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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1949 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 24, 2025

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).

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I promised @Muninn I'd post an update on my new coffee hobby. I don't have much of interest to say, but here it is.

At long last I got my coffee bean grinder (remind me not to order from 'remote warehouses' that happen to be located in other countries again). I had already tried out my Chemex (glass handle, 3 cup size) with proprietary filters for a week with mediocre pre-ground Arabica coffee from the grocery store. I pretty much only got a stereotypical 'coffee' smell and taste from it, which was satisfying enough to fill the home with in the mornings. I enjoyed a pleasant buzz from the caffeine in the first few days - a better buzz than ever before in my life from coffee, it seemed. That may have had something to with a noob impression that my body quickly got used to, and/or it may be because I added some L-theanine to the cups during those days. Anyway, I liked the experience of brewing and drinking the pre-ground stuff, but it more or less needed cream and sugar added to be really pleasant. Not that it was bad without those additions, but it didn't have much depth. In either case: way better than insta-coffee.

I tried Ethiophian Yirgacheffe and Rwandan Rugori specialty beans today. They're not super exclusive or anything, but they cost a lot more than the mass-produced Arabica stuff.

The grinder (Krups Silent Vortex; blades) is not that great. It does its job, but the coffee ends up ground to different sized bits. There's some light brown bits that are clearly much bigger and are thus perhaps not infused to the same degree into the liquid, compared to the tinier bits...? The smell from these beans was impressive after grinding them though. I expected a taste to match this impression, but far less nuance remained in the liquid. The taste was not all that special. I was whelmed. The Yirgacheffe clearly tastes better than pre-ground Arabica, but not that much different. There's a few subtle notes of perhaps fruit or a spicy flower or something, but it's all a bit too subtle for my untrained, somewhat aged palate. Pleasant to drink though. I don't need cream or sugar when brewing this one. The Rugori was even less impressive though. It was far too close to a totally average cup of coffee. I used ~16 grams of beans each time. Water heated to 90 C. I pre-soak the filter, pre-heating the Chemex at the same time before emptying that water out. Then I divide the pouring in two or three pours before then leaving it until everything had dripped down.

You could get a burr grinder from China. Something like an 1zpresso Q2 or something, they are cheap and will make marked difference in your cups. That said, it's your call. I for one have fallen too deep into this pit.

My dude, I appreciate the report! I'll just comment on a few things here:

I enjoyed a pleasant buzz from the caffeine in the first few days - a better buzz than ever before in my life from coffee, it seemed.

I also feel perkier when I'm drinking pour-over coffee when compared to a cup from a Keurig or an automatic drip coffeemaker.

The grinder (Krups Silent Vortex; blades) is not that great. It does its job, but the coffee ends up ground to different sized bits. There's some light brown bits that are clearly much bigger and are thus perhaps not infused to the same degree into the liquid, compared to the tinier bits...?

This is exactly why the grinder is the second most important component. Equal grind size equals equal infusion, which yields a more consistent flavor from the beans.

The taste was not all that special. I was whelmed. The Yirgacheffe clearly tastes better than pre-ground Arabica, but not that much different. There's a few subtle notes of perhaps fruit or a spicy flower or something, but it's all a bit too subtle for my untrained, somewhat aged palate. Pleasant to drink though. I don't need cream or sugar when brewing this one.

This tells me that you've got enough of a sense of taste and smell that you'd probably get to the point where you could get definite flavors from your brew if you decide to keep going down this path, especially when combined with your sharp observation that different sized grounds will yield uneven results in the taste department. When I first started down the road of fresh roasted coffee it seemed like drinking tea to me, which is to say that I definitely noticed differences with different varieties of black tea and so did freshly roasted beans seem to have some distinct flavor to them. I still don't know that I'd be good enough to actually go cup individual coffees and buy for a specialty house or operation but I'm definitely in wine snob territory when it comes to getting a lot of flavor notes out of a good fresh roasted pour over. I suspect that there's similar potential for you there if you choose to pursue it.

The Rugori was even less impressive though. It was far too close to a totally average cup of coffee.

Sorry to hear that one wasn't so special for you, though it's entirely possible that it might come into its own if you keep trying it over the next several days.

Regardless, I'm glad you shared your experience and it sure sounds to me like you've started your journey. If you decide to continue trying fresh coffee, please continue to write more here and feel free to continue asking questions, I'd appreciate it and from your last I know we have a few other coffee buffs around here that might chime in as well. Enjoy!

Pulsing the blade grinder a few times, letting the beans fall to rest in between, and then keeping it going for a good emount of time seems to help with getting a more evenly ground result. I'll stick with this grinder for a while. Using half the amount of beans, around 8-10g of the Rwandan seems to actually help somewhat with bringing out its unique features rather than just 'coffee'. But I still very much prefer the Yirgacheffe.

I'm going to see if it's possible to train my nose to become more sensitive and receptive again. Sort of like how exercising the body influences the brain etc. If I demand more performance from my palate, maybe something will respond. I'm something of a food/drink enjoyer, it's one of my joys in life, so having a weak receptivity won't do. I'll be trying some more specialty beans over the next few months. Peru, Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya might be up next.

I'm going to see if it's possible to train my nose to become more sensitive and receptive again. Sort of like how exercising the body influences the brain etc. If I demand more performance from my palate, maybe something will respond. I'm something of a food/drink enjoyer, it's one of my joys in life, so having a weak receptivity won't do.

I'm not surprised that you enjoy food and drink and I strongly believe that it's possible to gain or regain sensitivity to taste and smell. Simply paying attention to the sensory inputs while imbibing is, IMO, a large part of the battle. Not-so-coincidentally, I also believe that this is why explicit tastings are a Thing; for me, it's far easier to pay attention to the sensory input when that's the explicit point of the exercise. Anyway, sounds like you've got your eye on some nice new beans to try. Indonesian coffee in particular will likely give you a good idea of how different coffee can taste by region, assuming the roast isn't too dark.

I expect that finding the right words for the various components of the aroma will help the brain discern and sort them in the future. This is not that simple to implement though. Because there's no "answer key" and you're not necessarily standing there with the dictionary ready on your phone and because you might not know which is which in the mix. I'm thinking it could be a good idea to buy a "sample set" of lots of distinct ingredients in order to build a bigger vocabulary and knowledge base.

This is true to an extent, but you've already got the vocabulary to get started. Basic things like sweet, sour, chocolate, fruity, spicy, nutty, earthy, and even smoky will probably be noticeable to you right away. As you get into the taste of your coffee, you'll notice more and more details, and be able to get more specific. Tart and sour resolves to something citrus-y. That nutty flavor tastes a little like pecan. That one sip reminds you of a nibble of really dark chocolate as the bitterness fades and the chocolate really opens up in your palate. And doggone if that one doesn't taste like black tea or green tea here and there. I've uploaded a coffee wheel image for your reference.

More than the caffeine, this is the hook that coffee set for me. I don't always get every flavor advertised in the particular bean but it's there so consistently that I'm confident that the flavor is there as long as I roast it right, which of course is half the fun, except when I'm consistently getting savory out of my beans. That means that it's time for me to clean my roaster!

/images/17592353446912394.webp

That's a useful image, thanks. :)

I tore something in my hip practicing single leg takedowns two Tuesdays ago. Thoroughly warmed up and stretched, we were half an hour into a class, at more or less the point at which I'd expect to be least likely to injure myself...but I was wrong. Normally, when I've hurt myself lifting or climbing or in jiu jitsu, there was a moment going in where I thought to myself "gee, I shouldn't be doing this right now." Trying to squeeze in a workout super fast when I didn't have enough time, or feeling a stiff back and trying to muscle through it, or going for that extra rep or that extra five pounds when I knew it wasn't feeling it, or trying to fight my way out of a guillotine choke when I should have just tapped, etc.

But this time, it was absolutely no warning, I've never had hip problems up until I went down for a penetration step and couldn't get back up. Pop, sharp, instant pain. I was able to get up and walk it off, but when I tested it again I couldn't get down and up, so I went home. I was so upset thinking that I wasn't sure how long it would take to recover, that I briefly went online and considered buying a ski-erg because I thought that might be the only workout I'd be able to do. But it recovered pretty quickly, so glad I didn't pull the trigger. Took most of the week off, and after a day of mild discomfort it quickly felt fine. After a couple days I felt ok on the bike, so I stuck to that for cardio. Went back to BJJ Monday, rolled a few rounds starting from the ground, felt fine, no soreness after. So Tuesday AM I go back to the same wrestling/stand-up class...and it's fine for the first half hour then the exact same thing happens. The exact same way. I hit a bunch of penetration steps and shots, I was moving well, but then I felt that same pain.

So I'm mad at myself for being a moron. The pain has faded now, I only feel a mild twinge when getting in and out of my car. But IDK how soon to go back to full sparring with no limits, or to hip dominant exercises like a deadlift or KB snatch. For the moment I feel comfortable doing BJJ on the ground with certain partners, but it's going to be a long time before I'm ready to try stand up again. Which bothers me because I felt like I was making real progress towards a decent standup game.

The one problem I've had with BJJ is that it sucks up all the energy from everything else. I'm always too banged up or exhausted or busy to get much of another workout in. Which, combined with hitting middle age, is what has me liking biking more as cardio, because I'm less focused on the numbers right now and achievement, I'm just going out and enjoying the ride. I guess I needed to be reminded I'm middle aged on my birthday.

