SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
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User ID: 225
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5hr ago
I turned 40 this year, and one thing which helped me was to just stubbornly insist "I'm going to have a good time, fuck my inner voices". Specifically I didn't want to be depressed because I'm (approximately) halfway through my years on this earth, because it seemed to me like it would be a waste to spend my limited time worrying about my death. I know that's not exactly what you're going through, but perhaps a similar approach of trying to focus on the good things and enjoy them might help you?
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
9hr ago
Catholicism and the unbroken link back to the first Apostles is all predicated on the idea that the Christians of today are living exactly the way the Christians of the first century did if you were to go back in time. The two groups would be indistinguishable.
That isn't true. The unbroken link held by the Catholic and Orthodox churches is predicated on the idea that the first Apostles appointed successors, who appointed their successors in turn, and so on all the way to today. It has nothing to do with the liturgy remaining the same, or the people's lives remaining the same, or anything like that.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
23hr ago
You do you, but for me... fuck that noise. I'm not going to change my writing style because LLMs use mannerisms I do, nor because it causes people to falsely think my writing was LLM generated. To me, doing that would be a weakness. IMO it's better to be your own person even if some think less of you for that.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
23hr ago
Lack of success despite trying (to a point: at some point one starts to figure "if I've failed every time I'm just going to fail this time too" and gives up, but that took years). One thing that's continually surprising to me is how much those years of rejection still hurt on some level. Logically it makes no sense - I made it. I genuinely love my wife and we have a great relationship, but somehow in defiance of rational thought it's hard to shake the feelings of pain from back then. Thankfully it gets easier year by year - at this point it's mostly gone, but not entirely.
Similarly I think you are completely correct in your analysis of the situation I described with insecurity. We've been together 10 years, married for 8 - I won over all those other dudes, and I have the receipts to show it. Unfortunately (as I'm sure you're well aware, lol), human brains are pretty shit at being rational sometimes. Thankfully that, too, is getting easier year by year - perhaps it's habituation, perhaps something else, but it has gotten easier even if it has never gone away entirely (and I'm doubtful that it'll ever go away entirely).
I've been trying to think on the points that you and @fmac raised, so as to try to give you both a good answer and not just shooting from the hip. I think that ultimately, the reason I feel insecure in the way I do is not because I fear something per se, but because I believe that sex is something very special, almost sacred. And as such I believe that the more it is shared, the less it means to share it. By way of analogy, when a person gets married for the first time, I find that to be a very exciting and meaningful event. When someone gets married for the fifth time, I don't really think it's significant any more. That is roughly how I feel about sex, so basically I have that belief deep in my core values which says "this isn't particularly special between you two, you're just the latest man". Again I know this to not be particularly rational (though to be fair, values often aren't), but it can be difficult to maintain rationality on such an emotionally charged topic. The most helpful thing I've found thus far (as I mentioned in another post) is Stoic practices, where I try to hold the negative feelings at arm's length and remind myself "it doesn't matter, what matters is that I conduct myself well". I'm not always able to do that either, but sometimes I am - and in those moments the practice does help.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1d ago
You're welcome! I agree that it's not wrong to use the story as a vehicle for serious ideas. The problem I've had with this example (and the others that @Lizzardspawn and I discussed) is not so much that they are serious issues, but that they are a) divisive, so they need to be handled with extreme care and b) Burlew doesn't handle them with care, instead getting preachy towards his readers. I can envision a well written story which has something like Haley not being taken seriously by some character because she is a woman, being hurt by it, and letting the reader ponder whether maybe Haley has a point in how she handled the situation. The sort of story which doesn't tell the reader "this is the correct opinion to hold on this divisive topic", but so gently persuades the reader to see the author's point of view that it almost doesn't feel as if the author is taking a side. But unfortunately, that isn't what we got in those instances.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
You're welcome. For what it's worth, I don't think it's a problem of values per se. I suspect (though I can't prove) that many if not most people are wired to want sexual exclusivity (including past exclusivity) with their partner. I've known plenty of people who don't have traditional values around sexuality, but who say they would rather not know about their partner's body count because it will just bother them. That suggests to me that, despite our culture's attempt to brush promiscuity (or even serial monogamy) off as "it's just sex, who cares", many people are in fact deeply wired to care about sex and to not be able to easily shrug the past off as "well, (s)he's with me now so it doesn't matter".
