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After my dad died, we found the love letters

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Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#261

Post by swat535 »

pfdietz wrote: post #142
ryanjshaw wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a big difference between changing and lying. I wouldn’t be happy if my spouse lied to me.

I wouldn't be happy either, but I'd be understanding. Everyone is human. Everyone lies, even to themselves.

I think you're a better person than I am.

Obviously I can only speak for myself here but I wouldn't be so understanding, especially when my partner lied about such a fundamental aspect of their life and joined in a union of marriage with me.

I suppose, for me it would feel like the vows they took where not real and the foundation of our life, all the memories, thoughts and feelings were nothing but smoke and mirrors.

You're right, we're all humans and life is complex but I think it's selfish to waste your partner's life for years because you can't face the truth. I suppose that a bitter end is better than endless bitterness however.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#262

Post by candybar »

schneems wrote: post #257
candybar wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misreading that last line. I'm pretty sure what the author is saying is: > the evening we found the love letters my mom said to me, "he wasted his entire life, his entire life, and mine as well." Also, I don't think she's seeking one vs the other, nor is she judging him less now that she knows he's had a bunch of affairs. She's presenting a story and it's obvious that she has mixed feelings, full of bo…

> I don't think she's seeking one vs the other, nor is she judging him less now that she knows he's had a bunch of affairs. She's presenting a story and it's obvious that she has mixed feelings, full of both positive and negative judgement. It sounds like violently agree with everything other than my framing and wording choices. > I think you're misreading that last line. Maybe. I didn't notice it was a period and no…

> It sounds like violently agree with everything other than my framing and wording choices.

No, you previously implied that the discovery of this information is somehow leading to less judgment and blame and more of an effort to understand.

> The author seemingly had a lot of judgement and blame for the dad before finding this out. It sounds like they are seeking understanding

If you read the story, it looks to me that prior to learning all this she felt bad that he didn't get to have a life of his own and sacrificed for her. But she learned that this wasn't the case. This is kind of the opposite of what you're suggesting.

Also on this:

> You can either seek understanding or seek blame, but not both at once.

My point here is that she's doing both.

> Maybe. I didn't notice it was a period and not a comma until posting it. I still read it as "we found...his life" sure maybe they interpret it was him wasting that life, but your prior sentiment I quoted is the thing I'm emphasizing. I'm not saying there's no judgement. I'm saying there's a clear (to me) attempt at understanding that goes beyond blame.

It's not about the period - it's that she's using italic for quote and this is part of her mom's statement.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#263

Post by dpark »

billy99k wrote: post #211
pavlov wrote: post #75

Ouch. This hits incredibly hard. I’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself. Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like…

"Before you judge the man in this story too harshly" I will judge him harshly. Instead of getting a divorce, he emotionally abused his wide and child, which probably means therapy for the child for life. He's a selfish asshole, that doesn't think about anyone but himself. He also could have brought diseases back home to his wife (Just hearing the stories of his selfishness, he would have kept this hidden or not even…

Where in that story did he emotionally abuse anyone? He was distant and miserable but that’s not abusive (except to himself).

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#264

Post by quacked »

throwaway142351 wrote: post #59

I'm a dad too, and I'm in a somewhat similar situation. My son is under five, and it feels like I'm still at the very beginning of his story. I've known I was gay since high school, probably even earlier, but I kept choosing whatever seemed like the easiest path. It felt easier to stay closeted. Easier to date a woman. Easier to move in together, propose, get married, and even have a child than to face my truth. I lo…

Read The Last Psychiatrist blog.

"If you're going to pretend to be someone, why not pretend to be someone who doesn't hit on the cocktail waitress when he's away from his family?"

Edit: found the exact quote:

> "I feel like I am playing a part, that I'm in a role. It doesn't feel real."

> Instead of trying to stop playing a role-- again, a move whose aim is your happiness-- try playing a different role whose aim is someone else's happiness. Why not play the part of the happy husband of three kids? Why not pretend to be devoted to your family to the exclusion of other things? Why not play the part of the man who isn't tempted to sleep with the woman at the airport bar?

> "But that's dishonest, I'd be lying to myself." Your kids will not know to ask: so?

> The narcissist demands absolutism in all things-- relative to himself.

From this article:

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/01/can_narcissism_be_cu...