Happy birthday!

Appreciate the kind wishes

My condolences. Times like that are usually when my wife steps in and reminds me I'm old, and to stop trying to hurt myself. I probably defer to her judgment about half the time. Then probably about half the times I think "Naw I'll be fine" I wind up hurting myself.

I miss biking. We've been talking about buying bikes for the family so we can all hit various trails together. The kid is dying for a 12 speed or whatever, having long since mastered her fixed gear learning bike. There is a pretty flat paved trail in town that goes about 10 miles or so for the whole thing, and then a few light mountain biking trails that might be good for the family once we've gotten our biking legs back. I haven't biked in like, 10 years?

My condolences. Times like that are usually when my wife steps in and reminds me I'm old, and to stop trying to hurt myself. I probably defer to her judgment about half the time. Then probably about half the times I think "Naw I'll be fine" I wind up hurting myself.

Thanks. Hopefully it's like all the times I've hurt my shoulder or elbow, I stay off it for a week and while it might ruin a project it doesn't permanently change anything. As opposed to the first time I hurt my lower back, after which it's never been the same.

I haven't biked in like, 10 years?

I've really enjoyed taking it back up. My wife joked that as a white male professional, I hit a certain age and my biology kicked in and I needed to go get a road bike and some spandex like every dentist around here.

I apparently have to make an extremely personal post here. I remember last time I did that, it was because I was having a big existential crisis about whether my career was going somewhere. On that front, I talked to my old software engineering professor, and he was impressed when I told him some of the stuff I'd been doing, and he advised me about how to frame my accomplishments both to myself and to employers, so I think I will be okay.

TL;DR: I am torn between liberalism and traditionalism myself and seeing too many flaws in both. I don't know what to do with myself after I move out.

I was taught from a young age that sex outside of marriage was a grave sin. My father got angry at my brother multiple times when he suspected him of going upstairs to masturbate rather than play with Bionicles, as he claimed. He once asked me and my brother both whether we had any "puppy love" for anyone, and when we sheepishly lied we didn't, he said "good." He once, at the state park, pointed to two girls, one of which I had a crush on, and said "see those girls? never marry those girls". He once showed me a news story of a 12 year old boy getting a girl pregnant and getting disowned. He put it like this: "if you're old enough to do that, you're old enough to move out and get a job". My mother took a more minor role in this, saying that childhood romance is pointless and you shouldn't even think about dating until you're 16 and own your own car. On a different note, Dad didn't like "clowns", and I had taken the Bible verse to "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt", so every time I felt compelled to make a joke or to talk about myself too much, I felt bad. That old country house had sulfurous water, so my parents decided I should bathe once a week and "smell like a kid" rather than smell like sulfur. We also lived out in the country and had almost no social connections at all, and Dad thought church was a scam, citing that the Bible's original conception of church was that neighbors would host each other on a rotating basis every Sunday. So we instead took turns reading Bible verses aloud on Sundays, though Dad would get angry if you seemed like you were bored or not paying attention, or if you were bad at reading, Dad might angrily take a lotion bottle and tell you to read the back of it using your voice in an interesting way, rather than the dry way that most people read aloud. Anyway, I didn't really have what I would call "friends" until I was 13, due to all of these things. I started taking Tae Kwon Do when I was 10, but the kids I met there weren't very familiar with me, and I never saw them outside of practice or tournaments.

A little more on my dad: he was a geophysical navigator, meaning he would be on a boat 4 weeks on and then be back at home for 4 weeks before the process repeated. I think he hated doing it. He got really interesting photos, but I think he hated leaving his home every 4 weeks. Every time he came back, it was like the world filled with color. It filled with humor and warmth and adventure and interesting ways of thinking and it filled with pain. Random pain, random things that would set him off, too many things to remember all of them. I remember once that he got obsessed with the fact that laundry detergent companies got everyone to use too much laundry detergent so they could sell more. He said he learned that you only need to use a 1/4th cup full, they tested it on the boat, your clothes are completely clean. He had been saying this for a while, and Mom seriously disagreed, telling me to always use a full cup. Well, one day he decided to have me do it and watch me. I was so conflicted between the two of them that I ended up filling it half full to split the difference and hopefully not make him mad. It didn't work, he shouted at me and stormed off to argue with my mother. This was near the end of the marriage; it had taken on a deterioration when I was about 11. He had just gotten back from Kazakhstan, and he had mostly stopped bathing or changing his clothes. Mom decided then that she would divorce him someday, but wanted to wait until we were older, because she knew the statistics on single motherhood. Towards the end, he hadn't gone back on the boat for a good 6 months and he was drinking boxed red wine and playing Lord of the Rings Online about every day. One memory I have was him getting mad that he got killed in "Monster Play" and all of a sudden cutting himself off and looking at me intently. I laughed nervously, and he uproariously laughed at my response.

But he ultimately was consumed by paranoia that my mother was cheating on him. I was so shocked at how harshly he treated her. I remember he accused her of having sex in her chair at work, and she repeated back to him "I'm having sex in my chair at work" in utter disbelief he could say something like that, and he laughed and shouted "Straight from the mouths of babes!" It might have been that same night that they were having a vicious argument like that in front of me, and I think Mom excused herself to do some chore in the bathroom or something and I went to help her and we both tried to avoid talking about it, we made up some stupid cute skit to laugh at as we worked. When we came back, Dad accused us of talking about him behind his back. I remember once he tried to get me to take his side in such an argument, and I couldn't, I said "I am impartial" in the most neutral voice I could muster. But the night of the separation was the worst. An hours-long argument with both parents trying their utmost to hurt each other. The final straw for him was when Mom brought up the "wheat germ oil" incident. The car was out of gas, and I think Dad tried to fill it up with a combination of old gas and "wheat germ oil" to make it work again, he had read that it would work, but it didn't. Dad put out some sincerity when she brought it up and said "I thought it would work..." and Mom said "Because you're a retard!" and Dad got so angry that he took her and threw her out onto the patio. I remember walking off onto the nearby gravel road to try to calm the turmoil in my mind sometime during this argument; at night, it gets so dark in the countryside, and no one is around to hear you cry. When the cops showed up, she showed them her bruise, they took statements from my mother and brother (I declined), and he was taken. To this day, he still holds a bitter grudge against my mother and will easily say quite harsh things towards her. I learned recently that he did not practice what he preached regarding sex before marriage; I have a half-sister that I didn't know about because he fucked a girl he met at church in a one-night-stand type scenario without protection, and my brother was conceived from similar out-of-wedlock sex. My mother regretted getting pregnant like that, because it seriously reduced her leverage in the relationship.

That separation happened in October of 2012 when I was 15. I had respected my father so, so much, so the pain of his separation was very sharp. It felt like my life had gone awry before it had even began. I liked video games, so I likened it to getting the "bad ending" in life, that my life had already ended, I was just seeing the epilogue. Regardless, I started to really come out of my shell when I was 16 somehow. I joined Scholastic Bowl and I made new friends, new jokes, new random mood swings. I found myself popular when I was 17 and I felt I could talk to a wide array of people by then. I chalked this up to being an upperclassman, but now, I'm not sure. Even though I finally started masturbating at age 16, I found that sexually forward women made me uncomfortable and embarrassed. I had to be coaxed into the slow dance circle at the school dance because even touching a woman's shoulders made me very nervous. The virgin valedictorian was hopelessly obsessed with me to the point that I felt bad for her, but I had no idea how to talk to her alone in the first place, and I was also disgusted when I learned even she had given a blowjob once. There were other reasons, besides; I felt like I would just end up hurting anyone who loved me, and I also had extremely low self-confidence somehow. I had no job, I had no car except my brother's which I would borrow, I had no muscle, I had no idea why women would be attracted to me. The second semester of my senior year was marked with a lot of random flip-outs on my part. It felt even more like my life was ending. All my social connections would be severed, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. Graduating was surreal.

At 16, with much guilt, I started talking to a girl 4 years my younger that I met on the bus. She was 13 and I was 17 when I started to notice that I really wanted to be around her. In a very short talking stage with a girl I was talking to online last week, she said I was like a primary school kid in terms of my affections, which was very enlightening to me. A therapist had told me I liked the 13 year old because she was likely traumatized and had been made more mature before her age, but now I think it's probably the other way around; I was very immature, and still am. Once, I met her in the park after graduating, and she touched my chest as a joke, then felt awkward and expressed regret; I felt guilty enough for this age-gap touch that I eventually saw some classmates close to my age and I walked off to talk to them without even saying goodbye. After graduating, I kept talking to her through Facebook. Somehow, the conversation turned dark eventually. I told her I had heard she liked to kick frogs from someone else, and she said she did, because she hated them, and not only that, she liked to cut them open while they were still alive, and watch as their organs throbbed until expiration, because it made her feel alive in a visceral way. I tried to get her to disavow this, but she didn't, and she could tell that I was very disturbed, and expressed some sadness that her honesty with me had driven me away, and that she should be less honest in the future, because honesty hurts her. I told her she was wrong, that honesty is always good, but in truth, it had indeed hurt her; I stopped talking to her the next day. It was near the Christmas reunion, and I had so much turmoil in my mind and was so randomly irritable that I spent most of it upstairs reading. In a reading rage, I finished Crime and Punishment in the course of a couple days.

