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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2617 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 20, 2023

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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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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I'd agree that your alternative course of action would have been a much better idea, at least because acknowledging the importance of subtext and escalating away from plausible deniability gradually is a good way to communicate "if I were your boyfriend I probably wouldn't do anything to suddenly embarrass you". I also sympathize with anyone who feels so uncomfortable about delivering rejection that they'll avoid a person they've recently had to reject. But...

pretending to remain friends with her, when she knows you want more, which is not sustainable

"pretending"?

This sounds so much like a pot-shot Scott Alexander thought was embarrassing enough to delete:

They always use this phrasing like "Man, I thought he liked me as a person and enjoyed spending time with me. But then he said he wanted to date me! What a dirty rotten liar!" It sounds for all the world like not only are there two ladders, but that women can't even conceive of the idea of having a single ladder where liking someone and wanting to date them are correlated."

I thought that was a productive post overall because "just ask for dates in socially-recognized venues or via friends-of-friends" was a useful takeaway for some people, but if his overgeneralization actually applies to some women, then "don't reject suitors specifically because they were attracted to your personality first" might have been even more useful.

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