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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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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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.
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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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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Not a problem, just more an idea of "have you considered that in fact some people don't want X or Y?"
I suppose a bit like recommending to a gay guy "now what you really need is a nice wife, so you'll have someone to love and take care of you". Not what is wanted.
The messaging seems to be taking for granted that everyone wants friends, family, lovers, social interaction. If you don't have it, you miss it and want it. If you don't have it, this is loneliness which is a problem.
For the majority of people, that's true. But for some people it's not, and so the pat answers about "well find friends, get involved in your community, mix with people, get a hobby that will help you meet others" and the rest of it is like, as I said, telling a gay guy that all he really needs is a good woman.
Following the gay guy analogy, what if the gay guy posted on a forum asking why everyone assumed he was bi or straight even though he checked every gay guy stereotype? He said he was annoyed everyone kept telling him to get married to a woman - he was so gay that he couldn't even walk in a straight line!
He did confess that despite all this, he might actually be attracted to some women, some of the time. My advice to this gay guy would be to try and date some women again, and maybe he could finally figure out his gayness or lack thereof. Even if women had never worked out for him in his entire flaming life, maybe he was just unlucky all along or something. But if he didn't feel like dating women again, that was okay too. Some gay guys just have straight-conformity anxiety, and it will probably never go away.
My friend, let me introduce you to the myriad wonders of gender and sexual orientation. Your hypothetical gay guy could be described as homosexual (that is, he only wants to bonk people of the same gender) but hetero- or biromantic, that is, he can feel romantic - not sexual! - attraction for his own and other genders.
Also pls note not use "man" and "woman" as icky terms reinforcing binary sexuality, ignoring and insulting entire wonders of Genderbread Person, thanks!
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