I found myself applying this filter: asking my dates, "Do you have a girlfriend?"

Yeah, I suddenly find I'm attractive to married men. What is up with that?

ita, I don't doubt you'd be attractive to married men. The thing is, what makes them think they have anything to offer you? That is an amazing conceit on their part.

I've never met book intolerant

I never met someone I'd call "intolerant" either, when it comes to books, but at least three of my meatspace friends are just not readers. They look at my bookcases and ask if I've actually "read all those books." The DH is not like that, thank goodness.

I didn't have filters when I met him, I don't think. I was seventeen. What the hell did I know? He was cute and he liked me and we could talk, and talk, and talk. And almost twenty years later, we've learned that we have a lot of differences, but we love each other enough to make them work.

I couldn't imagine my life without him, yet if I suddenly found myself alone and wanting to find someone new, there would be a lot of filters in place that have to do with who I am *now*.

I never met someone I'd call "intolerant" either, when it comes to books, but at least three of my meatspace friends are just not readers. They look at my bookcases and ask if I've actually "read all those books."

Did you tell them, "Nah -- some of them don't even have pages. I hollowed them out to hide my hooch,"?

When I met my husband to be, I had filters that I thought were important that I discarded. Maybe not even discarded, but rather than being complete barriers to a relationship, they were issues we had to work through.

Before him I stuck with guys long after I should have bailed (not because they were psycho, just because we weren't really that compatible) because they seemed to have the qualities I thought I was looking for.

{{Gud}}

I am pretty much with Plei on the cat thing, though I am actually more of a pet person than a cat person. I just can't imagine not have a pet of some sort.

This. I am staunchly pro-mammal; love cats, love dogs, love rabbits, love guinea pigs and hamsters and mice and rats, feel perfectly certain that I would love horses and alpacas and gerbils and chinchillas had I the opportunity to own them.

And it's hugely important to me that Hec is also pro-mammal. He had a wonderful dog as a kid, wants to own pets as soon as we're in a living situation that permits them, and he even genuinely likes my cats. He's not a crazy scary cat-hater making jokes about how much he likes them, especially with some fava beans and a good Chianti; he just plain likes them. He's handled my cats before and has enjoyed conversing with the chatty Matilda and admiring the shy beauty of Toby, and I feel pretty certain that if he weren't allergic, he'd have ended up being one of those guys who grumps about cats and crazy cat owners while absently scritching the little black kitty behind the ears as she butts her head into his armpit. But he is allergic -- itchy, scratchy, red-faced and weepy-eyed and wheezing like crazy within half an hour.

And he has Emmett, who is more severely allergic and was not quite seven when we became engaged. I might possibly have asked Hec to go through allergy treatments, but how could I ask that of Emmett, whose life was already about to be massively disrupted and changed with exactly zero percent of it under his own control? There was absolutely no way.

And, truthfully, I adore my cats, and when I was sunk in the worst of my depression they served exactly the same purpose for me that Toto has for vw, and for that I'm eternally grateful. But they have tiny brains. Big kitty hearts but tiny, wee, tiny little tiny brains. And when we'd found a friend with a big comfy house who fell in love with them and wanted them there, they were freaky and maladjusted for about a day and a half and then they mellowed, and now they're deeply attached to their current humans and barely remember me. Sucks for me, but it's good for them. I didn't want them to be traumatized and suffering; I wanted them to be someplace they felt protected and loved and lavished with affection, and for them to do fine, and that's exactly how it turned out.

Plei's right: we were totally blindsided. It was supposed to be a casual, short-term, no-strings thing, so it hardly mattered that he was allergic, until there was love and tangled hearts and minds and a door had opened onto decades (God willing) of partnership; as dearly as I loved my cats, I couldn't close that door. Possibly I could have ruled the whole thing out from the beginning, but I can't begin to picture where my life would be, the chances I'd have missed, if I'd done that.

Though to reiterate: if Hec had been actively cat-hatey, hostile and contemptuous, I'd've sacked his ass.

ION, Fay rocks out loud.

Just (nervously) checking: Raquel, did you get an email from me yesterday or today?

Did you tell them, "Nah -- some of them don't even have pages. I hollowed them out to hide my hooch,"?

That's an idea!

what makes them think they have anything to offer you? That is an amazing conceit on their part.

Maybe I've reached a desperate age? I look less moral? I'm not sure. Or, maybe, that many men that I meet now are married. They do need to keep it to themselves (the attraction, not the married bit -- there have been a couple that got confused on that score).

yet if I suddenly found myself alone and wanting to find someone new, there would be a lot of filters in place that have to do with who I am *now*.

I worry that this is the case for me now -- do I have too many things in the filter, that I didn't have when I was younger and that wouldn't really be a barrier in the unlikely event of meeting someone who otherwise should be compatible. Or, as always, what scrappy said.

Sorry I keep bringing up my problems, It's just really weighing on me right now.

I couldn't do an affair, it would just be wrong. Aside from the moral problems, I also don't understand where guys get the time to have an affair.