Confused and conflicted people: anyone have good stories about things turning out ok in the end?

No, I haven't ever had a muddled confused early relationship morph into something livable.

It happens in Hollywood romantic comedies all the time. Not so much in real life, I think. Because it's so prevalent in movies I wonder if there's some archetype under it ... The Rescuer, or something.

Regarding "confused" people, something I wrote in another thread applies: "The natural tendency is to see things as you are, therefore the easiest thing to see is what you expect to see; consequently, the hardest thing to see is things as they are; and the natural tendency is to do what is easy, not what is hard."

The "confused" seem to love flocking to me to be "de-confused." (I think that's ALSO because they're confused. Anyway...) Here's more or less how I explain their state of confusion, and suggest a way to relocate to another state. Afterwards they do seem less confused, and their lives have apparently improved, some have said so and thanked me, however they flock to me even more than before, , so maybe not.

Virtual reality; what you think of as reality is really virtual; it's all inside your head; everything you see, hear and feel, everything you've seen, heard and felt. Now, how does what's inside your head (virtual; things as you are) compare with things as they truly are? (At this point most were like deer in headlights.)

Scientists and engineers create scientific/mathematical models, "virtual reality," so that they can simulate and test true reality. Part of the development process is validating and verifying the model by comparing it, virtual reality, to true reality and then measuring the divergence, if any. Often there is divergence, often for a multitude of reasons, and often for unexpected and counter-intuitive reasons, so "fixing" the model is often an interesting and enlightening process. And, to make matters more interesting, models we've already validated and verified sometimes "break" at extremes and/or when previously unknown or unexpected factors become significant.

Our lives, "our realities," are much like these scientific/mathematical models, but unfortunately most of us don't actively validate and verify our models, or at least not as thoroughly as we should, and we don't continue to do so throughout our lives. And, when our virtual reality disagrees with true reality we often, perhaps usually, erroneously blame true reality. Instead, what we should be doing is following time-tested scientific and engineering philosophy.

SO, are y'all now thoroughly confused? Are y'all still awake?

not meant as a joke though it is light hearted... I hear Brett Michaels is finally marrying his on again off again girlfriend of 16 years. Unfortunatley it took a near death experience.

My best story is the man I almost married. We dated for a couple of years and things fizzled because he was overcommited and didn't really have time for a relationship. He thought it was too 'demanding' of me to want to share a meal with him once a week -- his priorities were clearly not in sync with mine and I didn't feel that our relationship really mattered to him.

Four months later he contacted me saying he still loved me and wanted to try again. He said he'd been an a-- and missed me. I listened carefully while he spoke of all the ways his thinking had changed about us. He laid things out in very detailed way, and it seemed he'd thought things through.

I suggested we see a counselor (we did) and we dated again for almost a year, with a marriage plan in place. It was a great year, he was a great guy, but we fizzled again for other reasons.

I don't know the moral of my story, except that it almost turned out ok. Sometimes I think we'll always love each other, but it just wasn't meant to be. Life is funny like that.