Family get togethers

[tex]

Just got back from a christening "do" for my nephews second child, now please don't label me a grouch but as much as i love my family i have to be honest when i say i really can't stand hired room afterparties where people are awkwardly brought together and expected to have fun. The inevitable annoying DJ who loves his own voice and plays dreadful music so loud it's impossible to have a conversation, the usual understaffed bar that can never change anything bigger than a £5 note, the rush for the buffet which is always sandwiches,crisps, vol-au-vents....and repeat. The plethora of screaming toddlers running around, and the embarrasing business at the end when you have to go around kissing and hugging everybody.....NOT FOR ME THANKS!

[George 1978]

Re: Family get togethers

I don't really get together with my family very often these days - Christmas time and that's it. I would like to start a family of my own one day, but now I am in my 40s, the clock is ticking and I feel very pressured to find a partner, I feel that because of the difficulties I have had in my life so far, one asks oneself, is it ever going to happen? I am certain that if I ever did get married, the two witnesses would probably be Mr and Mrs Passer-By, and not many others. I am a traditionalist - I would want the bride dressed in white; bridesmaids; pageboys; the Best Man (someone who is ever-realisable); a three tier wedding cake; confetti; a Rolls Royce with "Just Married" written on the back; a Honeymoon in err... (must get myself a passport...), and everything else besides. Surely it's worth all that for a one off event?

The fact that my late aunt emigrated to Australia has always made me think whether I could have cousins over there that I will obviously never met, and my late mother wasn't too find of the offspring from my late father's first marriage. I believe that we all have distant relatives in out of bounds places like Australia and Canada, and we will never get to even acknowledge most of them.

DJs love the sound of their own voice - it's the verbal or audio equivalent of looking at yourself in the mirror.

[zabadak]

Re: Family get togethers

I seem to be older than most people on here - both my parents have long-since passed and my father's siblings are all but gone (my mother was an only child).

I did take part in a family reunion, on my father's side, a few years ago. It was great - seeing cousins I had not seen in decades, plus two aunts (one of whom is now deceased, leaving the other as the sole remaining member of that generation)!

[tex]

Re: Family get togethers

I was thinking more about weddings, christenings etc and whether anybody actually enjoys the afterparty?

[George 1978]

Re: Family get togethers

Regarding weddings - I actually come from a small family and so not many weddings in the recent past. In fact, I haven't been to a family wedding since the early 1990s and whether I will ever attend my own wedding (i.e. ever get married myself because a single man actually needs a single woman to help him do just that) is anyone's guess. I have to admit that when my sister did get married it was the no frills council registry office as she had been married before. We went back to hers for the buffet - lots of lovely things to eat and all that - yum-yum, and we went home feeling that we really had a good nosh up.

Fast forward to the early hours of the following Monday morning and I started to vomit on the bedroom floor - one positive aspect of this was that I had the next few days off school - dear old Mother was on the telephone to the school secretary mentioning that I wouldn't be in because of stomach bug, and so in many ways it was me that actually had the honeymoon rather than the bride and groom! The fact that I had a few days off school turned this incident into relief to a degree. However, when my sister who was the bride at the wedding was told about it over the telephone later on that day, she almost put two and two together and thought that we were accusing her of food poisoning, as one or two other guests had rumoured to had come down with it as well! The irony was that she had worked in catering at the time herself and so she vouched that if the food wasn't up to standard, she would have known about it long before any of the guests had even seen them on display! If the Food Standards Agency were guests at the wedding party at the time then I don't know what would have happened to be honest.

I did attend my nephew's blessing at a local Baptist church in 1994 which helped me to be introduced to the church as I continued to attend the Sunday services there for a few more weeks. We didn't have an after-party for that as it was on a normal Sunday morning.

[tex]

Re: Family get togethers

Hi George, i have picked up from several of your posts that you are single and looking for love, if it's non of my business please say but what steps are you taking to find a companion? I understand you have certain social anxieties but do you feel able to get past that in order to find love? It's easy to see from your posts that this is a big issue in your life, there will of course be thousands of lovely lassies with similar issues who are having trouble finding a fella.

[darren]

Re: Family get togethers

The last and only wedding i was at was of my uncle and aunt back in around 1985 or 86.
Can remember confetti everywhere.

I never go to christenings or anything like that altho i could have.

[George 1978]

Re: Family get togethers

Hi George, i have picked up from several of your posts that you are single and looking for love, if it's non of my business please say but what steps are you taking to find a companion? I understand you have certain social anxieties but do you feel able to get past that in order to find love? It's easy to see from your posts that this is a big issue in your life, there will of course be thousands of lovely lassies with similar issues who are having trouble finding a fella.

In many ways I often make this more than apparent so that people can understand - it is good that you have picked up on this Tex because I can explain in a bit more detail. I would rather write about this on here rather than have hidden away in a PM - the more people who see this the better.

