111–118 of 118 posts
I'd like to make a thoughtful comment, but I'm struggling to get past the phrase 'age-appropriate'. As someone who has never been 'appropriate' to their chronological age in any respect, it always comes across as reductive, patronising and ultimately dehumanising. It seems to me to be the product of a worldview which sees children not as distinctive individuals with unique preferences and aptitudes, but as mere larva…
I'd like to make a thoughtful comment, but I'm struggling to get past the phrase 'age-appropriate'. As someone who has never been 'appropriate' to their chronological age in any respect, it always comes across as reductive, patronising and ultimately dehumanising. It seems to me to be the product of a worldview which sees children not as distinctive individuals with unique preferences and aptitudes, but as mere larva…
Kudos to jdietrich for articulating so well what I was thinking. For this woman only thing that matters is her career as a writer. She is the definition of a manipulative partner. She makes material out of her husband's totally sincere mid-life crisis; she portrays her husband as a sentimental clown who needs her guidance; she portrays her husband as the week partner who is no longer the breadwinner; she portrays herself as the powerful woman who saves her family and so on... All this proves how much she loves her husband: none. Is there any doubt that she puts her career before her husband and her family?
So I took this advice a bit too literally when this article came out, and was in denial about all the tantrums my wife was throwing. This weekend, she told me she's hired a lawyer and moved out with my daughter. Should I "buy it" yet?
To whatever extent this article had any advice, it was not to ignore the tantrums, but to ignore the attacks. The author responded to "I don't love you any more" with "what can we do to make this better for you?" If you took a similar approach, refused to engage in the personal attacks, repeatedly tried to find common ground and ways to fix the problems, and your wife still left... well, you did everything you realis…
I'd like to make a thoughtful comment, but I'm struggling to get past the phrase 'age-appropriate'. As someone who has never been 'appropriate' to their chronological age in any respect, it always comes across as reductive, patronising and ultimately dehumanising. It seems to me to be the product of a worldview which sees children not as distinctive individuals with unique preferences and aptitudes, but as mere larva…
You're not being grossly unfair: you're just being completely wrong. Your conclusion is that she is a pathological narcissist, but it is you that makes the story completely about her. On the other hand, she clearly recognized that this man's life wasn't solely about her and she correctly concluded that any problems probably weren't solely about her either. She lets the guy get a broader perspective, by reducing her o…
It is erroneous to believe that what defines narcissism is an obsession with the self. The primary defining trait of the narcissistic personality is the failure to recognise the boundaries between self and others. Narcissists see others as simply an extension of themselves and fail to fully realise the independence of the minds of others. Narcissists have failed to develop the understanding that there is an external reality, acting independently of their own mind.
Narcissists are so debilitating to those around them because their internal logic is so different that our natural reactions are confounded. We fail to recognise when narcissists are lying, because to a narcissist anything that comes from their imagination is the truth - narcissists don't experience any stress whatsoever when lying and seem to be absolutely confident in anything they say or do.
People who are in relationships with narcissists quickly lose their sense of self, because the narcissist's erroneous sense of personal boundaries erodes their sense of sentience. The best analogy I can give is Orwell's Newspeak - if you live for ten or fifteen years with someone who can genuinely convince themselves that black is white, who acts as if nobody else around them has emotions, who acts as if they are the ultimate arbiter of truth, it absolutely warps your sense of self. There is a vast amount of literature on what happens to the partners of narcissists and this guy seems to fit that pattern exactly.
It's not that he's a pussy, it's that after twenty years of being told what he thinks and what he feels, he has a completely eroded sense of self. He doesn't know who he is anymore. That's why he wants to leave and why he finds it so difficult to do so. He came out point blank and said "It's over, I'm leaving" because he rightly anticipated that he wouldn't be given any opportunity to discuss it, and that any response he would get would be manipulative. He correctly anticipated how he would be manipulated, but fell for it anyway because he has lost his fucking mind.
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"I'd like to make a thoughtful comment, but I'm struggling to get past the phrase 'age-appropriate'. As someone who has never been 'appropriate' to their chronological age in any respect, it always comes across as reductive, patronising and ultimately dehumanising. It seems to me to be the product of a worldview which sees children not as distinctive individuals with unique preferences and aptitudes, but as mere larv…
At two I was a committed vegetarian, at four a committed socialist, at six a committed atheist. I could calculate the kinetic energy of a bicycle in motion before I could ride one. At four years old, I most certainly did feel de-humanised when refused a vegetarian meal or spitefully tricked into eating meat. I'm obviously a distant outlier, but the standard deviation is much greater than most people imagine. At the o…
I like to call it a "midlife adjustment" and there is not a person alive who gets to that age who does not have to deal with it at some level - it really is the transitioning from the phase of life where everything points up to that in-between phase where things slow down, age starts to show itself more, and our mortality looms nearer. We all react to it differently but react we do, unless we are beyond feeling. This…
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If there's ever a time when my wife distills my desires to building a "man cave" or "trekking" that's when I know I married the wrong woman.
Ok sure, "man cave" is a dumb phrase, but how do you know the husband hadn't regularly talked about trekking in Nepal or converting the garage?
As for trekking in Nepal, it struck me as a tremendously abbreviated comment. Could, "trekking in Nepal," possibly describe the sort of action a man so distraught wants to take?
This is akin to my wife being upset at my emotional distance and refusal to address her needs and, when called on it, I simply say that it's fine if she buys some new shoes.
I'm not a fan of sexism, in either direction.
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Tom Robbins is funny, quirky and occasionally drops nuggets like this. He is one of the few fiction authors that I recommend.
Fierce Invalids is one of my favorite books of all time. I laughed 'til I cried at several points.