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.
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Notes -
At some point in the last few months, without ceremony or consent, I became the most responsible person in my family. There was no coronation. Responsibility in families obeys a conservation law: it never disappears, it just migrates toward whoever flinches last. My parents are getting old and fretful. My brother, now that med school has stopped supplying its ambient excitement, is possibly mildly depressed, and his relationship of five years has come apart in his hands. Seeing it coming didn't dull the pain.
All of which culminated in my vacation falling apart, and me frantically darning it back together. He didn't apply for his visa in time; then, at our parents' gentle nudging, he postponed the whole thing to September. How kind of everyone involved. It's not as if I needed that vacation myself. I was fucking counting on those two weeks to undo several months of pure misery, which, granted, is a lot to ask of two weeks. I was asking anyway.
So I coped. I spent time in Glasgow, which I've warmed to; I can see myself living there in the long run, and God knows the demand for psychiatrists exists. I went to Loch Lomond, which is absolutely gorgeous, and overrun with tourists trailing dogs and small children, a combination calculated to make my heart ache. I ended up in Pitlochry, realized I'd left my keys behind, and did something I'd always meant to do and never had: backpacking.
Or an approximation thereof. I crashed at a hostel, despite being able to afford an actual hotel without checking my balance. Mixed experience. The kids were all on their phones. I looked comprehensively out of place, dressed in work-adjacent clothing and boots never designed for hiking. I could not have given less of a fuck.
I didn't sleep well. My bunkmate has an INCREDIBLY clingy nephrologist girlfriend, who began video calling him at eight in the morning. Ringer on. He slept through it. I did not. She kept this up for fifty minutes, per my watch. I silenced several calls. I tried to shake him awake and failed; the man was auditioning for the morgue. I considered throwing his phone in the bin and, in a display of restraint that should count toward my revalidation, relented.
Eventually I picked up the fucking phone myself and informed her that her boyfriend was not dead, merely doing a very good job acting like it, and that she might be better served dating an ENT specialist who could address the hearing loss, or someone from GI who could work up the clonazepam autobrewery syndrome he had evidently developed. She sounded understanding, or at least relieved to hear a male voice, then immediately pivoted to texting him, with a follow-up call ten minutes later. He did apologize at some point. I have forgiven him, because his life is clearly its own punishment.
I believe I've mentioned a cute Dutch doctor before. The one I was rather confident had a crush on me. With my tolerance for workplace drama being what it is, I'd kept things strictly platonic, barring some barely contained wheezing at her accidental innuendo. My Emotional Support Lesbian (asexual) had long lobbied for me to make a move. I always declined, explaining that I knew perfectly well my reluctance was downstream of a bad inferiority complex and a healthy impostor syndrome, and that knowing this did precisely nothing to dissolve it. Insight, as I tell my patients, is necessary but not sufficient.
She rotated to a different department, but I saw her again before she left. She got to see me doing much better than I'd been when we first met. Without going into detail, I managed to pay down some of the enormous mental debt I felt I owed her. It's a very good story, it really is, and I can't be arsed to write it. I returned favors. I was there for her on the day the NHS cracked even her armor. And we ended up on what even the most self-loathing, insecure version of me couldn't classify as anything other than a date, accidentally on purpose. Four hours. I could practically feel the ionizing radiation as she assessed me for husband material, and, unless I've badly misread the dosimetry, found me to her liking. Not the first sign, either, unless someone wants to tell me that Dutch women casually announce "It's such a shame that men are scared away by competent, career-oriented women" while you're mid-bite of a sandwich. I choked slightly. As I've always said: true of many men, but not me.
I hadn't expected to see her again, and I'd already gotten the platonic farewells out of the way, wishing her well on a career that plainly requires no blessing from me. She is very good at her job. Good enough that I genuinely wondered what the fuck I'd been doing at her age. I got better at some point, is my defense.
I will probably not move ahead with it, and it hurts to write that sentence. I have nothing against women with careers; I just watched myself fall for one. What I have is a finite battery and a realistic model of what it means to love someone who lives at a hundred miles an hour and fits more into an evening than I do into half a week. Distance. Rotational placements. I might be able to keep up. I'm not sure I have the energy to find out. I did have the energy to write 9000+ words about her that evening, because that is the only way I know how to process anything: I pin the longing to the page, next to the pain, where neither can hurt me on the move.
All I can say is that I said and did the things that the SMH of three months ago, that shivering, scared and sorry bastard, had wished he could say and do. I'd like to promise there will be no regrets. I'll settle for reporting that I took the worst of them out back with a shovel and came home alone. I've never been one to hope too hard for second chances (a lie), and I got one I could never have dreamed of. It's a considered decision. It is also a painful one; the two categories overlap far more often than anyone admits. I hope she finds what she's looking for: a family, a farm and a future. And at least she leaves with my link to a LessWrong essay on embryo preservation, plus my own comment underneath. I am exactly that kind of nerd.