The first semester of college went well; I had missed the fall semester due to my indecision and due to flirtation with enlisting that went nowhere because my father disliked the idea enough to sabotage it. I got A's in everything, even hard stuff like chemistry and Calculus 1. But I failed to make any friends, something that would carry over into the second semester, when I started taking my first Engineering classes. I started to feel some lack of motivation somehow, and I started to perform less well. This feeling got worse after I checked the social media of the girl I had loved: she had shot herself. On the last day of her life, she was silent until the latter half, getting more and more excited, saying "today's the day" without specifying what she meant. It was a week before her 16th birthday. I found out she had been in a sexual relationship with a man in his 30s, a man working construction on her house, a friend of her stepfather, a man who had previously been convicted of sexual abuse of a different girl under the age of 15 and was on parole. After her death, he was convicted again and sentenced to 77 years. I remember feeling awkward at the funeral because I think some people didn't even know why I was there, but her family was appreciative. I was so surprised at how well her brother had taken it; I apologized to him, and he said "she's in a better place now." Her grandmother had heard of me and thanked me having been her friend and for coming to the funeral, and I said she was welcome and threw in an "I'm sorry", and I could feel the words cut her as she walked away.

I heroically finished my work that semester and got A's and B's, but everything felt pointless. I couldn't believe that the world still spun around after that. Bad ending, indeed. The semester after that, January of 2017, I did horribly in every class. I dropped almost everything except for a natural sciences class and one engineering course and I developed an unhealthy obsession with the speech professor, emailing her too much. One day I had a particularly nasty breakdown and asked her why I shouldn't kill myself, after some test cuts to my wrists and neck, and I was introduced to campus police in my dorm, who took my knife. In response, I went and bought a new knife. One week, I had been having a bad week; I had such stress from finals about to happen, and I had barely been sleeping, and I had had an embarrassment in front of everyone in the science class, and I forgot to mention I had no roommate during this time so I had no one to put a strong face in front of, and I had frustratedly emailed the speech professor again and got a reply back that I had broken her boundaries and made her uncomfortable and she would never reply to any of my emails again. I felt physically sick and dizzy reading it, and I began to saw myself with the knife in earnest in a rage that lasted for probably an hour or so before the cuts were deep enough that they had a sort of aching pain to them. I browsed social media for a while, then thought to call my therapist. I wanted to see her, and she told me I couldn't, because we had no appointment and she was busy. I told her I had cut myself, and she then flatly told me to come in. It was a funny feeling walking outside. It was such a nice day out. The sun was bright, the birds were singing, and the temperature was perfect. I walked into her office and she said "let's see those cuts!" cheerfully. Her face quickly turned to horror seeing the deep pulsating wound in my left wrist. I was put into a chair and some EMS people looked at me; they found I had missed the vein entirely. I had cut vertically, too, so no tendons were cut. I was making some small dark jokes now and again up until I learned that I had to be taken to the hospital instead of just being stitched up and released, to which I finally said "goddamn it." which my therapist laughed at, oddly enough. I had to be wheeled out, but I was so ashamed that I asked if my face could be covered. They obliged, giving me a shirt or a towel or something. The EMS worker in the back of the ambulance was some 40 year old woman or something and, just like the others, was weirdly urgent in wondering if it was a serrated knife or a regular one. She was saddened at what I had done. She tried to tell me everything would get better, that her life had gotten much better and she really enjoyed her life at 40, that I would find similar fulfillment. I cynically told her that 40 was actually the age at which most men killed themselves. She frowned and said "you're killing me!" When she dropped me off at the hospital, she took one last deliberate look at me before walking off. I wonder what she was thinking.

It was in the hospital and the psych ward and the weeks afterwards that I found the reason to exist. The reason is the deep abiding suffering that I inflicted in both of my parents with my attempt. Mom said she was angry when she was driving up to visit me, but upon seeing me, she couldn't help but cry a little, and tried very hard to put on her most affable affect, and she brought me a Mark Twain book and visited me every day. It was only afterwards, witnessing her listlessness and a few flip-outs of her own at my various depressed cruelties, that I realized how much she suffered. Dad did not visit me; he called, and commented harshly that I tried to die without God's permission, and I got mad at him and called him some swear word or other and was outraged that he could call me and say that at a time like this, and he remarked that he had succeeded in his mission of getting me to feel an emotion other than sadness, and I told him that that the illness was actually two emotions, sadness and anger, and he started to cry and asked why I did it. In the psych ward, he kept calling me. He first tried to convince me that the girl was in heaven, but somehow I conveyed to him that I actually didn't even do it because of the girl. I had come to terms with her death by then and informed him that it wasn't my fault, and I stopped talking to her because she kicked frogs, and that was a perfectly natural thing for me to do. This, I think, confused him, because the next day, he called again, wondering if I did it because he wasn't helping me to pay for college. We then got into a bitter argument, me right there in the psych ward battling his stupid justifications. He said "the father usually doesn't even pay for half! he only pays for a third! the SON is the third party involved, and he makes it go three ways!" and I furiously said "then why won't you pay even for a third?!" a little bit louder than my inside voice. I think his justification was that he never agreed for me to go to a private university like I did, but it didn't really matter. The psych ward is a story for another time. I got incompletes for my finals, and went back to finish them later that summer. The natural science professor probably knew what happened to me, but didn't speak of it; he was just friendly to me in a casual way. I saw him in the gym locker room once, the following semester, and he was happy to see me, greeting me, laughing.

I switched majors to computer science, and things started going well again for me in my classes. I found a group of people in the 2nd floor (the Honors floor) lounge that liked to play video games; they would just take in their laptops and play. Usually one of them would hook into HDMI and play, and people would watch him. I really liked this relaxed environment, it was liberating in some ways because you could make so many jokes in such a casual place, with people coming and going whenever they pleased. It was also restricting, because they were almost all game dev majors, and I couldn't talk about shared professors with them, and they were all liberal and didn't have a very broad range of things they liked to talk about. They liked D&D, which I never really saw the appeal of. After 2020, many of them experimented with their gender. Two of them went nonbinary and changed nothing else, one of them went from gay to aromantic asexual, two of them went properly MtF and changed their names to weird ones, and one of those MtF ones went even further and developed into an endogenic system and brought PluralKit onto the Discord server. He played around with it once and then never again.

I will just take an intermission here to speak of LISA: The Painful RPG. It felt like looking in a mirror. Brad Armstrong was a picture of me: bald, bearded, background in martial arts and toxic family dynamics, losing someone he cared about to suicide, a lack of willingness to be intimate, a storm of emotions going on within him that he evidently never let anyone know, and a painful march to the end without even knowing why he was doing it. The humor in the game and the cruel hopelessness of the situation reflected what went on in my heart. I felt empty on finishing it.

For my part, I went strong for a couple semesters; in the third semester, I once again lost all motivation and dropped everything, only this time, I had very little suicidal ideation, just despair. Once again, it felt like the world was ending around me, except this time, it wasn't even due to personal circumstances; Covid had come and closed the university around me, though my downward spiral had started before that. I made at least one professor sad that semester; it was a stern looking yet funny East Asian woman, I think from China or Taiwan, teaching Assembly Language or whatever the low-level computer code language class is called. I think she emailed me for my lack of attendance. I emailed her back telling her I was going to drop it because there was no point in my coming in anymore, she expressed sympathy and told me that I was actually doing better than most in the class. She wasn't the only one. I loved the compassion of many of the professors, including the religions professor and the old calculus professor and the high-effort-paper professor, though half the time, I rejected their allowances for my illness because I felt it would be even worse if I accepted their kindness and then still failed. But the college was finally unamused by my dropping classes this second time. I wasn't making enough progress, they said, and they cut off my financial aid. It was already breaking my mother's finances even before that, so that was the end of my time at that college.

After moving back home, things actually started going a lot better for me. I got a part-time job at the gas station near me. It was fun. Having money for the first time was nice. I spent one off semester just working there. I realized that covid wasn't going to blow over after that, so I bought my first car and resumed my studies, this time at a local state university, a 20 minute commute, no meal plan, no dorms. It was actually fun this time, I'm not sure why. It was nice cooking for myself at home, I had started talking to people I really liked on Discord, and my mother provided some actual warmth in my life. Even though I didn't have any real social connections at college, I had a lot of fun. The professors liked me and I still talk to them sometimes. I was also excited to get a job in my field just a few months out of college in 2023, even despite the state of the industry. I've almost completely paid off my debt by now, and Mom's finances are not at the breaking point anymore, and I bought a newer car this year, not even needing a loan. Coupled with my professor saying I have real job prospects and this wasn't just a dead-end job I'm working, I'm actually pretty excited for the future these days.

