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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

#461

Post by Fritatta »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #333
Fritatta wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I submit that you should consider the opposite proposition with an open mind.

https://slate.com/technology/2022/07/divorce-bad-for-kids-hi...

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

#462

Post by gwd »

jerbearito wrote: post #400
gwd wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's judging people, and there's judging actions. - Getting married under societal pressure even when you're pretty sure you're gay: I'm willing to cut him some slack on this. - Having gay affairs while you're married: It puts your wife at risk of disease, but OK, you've been placed in a messed up, lose-lose situation. - Telling a lover you want to be exclusive, and getting him to move to a completely new country,…

Thanks for your assessment. I hope your judgement is useful to the author and their family.

You mean to be sarcastic, but there's a good chance it may. When I was recovering from my first marriage, during which I was pretty heavily gaslit, having rational, analytical assessments of my wife's behavior by third parties was actually really helpful for me to recover.

His wife has no doubt spent years of her life being gaslit as well, being conditioned to doubt her assessments of what's normal and to feel guilty for suspecting him, for resenting him, for wanting something better. I doubt she'll ever read what I wrote, but there's a non-zero chance it would be helpful to have my take on it.

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

#463

Post by gwd »

arpinum wrote: post #12
pja wrote: post #4

> “He wasted his entire life, my mom said to me, the evening we found the love letters. His entire life, and mine as well.” What a burden of expectations to lay on both yourself & your own family. I’m glad the author was able to put those aside & live her own life more authentically than her father did.

The author may be unduly harsh on her father. He got to be publicly married and have a private gay life. He didn't have to live with his wife much. He liked the idea of having a daughter. Given the hand he was dealt it's a pretty good outcome for himself. Grossly selfish, but not a waste for himself.

> The author may be unduly harsh on her father. He got to be publicly married and have a private gay life.

If his wife had been content in a low-intimacy marriage, then that would be one thing. Some people are -- they have security, they have children, they have approval of their family, they're fine.

But his wife wasn't -- she wanted to end the marriage, to try to find romantic, sexual, and relational intimacy elsewhere. And he actively guilt-tripped her into staying with him, multiple times.

He got to experience romantic and sexual intimacy the way he wanted, while preventing his wife from doing the same. He stole decades of the prime of her life from her. There is simply no justification for that.

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

#466

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #333
Fritatta wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Divorce isn't always great, but "staying together for the sake of the kids" can be pretty bad too.

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

#467

Post by celloductor »

pavlov wrote: post #75

Ouch. This hits incredibly hard. I’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself. Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like…

this was a man who had affairs but still refused to agree to a divorce initiated by his wife? so proceeded to be selfish anyway?

times change, people can too and should take responsibility for themselves

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

#468

Post by 71bw »

jemmyw wrote: post #412
rosstex wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Prefer women" could be in a sexual context, romantic context, platonic, etc. and the commenter above didn't define it. I imagine it's hard enough for bisexual people to be asked if they're "living a lie" by having to choose a side.

They aren't choosing a side, they're choosing a person. Being bisexual surely just opens the field to more potential mates, but once you're with someone the same rules apply as to folks in any other relationship. And I don't want to sound too conservative - if you choose to be with someone and both agree to have an open relationship of some kind, or any other mutually agreed kind of thing, that's no-ones business but…

Already explained this a bit further in a reply below in the chain, hope this explains a bit more.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033816

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

#469

Post by jemmyw »

71bw wrote: post #468
jemmyw wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't choosing a side, they're choosing a person. Being bisexual surely just opens the field to more potential mates, but once you're with someone the same rules apply as to folks in any other relationship. And I don't want to sound too conservative - if you choose to be with someone and both agree to have an open relationship of some kind, or any other mutually agreed kind of thing, that's no-ones business but…

Already explained this a bit further in a reply below in the chain, hope this explains a bit more.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033816

Yes that makes more sense. I would take the same approach.

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

#470

Post by senordevnyc »

ta9000 wrote: post #339
senordevnyc wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Recognizing that people face difficulties because of their responsibilities is not the same thing as encouraging them to abandon those responsibilities.
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