31–40 of 418 posts
Do I come from an alien universe where people in committed relationships still have friends?
How do you have time for friends besides your spouse after you do jour job, chores, fitness, sleping, education, side projects and random tasks which emerge every now and then? I do have some great friends but only meet them a couple of times a week even though they live very close to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I grew up in a religion where I am expected to love my wife to the point of torture and execution if it would protect her from harm (or at least, that’s the ideal). I doubt any “platonic life-partner”…
May I ask what religion?
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it.”
Doesn’t take more than a minute of reflection to figure out why we interpret it this way.
Edit @avar to your question ("posting too fast"): https://gist.github.com/gjsman/d928b0db53cc2a4bacf37d4e45543...
Kids are the center of your life. They are a lot easier (especially during the younger ages) to raise with a committed partner.
And you will find you have new friends unrelated to your interests and driven by your children; because you will be at the park watching them play with their friends and end up being friendly with the other parents.
Euro perspective: sounds like an american problem of people moving halfway across the country instead of usually settling down nearby with their highschool friends doing mostly the same thing.
As an adult, friendships keep passing by. All of a sudden a good friend "gets busy" or "life just happens". I really do not believe it anymore, even if people are genuinely busy, the least they can do is spare a few seconds of their day to reply back to a text? After what can only be described as a long "sliding window" of maintaining multiple friendships, seeing one tail expire and me actively trying to build more,…
> “It’s hard to make friends when you’re an adult,” Mulaney said. “I think that’s the greatest miracle of Jesus. He has 12 best friends in his thirties, and they weren’t his wife’s best friends’ husbands.”
You're lucky to have some "friendly acquaintances" (which you might call friends, but not speak to for years until you meet up again) - but one or two life-long friends seems to be a relative maximum unless you really set down roots in a small area.
As advanced countries' systems for marriage and child-rearing continue to fail, there is a constant demand for cope. What if we learned to love being single? What if we substitute friendship for marriage? 64 ways to enjoy retirement on your own! This is the collective version of listening to an alcoholic explain why he doesn't have a problem.
How exactly is "marriage" failing? This notion that two people being in a long term relationship can somehow suffer systemic failure or attack is bizzare. No objection re: children though. We've done an absolute number there via cost of living.
I'd probably group them all under the umbrella of social connections failing, which I'd consider one of the biggest issues of US society today.
Honestly, if my wife said I wasn't the number one person in her life then I would find that pretty disrespectful. She is my number one after all. It seems like we've failed a whole generation of adults with good examples of what a relationship should be like.
Do I come from an alien universe where people in committed relationships still have friends?
Propably. Also, I do consider my spouse to be a lot more than a spouse, you know like also a friend on top of everything else.
I'm happy you have this, it is the fundamental quality a relationship needs to work IMO. Having a child only needs animal magnetism, falling in love helps too, speaking from experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Propably. Also, I do consider my spouse to be a lot more than a spouse, you know like also a friend on top of everything else.
i'm not saying you will - but you might be surprised about that friendship after you broke up.
So, I'm sorry if it went horribly wrong in your case, but even assuming you handled everything perfect (behavior, communication), extrapolating to all women is really not reasonable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So far I lost more friends in my life than spouses, but I get your point. If it ever comes to that, I at least hope any break will be more or less amicable. No huge interest in finding out so!
losing friends is in my experience a somewhat dynamic and historically plausible process while break ups turn a switch in a woman's brain. i know this won't fare well with many folks to put it that way - but men don't have that switch. a woman turns from one minute to the other into someone else the moment the relationship is over and the only thing you have left to hope for is that this someone isn't going to be you…