However, the romance is something I'm probably going to have a tough time with, and I dread it. I've lost my faith, but yet, I don't belong to either the atheist liberals or the religious conservatives entirely. I think Christianity is deeply flawed in many ways, but I think the way liberalism handles relationships is very ugly. I don't want to give an intimate piece of myself to a woman who I'm not sure I will marry by having sex with her. If we break up, I will have been made permanently uglier in a way that I haven't been up to now, and it won't feel special with the next woman. At the same time, the old belief system I had was flawed; Dad never did what I'm doing now, he was apparently a rampantly sexual creature before marriage. But I think the liberal belief system is ugly, itself. It brought this country to what it is today. All of these thoughts, and then I realize I'm probably overthinking this, and I will have to take anyone who accepts me, because I have too many flaws to be too choosy. Perhaps I should just get into a relationship with someone who I have connections with and see what happens. I know one thing: I actually do need a relationship, regardless of my misgivings of hurting my partner. I predict that if I move out and don't start a relationship, I will quickly wither and crash out of my job, lacking any warmth in my life. Regardless, I need to start before my parents die, or my life will either end with a quick romp through alcoholism and a gunshot, or something similar to Brad Armstrong, a purposeless journey more brutal and agonizing without any end in sight.

Basically, I need advice from smart people. I don't know what to even ask, so I will just end this cutely to hopefully create some juxtaposition within you. Reddit, DAE lack any intimacy and fear the unknown? AITA? Thanks for the AAQC, kind sir! (Please don't AAQC this, I don't want people to see it.)

I read it all, oats, and I empathize greatly. A few things:

  1. Reading the dates, I'm probably ~20 years older than you, so I'm likely closer in age to your father than you
  2. Common ground. My parents also split acrimoniously at approximately the same age (I was 13/14) and the tone, if not the detail, of your experiences mirrors a lot of what I experienced. It's horrible, and it leaves a lasting mark. I was lucky enough to meet my wife when I was in mid-20s, and we're together since (married 17+ years, two kids), and while we wouldn't overtly describe ourselves as conservative, we live 100% a conservative relationship and life by most measures.
  3. On experiences of depression / self-worth. I've never been suicidal so your life went much further than mine in this regard, but I understand some of what you went through. Depression (major depressive disorder, call it whatever) recurred in my life every year for 20+ years. The story I tell myself is that it related to the family break-up (which took me from overnight from idyllic countryside life of quietude/solitude/animals+birds/farm-life to urban living / single parent / rougher friends who'd kick out lamp-posts, underage drink from cans in fields, get chases from the cops for fun etc.) We had no money instantly, and our mother worked 12-hour shifts in a grocer's to make ends meet. My dad contributed something, but I don't believe this ever came generously/willingly, and one year (1994) he took off with friends for a 2-3 week holiday a few thousand miles away while that year my mother needed help from a poverty charity to pay for Christmas. So I told myself a story that crap life and zero expectations and no self-worth went back to this time, but it was probably influenced by other factors too, most notably genetics: one strand of my family (my mother's) is blighted by depression, all the women are or have been in some form of treatment, all the men suffered in silence and never ever spoke about it, just "took to the bed" in a black mood for days or weeks at a time. [My mother also spent a few months in and out of mental institutions before the marriage broke up. I don't know if her severe mental health problems had a big causal effect on the bad marriage, or whether the bad marriage had a big causal effect on the severe mental health problems. Either way, she was on the mend a few years after the break-up and is quite healthy and stoic still, as she nears 80 and is still very active, only retired from work this year -- the same grocer's shop she worked those 12-hour shifts in 30+ years ago.
  4. On curing / overcoming depression / self-worth problems. I will preface these by saying it's still work in progress, I have no complacency about this, but reality is that for the last 8/9 years I have been free of depression. This has coincided with a few factors. (a) I stopped working jobs I found I couldn't do. My daily energy pattern is completely unsuited to 9-to-5 jobs I was working. Afternoons from 2.30 to 4.30pm are always the rock-bottom of the 24 hours for me, so basically every day of my Monday-to-Friday working life was ending on a major downer. I've been self-employed for all but four months of the last 9 years approximately. That four-month stint, I took a job in 2023, and was immediately reminded, and with great force, why I couldn't work those regular jobs. (b) I got physically healthy. I'm not ripped, but I went from very overweight (my weight was between 16-18 stones, or 225 to 250 lbs) to correct weight in about 3-4 months, and managed to keep it off ever since. This wasn't easy - I got some help from a nutritionist, who took me off all gluten and dairy for a month or so, and I immediately had a clarity of thought and lack of brain-fog that I don't think I had felt in 20+ years. I eased back onto all foods several months later, but the habit and mindset changed forever. Yes, I still fall off the wagon from time to time, but I eat much less sugar, much less junk food and drink much less alcohol than I needed when I was coping. Around this time I also started running too. Very slowly at first (5kms in the local park, lumbering around slowly in a walk-jog), but I immediately loved having run. I didn't look forward to running, and I didn't like the actual running, but the afterglow was real and made it worth it. After a couple of years that changed, and I hit the trifecta of all three. That was about 5-6 years ago, and now I couldn't imagine life without running. I'm doing my third marathon in a few weeks, and if I avoid injuries, I'm on track to go around 45-60 minutes quicker than my first.
  5. On finding a mate, my recurring rule of thumb is that we're mammals, and therefore any relationship that is too focused on mind (intellect etc.) is destined to have a greater chance of unhappiness. The body is powerful, so anything where your body gets moved is good. Other people have mentioned dancing, and I'd agree with that -- I did a community fundraiser through my sports club a number of years ago, and I danced tango with a partner in front of 750 people in a big hall. We trained for that a couple of nights a week for 6-8 weeks and it was among the best few months of my life. It was seriously enlivening. (Tango is sexy as hell, but the others who did foxtrot, etc all had a great time too...) Also I think it might have been you on another thread where we chatted about tennis? Any sport or activity that gets your body moving, and has room for social stuff around it, is great. Just make sure to get out of your mind (literally, not alcoholically or chemically!) and into your body as often as you can.
  6. Well done on how far you've come. Things were shitty when you were coming up, as they were for me and tens or hundreds of millions of others. Those shitty times helped to make you who you are today. Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms: "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." That line - "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places" - I think that line, and reading good fiction and good poetry in general, got me through a lot of dark days.
  7. Religion / faith We were raised Catholic on sufferance, and I haven't been practising for many years. But my belief in God never went away. I don't think it's a humanoid God, and I'm not sure there's a He looking down on me and guiding me or protecting me, but I do feel a very strong positive connection to some form of divinity (universe, cosmos, nature ... Napoleon Hill called it "infinite intelligence", which I liked). This divinity is always present, I just need to tap into it. I also believe this divinity sits at the origin / bedrock of all "religious experiences", on which organized religion was eventually built. So yes, I have faith, but it's a strange and chaotic form of faith, but it's mine. The only thing I halfway regret about this is I never have anyone to talk to about it.

Good luck with everything.

S

Sorry for what you had to go through.

First, I want to point out that you never got to see actual conservatism. I know, I know, no true scotsman and all that, but imo one of the most fundamental hallmarks of conservatism is stability and long-term connection to a local community. Your family - in particular your father - seems outright incapable of that. I've had discussions with friends who've had a similarly bad time with their allegedly conservative families, and I had to point out repeatedly to them that their families basically broke all rules you can possibly imagine for conservatives (the very basics, stuff like "don't have three kids from three fathers while being an unemployed single mom"). Conservatism is when both your parents are regularly employed, stay together and don't sleep around, have a decent number of friends (who all life a broadly conservative life), have positions in various local communities, they have a fixed lifestyle that is not substantially changed from their own parents (and their grandparents, and wider family, and so on), they also just simply know lots of people in their environment and are on amicable terms with them, etc. Not necessarily all of those, but most.

I know especially those from difficult backgrounds think this is just make-belief idealised conservatism that doesn't exist in the real world, but it's how I grew up. It exists, you just have to find it, there are whole towns like this. Ironically, this is also why I consider a large part of the mainstream left fundamentally conservative, as much as they hate that term, so YMMV. But contrariwise that also means that as long as you avoid outright woke groups, even many superficially left-wing groups will include lots of women with nice, conservative relationship views (even if they may not admit that to themselves).

So I'd say simple local connections is where you should start. Find local activities and groups that are at least roughly sex-balanced (ideally more woman then men!), intrinsically require human interaction and just do stuff. Dancing is the simplest. But there is so much more; Grow something and sell it on a farmers market (even the growing part can be done in a group). Help out in a local charity. Organize local festivals, and also, simply party there. Language/ethnic affinity groups. Maybe your work has some afternoon activities. The list is endless. You can even just start now shopping around for roommates - you have lots of time after all - and jump-start a social life from there once you've found some good people.

The important part is that you just join various stuff that exists already and try what suits you and has a nice culture. You will have to leave your comfort zone. You will find groups with an odd, toxic culture. Don't get stuck in the wrong place, and also don't let yourself be ruled by your inhibitions. Also, unless you're already very social, don't try to start things yourself.

Once you have a bit more of a social life, finding the right partner will be easier. I'd also advice you to not be particularly choosy, and DEFINITELY don't do that cheesy "oh I'm so damaged and I don't want to hurt you you're just too good for me" routine if you find a nice girl.

If you're looking for a more traditional but still secular romance, first gen immigrants from Asia might be a good option (if that appeals to you and there are any where you live).

Even in my small town, first generation Asian immigrants are present, though not in huge numbers. However, I don't know any, and cold approaching is scary to me. I also question the assumption that Asian immigrants would be much different. I was talking to a Chinese girl on a language learning app, and she described the same dynamic I see: traditionalist upbringing that sex was special, falls for the first man that pays attention to her when she starts college, gets burned by him, but realizes that she has a high sex drive and starts to convert more to the sexual liberalism thing.

