolutely astounding to me that the "American Dream" was so obtainable when I thought it was an automatic 30 year slog to get close. So definitely feel encouraged since I had absolutely no idea that I'd be here six years ago. Since I'd come from a lower middle class family I was really shocked to be launched forward so quickly after having seen my parents in the same situation for my whole life. Thankfully, my father has since gotten a major promotion and they're likely making a lot more now.
TL;DR of above spoiler
1. Got a decent job. 2009
2. Budgeted tightly.
3. Combined incomes. 2010
4. Made wise investments. (Retirement, non-retirment accounts, first house in 2011, second in 2014)
5. Lived well within our means thanks to the budgeting which expedited paying off bills to leave more money in our pockets per month.
Good point! No need to get too worked up over it, and I never let others' expectations affect how I dressed for my performances before, so why start now?
Good for you!
Yeah, it's rather bizarre how much semantics gets thrown into the equation, but I suppose there's also the element of declaring yourself as something other than straight factoring in. (Hence the "it's just a phase" accusations that pop up a fair amount for the LGBT+ crowd.)
So if some asexuals still express a romance orientation or a sex orientation, is it feasible for a long term relationship with an asexual of similar orientation? Please forgive me if that's an ignorant question to ask.
I'm sure there's a degree of confirmation bias that factors in when people use religious texts to back their arguments. (Same as anything else really, and as an outsider looking in, I certainly still have my own biases that help shape my opinion on the matter.)
Oh sure. You've got to see religious texts as a book of "givens"/assumptions being brought into a discussion. You can't have much more of a bias than when givens are set in stone and are brought into any conversation you have.
Your background on the topic is absolutely fascinating! On a personal spiritual level, I've probably always been essentially apathetic to religion. (I actually couldn't tell you what my religious beliefs were as a child because I don't remember ever having any profound thoughts on the topic.) Still, the ethnomusicologist in me really sparked an interest in the topic because of the major role religion plays in shaping a culture, and the role music plays within many religions. (I remember reading about the Bira Ceremonies within Shona culture and being absolutely captivated by it.) Even the early history of Western music fascinates me in a similar way, as a lens into a culture removed from my own. (Regardless of my own religious apathy, I love a lot of music associated with religions from all over the world, and Gregorian Chant is no exception.)
Oh, interesting! I hadn't really given all that much thought to religion's impact on music but now that you mention it, that should certainly warrant more research on my part. Hmm, thanks for that perspective! I'm trained in classical guitar and my wife has a variety of instruments in her skills list so I am interested in that.
I will certainly say that I have a lot of respect for your relationship with your faith! It's amazing how much anti-theist sentiments (as well as extreme religious ones) have shaped this sort of polarizing "you either believe in God or science, not both" stance that is so widespread. Even though some of the more judgmental/aggressive Christians I've interacted with gave me a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, (my university has some very active religious organizations and back when I was naive enough to be honest about my agnosticism when asked, I got more than my fair share of "oh, you're just confused; reading the bible should fix that" as well as "technically, you're going to hell" thrown at me,) I know better than to blame the faith rather than the individuals. My percussion professor, who happens to be the best educator I've ever had the pleasure of learning under, happens to be fairly religious (he took a musician mission trip to Kenya last year and plays regularly for his church, so I presume he's religious anyways,) and I couldn't imagine writing him (or anyone) off because of religion. There's no need to apologize for your religious views or fear that I'd think less of you for it.
Ah, did your campus have screaming preachers? My university did and let me tell you, that was embarrassing with an emphasis on 'ass'. While I am certainly intellectually in the deist category (as far as believing that the universe was most likely created without necessarily being someone or something we can personally know), I am quick to admit that my adherence to Christianity specifically is necessarily a step of faith beyond that intellectual position and not a logical or rational conclusion by any means. In fact, Christian scripture indicates that is how it works so for someone to tell you that you're just confused is a silly thing of them to say when scripture itself indicates that belief in Christ requires faith in the unproven rather than acceptance of assumed facts. Not sure why people make firm statements if they haven't studied the material enough to speak from a learned position.
Actually, I wouldn't treat one potential form of isolation from your peers as inherently better or worse than the other. I have moments where I really notice just how different I am from my peers, but it's more of the combination of multiple factors than me focusing on one aspect of myself. (I actually tend to feel especially isolated among more traditionally feminine non-musician women in particular because percussion is a niche predominantly masculine field, as is music composition, and my interest in video games as art as well as the industry itself doesn't help much either. Asexuality just tends to be the icing on the cake for me.) It's very frustrating when you can't find someone whose philosophies are similar to your own, especially in groups congregated over a common identity like religious belief, and I'm not surprised that could isolate you from your peers.
I'm sorry to hear that. Sounds like you'd get along with us just fine.
No problem! I feel like there's a bit of a high barrier to entry for asexual discourse because of all the terminology that's used almost exclusively within the asexual community itself. Many of the terms are useful, but many awareness efforts suffer for it a bit in my opinion.
The term is certainly a lot more complex to discuss than heterosexuality or homosexuality.
There was actually a fairly large survey on a major asexual website fairly recently, and the preliminary findings [https://asexualcensus.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/2014censuspreliminaryreport.pdf] includes romantic orientation. It seems that bi and pan combined makes up the largest proportion of romantic identities among asexuals at a little over 30% (well, of those who took the survey anyways, with all the potential for numbers to end up skewed in some respects). If not for the poll, I would have claimed that most of the asexuals I've seen online were hetero (which is still a significant chunk in its own right).
Very interesting! Thanks for the resource. Fascinating ratio of religious belief compared to the general population.
What would you say is the difference between someone who would classify themselves as a romantic orientation asexual as compared to a heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual that just isn't interested in sex? If someone isn't interested in sex would they automatically fall into the asexual category?
By contrast, do you know what the typical preferred gender would be for asexuals with the sex orientation?
Wow... this is clearly something I know far less about than I thought. Had no idea about the subcategories. Terms Demiromantic and Gray-romantic are making the study difficult for me to wrap my head around. But the study itself seems to indicate that even Asexuals can be confused by the diversity of terms at times. I certainly did not expect the "celibate" ratio to be less than 12%. This has been eye opening.
