NeedleinA

It doesn't do to idolize people too much. Lord Nelson won many a battle and was loved by his men, but he neglected his wife while having a long-lasting affair with the wife of his best friend. Martin Luther King may have been inspired by God, but he was also a serial philanderer and plagiarist. And the real George Armstrong Custer was absolutely nothing like Errol Flynn.
 
I'm sure it's the same in the US, but here in the UK there have been a stream of famous people many of us loved from childhood, who it now seems were sex predators.
 
To start with there was Gary Glitter. He was always a bit of a "character". I saw him in concert when I was at college - not of course during his main period of fame, but during a short-lived comeback in the 1980s when he was playing to students (like me) who remembered him from when they were 9 or 10.
 
That was bad enough, but it really took off with Jimmy Savile. I must confess I never exactly "liked" Savile: he was entertaining and funny to watch on TV, but I don't think I'd have felt comfortable meeting the guy. It's no big surprise that there was something funny going on behind the scenes.
 
But then came Rolf Harris. Good old Rolf. We all loved him. There were his Christmas and Easter shows, Rolf Harris' Cartoon Time and Animal Hospital. Great stuff. I agree with Russell Brand that the news of what he really was makes you need to re-evaluate your childhood.
 
But now: now there is Peter Ball. Less famous than the three I've mentioned so far he's not been in the news much, which is why I've only just become aware of this. Ball was an Anglican bishop/monk who worked a lot with young people during the 70s and 80s. I say "was" because he's not only been "defrocked" but convicted and imprisoned for sexually assaulting many teenage novices in his monastery. It's not even as if this might be a miscarriage of justice: he has fully admitted to it all - much to the dismay of his many fans and supporters.
 
To be quite honest I don't know an awful lot about Ball, but what mostly stand out in my memory are Adrian Plass' descriptions of him. Since Plass is one of my all-time favourite writers, and Ball was a close friend/mentor of Plass, I have (without much justification) adopted Ball as a kind of "hero by proxy". Stupid I know, but there you have it...
 
"...there is absolutely no substitute for our own individual journey with God, for spending time alone with him, and growing directly in our own consciousness of his compassion and wisdom. Leaders, systems and even theologies rise and fall, and we need that deep, personal, inner walk with Jesus that ultimately nothing can take away." Adrian Plass

Can I anticipate this 3 grand watch to replace all the other watches I'd run through over the course of a lifetime? It's not necessarily an impractical investment.

That just gave me an extreme case of the shivers.  :)

Sorry for going off topic, but it's come up so much with some false assumptions, that I'm gonna post....
 
From my understanding, if you feel drained when you get home, you're likely an introvert.  (In the below, when I say "stimulation" it just means electrical / chemical stimulation going on inside your brain.)
 
Introvert vs. Extrovert has nothing to do with whether you like people (though it would be awfully hard to be an extrovert who dislikes people).  It has everything to do with your natural mental energy level and the source of that energy:
 
1) Introverts expend mental energy when interacting with other people (when it's over, they feel drained and need time alone to recharge).  Introverts recharge their batteries alone.
  a) Being shy has nothing to do with this - shy is simply being uncomfortable around people for some (often specific) reason / fear.  Many may confuse introversion with being shy, but they are not directly related, and extroverts can be shy (which is very hard on them).
 
2) Extroverts expend mental energy when alone.  To recharge, they interact with other people (and when it's over, they feel energized or refreshed).
 
For both kinds of people, excessive interaction with people causes over-stimulation which is felt as stress or anxiety.  Too little time with people results in sadness or even depression.  "Excessive" and "too little" are determined by your internal brain stimulation level (without external influence).  If the stimulation is naturally high, you're an introvert and interaction with others can more easily push you into "too much" (and "too little" is harder to reach).  If the stimulation is naturally low, you're an extrovert and need lots of interaction with others to keep from getting bored, and "too much" is a lot harder to reach (and "too little" is easier to reach).
 
Now clearly, this is a spectrum, not an on/off thing.  Thus, someone could be right in the middle of this ("ambivert" as LP has called it).
 
Both types of people can enjoy company, and love it when something they're passionate about is involved.  Both types can also enjoy solitary activities.  It's not about the type of activity or interaction, it's about energy levels / sources.  Though introversion is more often treated as a problem because it's misunderstood by both types of people, often leading to introverts avoiding interaction because they don't understand their own reactions, and leading extroverts to treat them like they've got a problem (often a choice problem) because they don't understand it either.
 