I will give you that Asians are hot, though it would make me wonder if I should use a sperm bank to make the kids all-Chinese instead of just half. That has its own benefits because I don't know if mental illness and overthinking run in my blood. Also the kids could speak Chinese and English, but Chinese writing is dumb and the kids would probably turn out illiterate. My idea was that American citizenship would be something valuable I could bring to the relationship, but plane tickets are expensive and there's so much you don't get about someone through text. It was okay practice for talking to women, though. Turns out they're not really that much different from men in terms of personality, they just have different things they're interested in, and conversation is about finding mutual interests. Also that girl is really nice. I told her so many things about myself that I thought would be weird and make her stop talking to me but she was so accepting of everything.

As an aside, "Kill Your Inner Loser" is a guide for dating apps that I have seen posted here more than once by people that presumably find it helpful. My reaction was shock. "This is what it takes to be successful on dating apps??" That guide is disgusting to me. I thought to myself I'd rather stay single forever than do that, because that guide isn't who I am and isn't even who I want to be.

I also question the assumption that Asian immigrants would be much different.

There's all types of people everywhere, but at least in my anecdotal experience the distribution is different.

wonder if I should use a sperm bank to make the kids all-Chinese instead of just half

I'd strongly suggest against this, kids are orders-of-magnitude safer with their biological fathers than with step-fathers.

Yeah, the distribution is probably a lot more favorable.

The sperm bank thing was a weird thing to suggest, sorry, but I don't think that it makes sense to put that type of parenthood in the same slot as "stepfather". That's a totally different thing than marrying into some kids.

I was so conflicted between the two of them that I ended up filling it half full to split the difference

Should've been 5/8ths.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Haha I was thinking that as I wrote it, "hmm 14/15 year old me wasn't doing his math properly"

For uncertainty problems where there's a lower bound at zero and the uncertainty is over a large range of proportions, usually the geometric mean is more appropriate then the arithmetic mean; 14/15 year old you had good mathematical instincts.

I really wish I had anything at all useful to say about his or your actual problems; sorry.

I really wish I had anything at all useful to say about his or your actual problems; sorry.

No problem. The Dreadnoughts once had a blog post when the Ukraine War started that said

But the two worlds came together most clearly with Foreign Skies, a folkpunk concept album entirely focused on the insanity and tragedy of the First World War. I took my reading in history and social philosophy and tried to recreate the themes of that time by writing a diverse set of songs from the perspective of a wide variety of people; Gavrilo Princip, the Suffragettes, the German Soldier in Belgium, the executed deserter. We got a lot of questions about whether this was a “political” album; it wasn’t, unless bearing witness to horror, tragedy and evil is political. The only “message” was: this happened.

It's a striking line, and I think he wrote it in a post for Vicki's Polka too, which ended with the death of Vicki in 2020 and the family not being let in due to covid restrictions. It's striking because it's how I've viewed a lot of life. For a long time, I was immensely displeased that my life was not going how I wanted it. It's only now that I've lived this long and done so many things and talked to so many people that I finally realized: it's not the life I wanted, but it's a life. I can honestly say that I have lived a fulfilling life, and I think I'm a more interesting, more funny, more smart, more empathetic person overall than I was 10 years ago when I had all those social connections.

I was also struck by this feeling watching "In This Corner (and Other Corners) of the World", featuring a woman who was basically forced into marriage with someone she did not even know. She didn't hate him, but there was a lot about her situation that she felt was un-ideal, such as her sister-in-law treating her like garbage, and her not being able to do anything except smile and close her eyes and bear it like she always did, her hair thinning from the stress she kept hidden. And then, being 1930s Japan, the world started falling apart around her for reasons entirely outside of her control. Unspeakable horrors, but unlike Grave of the Fireflies, I feel it ends on a nicer note. We do not choose our circumstances, but we choose how we look at them and how we move forward from them, and in the end, Suzu from the movie provided a very nice model for how you do that.

I think you should give your faith a second look. It lines up best with the outlook you have on life, but seeing your dad’s failures up close has tainted it for you. But he is not the yardstick to measure faith by. You can in fact interpret him in the opposite way. He was flawed and hypocritical but this hypocrisy was because in spite of his flaws and failure he recognized to some extent a real morality that was extrinsic to himself. He may have never consciously internalized this but it seems apparent in your description that some of his toxicity was his own cognitive dissonance

I have so many thoughts about Dad. It's been interesting to see the comments on him with such a narrow slice I've presented of him. I thought about doing a @naraburns style writeup on him, but I don't know how to make it interesting. As I've said elsewhere, he's become even more extreme since the divorce, and he's a strange mixture of empathy and complete lack of empathy in favor of brazenly demanding things of you because he's your dad and the Bible says children must respect their parents. I'm pretty sure he hasn't worked at all since the divorce, but he was very reluctant to tell me anything because he thought my mother would take him to court and that I would rat on him as soon as I found out anything. It occurs to me he's never actually bought a house. He moved into the shitty farmhouse that Grandpa already owned. Did some repair work on it and moved in. After the divorce, he moved back in with his parents. Sometime, perhaps a year later, after everyone moved everything out of it, the house burned down. Both parents blamed the other one. I suppose the house burning down also contributed to the "end of everything" vibe I was getting. It really was a shitty house though haha. The wreckage is still there, as it has not been bulldozed.

I know faith is high on this forum, and I applaud your zealotry, but it's funny, my salvation is basically the last thing I'm thinking of right now. If God doesn't understand why I think the things I think, then the game was truly stacked against me all along.

A therapist had told me I liked the 13 year old because she was likely traumatized and had been made more mature before her age, but now I think it's probably the other way around; I was very immature, and still am.

…

I told her I had heard she liked to kick frogs from someone else, and she said she did, because she hated them, and not only that, she liked to cut them open while they were still alive, and watch as their organs throbbed until expiration, because it made her feel alive in a visceral way.

No I think the therapist is correct here.

I suppose it could be "both". I didn't know she liked to cut frogs open when I met her. She was "cute" in her genuineness and she was funny. Perhaps she was more outgoing because of her trauma; it sounded like both her parents and also her stepfather were terrible people. I regret getting involved with her in more ways than one, but I guess I don't feel too ashamed to publicly admit that I liked her now.

I have no insight to offer on your deeper problems, but in response to your core original question:

Should you be a liberal or a traditionalist?

You shouldn't seek consciously to align yourself with a whole grab-bag of beliefs. You should follow your conscience and your reason and your interests, and if that leads you to find that you align with people who use the label "tradition" or people who use the label "liberal," then that is convenient for labeling yourself to signal to others what your beliefs are, but it's not real. It's not a fact about you like your height or who your father was.

Hey man, I'm sorry you have had to go through all that. It sounds really difficult. I think you are doing really well to be where you are in life, given the unhealthy environment you were raised in. So, give yourself some praise if you can, you have had to endure a lot which you didn't deserve and came out reasonably ok. That says good things about you as a person.

For your specific topic with relationships, I would strongly encourage you to not pin your happiness on the idea of a relationship to bring warmth into your life. It is great to have a woman who loves you and who wants to be around you, but it isn't fundamentally going to fix things for you. That is, if you're struggling with depression and messy feelings about sexuality now, if you get a girlfriend you'll still struggle with those things just as much. You don't necessarily have to wait until you feel like those things are fixed before dating someone, because after all we are never finished projects. But don't make the mistake of thinking that dating someone is going to be a fix for them, because it won't be. They are separate issues.

I also would encourage you to not just go after whomever will have you. It seems like you feel like you can't be picky, but you must be picky to some extent when choosing a mate. Not picky about superfluous stuff (like how pretty she is or how big her breasts are), but picky about character for sure. Going in with an approach of "I have to take what I can get" is likely to mean you will settle for someone who is a bad fit for you, and you'll be miserable with that. So try to have some idea going in about what flaws you can and cannot realistically live with. It's easy to go "eh I can live with it" when you are in the heady early days of a relationship, but over the course of years that stuff will wear you down.

Sounds like you've been through the ringer. I've struggled with depression and various other issues, even suicidal ideation, though you have certainly been through worse.

For my part, I'd recommend just continuing to experiment with various ways of feeling better. Try and have hope from the fact that myself, and many thousands (or tens of thousands or w/e) of people have recovered from serious depression and shitty circumstances, even though it seems impossible.

What helped me a lot was to find a few good male role models I genuinely respected, and go to them for advice for big life things. Almost like a surrogate dad. I found a great priest (which btw, many are still fine talking to you even if you express disbelief and frustration!) and also a great therapist, though it took some doing a lot of false starts. But trying to make meaningful connections with other men, especially older men, was very helpful for me I think.

I also would recommend just being kind to yourself, I know it's hokey, but it can be helpful. Life can be extremely hard, and we make it harder by hating ourselves. Sometimes I think that's what God forgiving us is at least partially supposed to solve.

Psychedelics, such as MDMA or psilocyben, can help if you are in a really, really tough spot, but they can be a mixed bag. Plus hard to get. I've never done it but it's probably better to find a therapist or 'guide' or whatever to walk you through it, if you decide to go that route.

Ultimately I think while church is complicated, and Christianity is in a weird spot, finding a group of folks that you can have as a community can help. Doesn't have to be church, I did ecstatic dance for a while and that has a kind of church-like vibe. AA and similar recovery programs can fill the niche. But having some sort of community that is focused on the deep parts of life can help a ton.