Note that I am not accusing you of being a narcissist, merely saying that you may find this blog very interesting.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#265

Post by tsol »

apples_oranges wrote: post #9

"He wasted his life", sounds so dramatic, but what does it really mean. It's just an emotion like regret triggered by made up standards. If things were different and in the end they would have said "he lived his best life", what difference would it make except a few different words, differently arranged. Not sure what my point is, but perhaps being too much into Buddhism and similar things made me lose touch with mor…

He wanted to have a different life, but he didn't embrace it. Instead he lied to his wife and lover. In a more recent update he was cheating on his way lover as well, so he comes out looking pretty bad. At the end of the story everyone in his family is hurt by his actions. Send like he wasted his life and hers if that was the best he could do

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#266

Post by tsol »

lvl155 wrote: post #68

It’s always surprising to me how so many people believe in ideals. Finding love. Living happily thereafter. These are ideals and you’d be truly lucky to have it in your life. One in a billion. Life is ephemeral. We are innately fickle beings shifting from one equilibrium to another. Yet we long for a mirage of permanence.

Judging by the follow up that reveals he was cheating on his lover as well and had been doing it for years he seems to agree with your last two lines. He got the most out of life, but hurt his lover, wife and daughter in the process

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#267

Post by johncolanduoni »

Alt-F4 wrote: post #129
quitit wrote: post #38

From reading both posts, there's a few things that come to my mind: - It seems this is how the author is processing her father's passing, and it's not really up to us to make moral calls on the content of the posts. They are thoughts with gaps of missing context against a real life of highs and lows which is not readily condensed into a blog post. - I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a vio…

[flagged]

Most people do deserve to be able to form emotional and sexual connections, and most people that are unable to in practice are not incels and deserve sympathy without complication. They’re victims, but only in the same sense that someone can be the victim of a hurricane. The important bit is that no person has a duty to be the one to provide those connections.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#268

Post by Forgeties79 »

sallveburrpi wrote: post #186
swatcoder wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only questioned why he would have brought kids into the "union" For a lot of people, building a family is a duty you embrace with your household partner. It's why you exist in the first place. It's why you get married and share a home with somebody at all. Perhaps, if you're lucky, your children are a fruit of love, or perhaps, if you're horny, they're a fruit of passion. But for a lot for such people, having and r…

I don’t exist to produce children, tbh a very narrow view of what life can be.

>For a lot of people,

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#269

Post by mettamage »

swatcoder wrote: post #194
sallveburrpi wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t exist to produce children, tbh a very narrow view of what life can be.

That's great. Indeed, many of us don't see ourselves existing for that reason, especially among people who read and post on this site. But many many many in the world do see it that way, and more even in the past -- when the "dad" would have been making life their life choices -- than do right now. Either partially, but significantly, or wholly. My comment was helping its parent recognize the influence of that way of…

Yea, solid take.

> Marrying the person you're most attracted to or have the most fun with or whose pants you're most eager to get into is a very culturally specific practice and frankly, even where it is an aspiration, its one that a lot of people just don't luck into.

Man, I feel this. And it's also funny that you write it in such an objective way but it's true. It _is_ a very culturaly specific practice.

I've lucked into it. It feels amazing. But I'm lucky that I was crazy enough to really teach myself how to get over rejection and just search for as long as needed to find someone who felt the same way about me as I felt about her. Amazing character building though, it was a true rite of passage for me that started around when I was 16 and ended when I was 32 and married. Dating and being good at it, in order to be in an amazing relationship, has been an obsession of my life. This was in part because I sucked so hard at it as a young teenager. I think in earlier times I'd have settled for someone unappealing or stayed a virgin. Thank god, the internet was a thing when I was young.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#270

Post by tsol »

Alt-F4 wrote: post #129
quitit wrote: post #38

From reading both posts, there's a few things that come to my mind: - It seems this is how the author is processing her father's passing, and it's not really up to us to make moral calls on the content of the posts. They are thoughts with gaps of missing context against a real life of highs and lows which is not readily condensed into a blog post. - I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a vio…

[flagged]

People seem to disagree with this comment but it makes sense. Lots of people get no genuine sexually or emotional attention sure to severe disabilities, cultural incompatibility, weight issues, or simply because they don't know how to socialize properly. It's odd to say they can't live a full life, just because they didn't kiss a girl in the 9th grade.

If relationships are so key to the human experience, the incels would be right. They argue society should feel bad for them and accommodate them, because not being able to get sexual attention keeps them from having a normal life.

Not that I agree with them, but it seems odd to place so much value on relationships, except when people complain it's a problem they can't get one. I have a severely disabled friend who talks about wanting to get married every day. No one has ever shown him that kind of affection and I don't think anyone ever will. That's life for some people unfortunately. If you keep telling them they're missing out on the most important part of life of course it just makes them more frustrated

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