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This comment excerpt gave me a fun idea: The Chad harem/offspring-maxxxing doctors and lawyers explain to the autist incel programmers and engineers their personal understandings of how friendship and romance work!
Even before I realized that familiarity inevitably breeds contempt and stopped making attempts at pseudo-friendship, I absolutely hated the idea of obtaining an actual friend or a romantic partner only to be constantly forced by that person to do random things in which I had no interest. It seemed like a continuation of how my parents would torture me by making me join after-school clubs and dragging me to museums, concerts, and weddings.
I assumed that any friend or romantic partner would require me to do such things. But now @daguerrean says that only an inferior, weak-willed "beta" man allows his romantic partner to lead him around by the nose to random events. So, is it normal friendship/romance behavior to drag the other party to an event in which he is not interested, or not? Has my entire life been a lie?
Yesterday I dragged my fiancee to the gym. She dragged me to half priced books and Venezuelan food after we showered. This is generally considered to be what humans call a 'date'.
If one of us wished to drag the other person to an event they were not interested in, like a boardgame night, or an Emily Autumn concert, we would simply not do that and live would go on. The whole process is a negotiation. We each engage with the other's interests because we are interested in the other person. Like in any negotiation, not being willing to allow the other parties to walk all over you does a great deal to prevent the other parties from walking all over you.
As a male who likes the occasional boardgame, I would agree that regularly getting dragged to board game nights is big beta male energy if you don't. My fiancee likes plenty of nerdy stuff, but she doesn't like those, so she generally hangs out with someone else and watches anime instead whenever I attend one.
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Okay, I feel obligated to defend myself. I don't really find anything objectionable in doing things your wife enjoys for the sake of the relationship. It was just that post in particular that gave me a vibe that this man has no agency or convictions while his wife is a shrieking harpy calling the shots in the relationship. The other thing is, he is talking about basically dedicating hours every day of his vacation to standing outside protesting in Minneapolis in January, there is a point where it crosses over from being kind and accommodating to your spouse to being a doormat. You should do things your spouse wants to, but IMO you should also feel comfortable saying "Go by yourself, I don't want to do that." Now granted, my wife doesn't really go out, so the extent of this for me is watching reality shows I don't care for. I usually just go to daguerreotype-related things myself without dragging my wife along. I don't understand why some couple feel the need to do everything together.
You know, in one of your linked comments you had a list of 700 questions which I enjoyed, reminds me I've been meaning to make a survey for Motte users which I should post.
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"I am not as brave as my wife."
This was a red flag to me. I think this entire fundamental question comes down to the fact that your wife has to respect you. If your wife respects you, she will accept your saying no to things without pique; indeed she will take into account whether you'd be interested in going to something before she even asks you to. I'm not saying you need to "dominate" your relationship or anything like that - as the other commenters note, you should always be looking for opportunities to make your wife happy, even if it inconveniences you greatly; that's part of what you're signing up for.
If seeing your wife happy is a priority for you, you'll gladly do all kinds of silly stuff that's not for you; and you won't think about the cost to you. Many are the hours I've spent loitering in quilt shops for this reason, lol. But I also know that if I tell her no, I'm not going to thing X or Y, it'll just be accepted. I feel like if your partner does not respect you, then she'll have an expectation you'll go along with what she says no matter what, and if you don't she'll feel justified in being mad about it.
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Relationships are all about compromise, and give and take. You demonstrate your affection for your partner by doing things that she wants to do and you don't: after all, if they were things you enjoyed doing, you'd do them anyway. It's the fact that you're willing to sacrifice your time and resources to do something for her that demonstrates how important she is to you. The important thing is that it cuts both ways: if you're doing things for her that you don't enjoy, there's a reasonable expectation that she return the favour. But try not to think about this too much, or you run the risk of making your relationship seem cheap and transactional, a ledger that requires constant balancing. If you want her to watch a dumb action movie with you, when she asks you to come for dinner with her parents, just smile and say "of course, dear". Or buy her flowers or something. It's not rocket science. If it's weak-willed or "beta" to do things for your partner that you don't really want to do, well, that just sounds kind of exploitative to me. Good luck finding a girlfriend who's completely happy for you to walk all over her and never do anything for her in return.
I don't think this ordinary fact about romantic relationships should discourage you from getting into one. If you were to ask me to list the things about my girlfriend that most get on my nerves, the fact that she occasionally drags me along to go window-shopping with her would not crack the top ten, the top twenty, probably not even the top fifty.
If I do have a line in the sand, it's preference falsification. If my girlfriend wants me to come to some boring museum exhibition with her, I'll go along happily. If she wants me to attend a protest for some political cause I emphatically don't support (say, a "Free Palestine" rally), that's a hard no. Even the idea of going to a protest I don't support just to meet girls makes me feel gross. And yes, it does strike me as a bit lame to performatively attend a protest you wouldn't attend otherwise just because your wife wants you to.
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IANAC but I believe that while daguerrean is saying that that specific instance of being drug along to a protest (and certainly the way the guy describes it) is beta-ish, the standard going along shopping/to the museum/etc. (presumably harmless social activities) with your wife/girlfriend are not necessarily.
Certainly a big part of being married is being a good sport and going along with your wife/husband to events that you might not otherwise. In ideal circumstances you'd both only ever do stuff you both enjoy but that's just not realistic unless you've achieved mythical 100% compatibility. I've certainly taken my wife to stuff that she's been less than enthusiastic about, but at least we come away with a shared experience and maybe something to laugh about later. For my part, I tolerate the occasional shopping trip.
So no, your entire life has not been a lie, and yes romantic partners will want you to do stuff.
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