Anyway, I genuinely hope that things get better for you. Sounds like you have avoided a lot of the worst case scenarios, which is awesome. I'd give yourself credit for that. If you want to DM me, feel free. I like to chat with folks.

ETA: OH! Also for romance, I'd really recommend learning to dance. I started partner dance in college to get better with ladies, and it worked super well even though it was very hard and awkward at first. Partner dance like salsa, swing, etc is an excellent way to meet and impress women. Plus it can be fun once you get decent at it.

I know it might sound like I'm doing poorly, but I'm actually not doing poorly. I sometimes get sad, sure, who doesn't? But avoiding thinking about sad stuff or anything heavy like fears that I will die alone and un-romanced did wonders for me up until now. The only reason I wrote any of that out was to paint a picture for everyone to give me actually good advice on what to do with myself romantically, because it will be difficult without some strategy to go for. Will liberal atheist women accept me? How can I accept them without harming myself so much? After writing it, I think it might be stupid to even think about it at all, and just try to go for many women and see who works out. If she loves me, then she will be okay with talking the sexual hangups all out with me. Or, perhaps, I will rapidly make her unattracted to me by becoming emotional. Either way, I do appreciate your request to DM. I don't actually have any more sad things to say.

Ahh yeah. As I said in one comment, learn to partner dance. Did wonders for me.

One memory I have was him getting mad that he got killed in "Monster Play" and all of a sudden cutting himself off and looking at me intently. I laughed nervously, and he uproariously laughed at my response.

Woah, haven't finished reading but I had to comment in this in particular. This sounds absolutely terrifying, getting chills just reading it!!! Ahh!! Very sorry you went through that sort of thing as a kid. What a memory to have jeez.

I've had my fair share of raging at video games, and I think this affects me a lot because I can almost relate to your dad, but NEVER want to be that way towards my own kids, if I am blessed to have them. Glad you seemingly made it out okay.

If it matters to you, he was drunk when he did it, and probably very unhappy. I would recommend either cultivating a love for life or avoiding substance abuse when your kids are around if you wish to avoid a similar fate. I am touched by your words, though. I've always thought it was difficult to describe how he was; he wasn't directly abusive, I don't think, and he wasn't exactly neglectful, either, but he did a pretty terrible job. I could have really used a good father during my teens and early 20s. Sometimes I wished he beat me so that it would be easier to describe what exactly is wrong with me.

Thanks man. I've already gone through a long substance abuse arc going through similar things you described, though not as intense, and made it out the other side, by the grace of God. My fiance and I don't plan to drink much if at all around our children, and definitely not get drunk around them.

I think standard abuse via neglect is pretty awful man. Sometimes even worse than beating, if the beating is only occasional and the parent is loving the rest of the time. My father passed at 8, and my mom joined an MLM a couple of years after, so I spent over half of my time from the age of 10 to about 15 onward alone, in my room, mostly gaming or reading. I eventually ended up getting friends, but still had very little parental interaction. I can relate to feeling the frustration of like, ugh I wish I had had a more obviously terrible situation. Though ofc, I do get pity sometimes for my father dying early. Not that it helps much.

Either way, I am actually in a really good spot now. Have a job I can tolerate, and incredible fiance, lots of friends, and generally things are going well. Despite wanting to die for almost a decade growing up, abusing substances, cutting, etc. If you put sustained effort into it, then things can get better. I wish you the best my friend.

Hi!

You've clearly had a hard time in life so far. But putting that aside, it sounds like you have managed to find a job out of college, and that's awesome! That's worth celebrating!

You framed the issue as "Traditionalism vs Liberalism" to start. But it sounds to me like your current issue, and the reason your posting, has more to do with learning how to navigate romance. Would you say the current struggle is that the only two frameworks that you've seen for navigating romance is that of the traditionally liberal and conservative worldviews? And your conflict is that you see major flaws in both? If that is the case, I have thoughts that you might find useful, but first lets make sure we've identified the root problem first. If that isn't right, let me know where I went wrong in my interpretation of your problem.

Yes, it's about romance. I don't know. I have some weird values and clearly some hangups about getting intimate with women and accepting their own sexuality. I don't know whether to try the church thing or to try some combination of dating apps and making social connections in the real world. One preserves my original values but requires some beliefs that I think don't work, and are the reason that so many people are falling out of religion. The other opens me up to dating many more people, but they have their own shortcomings, like the belief in the "true self" and the discovery of your "self" sexually. Right now, I can't do either, because I still live at home and I'm in a dying rural area. But once I get a job elsewhere, these options will open up. But @WhiningCoil is who I wanted to hear most from because it sounded like he had a similar situation to me, and he's totally correct that I am thinking too much.

My own experience in life is definitely different than yours in a lot of ways, but I think its important to lay out some of it so you know me somewhat. For example, I come from more of a center-left background, and my childhood traumas are of a different nature than yours. But more importantly, I'm curious about some of what you said in this reply.

on church

requires some beliefs that I think don't work Which beliefs are those? And do you think you have to hold whatever these beliefs are to go to church and meet people there?

on dating apps

like the belief in the "true self" and the discovery of your "self" sexually Can you expand on what you mean by this? Like are you worried that you will have to start adopting these beliefs to use dating apps? Or is there some other hangup?

I really appreciate you honing in on a proper response. I know I'm not being entirely clear.

I love the idea of church. A strong community with strong values that are very family-friendly is great. But I feel something that ex-Mormons might feel, and it's that the Bible is based on some seriously flawed principles. It struggles greatly with the problem of evil, as @Hoffmeister25 has elucidated elsewhere. It struggles with the Epicurean paradox. And, if kids are raised like I was, it inflicts some suffering as they encounter and convert to sexual liberalism. The women do okay, they might have a slut phase but they can get married easily if they just lie about their bodycount. The men get fucked up. I feel very damaged, because I am expected to have a high bodycount by now, and I wasn't even true to the principles of what I was taught and I started masturbating to ease the urges. And this is all assuming that they don't just fall out of the religion altogether. I believe I could attend church and say all the right words because a kind God who would understand everything about me is deeply touching. But would my kids appreciate my lying to them? I don't really believe God would send a Son to one tiny region in the Middle-East and damn everyone else who didn't have faith. Or if they aren't damned, then what's even the point of believing in Jesus Christ? I can tell you, statistically, Christians are not helped at all by their faith, except for their community building. If goodwill and karma and a loving God existed, that girl I knew wouldn't have shot herself.

For the dating apps, look, I think I can accept a woman who isn't a virgin. That's just expected these days. But I'm worried she won't accept me. Right now, I can fall in love really quickly. Right now, I don't want to have sex unless I see a very serious chance that I will marry her, but I have no idea how I will feel if I'm deeply in love and accustomed to touching her a lot. I think that most women my age would not have much patience for me if I'm like a preteen and nervous and sweating while touching her. I don't know how many women will have it be a dealbreaker if we don't have sex within a short timeframe, or if I fail to break the touch barrier, or if I suck at kissing. I don't know if they will mind if I have dealbreakers like no blowjobs or no anal sex. I mostly think the old model of expecting marriageable women to be virgins worked really well, there were no pregnancy accidents, less STDs I'd guess, less jealousy on the part of the man, and less expectations for performance on the part of the woman. I think a huge mistake liberalism makes is saying that you need to sleep around to figure out what you prefer sexually, that every time you're with another person, you get closer to your true self. I hate that thought. I think the self is fleeting and changes even as you pursue it, and it's better to be sure about someone before making a commitment. I think sex is special and should be reserved for your life partner, and if she doesn't turn out to be your life partner, it was such a waste, and you were made permanently uglier.

I described them as weird hangups, and they are. I wanted to blame liberalism (including sexual liberalism) to the awful state of the country right now, but it's a little unfair, because Christianity led to liberalism led to people celebrating shooting each other, so they're both bad in that way. I don't know. The world is ugly, the sexual world is ugly, and my brain has been made weird.

I mostly think the old model of expecting marriageable women to be virgins worked really well, there were no pregnancy accidents, less STDs I'd guess, less jealousy on the part of the man, and less expectations for performance on the part of the woman.

I hate to point this out, considering that I myself am more of a traditionalist, but your own life experiences call in to question the validity of the above statement. Your father was immersed in that conservative culture, and he still had pregnancy scares and jealousy issues.

My experiences do not call into question the statement's validity. As @RenOS pointed out, my dad was not really a traditionalist, or at least, not a traditionalist of any tradition I know about. He started a family and kept cutting off any of his own social connections he had made. He didn't go to church. He had us go to the state park with a bunch of milk jugs to fill up drinking water from the spigots there. One year, he got obsessed with nitrogen and fertilizers and chemistry and had us all piss into milk jugs and buckets. I remember, once, the fellow Tae Kwon Do pupils were in the same car as me swinging by my house, perhaps to drop me off after a tournament, and wondered about the dark yellow liquid jugs lined up by the clothes line. They wondered "is that lemonade?". I don't remember what I responded with. Dad was immersed in something other than a conservative culture. Dad still is immersed in something other than a conservative culture. He browses extremist websites every day. He set up an office in the barn with a window AC unit for his elderly grandparents because the actual house is apparently not finished enough to live in (or, since his computer, his bed, and his TV are in the house, maybe he just doesn't want to be bothered by them?). He has spent years doing minor work on the house, and it still isn't finished. The toilet broke, so he set up a "bio-toilet" that doesn't need to be cleaned or piped anywhere or anything expensive like that. He doesn't pay for trash pickup, he just burns what he can and sets non-burnables aside in its own large dumpster. There are bullet casings all over the ground.