It is indeed a big issue in my life, and I am doing everything I can to find someone. The obvious places like pubs are out of the question as I don't like loud noises and all that. I have tried speed dating where a woman who didn't want to know me, basically put the phone down on me. I even tried application forms for The Undateables, First Dates, and even Blind Date (the Channel 5 version of course). As you can probably see from my signature, I am now in my 40s, and I am worried that life will pass me by if I don't find someone - reaching that milestone had depressed me into thinking what I have done in my life so far. Ever since I reached 40 last August, I have had depression in relation to this - it was indeed noticed in some of the posts I made on here just before Christmas last year, and I believe that was one symptom of it.

I would love it if a friend or a relative would introduce me to someone as I know that is how couples get to meet for the first time - if I know the person who introduces me to someone, and they know that other person, then that would be easy. As my birthday is next month, I would love to find someone by then. I am an isolated person who finds telephone, letters and email a better way of communication as to meeting someone rather than face to face for the first time.

Anyway, I found out yesterday that I won a meal for two at a local restaurant - the big question is who would go with me? I would love to find someone who can go with me to the place, and I have to admit that it is inspiring me even more to look for someone. I don't mind talking about it as it is a lot better than bottling it up inside where it can sometimes be lethal to do so.

[HG]

Re: Family get togethers

Keep the faith George, at 40 I was single and thought I was destined to always be. Fast forward 8 years and I'm firmly partnered with 2 children, I definitely didn't see that coming.

[darren]

Re: Family get togethers

In other words george hg life is full of surprises when u least expect them.

[Richard1978]

Re: Family get togethers

While I've not been short of girlfriends over the years, things happened fast when I met my wife, & we were married in less than a year together.

[George 1978]

Re: Family get togethers

Keep the faith George, at 40 I was single and thought I was destined to always be. Fast forward 8 years and I'm firmly partnered with 2 children, I definitely didn't see that coming.

Thanks for the positive comment HG - the problem is that I almost see everyone as stereotypes as each other - you know, married at 17, family of their own by 19, becoming grandparents by 40. I have always seen myself as the odd one out.

I am even looking at YouTube videos about marriage, weddings and pregnancy over the last few days as I don't want to feel ignorant about such things when they are more than apparent to everyone else -. I wish I was a woman so I could be pregnant myself and experience the core part of it!

I do like surprises, but sometimes surprises are not very nice, and that is what I try and look out for.

[George 1978]

Re: Family get togethers

Also, various factors in my life have attributed to the fact that I haven't found a partner apart from platonic relationships - for example, being bullied at school in the early 1990s which made me cut myself off from my peer group; my parents passing away when I was in my late teens and early 20s; my Asperger Syndrome diagnosis, along with social anxiety phobias; living in an inner-city area until my mid 30s. If one sums them all up and puts them all together, it does paint a picture towards my difficulties when it comes to finding love.

In 2006 I had a platonic relationship with a woman which I am still in touch with, but it never got to develop because she met someone else about four or five months later - basically it was just a telephone relationship in a similar way to being pen pals. I had advertised for someone in a newsletter and she responded - we weren't doppelgangers as such but we gave each other benefit of the doubt. I respected her - we only met twice and we were never physical. She had similar problems to myself which was one reason why. Mind you, we got in touch for the first time in time for Valentine's Day that year and Valentine's Day 2006 was the best one I have had so far - and then she met someone else and I was back to square one.

I joined a dating website last week and spent a bit on my card with it - not surprisingly, I got cold feet and second thoughts about it. Being single means a lot of decisions one needs to make and not all of them are easy. There was one of these introduction agencies I saw on Google that I telephoned yesterday and I turned them down because the cost of it was out of bounds to me. I always seem to be on the outside looking in, but I always look for a chance if I get one.

[tex]

Re: Family get togethers

Hi George, you are correct about introductions as a way to finding a partner, i met my wife of 38 years after my best pal introduced me to his sister but of course loves path is not always this easy to follow for most. Please don't think about dating shows as they are just sideshows for voyeuristics, my wife thinks the undateables is entertainment but i would like to think the producers of this programme were better intended than that, or perhaps i'm being naieve.

[George 1978]

Re: Family get togethers

Yes, I know that dating shows are ways of ridiculing people as you said, but on the other hand, I feel that the more people know about my problem, the more people can help me. For example, I believe that I am talented, and I nearly auditioned for Britain's Got Talent a few years ago, but then I had second thoughts about how people say what they think about people, and so I didn't go in the end. I know that people can set someone up to knock them back down again, and I must admit that I am not thick-skinned enough or take criticism too easily. You have proved that being introduced to someone by a friend works, and I would recommend it if it was possible - my sister met her husband that way.

I thought that I would put some BBC News links here which in many ways inspires me:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-47232648

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-eng...ger-s-syndrome

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-15557244

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7948511.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/4428602.stm