The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think I have to disagree here. I have no idea if I'm qualified to give any advice here, all I have is N=1 data point of 20+ year long marriage. But I don't think it requires KPI goals. I mean it's cool if you run marathons together, but it's not a requirement. People being comfortable together and genuinely interested in each other's happiness is a requirement. That's where the compromise comes from. If I want to do something, and I suspect my wife may be not ok with it, I ask, and she can say no. Or she can say yes. Or if she says no, and I really feel like I need it, we can talk about it. The key here we want to find that point where we're both happy - or at least, the least amount of unhappy - about the outcome. It's not a mathematical formula and it's not a ledger, if you start keeping balance on it, you're going to get in trouble. But it's totally about sometimes just doing something you otherwise wouldn't do because your partner wants you to. If you're going to be good long-term partners, you will be able to find a way to figure out how to negotiate those things, everybody does it in a different way. If you can not find a way to do it, then probably the partnership is not going to work out.
This sentence scares the shit out of me.
But then what happens? It's a very nice and good and smart modernist idea to think that when a married couple realizes they aren't good for one another that an amicable and professional divorce takes place.
In reality, however, divorces are some of the most (figuratively) violent experiences people have. Many, many divorced people never truly recover. Most, I'd wager, have, at least, a year or two of personal and financial setback. And, of course, outcomes for children of divorce and uniformly inferior to their stable household peers.
My whole point is that I want discourse around relationships to actually be helpful to them instead of milquetoast generalities that do nothing but sound and or feel good. Dating is one thing and breakups are fine. But when the marriage contract is signed, it's such a massive commitment that you need all the tools and good information you can get.
Why? You can't expect be perfectly happy all the time when dealing with other people - or anything, really. If the dog vomited on the carpet, somebody has to clean up. Nobody likes to clean up dog's vomit from the carpet. Somebody will be unhappy about it. There's no option to avoid it - just to minimize the unhappiness.
Hopefully you can figure it out before marrying each other. If that didn't happen, it sucks. Hopefully, you can recognize what happened and cut the losses. If you can't, it really sucks.
Don't underestimate milquetoast generalities. They are generalities because they are often true. And a real lot of people dismiss it too readily before actually examining them properly. They feel like "oh surely I do this, everybody does this" - but everybody doesn't do this, and to do this requires untrivial amount of work and attention. Including how to negotiate things with your partner that it won't cause you both being worn down to dust and ashes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link