I think I'd describe him as "extremely anti-social with paranoid narcissistic tendencies" before I'd describe him as a traditionalist.

But I'm not calling your father a traditionalist. I was pointing out that despite being immersed in a conservative culture, (or at least presenting as conservative), he still fell into all the poor outcomes you described.

He started a family and kept cutting off any of his own social connections he had made. He didn't go to church.

Do you think Church membership is a panacea to your father's ills? Every progressive was once the child of devout church-goers. Every liberal once went to Sunday school.

The point isn't so much about how much or how little your father was immersed in traditionalism. The point is that you can't expect a traditionalist culture/mindset to protect you completely from bad outcomes, by itself.

It's simply untrue that the expectation for the women to be a virgin led to reduced jealousy, pregnancy scares, and less expectations of performance from women. You want a tangible example? Islamists expect their wives to be virgins (and their wives are virgins) and are still jealous, and still have expectations of performance. All those issues you describe are issues effecting all relationships, not just "sexually liberated" ones. And if you think a traditionalist relationship will protect you from them, by virtue of it being a traditionalist relationship, then you run the risk of failing to uphold the very virtues you hold.

Do you think conservative parents don't go through divorce, or separate, or fight or get jealous? The Sexual Revolution was partly a consequence of conservatives failing to uphold the virtues they held. You can argue about whether or not it lead to better outcomes or not, but that observation is still true. Many, many conservatives professed conservative relationship mores, just like your father, and then completely failed to actually follow them; that failure undermined the entire conservative zeitgest.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I guess I am just trying to push back against the feeling that the circumstances of relationships, rather than their actual action determine their development. "In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" James 2:17. Don't let your theoretical thoughts about relationships dominate them, but allow your understanding of actual reality to guide your actions.

I agree with your point. I think using my father to make it was not very effective, though.

I really appreciate you honing in on a proper response. I know I'm not being entirely clear.

Tis the power of asking questions, and thank you for being willing to open up so much. This response I think gets us much closer to somewhere useful. And their are a few places where I think you can explore further. But first, to re-echo @FiveHourMarathon above:

You shouldn't seek consciously to align yourself with a whole grab-bag of beliefs.

This is such an important point, and he elaborates on it well so I won't divulge further, I just want to emphasize how important I think that is.

But onto some specific comments and questions regarding church and romance:

On Church (traditionalism)

Disclaimer: I'm not religious, so the following will be an accounting from people who are/have been close to me in my life...

A strong community with strong values that are very family-friendly is great

Agreed, this is something I have really respected about religion (despite not being religious myself), they really do foster community which is so powerful.

I believe I could attend church and say all the right words because a kind God who would understand everything about me is deeply touching. But would my kids appreciate my lying to them?

I once had an ex-girlfriend who was an Episcopalian, and she told me that at her church, there are active members who don't believe in God but come every Sunday for the community. And the community accepts them. It is very likely that this is a very weird church (it is in SF after all), but the core point here is I do not think you have to have all the same beliefs as the congregation you are in to go to church somewhere. Obviously some baseline stuff is required, i.e. actually believing in God is probably needed at most churches. But every belief doesn't have to be the same. And if the church you find does have a problem with some view.... find a different church. I'm sure some people more religious than me would disagree with this, but I think you can be choosy about what parts of religion and the bible work for you. It doesn't have to be that you believe every word to go to church.

I can tell you, statistically, Christians are not helped at all by their faith, except for their community building. If goodwill and karma and a loving God existed, that girl I knew wouldn't have shot herself.

In my world view "faith" and "the existence of a loving god" are too very different things. One is a question of belief (I think a loving god exists), and the other is a question of truth (A loving god exists). I too have doubts as to the latter, but that doesn't mean that people's faith doesn't provide vast amounts of comfort to them irregardless of the truth value to the former.

On dating apps (liberalism)

I don't know how many women will have it be a dealbreaker if we don't have sex within a short timeframe, or if I fail to break the touch barrier, or if I suck at kissing

So, more women than you think will ok with this. Modern media likes to frame women as these "sexual beings", and while those kinds of women do exist, they aren't omnipresent. And more women than you probably think would be ok waiting until things become serious to have sex. And if you play it with the right charisma, this can even come across extremely romantic.

I don't know if they will mind if I have dealbreakers like no blowjobs or no anal sex

Main thing here The VAST majority of women don't do anal. Anal is very much a product out of porn, and is mostly done because men who have watched too much porn ask women to do it. Most women won't ask for anal.

I think a huge mistake liberalism makes is saying that you need to sleep around to figure out what you prefer sexually, that every time you're with another person, you get closer to your true self.

I think this is another one of those beliefs that really only exist in the outside fringes of liberals. I.e. only the most liberal people (men or women) I know actually believe something like this. Most of the people I know, including my liberal friends, believe something closer to what you said about only wanting to have sex with someone you think you'll want to marry. My personal rule of thumb, is sex is only something I will do with someone who I am in a relationship with, and deeply care about.

I think the self is fleeting and changes even as you pursue it

Definitely -- My favorite quote from any teacher I ever had was from an old english teacher in high school who said "feelings are ephemeral". I think about that quote so damn often. Because life is, at its core, ephemeral. (God I love that word)

Last question

it was such a waste, and you were made permanently uglier

So here's a thought, and again this comes from a place of curiousity. Why do you believe that sex makes you permanently uglier? Is it a byproduct of your religious upbringing? Or from something else?

Again, thank you for being so open, and I hope some of these, thoughts, questions and observations can help you even a little bit.

and while those kinds of women do exist, they aren't omnipresent. And more women than you probably think would be ok waiting until things become serious to have sex.

It may be more rare than it used to be, but I'm pretty sure "waiting until marriage" still exists from various anecdotes, and is even to some (women) a preference that they might not feel comfortable to state out front for the same reasons OP feels weird about this.

Statistically, there are dramatically more women who say they would like to wait for marriage on anonymous surveys than who actually do so. Revealed preferences and all that, but I think the most obvious explanation is that women are far more likely than men to be interested in waiting for sex.

So here's a thought, and again this comes from a place of curiousity. Why do you believe that sex makes you permanently uglier? Is it a byproduct of your religious upbringing? Or from something else?

I think I can't really give you a satisfying answer. Someone else here has said it before, but the human brain is not so simple that if it has been told that a primal urge is very very special for a good 15 years, it's going to be a really conflicted mess of a concept for it. If it were simple, we wouldn't get all these new sexualities and new genders and new questions from new genders about their new sexualities that we've seen in the last decade. Sex is not tennis.

Sex does not make you permanently uglier. Sex outside of the confines of marriage does. The idea that you shared something so intimate with a woman only to break up and her to take that part with her as she walks away. That you made someone worse, added extra baggage to her, added to her "bodycount" and made her less desirable to everyone else. Made her less good at pair bonding. People have committed murder many times throughout history over women, and sex with them, so I hope you don't think you can talk someone out of that. I understand you're center left, but rhetoric only goes so far.

I hope you don't think you can talk someone out of that

I am under no illusion that I can change the mind of a person on anything, people don't change their mind so easily. I only really have 2 goals here.

  1. I am a genuinely curious to see how people who think different than me think.
  2. To ask clarifying questions where I fund reasonable. Not as a means to change your mind. But simply as questions for you to ponder as you come to your own conclusions.... on that note, I have one more

The idea that you shared something so intimate with a woman only to break up and her to take that part with her as she walks away.

Would you say your own beliefs about pre-maritial sex making someone more ugly, has more to do with the damage being done to ones partner? That by engaging in sex with someone you don't ultimately marry, you'll be making their life actively worse because you believe that having had this sexual experience they will find it harder to ultimately marry themselves? So by making their life worse, you are now uglier for having done that to them?

Damage to them and to yourself. Do you think that a man who has had sex with dozens of prostitutes will truly respect sex with his wife? I don't. I think that process works on a more minor scale for every time you have sex, in a similar way that if you admit micro-evolution exists, that macro-evolution is the obvious undeniable conclusion. If you have macro-intimacy donations to many women, your micro-intimacy doesn't mean anything, and that sensation was robbed from you as if dozens of pickpockets snatched up everything you had little by little as you walked through the medieval town square.

More comments

I think you'll find that it's not a dealbreaker for all women to be inexperienced, or even wanting to wait until you are in a seriously committed relationship to have sex. It will be for some, but of course they wouldn't be right for you anyway, so the best thing you can do is sincerely wish them well and part on friendly terms. But for the rest, you'll be ok. I was a virgin when I met my wife, and I was very up front about that on my profile. She said after the fact that she actually found it pretty refreshing to not have to worry that I was going to try to get her in bed on the third date or something, and that we could ease into having a sexual relationship. I'm quite certain she's not the only one out there, so try not to worry too much.

Your Dad sounds like a bully.

One thing thats stuck with me is that in this atomized modern world, that the true value of friends and family that care about you. So while you can buy a cake from a bakery for yourself, you will get no joy eating it by yourself.

But you can't put the weight on others to give you a reason to live. You're enough of a reason to live and thrive.