I agree with the advice of both @yofuckreddit and @ThomasdelVasto - this may be something you have to compromise on due to the nature of the society we live in, but not necessarily so because people waiting for marriage do still exist. Just be aware you're making it harder on yourself to find a partner if you make that a dealbreaker. Nothing wrong with that, one simply has to be aware of what they are setting themselves up for.
For some unsolicited advice of my own:
- Be prepared that even if you figure you're ok with someone with a sexual past, your feelings might change. I didn't start to suffer from retroactive jealousy until my wife and I had been dating for 9 months.
- If you think you might struggle with this topic, try to resist the temptation to sleep with a woman before getting married. My wife and I were already sleeping together when I started to struggle with her past, at which point there wasn't anything I could reasonably do about it (besides keep struggling) without being a massive hypocrite and the scum of the earth. What was I going to do, break up with my (then) gf because I felt bad because she had sex with other bfs? We were doing that very thing. Nor could I have tried to then find a woman who was a virgin without being a virgin myself (at least, not write being a massive hypocrite and the scum of the earth). I know how strong the temptation is - firsthand. But I wish I hadn't gone down that road.
- If you pursue a relationship with a woman who has a past, and you start to struggle with feelings of retroactive jealousy, do not talk to her about it. I did this with my wife (while we were still dating, and once briefly after we got married) and all that it accomplished was that I hurt her deeply. Because what could she do? She couldn't change her past, after all, nor does she have a magic wand to wave to make my brain stop being hung up on this topic. Instead she rather bitterly remarked that she wished I had a gf before her whom I had slept with, that way it wouldn't be a struggle for our relationship. She also lamented that she was going to be a cautionary tale for Christian girls everywhere, that if they had sex with a man they didn't then marry it would ruin their marriage. For my part, all that happened was I got horrible guilt that I get to carry around that I hurt her, and moreover that I continue to have the feelings which hurt her. But I did at least learn to never speak of it again - I would bet dollars to donuts that my wife has no idea that I still struggle with these feelings of jealousy (though thankfully much less often than I used to, probably due to the wonders of habituation).
Regardless, good luck brother. I doubt it'll be easy for you, because it hasn't been for me. I can only hope that some of the advice here (from me but also others) will help to make it a little better. I wish that human psychology wasn't susceptible to this failure mode, but alas it is. I am truly rooting for you though.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
I do still have the book, turns out. Here's the quote (apologies for typos, I do the motte only on my phone for whatever reason):
"In this way, Tarquin is also symbolic of an older time when stories were likely to be more formulaic or clichéd--and less diverse. It's no accident that he's a wealthy old straight white man losing his marbles over the fact that the tale he is experiencing doesn't focus on the other straight white man at the expense of the black man, the woman, the genderqueer person, and even the Latino guest star. By rejecting his insistence that he take the lead, Elan is also saying that no, it's OK for not every story to have a blond white guy in the lead. It's OK for them to be the supporting character sometimes. They can still be a part of the overall tapestry of the narrative, and sometimes maybe they'll get great focus episodes. (Like this one!) As an author who is, himself, a straight white guy, it's difficult for me to always make a statement on the experiences of other demographic groups without running the risk of talking out of my ass. But I can make a statement about what I think we, the straight white men of the world, should be doing. And that's for us to recognize that it's not always about us, and that it doesn't make us weak just because someone else is the hero for a while. I'm sure the Tarquins of the real world will read this paragraph and lose their own marbles about it, but I don't see any point to writing if I can't express my own views."
At the time I read it, I had a few problems with this commentary from the author.
