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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

#321

Post by tempestn »

array_key_first wrote: post #234
apaosjsja wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share this sentiment. Most in the west (especially on HN) have been conditioned to believe mercy must always be granted and justice is evil. You can’t have one without the other or society falls apart. As a child of a mother who cheated and ruined our family, I complete agree with you. This story filled me with disgust, and I want to live in a culture where people like this feel guilt at what they did. The sibling…

Wishing for liars to live terrible lives does not help your life. At all. It makes it worse. This comment and mindset is self-destructive. Yes, bad things happen - but nothing is ruined. There is no such thing as ruining, only changing. The relationship changes, the people change, and your understanding changes. Desperately vying for any sense of sameness, and forcing yourself to continue a life that is not true, doe…

And even if you don't consider the well-being of the father at all, surely the best thing for his wife and child isn't for him to continue the charade. I certainly wouldn't want that, in their place.

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

#322

Post by fragmede »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #273
dtech wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a follow up linked a few times in the thread, and unfortunately he looks to be pretty villanous

None of us here ever knew the man, and the only reports we have on his life are from a pseudo anon author who admits that they also did not know him very well. That any of us, including the author, are justified in calling him "villanous" is a big stretch in my opinion. It feels more likely that the author, and perhaps you, simply disagree with the decisions he made. Which is fine, but a far cry from villainy.

We don't have a 24/7/365 video feed of the man's life with which to throughly judge him on, this is true. So casting him as a villian based on this shadow caricature version of a story we've been told might be unfair to the actual person. We're not Michael at the heavenly gates or Osiris or Anubis though, we're just going off of what's been written. Do the actions of that man as described not qualify as villainous to you? It’s small, affecting only the lives of those in his immediate vicinity. But it’s still not good. Maybe little V villainy not big V villainy like Voldemort?

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

#323

Post by Drupon »

fakedang wrote: post #158
l2silver wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I am totally naive on this subject, why was the divorce so hard for him? In that society, they just don't let you get divorced unless both parties agree to it? And with the evidence he had of her being a lesbian, does that mean nothing? What is even the point of divorce in that society?

Because it's the great nation of India, where harassment and dowry cases and custody laws swing hard in favor of the wife. Which has resulted in the worst of both worlds - poor women who won't even see a the light of day in front of a courthouse, never mind inside it, continue to be oppressed by their husbands, while wealthy women tired of their marriages hire ever-more-eager lawyers and slap false dowry cases on the…

Why are you all talking about India when the blog post used Chinese words and explicitly said he was in China?

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

#324

Post by serf »

tempestn wrote: post #315
dpark wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Problem” is not the same thing as “abuse”.

Coercing someone to remain in a loveless marriage while you abandon and repeatedly cheat on them sure is though.

so by this rational a person can be abused without even being aware of it and seeing no comparable ill effect?

Where is the line drawn? Am I abusing my spouse when I decide that we're a bit too over-stretched financially and that we're going to need to skip the surprise Disney World trip that I had planned but hadn't yet told them about?

What about if I think they just didn't try their hardest during the family softball competition? Are they abusing me?

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

#325

Post by mensetmanusman »

miltonlost wrote: post #301
ninetyninenine wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

A kid can handle a gay parent. A kid can handle a divorce. It's not some apocaplypse.

This, look at the stats on how kids fare after these events compared to the death of a parent. Lies have consequences.

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

#326

Post by Drupon »

noduerme wrote: post #58
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…

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.

He was so afraid of coming out that he FORCED his wife to never divorce him and kept a lover on the side while cheating on him as well with multiple partners at the heights of the AIDS epidemic while lying to him that they had a future that he was too scared to ever make a reality. If that's not a coward, then I don't think you and I can agree on very simple definitions of words like "coward".

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

#328

Post by dpark »

Drupon wrote: post #320
dpark wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Problem” is not the same thing as “abuse”.

>because you see, my dad was a coward. mom had started asking for divorces by the time i was in my teens, and dad was the one who always said no. he would complain to her mother, a traditionalist, to ensure that she would berate her daughter back into line. his family and his culture had no place for him, so he used her as a shield to make sure that he would be spared the scrutiny. What exactly do you call that? NoT…

No. Being selfish is not the same thing as abuse.

People do selfish stuff all the time. It’s not abuse even if it’s shitty behavior. Abuse means more than that.

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

#329

Post by fragmede »

lordnacho wrote: post #255
nemomarx wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is he trapped, and could you expand a little on the situation? I'm not sure I understand the social expectation at play for it. Does he actually have kids in his relationship that he doesn't want to talk about or admit to in public? Is his partner being neglected, or children?

It's a "partner" who uses him for his wealth. No kids, and there won't be any, because I know how those are made and you have to do certain things that are not being done. When you talk to the guy, everything is great. Not even a sign that he has gotten hitched to this lady, or is dating, or that anything has happened at all. Yeah it's weird. I was incredulous when I was told.

So your friend has a sugar baby and you feel awkward about it?

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

#330

Post by l2silver »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #319
geoffmanning wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not apologizing for anyone's actions. This is not to say he is a good person. It is to say that there isn't enough evidence to judge one as a bad person. A lot of good people have made bad choices, and these writings reflect a mere sliver of a man's life choices from the very thin perspective of one person's grief laid bare.

There are good and bad actions, not people.

There are students who get good grades on their assignments and tests, and there are students who get bad grades on their assignments and tests, but there are no good and bad students.
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