and lived among Polish-Germans and other such "mixes’
Incidentally, any Pole is very likely to be a German mix. Throughout history there was a very large share of German immigrants among the burghers, to the point some of the cities were practically entirely German in ethnic terms. Much of the knighthood was German, which is obscured by the manner in which surnames formed (Polish adjectives based on the name of the manor, which tell about the manor’s origins and not the knight’s). In some regions, also the peasants, sometimes crowds of them, especially where there was depopulation or forests were cut to make room for cities. The share is so high that German names spelt the Polish way are as Polish as any. As far as I know, in WW2 a third of our commissioned officers had German surnames (and I’m not sure if names of merely distant German origin were not excluded, and this obviously excludes descendants of once ethnically German knights that named themselves after Polish manors). Poland was much like the US in this aspect of its past history (there were also other ethnicities with similarly strong impact, other than ethnic Poles… we had many Jews, not a few Dutchmen, Ruthenians aplenty, obviously, some immigrants from neighbouring Muslim nations, and heck, we even had a Scottish minority with its own self-government
).
But let’s get back to the topic:
“Virgins rejecting their fellow virgins in favor of non-virgins”? Are you suggesting that there is something wrong (ie, brains screwed on backwards) with people who choose a spouse who wasn’t a virgin, as if that should be the only criteria to evaluate a potential spouse on?
I believe Norseman’s primary gripe (and please correct me, Norseman, if I’m wrong) is with the apparent comparative difficulty of virgins and their male counterparts (men are not virgins, a virgin, strictly speaking, has the same meaning as maiden, which is not what you call a man) in finding a partner.
Believe me when I say that I have, even in Catholic circles, heard comments like, “if someone is still a virgin [not “unmarried” — chev] by age of X, then something is wrong with him,” putting that kind of folk pseudo-psychology ahead of moral considerations, such as the idea that the person may have chosen not to engage in premarital sexual encounters for moral reasons, accepting the consequences of such a decision. (As opposed to a “healthier” history of trial and error.) This goes in line with the secular idea that people who don’t engage in certain particular behaviours recognised as wrong but still supposedly very human, are somehow defective, or with the secular idea of a “healthy” approach to morality, i.e. making exceptions from time to time.
Of course, everybody is free to talk about spiritual pride (admittedly a temptation likely in the case of some people who’ve stayed virgins (or male counterparts thereof) for a long time), or about the fact that those who have not fallen in some particular regard (but in all likelihood have fallen in a host of others like all of us) may well mean they haven’t been sufficiently tried, or about the love that springs from forgiveness… All of which is true.
But certain fundamental things must always be remembered:
somebody who abstained from premarital sex that was the cultural norm and everybody else was having, made a great sacrifice. Due to the modern circumstances, it may have cost him much psychologically (I could elaborate but would not for the sake of brevity) and the cost of that sacrifice (including the sacrifice of relationships or potential relationships sacrificed as collateral victims) may have made him grumpy or stern. But that is because the sacrifice was costly and even if the person in question has had problems dealing with the costs, he fundamentally did the right thing (possibly at a great personal cost at that). Anybody who would suggest that it would have been better for him to have allowed himself a deliberate exception (to release tension or otherwise) or have loosened up his mental control (which could have let to pitched mental battles, and I could tell you about a couple) in order to prevent straining it (as in give up on the inhibitions so that you remain sane), simply does not understand.
Incidentally (though relevantly), such a lack of understanding may well form an additional obstacle in finding a companion. It may shoot down the ability to comprehend and to coexist.
As for “poisoned dating pool”, I wouldn’t shrink so much at that expression. From the point of view of what it should look like and what it does look like, strong statements are very well justified. I gave you some numbers from a Catholic country and a Catholic website, with a double (i.e. in this case exponential) bias in the statistics. Now think of the world as a whole, a region or social group that is not so Catholic or Christian or is heavily secularised.
What is more, as many threads in these Family Forums amply illustrate, there are plenty and plenty of people with issues. Issues which may well and probably do originate from previous relationships or childhood experience (i.e. with parents, who had their own experience and so on). People are pitted against things only script writers normally give thought to. Whereas the WYSIWYG principle (What You See Is What You Get) stands, it’s still true that plenty of people do have really nasty or weird issues (merely issues is what everybody has) , some of whom have crossed over to the dark side (players, revanchists, those who get a kick out of being mean etc.). The dating pool is indeed poisoned.
I just gave up and am much happier. It would be nice to have the companionship though but relationships these days seemed to be filled with so much drama I’m happy as I am for now.
) are not being appreciated. They may have the feeling that in the perception of their potential partners, even Catholic, this isn’t priced, is regarded as irrelevant (or even an oddity). This is why I always chime in in these discussions.