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I don't consider myself as a passive victim but it's undeniably true that people as a group are passive victims. Just look at weight loss; everyone knows that eating healthy food in small portions will mean you lose weight, and yet the efficacy of prescribing diet and exercise as a health intervention rounds down to 0%, and almost all people need Ozempic before they actually lose any weight.
Because marrying her makes my life better and allows me to make hers better, isn't that what love is?
Because having children and raising them well makes my life better and I can give them a good life, isn't that what love is?
Because treating my parents well and being treated well in return makes my life better, isn't that what love is?
I don't mean to say that we should all be trad rvturners, the idea is silly, and I'm well aware that there was a lot of misery hidden in pre-modernity, and that not all trad marriages were idyllic and happy. I simply mean to say that in the past, working hard, getting hitched, and doing my best to make it work pretty directly correlated with my own incentives, in a way that it's not at all clear whether it does now.
You may call me a cynical bastard for saying this, but if the incentives don't line up for me, saying that I should stop caring about my own ego and pleasure to care about someone else's just sounds like they're trying to figure out the best way to exploit me.
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