- While I concede that he is the voice of God for this setting, and what he says about characters' internal motivations is by definition correct, the narrative he set down in the comic failed to communicate the ideas he claims Tarquin was following. The comic, as written, portrays Tarquin as simply prideful, not bigoted because he can't stand that minorities are getting the spotlight. His insistence that Elan take the lead appears to be motivated by self-interest (Elan, as his son, would be furthering his glory as the head of the dynasty) rather than identity politics. There is no indication at all that Tarquin would be ok with Elan not taking the lead if the party was full of blonde white men. So while Burlew has the right to tell us what he imagined the characters' thoughts to be, he didn't do a good job of showing us that in the work itself.
- Burlew is certainly entitled to his thoughts on politics, identity or otherwise. And he is indeed entitled to write about those thoughts in his work, as he says in his last sentence. Nevertheless I find it extremely obnoxious for a lighthearted D&D comic to suddenly take a turn towards preaching and moralizing at me (even if it was in the writer commentary and not in the comic itself, at least not at this stage).
- Burlew predicts that "the Tarquins of the world" will be upset by his paragraph of commentary. That is, he predicts that the people who have a problem with his writing here will do so because they are bigots who can't bear that the world isn't all about straight white men (since that is how the author himself conceives of Tarquin, it seems fair to draw this inference). But I wasn't annoyed by the paragraph because I have any problem with the comic having a diverse cast. I read the comic for a decade or more without ever once objecting to that. Nor do I have a problem with other stories featuring minorities - I enjoy many such stories because the identity politics are completely immaterial to me. No, I had a problem with Burlew's commentary because a) it was pushing divisive politics into what should be a fun comic strip, and b) the political angle he was taking wasn't even present in the comic until he forced it in via "word of God" commentary. And of course, I have a much bigger problem (as I already mentioned) with the author comparing me to his morality play villain just because I don't think that it was appropriate to bring politics into things.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
Assuming I have the book still, sure. I'll have to look around to see if I kept it or got rid of it.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
That's an interesting way to look at it. What's kind of ironic is we don't seem to have actually rid ourselves of those instincts, so much as changed what it's acceptable to apply them to. Like, look at how the left treats JK Rowling for example. There's precious little difference (except for no violence) between the way people treat her, and the way someone in the 15th century would've treated a heretic. Perhaps those instincts are too deeply embedded in our genes to be eliminated completely.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
Hell no I don't ask. I have a rough idea and that's bad enough, I know it would destroy me to get more info. I wish I knew how to get over it. I've been struggling with the mental health issues of my wife having had sex with other people (whereas she was my first) for almost 10 years now. Stoicism helps me some (and indeed it's the reason I got into Stoicism), but I'm not always feeling rational enough where appeals to philosophy can convince my brain to quiet down. Therapy didn't help at all. At this point I've given up on fixing it and figure I'll just have to live with the pain until the day I die.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
Recently finished: Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth. Basically, his thesis is that modern Western society (in its entirety - government, economy, social mores, etc) is destroying the things that enable humanity to thrive - think things like cultural traditions, connection to a particular place going back generations, spiritual practices, and so on. He personifies this as a machine which rips up all in its path, destroying what those things once were and remaking them in a fashion to suit the machine's purpose of expanding without end.
I am not sure what I think of the book. I think at the most basic level, Kingsnorth is right that there's something which has gone wrong with Western society. It hasn't been without benefit (and he himself admits this freely), but we seem to have lost some measure of basic human joy and mental flourishing along the way. I'm not so certain I agree with his framing of the trend as a coherent entity. It's kind of like the idea of Moloch - rhetorically powerful, but also factually inaccurate. And I definitely disagree with some of the author's ideas - at one point he argues that the Machine is quite literally demonic in origin, which I don't believe at all (we humans are quite capable of destroying ourselves without supernatural influence). So I guess I found the book interesting, but not without its flaws (or at least flaws as I see them).
