Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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People of the Motte, I am engaged to be married. AMA I guess. Reaching this state was a surprisingly long journey - I'll be 35 on wedding day. I have been dating off and on since I was 18, and at that time I never would have imagined that I'd still be playing the game 15+ years later. Glad to be finally be checking out, hopefully for good.
I can't help but wonder how checking Culture War Roundup threads every day for the last 10 or so years, may have contributed to my ultimate change from rootless, callow 20-something to homeowning family-seeker. This was previously a classic path that people tended to follow, but relatively few of my peers ended up following it. I often wonder if being a SSCer/Mottizen has actually been a good thing for me, or whether I'd have been better off never knowing about the things we discuss here. Nevertheless, though you do not know me, there are many of you to whom I'd send a wedding invitation if I thought we had room for it; and indeed it will be an interesting culture war occasion to observe, as many blue tribe + red tribe friends and family will meet for the first time. But of course on the day, I'm going to really try not to think of it in those terms lol.
Anyway, as far as Friday Fun: my fiancée and I have been doing jigsaw puzzles lately, while listening to the "oldies" station on AM radio. I think for many people, if you see this activity on a list of activities to do, your eyes may pass right over it - it seems so boring that it doesn't merit serious consideration. But seriously, it's actually really satisfying when you get the whole border put together, or when you get on a roll with a big section of the puzzle. Are jigsaw puzzles what they call "lindy"? In any case, I realized there must be a reason why they continue to sell jigsaw puzzles in every Target, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Big Lots etc. in America. Consider giving it a try if you want to do something easy and analog for a while, as a nice little break from technological recreation.
How did you meet? How have your expectations for a partner changed over the years and across relationships? Do you have any regrets that you learned from or might be generalizable?
She started a Meetup.com group dedicated to following the local baseball team. I went to the first meeting, and she and I got along right away. We started talking outside the Meetups, and after a few weeks I asked her if she wanted to go to the baseball team's Hall of Fame with me. From there we just kept doing stuff together; when I "asked her out" it wasn't really a big transition in our lifestyle by that point.
Let me share something which is kind of embarrassing now, but to which I bet many men can relate. When I was in my teens and early 20s, I actually described my dating behavior to my male friends as a "quest to gain XP." That is to say: the only criteria I set in those days was 1.) looks okay 2.) is willing to date me. This is a daft way of living your life, to be honest. I certainly did date many kinds of women: a schoolteacher, a college professor, a pediatrician, a hairdresser, etc., etc.
In hindsight, I know that I was just doing this for validation. I was a very ugly, awkward kid until I finished puberty, and it took me an extremely long time to develop inner confidence. As a result, I was dating without actually assessing my partners for any kind of suitability for long-term relationships. I just wanted physical affection, and to be continually told I great I was. I did get those things, and unsurprisingly, it did not make my life any better, and left me wondering what the point of it all was. Meanwhile, I created all kinds of false expectations in my girlfriends, which would inevitably be disappointed after I had wasted much of their time.
It was in 2020 that I had this realization fully, and at that time I stopped dating entirely; I realized that I needed to make a decision about what I was trying to accomplish, and to stop causing unnecessary pain to other people. So I concluded that I did want to get married, I did want to start a family, and that I needed to focus on cultivating the characteristics in myself that would lead to success in these endeavors, and to find a partner who had them as well: emotional stability, the capacity to love strongly, honesty, high time preference, and so on.
I repent greatly of the way I handled dating in the past. It simply added to the amount of misery in the world. I wish I had known better.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu In the past I learned tactics about dating - about how to be charming, about how to make people like you, etc. I had no strategy: I had no goal, and so there was no way the relationships could go anywhere. It feels like a big waste of time, and while one might say, "You learned something and so it wasn't time wasted," I am cognizant of the fact that by being married at 35 instead of 25, it's 10 less years I can enjoy married life.
If I had had a plan to begin with - I did date some excellent women with whom I might have built excellent lives. Those opportunities are now gone. I love my fiancée, but people should be aware of the "secretary problem." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
It's fine to date for fun. I don't have an issue with doing that. I would recommend anyone who is young, though, to start thinking about the big picture of their life as soon as they can conceive of it. I do, honestly, wish I had done that.
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Congratulations! Must be exciting.
As to the AMA:
Are the two of you planning on having children (and if so, do you have to worry much about having time)?
What's one thing you especially appreciate about your fiancée?
