The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Married men of the motte, I need a sanity check.
To put it bluntly, my partner is lower status and less intelligent than I am. 110 vs 125 IQ points. middle class vs upper middle class.
We've been together for a year and our relationship is otherwise great (unrelated mental hang ups i have posted about here before aside). I can see myself marrying and being content.
Unfortunately, I am a pretty HBD-pilled individual, and the concept of my future children potentially being less intelligent and of phenotypically lower status fills me with dread. (The woman in question has many many positive qualities I DO want my kids to have.)
Is it over? Is that alone enough to say I should break up because that shows how I don't really love her etc? Are doubts like this normal for a young guy who's maybe getting commitment anxiety?
I come from a family of fairly accomplished people. Upper middle class academics and some geniuses. Her family generationally is lower/middle middle class.
My children would inherit this.
Now I should add that her family is of perfectly average to above average intelligence. The biggest difference is that they have very little intellectual curiosity. Abysmal levels of general knowledge, archetypical shape rotators.
(They do have their own opinions and are independent thinkers but they are deeply "practical people")
I thought this wouldn't bother me, and it doesn't, in the relationship. But I dread my kids being like that.
Narcissism? Does my girlfriend secretly disgust me? Am I giving this too much thought? I really want some outside opinion on this, preferably by people with children. This is obviously something I can only talk about on this forum.
I feel like this is some kind of troll, but just on the off chance -- somebody of your (claimed) IQ should know that IQ (heritability in general, really) does not work like this at all. "Lower-middle classness" even less so.
Proof: I have a quite a bit higher IQ than either of my parents. So did Von Neumann, Einstein, and innumerable other smarties (one assumes).
This is a very bad thought pattern you've gotten yourself into, and that's a you thing. Seek help, touch grass, log off, whatever it takes.
If you can't manage this, my advice to your girlfriend would be very different.
Class and inteligence are both very heritable. Choosing my partner is by a wide margin the most control I have over how my children will turn out. I am trying not to live with regret, which is why I want the perspective of parents who have already made tge choice.
Well you have it in me -- I'm smarter than my wife, and my parents. I'm not Von Neumann, but scored very high on a pro IQ test in the 'keep smart kids from getting distracted and/or BTFOing their mediocre teachers" stream at school, and (smart) people at work seem to think I am worth asking about smart-guy stuff.
My kids are pretty smart, my wife & I mostly get along, and I'm sure they will have successful, (mostly) happy lives going forward. What more could one want?
(You are quite incorrect about class being heritable in the genetic sense, but I don't have time to fight your egregore on that -- maybe spend a few minutes thinking about how that would work?)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link