Yes, this is the dumbed-down version ala Zil, but if everyone understood this, and treated themselves and each other accordingly, we'd all have much more positive relationships and interactions.  (I know my relationships and interactions are much better for my understanding - and, despite being an introvert, it's _much_ easier for me to spend time with people now.)

Biologist/ecologist here. 
 
 Accepted idea: I do believe that there is spiritual "DNA", in that we are children of the Father, and we all have individual talents/gifts/inclinations.
 
Rejected ideas:
* The spiritual "DNA" relates to literal DNA in any way.  
* That pre-mortal actions result directly influence our situation in this life in any categorical way our mortal minds can understand.
*  That one's talents/gifts/inclinations somehow elevate responsibility for person acting one way or another (either positively or negatively).   

For what it is worth I just stumbled across this 2013 article:
 
American men’s hidden crisis: They need more friends!
Of all people in America, adult, white, heterosexual men have the fewest friends. Moreover, the friendships they have, if they’re with other men, provide less emotional support and involve lower levels of self-disclosure and trust than othertypes of friendships. When men get together, they’re more likely to do stuff than have a conversation. Friendship scholar Geoffrey Greif calls these “shoulder-to-shoulder” friendships, contrasting them to the “face-to-face” friendships that many women enjoy. If a man does have a confidant, three–quarters of the time it’s a woman, and there’s a good chance she’s his wife or girlfriend.

Both me and my Husband don't get on with our families too well, we do visit them but we don't really have anything in common with them and a lot of them smoke and drink and stuff which neither of us want around the kids.
 
My Husband has a lot of friends he sees maybe once a month or two months.   His best friend he has had since School and he is a Muslim convert.    His best friend at work is a married lady but we normally do stuff with both of them.
 
I like having close friends I have 3 close lady friends that I do stuff with normally on a 1 to 1 basis and a couple of male friends, I am into a lot of science fiction and philosophy, listen to rock music and have quite a dark sense of humour so I find I have more in common with guys as a rule.   The lady friends I have are like me and it took me a while to find them. 

I've already had my say on this topic. Let me just add that I do know men that I consider to be "close friends"; it's just that that term doesn't mean exactly what it used to mean. And I am convinced that there is a lot more to intimate friendship than most American men of my acquaintance seem to understand.
 
But there is a downside. On a recent flight, I watched an Italian "comedy" featuring a half-dozen or so close friends discussing the naming of a child. The father was joking with his friends that he would name the boy "Benito" (as in Mussolini), and the friends were absolutely shocked and had lots of nasty things to say. By the time the father admitted he was only joking, things were spiraling downward. Frankly, this is exactly the sort of scenario I envision when having people know you intimately. Along with such intimacy comes, or should come, the caveat that you never, ever use the information to hurt the other person. Kind of like with marriage, you know.
 
In the end, I suppose it's a matter of trust and trustworthiness.

I have some close friends outside of my family. I have two other guys that I go on trips to Nauvoo with. They are my Nauvoo Junkie buddies. I also have another church member that I go to Notre Dame football games with.

I have one good friend and many acquaintances.

Here's a paraphrased story from one of my best friends.
 
*******
 
I was in a Primary meeting where a bishopric counselor was talking to the children about using good language. At one point, he asked the children, "What kinds of words shouldn't we say?" The children looked around at each other silently. One hand timidly crept up, and the bishopric counselor said, "Yes, Bobby?"
 
Bobby said, "...butthole?"
 
Immediately, two dozen small hands shot up.

My youngest daughter just called me "a dolt" -- think real hard what she was really trying to say.

If you consider yourself a Mormon, act like one. Quit seeing him, especially since it is leading to fornication.

Don't date an atheist.

I'll give you the advice you don't want to hear.  You already know the answer-you just are refusing to accept it. That refusal to accept the answer you know to be right will lead to much heartache in your life.
 
Obeying the Law of Chastity when you are young and in love is hard enough as it is, you make it even harder on yourself when you are the only one who believes in it and the other person does not. For an atheist there are only two reasons not to have sex out of wedlock; STDs and babies and both of those are overcome by "protection".
 
No matter what he claims or how strongly he claims to say to you about how he might believe sex before marriage is wrong--deep down in today's modern society there is absolutely no way he can be an atheist and firmly believe it. Not believing in a God, means not believing in scriptures and the scriptures are the only thing in our modern society that makes the claim, definitively sex before marriage is wrong.
 
