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After my dad died, we found the love letters

jenn.site

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

#281
post #104
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm straight and love my wife of 44 years. But I long ago made the thought experiment of what would happen if she were in the same kind of situation you were in: what if she decided I was a mistake, or that being in a relation with a man was a mistake, and that she needed to do something else. I decided that would require I support her in that. How can you love someone and not want what is best for them, even if that…

I can relate to this probably the most out of everything I've seen on HN so far. My fiancee is pansexual and overall seems to prefer women, so I surely am quite a bit of a surprise in her life (to the point where her family laughed at the fact that I 'fixed her' the first time I met them...) as a straight man. I know she loves me, I love her with all my heart but I am aware that at some point she may want to change m…

dude fuck that - cheating is cheating - don't be that guy (unless you're into that sort of thing, of course). if she feels that you aren't the one for her, drop it like it's hot. there's plenty of other fish in the sea

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

#282

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…

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, he is a bad person! Ffs That is quite the judgement of a person you've never known, based solely on the view of one person's brief writing processing a deeply emotional experience. Your judgement reflects poorly on you.

There's too much apologizing for people's horrible actions these days. Nearly everyone is a sympathetic character when you get to know them, but that doesn't excuse them. There were other people, in his situation, who took different approaches that didn't result in locking a woman away in a loveless marriage for her entire life. I'm sure a lot of us come from easier situations, but the people who come from hard situa…

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

#284
post #221

Interesting anecdote, but for the life of me I can't understand what relevance this blogpost could have here on HackerNews

I see these comments on most HN threads that aren’t about tech stuff, but to me these are the best part of HN. I think it should include things people in tech who are also humans find interesting and want to discuss, like this, not just discussions of the latest cpu architecture or whatever. If you don’t find it interesting ignore it, and the algorithm will make it go away on its own if most people agree!

But that's why I'm in HN, If I wanted to read this, I would be in reddit.

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

#285
post #76
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…

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If it were written to seek attention in 2025, it would be on substack or twitter, not on a quiet personal website that can't go viral unless someone else posts it on hackernews

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment definitely made it sound like the victim/husband's suffering came from the culture they lived in, not the wife's actions directly. So I vote for bad system, not bad people.

I think marrying someone despite being attracted to the other sex without telling them and then having an affair with someone definitely makes you a bad person. But that’s me.

I can even tolerate / excuse / forgive up until that point, because it is indeed an unfair system. She took a gamble and got caught, at which point she ought to have made a deal with the guy. Not exploited the other unfair system of state violence against him.

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

#287
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the capitalization of the quote your own doing or was it displayed like it for you? There isn't a single uppercase letter when I open the article, it's impossible to me to read it because it feel like a single sentence and I can't breathe

The author obviously has this as an acquired habit or affectation, possibly for stylistic reasons. It's interesting that some people can read this just as well as normal prose, but to others it feels as if someone is pouring sand all over their well-oiled gears. I gave up after a paragraph as well. I fully support people writing in whatever way pleases them, but for broadly accessible article length text capitalisati…

Generally agree with that, but in this particular case I don't think this text was designed to be broadly accessible, given the content and the platform (little indie website).

Edit: checked out some of their other posts and they don't always use this style. Seems like a pretty deliberate choice here.

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

#288
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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).

Um, you don't see the problem with that when it's your father / husband?

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

#289
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I hope this comment finally seals my departure from HN. Lots of very thoughtful people here but the small toxic fraction is still too high.

Yes, there are some toxic people here, as in any community or population, but there are also thoughtful and compassionate people here. This article seems to be mostly filled with the latter. I don’t know what your experience on HN has been but I encourage you to look beyond the that unpleasent post and consider the humane majority on this pot before you make your decision.

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

#290
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…

I agree with all of what you say, and while I thought the author was very good, I think calling him a coward was an unnecessary stroke of vanity and bitterness. For the same reason that no one can ever know what's inside another person's mind, much less a child understand their parents.

So when can we judge someone a coward then?
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