141–150 of 418 posts
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Respectfully, the last thing I'm going to do is put in work with my ex wife. When the kids are with me I'll do whatever I want. Those types of discussions are one of the reasons why we're no longer together.
You're going to love it when the kids reach puberty.
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.
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As they age, you're going to find a whole different level of arguing about how to raise kids on an every-other-week rotation with conflicting influences/decisions. Trust me, I've seen it. It can work, but you're gonna need to put in some work on the relationship with the other parent to get through it and find decent compromises.
Respectfully, the last thing I'm going to do is put in work with my ex wife. When the kids are with me I'll do whatever I want. Those types of discussions are one of the reasons why we're no longer together.
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,…
Don't read into this question more than necessary: are you a "generic" American (non-immigrant, born and raised, family has been here for more than 3 generations, no strong ethnic ties) or primarily surrounded by "generic" Americans? I've found most of my long-term, "deep" relationships in the U.S. to be with immigrants/foreigners. With the "generic" Americans, I can get to the point of a friendly and jolly relations…
I'm simply asking to get a better understanding of your view.
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.
> As advanced countries' systems for marriage and child-rearing continue to fail, there is a constant demand for cope. Make childcare not a choice between living in poverty and not, and people will have children again. Many of my generation including myself can't afford children despite us wanting to. The worst problem is obviously housing costs and cost of living in general, coupled with wage stagnation. We don't wa…
I don't think we should want women to be anything in particular. Saying they shouldn't be stay at home mums is wrong, just as saying that men shouldn't be stay-at-home dads is wrong, if they can afford to be. And society has caught up in the sense that house prices are driven up by bids from two-person incomes.
I am personally really curious to see what will become of this tend. It seems to me that economic conditions will continue to reward people for banding together and pooling resources to get access to housing / work spaces / childcare. I don't think it's right to say that the economic pressure 'causes' these social shifts - more that it allows people to recognize that they could live another way if they so chose. The US has historically been pretty disdainful of living situations that aren't nuclear families - but I hope we are entering a period of greater openness and recognition of the diversity of arrangements that work for those in them.
I never thought marriage was at the center of life, and I'm a bit surprised to think some people think that way. In my book marriage is a contract whose main purpose is to agree on what will happen when the spouse divorce (which happens for more than 45% of marriages in my country, and growing). It's not clear to me why it should be a the center of anything, and of life especially. Friendship on the other hand feels…
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.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: There is more than one kind of relationship! It's exhausting to constantly hear about romantic commitment as if it's the barometer for all relationships . That's absurd! Did it truly never cross your mind that a person can have more than one meaningful relationship in their lives? No wonder people are so lonely! You don't need one or the other: you can participate in a close…
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That doesn't always happen though. I feel the most lonely when I'm alone with my wife. We can only have a back and forth conversation on topics that interest her, or the day to day of the house/kids, anything outside those things is just never discussed or is a one-way conversation that just dies. I was friendless and grew up with the same 15 boys until the end of highschool, never fit in. Married the first girl who…
Dude, this isn't "normal". "I'm most lonely when I'm alone with my wife" -- that is not healthy or good. I don't think your situation is applicable to the OP. As a counter, I feel most comfortable when I am alone with my wife. She is my best friend.
That is debatable. What's not debatable is that it's not healthy. Unfortunately a lot of marriages are not healthy so what is 'good' and what is 'normal' significantly differ.
I grew up around a lot of evangelical religious people and there was a massive amount of pressure on people to get married. Conversely there was no pressure to make sure you got along with the people and were going to be happy. This lead to pretty much all my friends having short marriages that ended in divorce.
Marriages are like diets. Some people eat healthily and get the benefits from it, a lot of people have no idea how to eat healthily and suffer because of it.