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Wellness Wednesday for October 11, 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 think one of the worst recent developments is the extent to which we’ve made our personal lives hostage to our political beliefs. Who cares, just call him they. This isn’t lying or submitting to an evil authority, it’s a minuscule, inconsequential compromise to get along, after you’ve made your position clear. Save your spine for someone you don't care about.

What if it's your own kids though? When it comes to your girlfriend or wife it really does matter. That woman is going to determine how your kids grow up and see themselves.

I'm really surprised at the line you're taking in this thread.

I guess if he is literally at the conceiving phase he should push back. But realistically he isn’t and should cross that bridge when he gets to it. People believe a lot of dumb shit. You can’t draw a million red lines based on problems that might appear 15 years down the line (assuming you have not convinced her or pushed back at any point before that) and expect a normal romantic and social life.

That woman is going to determine how your kids grow up and see themselves.

So obviously you need a perfect specimen with entirely correct opinions on everything or your hypothetical kid’s lives will be ruined. Think of the children.

I don’t know why the internet social advice is always so manichean and unrealistic. It’s like the limited information forces a binary answer, and since the information is usually bad or else they wouldn’t have asked, there’s only one possible answer.

edit: maybe it's all status signaling, like those tinder profiles that go 'you need to be able handle me at my worst, make 16 million dollars a year, be 8 feet tall, etc'. I get it, you got options.

Hey you make some good points. People aren’t perfect and we shouldn’t try to make them be.

Who's 'us' in that statement? Me or her? Or both?

Both. She deserves most of the blame for pressing, but I don't think your intransigence benefits society . A break-up over this would only increase the political homogenity of couplings and friendships. Even if we completely ignore any personal benefits from your continuing relationship, I think it's more important to maintain an open society than to crush the they-them aspirations of the trans in private conversations with your gf.