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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   775 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 17, 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.

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  • 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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It is difficult to overstate how different your love life is from mine. I am in almost every way the opposite of you. Partnered for ten years, soon to be married. Almost constitutionally incapable of big romantic gestures, inclined to focus on the smaller day to day things. Generally into women who are healthy, sane, and on the other side of the kids conversation.

Lucky man. I'm jealous, but also grateful, because it proves there's hope for the rest of us.

A large part of my struggles isn't just stochastic. It's awkward to date with intent when you keep hopping between countries, and are unsure where you will be or can be in a particular place. It's almost like the UK training scheme is designed to reduce medico fertility to nil. On a few occasions, I've met people I could see myself being happy with indefinitely, with minimal drama, but either or I they couldn't stay.

It sucks.

But damn do I enjoy reading about it.

Thank you. I suppose we all need a reason to be grateful for the eggs that did hatch.

I wish you luck. You've had a hard run of it. But there's no rhyme nor reason to these things. Sometimes it works until it doesn't, or doesn't until it does. There's little more you can do than try and learn from your mistakes, and you're doing that. I hope you find all the happiness of stability while keeping hold of the passion. My dad likes to say the most important thing we can do in life is find the one person we're going to share it with. If you do that right, the rest all falls into place.

Thank you, I mean it. I'm doing my best to minimize the role of luck. Every girl dreams of being lucky enough to find Mr. Right. It's worth considering what that gentleman had to do to get there.

Good luck with your upcoming marriage. Given the track record, I can only assume it will be happy and productive. You sound sane, and that's more than many can say. Probably me too.

Oh, we're all mad, I was just lucky enough to meet someone whose neuroses are complimentary to my particular eccentricities. Whether your own romance works out or not, I'm sure it won't be because you didn't treat the endeavor with the gravity it deserves. And if fate does intervene, you are building all the skills and temperaments that will help when you do finally have the stability to date off intercontinental hard mode.

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