ESI/LIE Conversations

[Adam Strange]

@Adam Strange lol oh dear. Maybe you should believe in God, because she's even considering you.

Lol. @Minde, I’m the one who found her on Match. Now, I will admit that I’ve tried to date other ESIs with no long-term luck, and I’ve been talking to this one for a little over a year and she hasn’t told me to get lost yet, but I’m chalking that up to good luck and long preparation and hard work, not prayer.

Also, I know you really want an ESI and she seems decent, but try to get a better feel for how deep her faith feelings/convictions are. If she's made it a part of herself, then it'll be hard on her to decide between you two, whether that comes sooner or later.

I’m not planning to interfere with her beliefs or ask her to decide between her religion or me. I was married to a woman who went to church every Sunday and volunteered a lot of her time to the church and tithed. I mean, she tithed. Did I tell her that this a complete waste of money? No, not even when my SLI father told me it was. Did I ever say anything at all about it? No. Did I volunteer the slightest hint in any way that she shouldn’t spend money that way? No. She worked and she earned money and how she spent it was her business, and I expected the same consideration from her in return. So I’m not too concerned about this ESI’s religious views, but rather I’m more concerned that she will be intolerant of mine. And if she rejects me for that, I’d call that her loss.

One thing I have absolutely learned is that there are other people out there and you can love many of them. You aren’t stuck with just one. I tend to be very loyal and will stick by the decisions I make, until those decisions absolutely can’t be supported any more, and then I will move on without looking back.
I will admit, I don’t think I will find someone with her exact mix of looks, psychology, habits and history, but that’s OK. I can love a fairly wide spectrum of people, and truthfully, if she and I don’t connect, then I might find someone slightly different whom I like better. I’m only restricting myself to ESIs because I don’t want to work that hard in my relationship. Not as hard as you’d have to work, for example, to stay married to an SLE. And SLEs vary a lot.

That aside, I feel like ESIs are similar to EIIs in the excommunicating of someone after they've crossed a line. Not a perfect match (particularly in severity, possibly), but similar repositioning of the offender. Where that line is and what it looks like can be very variable depending on the individual (and their attachment styles).

I mostly agree with this, but I think the “break” points and reasons are slightly different between EIIs and ESIs. I’m absolutely certain that she divides the world into Friends and Enemies, based on her experiences with those people. She doesn’t do much intuiting. So far, based on what she’s seen of me, I’m in the tentative and possible “Friend” category. But I told her that I’m an alcoholic and I used to do a lot of drugs and I saw panic and alarm bells go off in her head, based on the fact that her first husband bonds by drinking and he used to deal drugs. But I don’t do that anymore, and I think she sees that. But if she eventually decides that I’m not her cup of tea, for whatever reasons, that’s not going to be a huge problem to me.

There are others.