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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!homxa!carson
From: carson@homxa.UUCP (P.CARSTENSEN)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Kiss of Death
Message-ID: <262@homxa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 29-Jun-84 09:06:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: homxa.262
Posted: Fri Jun 29 09:06:40 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Jul-84 04:11:43 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 22

The problem of turning friends into SO is really a problem of
local maxima and stable equilibriums....it generally has nothing
to do with the niceness of the people involve.  It just takes
a certain amount of gumption, presumptuousness, or something to
risk a nice stable friendship--one person or the other has to make
a first tentative signal that the current relationship is just
a local maxima and the global one is yet to be found--and then
both have to go through a certain amount of playing "emotional
chicken" and other grossly unstable (therefore, exciting but also
uncomfortable) behavior until .... (The other risk is that the friend
is not interested in being an SO...which usually puts the new local
max lower than the old one)  Anyway, the two times this has worked
for me, one happened when he had been away for the summer and we
wrote a lot of letters that summer, the other relationship changed
after a long night of partying, talking, etc. (No, I didn't sleep
with him that night--but the great light dawned that this was one
very interesting guy that I ought to, Hummm....Patty is a little slow
sometimes)

Anyhow, hope this helps some of you who are trying to work out
the relationship equations....
          PJC  houxa!homxa!carson