The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Because I am given to writing out sprawling anecdotes, let me tell you the story of my friend W.
W had lived in Japan a few years and speaks better Japanese than I do--I who have lived here more than 20 years. He moved, as one does, to Hawai'i, where he worked at UH and did some ocean-involved part-time jobs. He is a natural physical, outdoorsy-type. Smart, quick-on-his-feet, clever, but also competent. Not bookish. He is also blonde and blue-eyed and has a winning smile. This leads to the next point, namely that he got around with the ladies to some degree. He was mostly attracted to Japanese women, possibly because, as Hannibal Lector says, "We covet what we see every day, Clarisse." Anyway he would occasionally come visit us in Japan and tell me the goings on of his life. I met one or two of his girlfriends. One of them I liked a lot, though, like W himself suspected, I didn't think she would be a great wife. He broke up with her. The next girl he dated I did not meet, though I did see photos. In the photos they looked immensely happy hiking up Diamond Head or diving or on some trail somewhere--they always seemed to be outdoors in the pics. They got along famously, he said. She was several years younger than him, but I saw that as only a positive. She was Japanese, she spoke a little English. She met some of his family, and he hers. He proposed, she said yes, they scheduled a date, the date eventually became the day after I received an email from him.
What comes next is the relevant part to your own story. For W suddenly had had a change of heart. Unlike the situation you describe, his conformed more closely to what I have seen as the norm--he had his change of heart because someone else entered the picture. It is my view that in the realm of relationships many of us will tolerate even the most tedious of sameness and irritating behavior as long as we see this person as our lot in life (once married, at least in my mind, this becomes part of the gig--in other words once married part of the job is tolerating the bad.) However even in good relationships among singles, once someone else drifts into the picture--and I mean someone who tickles our fancy, not just a random brunette at Starbucks who smiles, but someone who hits the right buttons--this is when we start thinking of greener pastures, etc. This is true as much for women as men. And this is what happened to W, though he told me this part in confidence. He then asked me for advice as to what he should do, whether he should go through with the wedding, or just end it, as, frankly, everything in his heart was telling him to do. I told him the choice was clear, and that he should break it off. I told him if he didn't he was going to make the poor girl's life hell later on.
And break it off he did. The day before the wedding. He earned his previous fiancee's eternal hatred, and the eternal hatred of her entire family, no doubt. And probably the hatred of many others. And he did not end up marrying the other woman, either (though he did end up getting married a few years later to yet another woman.) I do not know if he regrets his decision, and maybe there's no way of knowing because of the natural tendency to stick to our guns in such cases (sunk-cost, bygones, etc., though I really dislike such neat terms when applied to human relationships). I personally think he did the right thing, though I have no doubt it was traumatic for the girl and her family, and that he deserved their hate and still does. But that's life.
As for your friend, I am not sure that she will listen as closely to you as a man as she might to your wife. Even then, at the end of the day it's going to be trusting her heart, because Woman. That probably sounds and is sexist, but I don't mean it in a hurtful way. I wouldn't think about it too much if I were you, but I'd lay out your views as a friend. That's just me, and how I am. I know many reasonable people who wouldn't do this, who would keep quiet and just be there for the person regardless of what plays out.
Train has arrived, gotta go. Good luck.
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