When I was younger girls were everything and I had long relationships. I also liked motorbikes and had many.
Now in my fifties motorcycles are everything, I tend to keep bikes for years not months yet my relationships never seem to last that long.
What happened...?

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have fun with your helmet!

Dear Alan Hopkins,
If you are interested in the credentials that qualify my response, I am an experienced anthropologist, and financed my way through graduate school by inventing, marketing and selling the "Love Game" series consisting of 4 therapeutic games : Love Game, Sex Game, Family Game and Office Game, which I sold to psychologists for use in their practice.

During almost seven decades, this life, I have had numerous very short, short and long term relationships with women and motorcycles. I have been married more than once. In 1968, I appeared, with a woman from Costa Rica, on (self proclaimed CIA hit man)Chuck Barris's ABC national broadcast the "Newlywed Game," http://www.biography.com/people/chuck-barris-9542546
while working as a cub reporter for the L A Times. I am the author of several professional articles, most notably, an ethnography describing sorority and fraternity dating patterns within the context of a state/land grant university.

My 675 posts on the Hubb speak to my relationships with motorcycles.

Based on my research here are the five reasons relationships do not last.

1. Each person has a rhythm of communication some people inflow and outflow communications rapidly and others slowly. I call this the speed of particle flow. This fact does not speak to the intelligence or abilities of the person, but the relationship of two people who have very different (speeds) rhythms of communication is, after a while, intolerable and a major cause for the failure of the relationship.

2. Comparable magnitude is best described by the size of the soul or spirit. Some people are big souls or spirits defined as a soul or spirit who is a survivor and assists other to survive. These big souls believe "I am going to make it and so are you even if I have to help you along the way.
Grant and Susan Johnson are perfect examples of these kind of souls.
Others are little souls or spirits and are constantly in fear of anyone who is doing as well or better than they are and while pretending to be friendly is overtly or covertly stabbing others in the back. relationships between big souls and little souls never last, while relationships between big souls and big souls last forever just as relationships between little souls and little souls last until they destroy one another.

3. Each of us have a social facade, but we all have a chronic emotion - as best described by L Ron Hubbard, yes he got some things right.... And if one person has a chronic emotion of fear (that emotion in which he/she spends the most time) and another person is chronically bored, this relationship is not going to last very lone. Another example would be one person is chronically interested in life and the other chronically anger (like several people I have read on the HUbb) that relationship is not going to last. On the other hand, if the two peole have a similar chronic emotion - react to the world in a similar way that relationship will last forever. I am a cowboy, and know many other cowboys who are chronically angry and have been happily married to chronically angry women for 50 years and more. They understand each other!

4. Agreements, the inability to abide by mutually agreed upon agreements is another reason relationships do not last. Most people are good, and when a good person breaks an agreement with someone the good person must justify breaking that agreement and begins to imagine or fabricate all sorts of shortcomings in the person with which the agreement was broken.

5. Sexual attraction plays a part in mate to mate relationships and each person must be sexually sexually compatible with the other for the relationship to last. If I am in a room and out of my eyesight a woman I have sexual feelings for enters, I know it.... I don't have to see her, I feel her. This occurs frequently between sexually attracted partners. Not being sexually attracted or physically compatible with a mate will eventually take it's toll on a relationship.

Experience levels are also very important in maintaining relationships. For example it would be difficult for a well traveled, educated woman to maintain a relationship with a high school drop out who has never left home. this is an extreme example, but education and/or experience should be comparable for a relationship to last.

And Alan Hopkins, the reason you get along so well with motorcycles is you control, for your motorcycle, each of the 5 reasons person to person relationships fail.

Did I mention that I am currently happily married?

Eat, Drink and help others survive

xfiltrate

Probably a narrow escape I'd guess.

...so I have to marry my motorbike?

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have fun with your helmet!

That all sounds incredibly well thought through and wrapped up with no loose ends.
Problem is that doesn't take into account people changing or physical circumstances changing. Those rules gotta work on fluids not just solids.

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have fun with your helmet!

No alan, but let the exhaust cool before buying into a relationship

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My memory is becoming that good, I should be able to organise my own surprise party soon

+1
Can't see a problem with short relations

Wayne

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The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

Coming out of a long relation the taste of freedom is good and short relations feel great...

And it will get better when I get older you say? More bikes and even shorter relations! I can't wait.

I have to agree. The longing for that perfect soulmate to share everything with has taken up enough time and money. I'm starting to think short term contracts are better. Wives ask things like why do you need another bike and question if you even need one at all whereas new GFs just ask what colour it is

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have fun with your helmet!

glad you said buying as opposed to entering...

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have fun with your helmet!

Well as someone who's currently going through some relationship issues that all makes a lot of sense.

I've been a social worker for 35 years & haven't come across a better article that couples can use to examine their relationships! Thanks!
PS....I have my old copy of the Love Game in my office!

Dietcokeani, knowing that you have been helping others for 35 years, you kind words are very meaningful. Thank you very much.

As you know, it is seldom the "helpers" are encouraged. I thank you for all you have done for so many people during your long career as a social worker. Interesting you have a copy of the "Love Game"on your desk... that was quite a ride. I did TV and radio interviews to promote it and even sold it to the Catholic Church in Orlando Florida for their marriage encounter weekend retreats. I also sold my "Sex Game" to Catholics.

Once I was in the company of a well dressed group of IBM salesmen during an electronic convention ( I was selling two other inventions of mine, "Mother calls you to Dinner" an electronic seating systerm and Fast Eddie - a food expediting system both designed for restaurant chains...by me as an indiviual with my own business) when one of the IBM suits asked - what did you do before you invented your restaurant communications systems?

Dressed very casually in cowboy boots, jeans and my favorite Banana Republic shirt with epaulets and button down pockets , I replied, well I was certainly not salesmen like you all are, but I did invent the Love Game and Sex Game and I sold them to the Catholic Church for their married couple retreats.

Another of the IBM suits exclaimed, "You sold the Sex Game to the Catholic Church and you don't think you're a salesman!" We all laughed and during the three day convention all my meals and drinks were paid for by the IBM salesmen.

I ended up selling the maintenance contract for my restaurant systems to NCR National Cash Register Company.

I hope the monitors will indulge these, perhaps off topic comments, this is after all the Hubb Pub. and I was in a bar when I encountered the IBM salesmen...... thanks

xfiltrat, Eat, Drink and Love

Post script: Here is something for the light hearted boys who post here........the other day while walking on Av Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, Argentina I passed a "Sex Shop" with a banner that read "Blow Up Sheep Now in Stock"

Thanks, Ex. I appreciate it.

After a 24 year marriage, I find great freedom in knowing that I don't have to look for a partner that I can have/raise children with. That part of my life is complete & the pressure is off. Now it's all about me.....and my machines.... I'm loving the empty nest period of life. My SO doesn't have children and loves bikes. Good enough!

relationships dont last long happen when 1 person is no longer interested or is not interesting. go figure where ur at...