I mildly dislike puzzles (I think?) because if one's in progress I'll do it compulsively instead of the other things I'd like to do. The ratio of impulse to do it vs fun had is too high.
It is simultaneously exciting and exhausting. I am excited to finally give up bachelordom, and I am excited about my fiancee; the main thing I worry about there is that any time we spend together feels too short, and so it could have the effect of making my entire life feel much shorter than it otherwise would have.
We are, and I do worry a bit. On wedding day, I'll be 35 and she'll be 31. She and I both lament to some degree that we didn't meet earlier in our lives; and I do think that if I had my whole life to live over again, I'd have certainly preferred to get married much younger than I actually am doing. I just didn't know any better - I nearly learned it all too late. So she and I both have the attitude of: we'll take what we can get, and be grateful for it. Ironically, from a culture war perspective, the issue of the "fertility crisis" is perhaps my biggest pet issue - I even wrote essays about it college, a long time ago now. I wish I could raise 8 children, but to some extent I'm paying for the folly of my youth, I guess - perhaps every one less child I can have, is punishment for one heart I broke or something, lol.
If we can get to three I'll be ecstatic. Frankly if we even get to one, I'll be ecstatic; I take nothing for granted in this.
Ayn Rand would not approve, I know, but she is remarkably selfless. The wellbeing of her inner circle of family is her first priority, and this is apparent in everything she says and does. I have known lots of people who say things like this, but very few who actually act accordingly. I think she'd probably be too clumsy or slow on the draw to actually take a bullet for me, but I think she really would try.
She is also an optimist to almost a Pollyanna extreme. It can be a bit frustrating at times, but in general it's a great complement to my occasionally Nybbler-esque cynicism.
I do know what you mean. Lately that's been me and the Chess.com app, lol. I spent so much of a beautiful day yesterday, trying to get one more win. At least with the puzzle I have going right now, I know I'm supposed to wait until she and I do it together.
Well, I'm delighted for you!
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Congratulations!
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Congrats!
I was reflecting a bit on how amazing marrying well is to your quality of life last night. We had dinner with a fellow parenting couple - the husband is an excellent friend, a commiserate nerd and hobby-sharer, and is one of the few people aligned with me politically. Extremely intelligent, wouldn't be out of place here. His Wife is a kind, funny person. Great mom, extremely easy to talk to. The whole night was really fun. They're in overall a marriage id consider happier than average.
And yet my wife and I had to vent a bit afterwards at the cracks we can see in their relationship. He's just far too stubborn and snappy, a bit too annoyed at "irrationality" or mistakes. They've been together so long that the kindness-as-default standard isn't there, even if they work effectively as a team to manage their life.
I'm only ~10 years in but that single component is something I can see his wife be a little wistful for. It's something I dread losing so much I can't even imagine it.
I hope you're as hyped about marrying your spouse as I was to marry mine, and that the wedding ends up feeling like those very different people are still, broadly, "each other's people". It's a blast.
FWIW my marriage is almost 30 and we have had some stages where we were less than loving towards each other. Fortunately they have been short lived and we're mutually committed to making the relationship work. But everyone has bad moments and forgiveness is a gift to be given generously to those we love. Don't judge yourselves too harshly if you ever find yourself in one of those picky-pokey stages.
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Congratulations. I got engaged a few months ago. It’s weird, I knew it was going to happen for a long time (and almost exactly when), but it felt like a big thing nonetheless.
Congratulations to you as well, lest this comment slips through. Maybe others were already aware, but I was not.
I think it’s the first time I’ve mentioned it, but thank you for the kind word(s).
I missed the original comment, +1 on the congrats!
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By far the weirdest thing to me when I proposed to my wife was how nerve wracking it was. We both kinda knew it was coming, I was pretty damn sure she would say yes, but it still was very scary even so. Weird how that works.
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Congratulations.
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What are some of the best things you've learned from reading those threads for 10+ years?
It's hard for me to compose an answer to that, because it's been such a constant part of my life for so long now. I can barely remember all the things I used to not know. (Additionally - it's hard for me to compose an answer, because I never have acted on my ambition to "lurk less + post moar" as an aid to getting better at argumentative writing. I guess it's still not too late.)
