Sup.

Hey guys. It me (Josh). Here’s the deal:

The blog is back baby. And this time, I’m not fucking around. That’s right. I say swears now.

You may be wondering: Josh, why did you move your blog away from your personal website and onto this one? Aren’t domain names expensive? And the answer is: I don’t want to have to censor myself, so I have disconnected the blog from my website, which I plan to use professionally for a quite a while.

Also, yes, they are expensive as hell. But I’m going to enjoy this a lot more now that I don’t have to worry about potential employers reading it, and hopefully so will you!

Today I’m writing about a theory I have about the human psyche. Specifically the human psyche of dudes. Probably most specifically dudes like me (straight, white, middle/upper middle class, looks like Gumby).

As we all know, just as individuals can be friends, families can be friends, too. And often, within family friendships, individual friendships of varying intimacy exist.

Sometimes a family friend, AKA the person in the other family that is closest to your age, is little more than an acquaintance. Alternatively, an individual family friendship can evolve into a friendship which can stand alone, regardless of the overarching familial relationships. Furthermore, some family friendships blossom out of a budding individual friendship.

This theory is similar to the one posed by Harry in the genre-defining Rom-Com When Harry Met Sally (1989). Something along the lines of ‘men and women can’t be friends because the man always wants to sleep with the woman.’ I’m not looking up the actual quote. Whatever.

My theory:

If a guy has a female family friend who is a woman around his age, he has had this thought about her: ‘We could probably get married some day.’

Before you hit me with a ‘Not All Men’, yes. I know. Exceptions to every rule, blah blah blah. And let me be clear: this is not even close to a fully-baked thought.

This is like a fragment of a daydream, which drifts into a dude’s mind when idly scrolling through Instagram, lingering for a moment on a photo of his female family friend dressed up for a dance with some guy who has an internship with his dad’s pharmaceutical sales company lined up for this summer.

It lasts for an instant. Based purely on the fact that ‘our parents get along’ and ‘we’ve known each other our whole lives’, this guy has decided to make a one sided marriage pact. A classic ‘if we’re still single when we’re 40, we’ll get married.’ And I 100% believe with all my heart that some dude has absolutely turned 35 or 40 and Facebook messaged that family friend. The poor girl.

I’m being a little hard on the guy, here, I know. To be honest, I think this is pretty innocent. A split second fantasy of a happy life spent with a person you care about is certainly not the end of the world. And if you were to say this is projection on my part… You got me. I’ve had this very thought before. But immediately after, I laughed at myself for being a dumbass.

Basically, my brain will often draft up a ‘what if we dated lol? jk… unless?” message, directed toward all kinds of gals with whom I have 0 chance of being romantically involved. Luckily, I’ve never sent one of those messages, at least not since like middle school.

Most recently, the subjects of these silly, naive fantasies, have been random other twitter addicts, who I have never met and will never meet. But my brain says: ‘they also like twitter and are funny, and they are an attractive woman, so we have a crush on them I guess?’

That’s right. Lord forgive me. Multiple times. I mean, obviously I didn’t really fall for an egirl. But, I’m pretty sure I did exactly the thing that inspired that image.

It’s so easy to project a fake personality onto someone we don’t actually know. How many adolescent relationships have ended because one partner realized that neither really had anything in common, they just both wanted to make out in a basement?

I’d wager 3 out of 5. At least. Sorry to my high school gf lmao.

Anyway, in conclusion, next time you’re 2 adult beverages deep and watching Parks and Recreation, go ahead and message that family friend. I’m sure they feel the same way.

Just kidding. Don’t do that, you freak. Masturbate and go to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning, and eventually find love (maybe).