From your description I would first focus on friends, being a good friend, having friends, planning things with friends. Focusing in the romantic after being secure in socializing with peers. Once you do focus on the romantic, I would say be upfront, don't try to be someone you're not, if you're not set up by friends, and the other person has no clue about you, on the first or second date the say your waiting till marriage. Its kryptonite for some, but not for all.

I appreciate your words, and everyone else's, too. I think a lot of wisdom has been shared here that has been helpful to me and made me not regret posting what I did.

However, I have to reply to you to tell you I disagree that you shouldn't put weight on others to give you a reason to live. Humans are social animals, so it makes a ton of sense to me to tell someone that they must live for others. It helps build community, it's a very obvious and plainly true statement to say that your own death will hurt those around you and if you care about them at all, you must never purposely die. And I also take the stance that you should use whatever works to achieve your goals; for me, it's to avoid the Bad Ending. There are many Bad Endings to get, many failure paths, many ways to make people shake their heads at what happened to you. Pity is not an emotion I want to evoke in people, but I understand that there's some amount of pity that people feel for me already that is unavoidable.

I do agree with you if I modify your statement a little: "you can't put the weight on a small amount of others to give you a reason to live". To directly place my fate on one or two people is pretty cruel and creates intense pressure on them to never hurt me in any way, which I think is toxic. That's why I think involving yourself in a community with many people you care about is important. The cost is distributed, and you make many more people happy to be friends with you, and it's a greater motivation to be the best version of yourself so that you hurt people as little as possible.

When I was 25 my most serious girlfriend yet dumped me for another man, and then the next day my dad died. I was moping around having a pity party, and a friend of mine went "Boohoo, like other people don't have bad things happen." I probably needed to hear that.

Some people grow up well adjusted and family oriented, and somehow pair off with other well adjusted family oriented people and go on to have happy well adjusted families. Sometimes I get glimpses of these people, and it's like looking into a bizarre parallel world. Like they are made of dark matter and only weakly interact with the world I've always known.

The rest of us, and I'm pretty sure we're the majority, just have to get out there and try to live faster than we die. Play catch up on all the things we think we missed out on. You just have to keep putting yourself out there. There is no other magic trick. "Fair" is a four letter word.

Probably the only advice I have which might still be relevant, is don't try to go the "become friends because I'm scared and then try to date later when I feel comfortable" strategy.

Aside from that good luck. And try to spend more time doing things than thinking about doing things.

Some people grow up well adjusted and family oriented, and somehow pair off with other well adjusted family oriented people and go on to have happy well adjusted families. Sometimes I get glimpses of these people, and it's like looking into a bizarre parallel world. Like they are made of dark matter and only weakly interact with the world I've always known.

Hah, I can relate to this. I like to spend time around them at church though, it feels very healing. Just being in the presence of happy, well adjusted people has done a lot for at least exposing me to a different way of being in the world, given me a model for how to be that I didn't really have before. I love it.

Sorry to hear about your father, and the break up. That is a lot to happen at once. FWIW your friend sounds like a dick hah. I don't think you needed to hear that.

Eh, the story was less about farming sympathy, it was 20 years ago, and more just, yeah, shit happens to everyone. And life goes on.

I know one thing: I actually do need a [romance], regardless of my misgivings of hurting my partner. I predict that if I move out and don't start a [romance], I will quickly wither and crash out of my job, lacking any warmth in my life. Regardless, I need to start before my parents die, or my life will either end with a quick romp through alcoholism and a gunshot, or something similar to Brad Armstrong, a purposeless journey more brutal and agonizing without any end in sight.

Maybe I'm just a killjoy autist who is badly disconnected from normal human motivations, but every time I see a person whine about """needing""" romance I become more disgusted. The recipe for happiness is simple:

  1. Accumulate money

  2. Retire

  3. Spend the remainder of your life and money on enjoyable hobbies

  4. Die alone and unloved

Who cares about friends and romantic partners? Familiarity breeds contempt. Gradually you will begin to hate any person to whom you become close.

Reddit, DAE lack any intimacy and fear the unknown? AITA?

Definitely YTA. Get some goddamned hobbies.

  • -15

I have no idea if you're being serious here or not. Did you really think this was an appropriate thing to respond with? That's autism on another level. You are not the person I want to hear from.

I have no idea if you're being serious here or not.

I am being completely serious.

Did you really think this was an appropriate thing to respond with?

Your post does not really pose an unambiguous question, but its most specific requests appear to be "I don't know what to do with myself after I move out." and "Basically, I need advice from smart people.". I have been considered smart by my teachers and my coworkers (though perhaps not by the illustrious denizens of this forum). So I think my comment is responsive.

That's autism on another level. You are not the person I want to hear from.

As the kids say, "o7".

So in your view Scrooge from Dickens Christmas tale is living his best life at the start of the classic and is left worse off by the story's conclusion?

The story does not indicate that Scrooge had any enjoyable hobbies. Rather, immediately after work:

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed.

Also, he obviously had not retired.

I don't really blame you for not reading the whole thing, because it was rather long. But I already told you I kind of doubt that I could continue my career without some specific permanent thing, someone who cares about me, and then something that I will grow and leave behind (children). I believe that because I sometimes feel pangs of existential dread on my drives home like my life is going nowhere and that I don't know why I'm doing anything. I believe that because the same pangs caused me to drop out of all my classes a couple times. So, respectfully, I think your advice doesn't apply to me.

A lot of the folks on here, while super intelligent, are quite cynical and even misanthropic. Just so you're aware.

I don't recommend mimicking that approach to life, hah! It can get old quite quick.

This forum has previously discussed how people who make excessive use of online personas often allow those personas to become Flanderized and even to bleed back into their real-life opinions. Still, when doxing/doxxing/SWATting/phonebooking/unmasking can lead to being fired by your employer or ostracized by your family members, some measure of detachment between one's personas seems advisable.

But at what point does it not matter any longer? When should a person abandon his online personas and walk proudly under his government name? After he retires, so that he need not worry about his job? After his parents die, so that he need not worry about his inheritance? Never? Or perhaps, after retirement, his government persona will become the secondary one, and his online persona the primary one.

As loathe as I am to generally recommend an anime, Serial Experiments Lain had me milling over this question a lot as well. My main objection to it is that the people who do this tend (not always, but there is a general pattern) to become the mask rather than taking the mask off, and usually in a self-destructive way.

Who is this person, really? How much of their being is dictated by their immediate environment?

That post reads to me like it's talking about people who feed off attention. If you don't care about maximizing attention then you mitigate the risk of Flanderizing yourself. My online persona is not so different from my real-life persona which is not so different from who I've always been. I don't have a Twitter account so that helps.

Only boring people have nothing to hide.

Being boring is not a sin.

And if they have nothing to hide, why would they accept complete electronic surveillance of their boring lives? Seems a little illegitimate.

I’ve been on sertraline close to a year now. For most of that time I stuck to 25mg because I was in the middle of heavy test prep and didn’t want to deal with stronger side effects. Even at 25mg, it did a lot for my social anxiety. I could actually show up to conversations without spiraling, which was a big deal.

Two months back I updosed to 50mg. When I first hopped on sertraline I had that floaty feeling where I couldn’t get annoyed, like my whole irritation/anger circuit was cut off. That’s not the case anymore. The drug still helps, but I’m back to being annoyed, low energy, sometimes scattered, especially when career or dating stuff stalls. Basically, the buffer I leaned on early on isn’t there in the same way.

Some context on me: I work in ML in Bangalore. A lot of my energy is tied up in career transitions (quant finance, big firm interviews, trying to push my comp higher). At the same time I’m trying to keep my routines sharp: gym, leaning out, studying.

Sertraline has definitely been a net positive: I’m not frozen in social situations anymore, I can actually function. But I don’t find it mood stabilizing in the way I thought it would be, especially now that the early numbing has worn off.

So I’m wondering:

  1. Is it normal for SSRIs to kind of lose the magic once your body adjusts?
  2. Do people usually just keep upping the dose, or is this when you start thinking about switching things around?
  3. How do you deal with the tradeoff between reduced anxiety versus the emotional flattening or low drive that sometimes comes with it?

I’m not fishing for medical advice, just looking for frameworks or personal experiences to think through this better. I do have to go back to my psych, I’ve been pushing it off for a while. Also, I enjoy ChatGPT a lot, but I’m posting here because I don’t want it to be my only source of consolation.

EDIT: think I might be shadowbanned or muted for some reason.

You’re not shadowbanned, it’s just the new user filter. Until you’ve reached a certain karma threshold, all your posts have to be approved by a mod.

Thanks, makes sense.

I’m starting to think screen time north of 3-4 hours a day is really not good for me. Spent most of the day at work yesterday on my computer and most of the evening as well. Felt like shit this morning (anxious, low HRV) and didn’t sleep well.

Maybe helps explain why I got so much faster senior year of highschool re:running. I stopped gaming and drastically cut down my social media time. Iron supplements probably helped too, but I’m coming round to better recovery from less screens as a factor too.

I don't think it's good for anyone, but the average American adult is pushing past 7 hours a day at this point. Gaming is among the least harmful applications though, given certain parameters (played with friends, in a setting where you directly impact each other cooperatively or competitively).

I think social gaming is great! Just didn't do much of it in high school.

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