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Wellness Wednesday for May 13, 2026

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 didn’t not know that, :o. Thank you.

Men and women are capable of being friends but in my own life I generally advise against it, especially if they’re in a relationship. I have many women friends in my life but the nature of those friendships is built very differently from the ones I have with my guy friends. (Yes, most of your guy friends want to fuck you; I don’t care how much they lie about it.) It’s also a major reason I don’t date women who keep male friends. Women aren’t stupid, they know what they’re doing by keeping men in the mix that play into the role of their backup plans “just in case.” In a relationship you’re either all in or not. A person who keeps one foot permanently out the door tells you much about the sincerity of their commitment.

Men often interpret women’s friendship as sexual interest because most men get zero attention from women. But I’ve seen it the other way as well, where women insist they’ve dropped every signal and the guy isn’t interested. (No. He sees it. He doesn’t want to risk interpreting your sexual interest as friendship, so he cautions himself not to press it. He’s not stupid either.) The problem is women flirt and express interest with full plausible deniability, and that’s why they lose out on so many opportunities. If you want to make a move, it has to be one that’s unmistakable and that you can’t back out of; you have to be able to bear risking rejection.

There’s only two women in my life (apart from my mother) that I’ve had an “I have to be careful about this person,” moment; who could read me very well; and it was eerie. I loved hanging with them though because they had an incredibly high powered perception and amazing situational awareness. It was very evident to me that they hid their intelligence from the rest of the group, but they were very confident people and just every “once” in awhile they’d drop the mask on purpose. Occasionally we’d be talking about something and look over at each other at the same time and smirk. They knew what I was thinking before I did and could see right through me. They were ‘incredibly’ sharp women and kept me on my toes.

Well said, I have had similar experiences. And I believe it is never good to be a backup man and/or piggy bank, but most men tire of it as they age and see the orbital relationship for what it is. My friend's female cousin is an absolute man eater, to the detriment of every man she lures in and to her own life. Predictably, she works in a strip club, has no dad, and was raised by grandma. She has many, many orbitals.

I agree. And I would never allow myself to be that guy or tolerate that kind of disrespect. If she’s prepared to accept that I’d never marry her I suppose I’d be content with “being a thing,” but I’m not under any illusion for even a moment about what kind of relationship this is.