I'll tell you the other thing you don't want to hear; continue down this path and you will have sex with him.  If that is what you desire then you will get it; if you desire to stay true to God then you already know what you have to do.

Hi Strangesquirrel,
 
Doubt is good.  Lots of us start from a position of "I'm a good Mormon because my parents believe and I keep the commandments pretty well".  That's not really the foundation for a testimony though.
 
You need to figure out for yourself: Do you believe in God?  Jesus?  Do you believe the restoration was brought about by Christ through Joseph Smith?  I'm guessing you may not know if you believe that stuff or not.  Again - this is normal - we grow up just assuming, running off of the testimonies of others.  Then your dad's testimony disappears and it rocks your universe.  Totally understandable.  
 
A quote that helped me:
 
 
  You need to figure out what you believe, and why you believe it.   God bless and good luck!

In the end I really enjoyed it and will happily shove money down Disney's throat for more.
 
Parts that bugged me: get more new characters! Sure it was nostalgic to see the same fish guy (General Ackbar) in the exact same setting but I could have just watched the older movie for that. Same with Nien Nunb (another fish looking guy). 
 
I actually felt bad for Kylo Ren that he, a trained sith, was beaten by someone so new to the force. Sure Rey knew how to fight, but what did she really know about the force? She was an infant, yet took Kylo to town. I don't mind at all that she kicked some but, but it just didnt seem she was ready for an all out battle like that. 

Being offended is a choice.
 
And most often an unwise one.

You should rethink that and stick around.

As an adult man, I have no truly close friends outside my wife and immediate family. One of my close friends is a man I Skype with who lives in Italy and whom I have never met before in the flesh. I consider myself "close" friends with a few men who are or have been members of my ward; but "close" in in quotes because they are not close the way my close friends were when I was twelve. I do occasionally talk about personal and even sensitive things with them, because I trust them. But we are not "best buddies" like I had in my childhood.
 
I have spent the last two weeks in Hyderabad, India (preparing to leave for home in a few hours). I have just loved India, almost every aspect of it. (Except traffic. I haven't loved traffic. But I have enjoyed the way Indians drive and use their horns as communication devices rather than expressions of frustration and anger.) One thing I have seen that is not uncommon is for men walking together to hold hands. Seems strange at first, but why shouldn't men hold hands in friendship or brotherhood? Who decreed that hand-holding among men was limited to fathers with young sons and homosexual couples?
 
I am becoming convinced that we in American (perhaps even Western) life have all but lost the intimate connection between men that has been a hallmark of civilized behavior throughout human history. I recall the intimate friendship Jesus shared with his disciples, that went far beyond a fond regard and a warm handshake. I think of king David and the intimate friendships he had with other men, such as his transformative friendship with Jonathan, the son of Saul, David's mortal enemy. I read the descriptions of some friendships in the Book of Mormon, such as between Moroni and Lehi, and I think I detect that kind of true love. Some moderns like to suggest that such friendships imply homosexuality, but I think this is a perverse interpretation based primarily on wishful thinking and the ancient Greek model of sexuality, which embraced homosexuality and pederasty.
 
When Jesus says that we can become his sons, we have some idea what he means. When he says we can become his friends, I strongly suspect this has cultural overtones that escape us -- not because the ideas are hidden, but because our culture has not taught us what that even means. Imagine a culture where mutual respect and deep love were not expected in, or even thought of as a normal part of, a marriage between a man and a woman. How much richness, depth, and beauty would people in such a culture be missing out on? It's heartbreaking to consider. Yet we may be in much the same situation regarding deep and lasting adult friendships, women too but mostly men.

Elder Bruce R. McConkie :
 
"The place of gathering for the Mexican Saints is in Mexico; the place of gathering for the Guatemalan Saints is in Guatemala; the place of gathering for the Brazilian Saints is in Brazil; and so it goes throughout the length and breadth of the whole earth. . . . every nation is the gathering place for its own people." 
 
(quoted in Church News, 03/06/93...Elder McConkie died April 19, 1985)

"Ahoy! There she blows!". Thanks Windseeker, that was quick!

Welcome Bruce. I'm a High Priest who wishes they would call me to the nursery :), you are a lucky man!

Fun slice of history from the 1979 Ensign, where we all but grant Mohammed the title of prophet, and the Koran status as scripture: