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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2499 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 27, 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:

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I've struggled with this too buddy. Despite what @George_E_Hale says, I've talked to quite a lot of married men grappling with this problem and I'd say that your position is the norm. Most men who get married aren't ready for it, and are nervous often in an existential way about being with one woman for the rest of their life. It's a serious commitment.

First off, it's a damn good thing that you take it this seriously and think about the long term consequences. Most men don't do this, just sort of put the ring on and get carried on a wave of infatuation and short-term thinking. This type of spontaneous decision making is what our short-term consumerist society loves to perpetuate, and it's foolish. In my humble opinion, it's the reason so many marriages end in heartbreak nowadays. Two immature children deciding to make a serious commitment based on fleeting feelings.

Now I'm not married, although I hope to be relatively soon. And I can strongly relate to what you've written here, hell I could've written this bit myself:

I doubt my girlfriend would accept a non-monogamous relationship (I don’t even really want this myself), and I don't intend to be unfaithful (if only because the stress / feelings of guilt would eat me alive). I've always preferred vanilla sex; novelty's my only kink.

I can say what has helped me get over the nerves and 'settle in' to the idea a bit more is understanding the full tradeoff. I can't find it after a quick search, but the great @FiveHourMarathon responded to one of my older posts here explaining this. Picking a wife can be seen as kind of like an intense game of poker. Yes, of course it's exciting to keep betting and betting and trying to win bigger and bigger. Get more and more novelty. But eventually you're going to be faced with a choice. You'll have to decide to go all-in. And ultimately if you never decide to put everything on the line, if you always waffle and place small bets, you're probably never going to win shit. You're always going to have to risk something if you want a true reward.

It depends on what you want out of your life. Not marrying the girl and going for a string of shorter term relationships is probably the safer option. You'll get fleeting pleasure, you won't have to change who you are much, you'll have a lot more control over your life. But you also won't get the lasting satisfaction of knowing there's a person you love there to reach out to when you wake up at 3am questioning all your life decisions. You won't learn what it's like to have to truly self-reflect, because you have a partner that knows you a damn sight better than you know yourself and who's willing to call you on it when you're being a hypocrite.

Most importantly, you really won't know what it means to commit to something, deep down. I've been learning that there is no commitment without risk, without sacrificing a part of yourself. I'm sure @FlyingLionWithABook can pull up the full quote, but C.S. Lewis said it well in Mere Christianity:

It is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction.

I've found that the more I'm willing to sacrifice the childish part of myself that just wants to bang chicks and live free, the more depth and beauty I've been able to find in my own relationship. The icy walls I've put up around my heart have started to melt, just a little, and I've managed to glimpse what it really means to open yourself to someone else. It's terrifying, breaking open, but there's a beauty and intensity in that vulnerable surrender that I've only found elsewhere in literally feeling the divinity of God.

To answer your question as to where to start, I'd recommend reading about journeys to maturity and what it means to become a true adult. You'll quickly find that most people in the modern West are childish, never even truly reaching the stage of early adulthood, as Bill Plotkin outlines well in his work on discussing the human soul and the stages we go through.. You could also check out Jung's Man and his Symbols, or go into the Constructivist framework and look at Piaget's writing or Kegan levels.

There's no easy way to get around the idea of marriage. Frankly it's a hell of a difficult journey, as it's one of the only serious decisions and commitments men have left to make in the West. But even if it stresses you out on a deep level and makes you question your life, it's also an opportunity for you to grow and mature. Decide what kind of person you want to be, and commit. That's the best advice I can give you.

I'm sure FlyingLionWithABook can pull up the full quote,

Speak of the devil, and he shall (eventually) appear!

People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on "being in love" for ever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change—not realising that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there.

Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and becomes a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.

This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow —and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life.

It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

Thank you. I think this is very helpful. I look at various of the married guys I work with and it's hard to tell whether their boring-seeming (to me) lives are actually full of these hidden, rich wellsprings of "beauty and intensity," or whether it's all a lie I should run from without looking back. A lot depends on the person, I guess.

I look at various of the married guys I work with and it's hard to tell whether their boring-seeming (to me) lives are actually full of these hidden, rich wellsprings of "beauty and intensity," or whether it's all a lie I should run from without looking back.

The vast majority of adults I've interacted with are broken from trauma and have learned to repress their emotions to a large degree in order to function in their workplaces. It's not an enviable life, in my opinion, as the costs are high. Learning to be a passionate and intense person is difficult work though, not for the faint of heart.

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