301–310 of 669 posts
Sounds like she fell between two stools: neither a fulfilling career, nor a family. I guess this is what you would call the modern American dream.
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I think his view is fairly correct. I also don’t see it as being negative, you’re making your own value judgement equating commitment with positivity. Men do tend to want to have a lot of partners, and many of those who can, do.
It is just not my impresion that men who hop relationships look all that better. The comitted ones are not ugly ones. Also, a men who is having relationship with you solely because he can't find replacement likely sux as a partner. Or maybe she sux or they don't match, but in any case, that relationship will be crap. And that relationship will become real bad after children.
There are plenty of good-looking men in committed relationships. You're reading the relationship in reverse. It's not that "men who hop relationships look all that better". It's that better-looking men can hop relationships.
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Your story has a similar outline to my own. I moved from the UK to Canada which has been excellent for my career but at the same time has put enormous strain on my relationships as I just don't get to see people thanks to splitting a really shitty vacation allowance (3 weeks Canada wtf). Now I'm torn between putting down roots in Toronto, moving out to the sticks, moving to Europe to be close to everyone or doing the…
3 weeks is good. It took me 3 years to get to 3 weeks vacation in the first company I was at. I was a product designer working for Google.
> And with men I date, I feel pressure to make something of the relationship too soon (move in, get married, “I have to have kids in a couple of years”; fun times!). All the while still trying to be the sexpot 25-year-old I thought I was until what seemed like a moment ago. It sounds like going from one end of the spectrum (aventuros, yolo) to the other (a family, fast), all while punching above their weight, so to s…
My friends who enjoyed dating for fun, found they had trouble with it, because most guys were looking to commit - they weren't too interested in merely flings.
But this is anecdata, from Europe, so it may have limited applicability.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your story has a similar outline to my own. I moved from the UK to Canada which has been excellent for my career but at the same time has put enormous strain on my relationships as I just don't get to see people thanks to splitting a really shitty vacation allowance (3 weeks Canada wtf). Now I'm torn between putting down roots in Toronto, moving out to the sticks, moving to Europe to be close to everyone or doing the…
I am in the exact same situation. I moved to Canada from Europe and it has been really tough thanks to three measly weeks of vacation. I can't remember the last time I have been on a real two+ weeks vacation somewhere that is not my home country. I am thinking about all those same options except the moving to the US thing. Even though I could earn much more money, I don't think that would be worth it living in a coun…
Hell. I'd take a 10% hit on salary for a week of unpaid vacation.
This probably won't be popular, but what the hell. I feel like, if you strip away the outward trappings and dogma, this is what religion is good for. Not in a "believe in Jesus" or "trust in God" kind of way, but in a "how to orient your life" kind of way. Which is to say, the actually useful portion of religion generally teaches that your best life is probably not focused on you. It isn't about finding yourself, or…
> You can always do something meaningful with your life. There lies the rub. What if you don't find anything to be meaningful to you. This implies that there are some activities that are inherently more meaningful that others and you just have to find them. Now you are back to square one. Can it be rewritten to > You can always find meaning in anything you do This doesn't handwave the problem away. Main task is to fi…
As you expressed, you see the task as "find meaning in yourself," a concept that can maybe be expressed as "meaning comes from within." This sounds nice! I think what OP was getting at is that this perspective has two problems: 1. It requires you to produce your own sense of "meaning" (whatever that means) that is self-satisfying, AND that works well in the society/community in which you exist; and 2. it is fundamentally self-centered. A hypothesis could be that this perspective seems to most frequently result in a failure to find "meaning" (probably better called "contentment") in anything.
As OP said, faith/religion traditions tend to hand you a set of pre-defined "here's what's meaningful" morals, and these also tend to be skewed towards group value instead of just self-satisfaction. When handed this outlook on meaning/morals, it seems possible there might be benefits - not having to come up with a self-fulfilling sense of meaning that also meshes with broader society, as well as a focus on being useful to the community instead of just yourself.
I personally find the whole "be yourself" / "do what you love" dogma-du-jour to be terrible, and prone to actually resulting in depression and shame. It is at the same time selfish, and self-sabotaging.
This probably won't be popular, but what the hell. I feel like, if you strip away the outward trappings and dogma, this is what religion is good for. Not in a "believe in Jesus" or "trust in God" kind of way, but in a "how to orient your life" kind of way. Which is to say, the actually useful portion of religion generally teaches that your best life is probably not focused on you. It isn't about finding yourself, or…
This probably won't be popular, but what the hell. I feel like, if you strip away the outward trappings and dogma, this is what religion is good for. Not in a "believe in Jesus" or "trust in God" kind of way, but in a "how to orient your life" kind of way. Which is to say, the actually useful portion of religion generally teaches that your best life is probably not focused on you. It isn't about finding yourself, or…
https://www.youtube.com/user/DaveRamseyShow
This man specializes in this.
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> When youth starts to fade away, reality kicks in - the highly desirable partners are not interested, and the average ones are already committed to long time partners who valued them in their own youth. You're forgetting about a) divorcees and b) men who have also gone down the same path.
Men don't have the same time pressure to start a family with many starting at 45+. The other thing is men often become more attractive to women as they age due to things like financial success while the same can't be said for women.
I think the parents of many 20 and 30-somethings played a role in so many young(ish) adults failing to launch. American parents could learn a thing or two about parenting from previous generations and from a lot of immigrant families: nobody owes you anything, plan for a rainy day, find a partner you love and commit to them, work hard, cherish friends and family even when it's difficult, etc. I think parenting has ov…
Even here we'll get a few blog posts a month from a one-man-show who's just got their start-up off the ground -- or alternatively, the one that's just burst into flames.
It's the same story. "I keep putting all my money into lottery tickets hoping to make it big, with no plans for what to do when I don't." No one tells us to romanticize it. We're not ignorant of the risks. And yet, we still do.