Here is my best answer, I guess. I discovered the SSC-sphere around 2013. I had just dropped out of a political science Ph.D program - I realized that, basically, trying to write and publish academic papers was miserable to me and I did not want to spend any more of my life doing it. Anyway, even with that pretty high level of education, I still believed such things as:
I could give an unlimited number of other examples like that; and I was certainly 100% within the left-liberal bubble at that time, so the examples would be biased in that direction. Basically, exposure to the SSC-sphere enabled me to build a theory of mind for all kinds of groups and beliefs. Over the years, people in the Motte etc. have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to understand what people really believe and why.
This is a continuous, lifelong process; I'm certain that I still have wrong ideas about lots of people's beliefs. And, my biases have shifted in the opposite direction, but they definitely still exist. But I just didn't think about it at all before - I believed what the people around me believed, and I didn't think about it. Now... at least I think about it, I guess. I no longer think "x believe that because they're idiots" or whatever. I try to understand how people arrive at their conclusions, because even if I oppose them, I still have to live with these people; and having some understanding makes it feel better, or if I want to act against them, I can do it more effectively.
Looking through your history, it looks like you're now Christian. What was the process in that case?
Since you asked, I will tell you. I hope this is not too boring.
Well - I was raised by atheist parents. They weren't vocal about that; I don't think it was even something they decided. They just don't believe anything, and never think about religion. So I was raised with very little exposure to Christianity or any other faith, and I certainly had no developed system of morality, the purpose of life, etc. "Do nice things to other people" and "pursue your happiness" was all I had.
I am a pretty gregarious person; over the course of my life, I met and got to know all kinds of different people from many different backgrounds. In my early 20s, I met two people (in separate places and circumstances - they never knew each other), a man and a woman, who were sincere Christians. Call them A + K I guess. They were open and accessible about it, and would let it be known generally that their faith guided them and drove them in all that they did; they would give thanks to God for anything that they had, and seek solace from God when anything bad happened. Ultimately they would pass out from my life, though I kept in touch with them to some degree; looking back, later, I realized that they were probably the two best people that I ever knew. They both married good partners and built extremely happy lives centered around their family. As people, both of them were intelligent, creative, principled, thoughtful... and just altogether enjoyable to be around as few other people I've known have ever been.
Anyway. After I left that Ph.D program, I cohabitated with a girlfriend, in a terrible apartment which was all we could afford. It was infested with fleas, and water came in through the ceiling often. Having never understood the concepts of networking, internships, etc., I was no more prepared to find work than any man on the street, and so I had a job doing data entry; she was working at a Publix grocery store and going to film school. We were very miserable together. Though we believed we loved each other, we were each dominated in our own way by our insecurities and knowledge of our mediocrity. Furthermore - we had no conception of a future, of what we wanted out of life. I believed I would become a famous novelist, she believed she would become a great filmmaker; this was delusion. We knew absolutely nothing about what is really involved in accomplishing such things. Ultimately: this relationship broke down. We moved back in with our respective parents, since neither of us could carry the lease.
I felt a profound sense that all of my efforts in life were dissipated into nothingness. I failed at everything I tried. I had no money, no prospects; I had even gained like 25 pounds from eating too much "party mix" from big plastic tubs. (That part is not really relevant but I still think about it sometimes.) I considered what successful people I had known had done, and how that differed from how I had lived my own life. I remembered A + K, who were living lives I thought better than my own in every way. Previously, I had thought the claims of Christianity vaguely ridiculous, as that was what my peers believed; at this time, I humbled myself, and began to look into it with a more open mind, for I reasoned that, if nothing else, the people I knew who believed these things and acted accordingly were far happier than I was.
That's the part of the story that actually matters, I guess. The process of becoming a Christian is maybe not as interesting. I started reading a Bible; as I moved around the country during the next few years, I went to various churches, and spent time with pastors and small groups, hearing what they claimed and evaluating if it was something I could accept. Where occasionally some aspects seemed impossible, I concluded that far, far better and wise people than me had accepted them, and I would hold my doubt and wait for full understanding to come at a later time, or never if that's how it turned out. Once I settled in what I think be my permanent geographical area, I formally took membership in a church. I believe as sincerely as I can, and where I do this poorly, I pray to do it better. I do not know if this was, ultimately, a valid, logical, or sensible way of doing things; but it is a true story, and I can also say that my life is better in every single aspect than that of the 24-year-old me who had to move back in with his parents. (Of course, some of that also results from a number of steps I took, also rooted in increased maturity and life experience, that eventually resulted in material prosperity; but that's a story for another time.)
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