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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yep, these are your choices. You can elect to compromise your integrity about something that you apparently have a strong epistemic stance on or you can choose to piss your girlfriend off. The easiest thing would probably be to just avoid these people and avoid all discussion of them, minimizing your need to resolve whatever cognitive dissonance you feel from playing along with something you think is ridiculous or pissing your girlfriend off of over something fairly trivial. In general, my advice is that avoiding these people is good general practice regardless of whether you have some pointless disagreement with your girlfriend since they're going to be magnets for pointless (but fashionable!) political disagreements and low-level antagonism.
Didn’t I tell you to take a covid test instead of blowing a friendship? I don’t understand the integrity instincts of the people on this board. I don’t know if it’s the same people, but on the one hand it seems that if they get an email at work telling them to give their pronouns, wear a rainbow shirt and post a blm flag, they won’t even say anything, and act like they’re living under stalin, while they appear ready to destroy all non-pecuniary relationships over some incredibly puny stuff.
They wouldn’t be caught dead protesting or sending a letter to a congressman, or getting into local politics to oppose some policy they abhor (the elites will do what they want anyway, democracy is a sham the state will destroy me like the truckers and blablabla) , but when their gf wants them to use a pronoun twice in their life, they really draw the line and will fight till the bitter end.
You did! I took your advice and you were correct. I still think that the position basically wound up being "compromise your integrity for the sake of friendship or don't". My choice was to compromise my integrity and I think it was the right now.
For what it's worth, I would adhere to a much, much more stringent standard of integrity when it comes to work. That quite literally comes from a place of privilege though - I can refuse something at work and replace a workplace quite easily, but replacing friends is pretty hard. In stark contrast, other people might place great value on their work or just feel like they aren't in a financial position to make a choice.
One additional asymmetry is that shutting up about something and leaving it be is easier than actively participating in something that you have a strong feeling against.
I think it’s important to just vocalize your opposition, perhaps more important than actively opposing. Protests are not effective because they harm a policy or regime, but because it lets other people know they oppose it. They already did, but now they know. Wrong policies thrive when the line is blurred between followers and supporters. They only remain in place if most people are assumed to be supporters, not followers. I think it’s completely counterproductive to act as a quiet supporter in public and turn into la resistance with the people you care about.
But again, maybe it's different people saying those things. Plus I’m really burnt out on the /r/relationships /r/AITA standard “dump him!” takes. Maybe we need less dumping, just people staying together, staying friends, not sacrificing another relationship on the altar of politics for some internet shrews.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link