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).
Jump in the discussion.
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That makes sense.
I’ve had some short-term romantic relationships and they always ended up feeling like the effort I was putting in wasn’t worth it. I felt like I was in a constant audition for her attention and that I had to remain vigilant about everything I did around her so she wouldn’t lose interest and leave me for another man with more relationship experience. I felt there were a lot of things I couldn’t open up about because it would be perceived as a sign of weakness.
My mental model of romantic relationships is probably heavily influenced by those experiences. If all future relationships are going to be like the past ones then I would be happier by remaining single. However, maybe not all relationships would turn out like that. Maybe I could find my 99% match that is unlike the other women I have been in romantic relationships with. I have a hard time envisioning that a new relationship would be different from previous ones based on my observations when interacting with new women.
Most relationships are like that in the beginning. People test each other, both for competence and interest.
That kind of testing doesn't persist indefinitely (unless they have something like bpd).
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Do you think any of these dates developed an emotional attachment to you? I call them dates because this is not what deeper relationship are like at all. While dating as a man you usually need to adjust to female expectations but after a good connection is established it’s often the opposite and it’s the female who adapts to the guy’s personality and worldview.
I don't think any of these dates developed emotional attachments to me. The pattern seemed to be that she would view me as a nice/pleasant/reliable person but there wasn't enough beyond to generate a deeper emotional attachment.
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