Currently reading the Divine Comedy. I've had a copy of it forever, but am just now getting around to it (mostly because a friend really encouraged me to read it, at least Inferno). It's been interesting. Obviously it's one of the major works of the Western canon, and has had a ton of influence over our culture. So seeing the original first-hand is pretty cool. I think I'm looking forward to Purgatorio and Paradiso more, just because I know absolutely nothing about them, but am enjoying Inferno as well. It's pretty funny the extent to which the work is Dante just showing everyone he dislikes in hell. I can't imagine it made him many friends at all, though perhaps he didn't care because he was exiled anyway. I find poetry kind of a slog to read (even short poems like Robert Frost etc), so it's certainly a challenge to read long-form poetry like this. But hopefully I'm able to stick to it because I do want to finish a classic of this magnitude.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
4d ago
Yeah I also lost interest in the comic when he started getting political. There's the incident you mentioned, plus the comic where Haley and some other character talk about "remember how we used to hurl gendered insults at each other, that was awful". Perhaps worst of all, he inserted that stuff in the published books. In the book that covers the general Tarquin arc, the author commentary says that the reason that Tarquin flipped out on the heroes was because he couldn't handle that he, a straight white male, lost to a party with a black man, a woman, and a genderqueer elf. The author then went on to insinuate that his readers were Bad People (TM) who shared the same character flaw of being upset because the world didn't evolve around straight white men.
I kept reading the comic online for a bit after that (until that became insufferable too), but will never again give that man another dime of support. I don't give my money to artists who go out of their way to insult me for no reason.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
4d ago
You should! Obviously I can't speak for how satisfying the Lions route is, but the other ones I did have been fun so I'm willing to bet Lions is too.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5d ago
Good call, I second that recommendation. It's a fantastic game to play with friends.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5d ago
There's Overcooked 2 if you enjoyed playing the first one. Maybe try Magicka? The game is a lot of fun in coop due to the chaos that can ensue when two players cast spells that interact badly (or sometimes well) in the moment.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5d ago
I just finished playing NG+ of Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Golden Deer route). Had a good time, and the extra exposition on the main villains of the story was welcome. I still think they are under baked (only one map, really IS?), but at least it wasn't as perfunctory as in the Black Eagles->Church route. We'll see if I do Blue Lions ever, but if I do it won't be for a long while cause I'm not eager to replay part 1 right away.
Also playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I picked up during the last Steam sale. It's enjoyable. The side tombs are fun though often too brief, and there's a dash of Metroidvania "you can't get in here until you get this item" which is a nice reason to revisit parts of the map. Overall I can't complain, especially given I got the game for just a few bucks.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
5d ago
Others have given good advice about setting boundaries, which I agree with. Main thing I would add is that it's not only beneficial for your sanity, but it will preserve your friendship as well. Nobody wants to hear someone tell them they should break up with a significant other over and over, even if that person winds up being right. I've had friends who dated crappy girls in the past, and had to learn to let it go and let them make the mistake. I figure if you've told this woman once that this dude is bad news, you've done your duty as her friend. All you can do at that point is sit back and wait for her to come to the realization herself.
Sorry, I'm not really sure how best to answer your questions. Would you truly say, upon introspection, that you have literally zero joy every single day? I assume you're telling the truth and that you feel that way at this moment, but let's say tomorrow morning or another time once your brain has had a chance to reset. There's not even one second of joy? Not something as simple as a hot shower, listening to good music, or eating a tasty meal? It seems to me like there is likely to be something, however small and insignificant it may seem right now, that you do enjoy. Obviously I'm not you and can't say for sure. But if there is anything, then perhaps focusing on those things can help. Or perhaps not. All I can say is that approach has helped me at times.
I wish I had some pat answer I could give you of "do this one weird trick and you'll be happier", but unfortunately I don't. Honestly I don't even have any training or knowledge on how to help people who struggle with their mental health. But for what it's worth, I'm genuinely sorry thar you are in so much pain. You seem like a decent guy, and it sounds like life has dealt you a pretty rough hand. I wish I could do more to help, brother.
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