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Alone Together, Again

al3x.net

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Re: Alone Together, Again

#31

Post by graue »

themgt wrote: post #2

I spent four years telling anyone who asked how we met that OkCupid’s matching algorithms must have been off. “We were only a seventysomething percent match, with like a twelve percent chance of being enemies. Guess they need to work some bugs out!” The joke’s on me, of course. I emailed the right person at OkCupid to apologize for the years of disparagement. This about a 4 year relationship? The whole thing reads li…

The suggestion that OkCupid's algorithms were right all along and that's why the 4-year relationship failed is, if taken seriously, indeed questionable. But I'd assume that remark is more an offhanded joke than anything.

Re: Alone Together, Again

#32

Post by teddyknox »

fferen wrote: post #21
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

I spent so much time trying to organize the life that I thought I wanted. It wasn’t the same as living. Every single time I've tried to push my life in a direction, tried to bend it to my will, it has blown up in my face. So, while I have things I'd like to do and places I'd like to go, I've learned to just let things unfold as they may. I try to influence and guide it, but I don't push it anymore. I think it comes d…

This is basically how I live my life. Throughout high school and freshman year college (I'm 19) I was always so concerned about things that were utterly unimportant in hindsight, like not offending people, making friends, not being a shut-in (I've always been an introvert). I've found that simply not caring about stuff has made the biggest improvement in my life satisfaction. For example, I tried to make friends in t…

I think that this passive philosophy is important for finding happiness, but that going against the grain is exactly what it takes to achieve success.

In my mind the hardest part of life is figuring out and prioritizing what I should do. During my freshman year of college (another 19-year-old here) I was very deliberate about taking classes I was interested in, rather than ones that my friends from orientation were taking. As a result I learned a ton of great stuff, I had an awesome schedule, and I met kids I wouldn't have met from just staying within my comfort zone. At the same time, I missed out on valuable chances to get to know other kids that were in the same boat as me: fledgling freshman looking for a friend group. I think if I had gone with the flow in this situation I would have been much happier that first semester. I would've been taking easier classes, getting more sleep and exercise, and hanging out with soon-to-become lifetime friends. That's what I've been trying out this semester, and it's turned out that I'm much happier for it. But is this a road I want to keep going down?

In tasting the happiness of wu wei and satisfaction of focused drive, I've realized the dilemma that I've always been in. As a social yet ambitious individual the hardest part of my life has been finding balance.

Re: Alone Together, Again

#33

Post by noonespecial »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

I spent so much time trying to organize the life that I thought I wanted. It wasn’t the same as living. Every single time I've tried to push my life in a direction, tried to bend it to my will, it has blown up in my face. So, while I have things I'd like to do and places I'd like to go, I've learned to just let things unfold as they may. I try to influence and guide it, but I don't push it anymore. I think it comes d…

To this I might add my own minim of insight:

Don't try to like the things you think you ought to like, just let yourself like the things you do like.

It seems simple enough, but I found it quite difficult to actually do. If you succeed though, it not only makes you happier, it also seems to inoculate you against pretentiousness.

Re: Alone Together, Again

#34

Post by benatkin »

philwelch wrote: post #29
btilly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sounds great, but not exactly true. There are therapists out there who push their clients to blame everything on their marriage and get divorce. Some marriages that were working perfectly well until the poor therapy ended in divorce, to the later regret (at different times) of both members. So at the moment of divorce there was unhappiness. But what marriage does not have periods of stress? But the marriage its…

I'm not sure I buy this. First off, why are people going to therapy unless something is wrong? Secondly, once this person goes to therapy and ends up asking for a divorce, what makes the other person such a reliable source on whether things were going well?

> First off, why are people going to therapy unless something is wrong?

I think btilly meant to answer this with "So at the moment of divorce there was unhappiness. But what marriage does not have periods of stress?" It isn't very clear, but the point is that something might be wrong, but it might be temporary.

> Secondly, once this person goes to therapy and ends up asking for a divorce, what makes the other person such a reliable source on whether things were going well?

A lot of decisions to get divorced aren't mutual. Many of them seem mutual because the other person decides to cooperate, but that's different from arriving at the same decision independently.

Finally, btilly said that it's an edge case. My reaction was to think that Louis CK is a comedian and that he's saying something that is the case much of the time is the case all of the time for effect. I take philosophical statements by comedians with a grain of salt.

