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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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It is tough to overcome jealousy/insecurity and to have that level of trust, for anyone, I agree. Phrasing it as biological wiring, I'm not sure fits.

It does fit. There’s actually science on this.

In experiments they have found that women are much more ok with sexual infidelity than men. They aren’t fully ok with it just more ok with it than men by a huge margin. There’s a huge gender difference and given how culture doesn’t differentiate this aspect in terms of teaching, logically the only origin is biological.

It fits with evolutionary psychology as well. If a wife engages in sexual infidelity a man could end up raising a child that is not his own and that is a huge evolutionary cost so men evolved to be extremely guarded against sexual affairs while for women the cost is just a man potentially raising another child. She loses resources of the man but if the man doesn’t raise another child it’s not as huge of a deal. This isn’t stuff I’m making up… it’s academic.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151008083755.h...

For you to be in a polyamorous relationship you are definitely overriding your default biological drive and giving evolutionary advantages to your mate (if she is female and you male). Birth control largely eliminates this cost but the emotional states are the same in the sense that is a form of submission. Case in point: Most likely it is the female partner that initiated polyamory and the male partner who had to learn how to accept it.

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

#333

[flagged]

You talk like a coming-out divorce ‘upends’ a family in some unprecedented way. People get divorced all the time. Families reconfigure, children adapt, adults survive. Get a grip.

No. Divorce ruins the lives of the kids. Look at the statistics. The outcome and financial damage and emotional damage is horrid.

The problem is more that it’s normalized. I think the normalization is wrong. Similar to how North Korea normalized poverty. Marriage should be taken seriously and divorce is extremely serious. The fact that you think of it as nothing is whats out of touch.

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

#334
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

One of the parent comments mentioned a similar situation involving a colleague who other comments think was from India based on the description of the dowry.

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

#336
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.

I think she absolutely has a right to her judgment. She clearly has empathy for her father, but the rest of her family also suffered--greatly, it seems--from how he went about his life.

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

#339
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why society is going to shit. “Live free, no regrets” has to be one of the most narcissistic memes I’ve ever heard of. If a person commits to a partner and/or a family, they shouldn’t just hit the reset button because they’re bored or upset with how life turned out. Talk to your partner. Tell them the truth. It’s wild that this has to even be said. Obvious caveats for abuse or depression, but come on. Hav…

No one advocated for anything you're railing against.

> Suddenly you wake up in an aging body and your ideal life seems far away. As I get older I kind of understand the people who just flee their lives. Being saddled with responsibilities you never wanted you are forced into choosing to either strangle your own desires or be perceived as a terrible person for not fulfilling your societal obligations.

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

#340

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…

> I've known I was gay since high school, probably even earlier, but I kept choosing whatever seemed like the easiest path.

Just so you know, you're not alone here. Mine was a bit different (gender related) but the causes are essentially the same: I just kept choosing whatever path was easiest instead of facing what I was actually feeling. It made me fabulously "successful" at life and I had everything that you would expect to come along: wife, kid, big house, fancy job. It's a hard feeling to reconcile - being so successful in what most of society would say you should be ... and yet still so miserable.

So, I see you. <3

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