Tease.
To be fair, I have written the story. Every detail of that day, somewhere in the ballpark of 9600 words. The problem is that it is too personal, and making it safe or suitable for public consumption would take an enormous amount of time.
Hey, at least I was coaxed into spilling one of the more cinematic moments. There was so much, that day, it took at least 5 hours to cover most of it. Why? I forget. Human memory is imprecise. I wanted to capture what I felt in the heat of the moment. I am, despite my best efforts, a romantic. And I'm very good at missing opportunities and then making up for it the first chance I get.
I get it, no, really, I do, but those of us that are interested in such things are left hanging. Good for you for actually writing it out at least.
I'm sorry. I recall seeing your comment, but I lacked the context for a proper response. I suppose the title of the book is all the context I really need, unless you want to talk about it. I hope you figure things out, and find someone new, who is better for you.
I get why you wouldn't want to air your private laundry is what I'm trying to get at, not trying to threadjack you here.
But you're still a tease. =P
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Let me summarize this for you:
You're walking away from this?
My brother in Christ this is the one you'll regret letting get away. A sober, frugal Dutch doctor who wants a farm and a family, and you're passing on this because she's too organized? You're not supposed to "keep up" with her! You're supposed to complement each other! You're not internet semi-famous for nothing, and that charm and turn of phrase makes her feel as insecure as her conscientiousness makes you feel. You could walk away from this, and a few years from now as you age into dating divorcees, you'll look at the grippy-socks/grippy-box mistakes you've made, and feel that sudden zero-g free fall feeling of regret.
I almost let a good woman go for the same reason: I was insecure she would keep charging ahead, and I could barely keep my phone charged. (plus I was enjoying my own grippy-socks/grippy-box decisions). But I didn't, and kid number three is slowing mom down enough that I can just about keep up.
Don't walk, run back to her, with as grandly romantic a gesture as her Northern European temperament and the rules of the NHS HR department will allow.
I'm grateful, I really am. All I can promise is that this is a considered decision, and I haven't cut things off.
I will note that I'm not as old as you seem to think I am. Far from it. I'm in my late 20s. I intend to bite the bullet in the next 2 or 3 years, 5 max. I'm quite far from worrying about only having the leftovers of the dating pool at hand, and I keep that a live concern.
I may or may not have fractured my thumb, so I'll keep it brief.
She's not "too organized", I might be lacking in that regard, but I'm not scared off by people who have their shit together. She's too busy, I think. She's intent on entering a brutal specialty for further training, and she's moved/moving to a different city. Not too far, by itself, but in conjunction I'd be surprised if I saw her more than once every other week for the next few years. Even worse if either of us seek a competitive job later, which might require serious geographical upheaval.
I don't want to make demands of her. It's one thing to make those adjustments when you're engaged or married, and it's another to enter a relationship like that. You probably don't understand what an absolute pain in the ass rotational training is, especially when both parties are doctors. She clearly loves her career, and is visibly worried about how that'll impact having a family. I don't go around giving IVF advice for nothing, she's well aware of the health risks of delaying pregnancy, and my impression is that she wants to hold off for a good while.
True story: I was walking her back to a party, which she had delayed going to for the said 4 hours. We took a shortcut through a uni campus. I was a few steps behind.
"SMH! You walk awfully slow for someone with such long legs."
"I used to run everywhere, once. These days, I'm older. I like to linger and smell the roses."
She raised an eyebrow, "I don't see any roses."
I shrugged. "It's a metaphor, I'm not hallucinating." I sniffed a flower of uncertain taxonomy.
"I thought you'd keep up." She declared, walking off at speed, looking back over her shoulder with a smile.
"I'm still here, am I not?" I resumed chasing her at my own pace. One step behind.
No, she does want someone who keeps up. I can keep up. I'm just tired, sometimes, very often. I'm not too far from taking a stand, digging in my heels, and declaring this is where I'll live now. I just want it to be where I want to be.
I genuinely don't think that's the case. I'm not insecure that she, in her chosen field, is visibly more competent. I'm good at my job. She told me she appreciates that. I can pick up on the insecurities she does have: her body, the tension between her career goals and her craving for a family. I don't contribute to these.
I'm glad you got the happy ending. I'm quite sure I'll get mine too. Say hi to the kids and the missus for me.
We don't work together any more. But if I see her (big if), I'll bring a bouquet of roses, and ask her to smell them while I stand by and grin like a loon.
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