Re: Alone Together, Again

#35

Post by gruseom »

sakopov wrote: post #24

This June i jokingly told my fiance "I wish you a great husband" on her birthday. She laughed. I laughed. 2 months later and 1 month before our wedding we separated in the most disgusting, disturbing way possible. The joke was also on me. I was alone and devastated. Then suicidal. Then just hopeless and completely alone. I'm not sure i know how to cope with this. Life as a gigantic lesson, never meant to be completel…

That's pretty recent and sounds like it's still raw. So for what it's worth I wish you the best in getting through it. As a wise man once said, first the shocking truth, then the healing truth.

Re: Alone Together, Again

#36

Post by oz »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

I spent so much time trying to organize the life that I thought I wanted. It wasn’t the same as living. Every single time I've tried to push my life in a direction, tried to bend it to my will, it has blown up in my face. So, while I have things I'd like to do and places I'd like to go, I've learned to just let things unfold as they may. I try to influence and guide it, but I don't push it anymore. I think it comes d…

I don't know. We all have outcomes we prefer. Shouldn't we take rational actions to create those outcomes? Sure, "life is what happens while you're busy making plans," but some people do accomplish what they set out to do. I want to join their ranks.

On a day-to-day basis, what's the difference between "influencing and guiding it" vs. "pushing it"? No snark, just trying to understand your POV a bit better.

Re: Alone Together, Again

#37

Post by jdietrich »

colmvp wrote: post #3

“Divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. It’s really that simple. That’s never happened – THAT would be sad. If two people were married and they were really happy and they just had a great thing, and then they got divorced, that would be really sad. But that has happened zero times. Literally zero.” Louis CK

Bullshit. I personally know of at least two marriages that ended in divorce for reasons entirely unrelated to the quality of the relationship - one or both parties had a mid-life crisis, tried to reinvent themselves to assuage their existential angst, divorced, utterly alienated their partner in the process and ended up bitterly regretting it. Deciding to divorce doesn't mean that your marriage is bad, it just means that you've decided to divorce.

It's an idea that betrays a profoundly defective concept of marriage - that a lifelong relationship should seem easy and natural and that if it's not so perfect that you're absolutely certain that it's the best possible relationship you could ever have, the solution is to end it and start from scratch with someone else. It's a rejection of the idea that living with anyone is inherently difficult and requires a great deal of hard work, that people get cold feet and seven year itches, that people take things for granted, that the grass always seems greener. If divorce were genuinely a good thing, we'd expect post baby-boom generations with high divorce rates to be much happier and more satisfied with their relationships than their parents and grandparents; Instead, the opposite is true.

Re: Alone Together, Again

#38

Post by corin_ »

philwelch wrote: post #29
btilly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sounds great, but not exactly true. There are therapists out there who push their clients to blame everything on their marriage and get divorce. Some marriages that were working perfectly well until the poor therapy ended in divorce, to the later regret (at different times) of both members. So at the moment of divorce there was unhappiness. But what marriage does not have periods of stress? But the marriage its…

I'm not sure I buy this. First off, why are people going to therapy unless something is wrong? Secondly, once this person goes to therapy and ends up asking for a divorce, what makes the other person such a reliable source on whether things were going well?

> First off, why are people going to therapy unless something is wrong?

Maybe the person going to therapy was just going through one of life's blips that everyone experiences, but even assuming there is something more serious then why does it have to be marriage-related? Maybe they are suffering from depression, or PTSD, or... etc. etc. There's many valid reasons for therapy and not all of them are related to your love life.

Re: Alone Together, Again

#39

Post by sneak »

I had the good fortune to meet Al3x this year while he was traveling, before this article was published in The Magazine. I heard most of this story over drinks in Berlin.

Had I heard the same kind of story from just about anyone else, I think it would have been pretty uneventful, but to sit across from someone so undeterred by some of life's largest challenges was pretty moving. I imagine the sort of outward displays of not-really-togetherness I'd probably display under similar circumstances, and Al3x's matter-of-fact and direct way of dealing with it was pretty inspirational. It totally comes through in this piece, too.

What a guy.

Re: Alone Together, Again

#40

Post by benjaminwootton »

erickhill wrote: post #30

Having lived through a similar experience as Al3x, my biggest take-aways after the fact were: - If she/he finds enjoyment from it [pick anything] then encourage it. Don't find a fault in it and be an ass. - Comments and attitudes over time do matter. Don't be condescending. You're not "all that." You may think you are, but you're not. - Everyone has dreams. They may not align with yours. That's OK, if you aren't narc…

This is just common sense and decency - you should behave like this to everyone, least of all your significant other.

Anyone who doesn't have this level of emotional maturity isn't ready to get married!

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