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Wellness Wednesday for November 29, 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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Far enough that it's true that you never really cared?

Maybe a better way to express my thought is: I had an idealized version of what having a girlfriend would look like and how it would change my life. That is what I cared about and wanted.

After getting a girlfriend and many subsequent post-breakup dating interactions I realized that girlfriends and romantic relationships look a lot different than what I had idealized. I no longer cared much about them after replacing my idealized version of these ideas with versions based on my experiences.

Another potential component of this is I sometimes want something (such as a job) because I think it will be greatly beneficial. If I can’t get it then I will fixate on how much better my life would be if I just had this one thing. Then once I finally get it I quickly stop caring very much about it because it didn’t have the benefit I was expecting.

I can certainly identify with the 'having an idealize girl' feeling, and the 'adjusting to an actual girl not meeting those ideals', and that led in my dating life to a lot of introspection about whether I needed to adjust my perception or find a better girl. But never anything like

I no longer cared much about them after replacing my idealized version of these ideas with versions based on my experiences.

Any grappling with comparisons to idealized fantasy girls was part of a deep desire to find real girls that fit the bill, never anything like disillusionment with dating girls generally.

All that to say, I can't really help ya. I hope you work through what you need to and decide what is best for you.