Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
Inspiring controversy on Reddit today is an extremely long-winded comic, "I Don't Like My Boyfriend". Each of its 12 panels was posted as a separate image, so here are some consolidated renditions for your convenience.
One image, millions of colors (11 MiB)
One image, 256 colors (2.3 MiB)
Text (5.8 kiB)
In this comic, a woman contemplates how she doesn't like her boyfriend (who is drawn as a short, fat Chudjak). She finds him boring and annoying. However, he is smitten with her, and she has never had any friends, let alone romantic partners, other than him. She wonders whether she is just an unlikeable person, and should be more grateful for having hooked a person with such low standards. The general opinion of commenters seems to be hatred for the woman.
This actually matches my personal experience with attempts at friendship (1 2) somewhat well! I eventually couldn't tolerate my pseudo-friends any longer and kicked them all to the curb, and the commenters seem to think that the woman depicted in the comic should do the same with her romantic partner.
Do you have any thoughts on this topic?
So much for "serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics".
Perhaps. I thought this was just surface-level analysis of the average marriage, or what loveless relationships/marriages ultimately devolve into.
There's a mismatch between can't and won't, too; is it just a complete lack of mental horsepower/effort (incuriousness), or something else? And while a lack of mental horsepower is concerning for a long-term relationship- both in the sense that you're going to be more alone than he will, and that it'll make those promises more difficult to depend on (in the sense that if he's not smart/paying that much attention he'll be outcompeted by others, which by extension means you will be outcompeted as well)- the Fiddler on the Roof-type marriage as means seems like it's actually the average human experience. (19th and 20th century drinking culture is another data point.)
Maybe that's actually the scary part, when there really is nothing more, that this is all there is and all you can expect out of life. I guess that's why people buy dogs and kids and say it saved their marriages- if only because it exposes a new facet of whoever it's with, but because at that point the relationship has shifted to means rather than end.
I've come to that point with a few people in my life: that this is all it's ever going to be, and they're never going to be any different. Sure, there are some barriers to communication, but the flip-side is the Copenhagen ethics problem where, if I don't have a better idea, then I feel that complaining about it is just more a one-sided vent than anything else.
The more interesting ones are those you can build on/up, which I think is what normal people call "getting along well". Especially if they build you up; those ones are keepers.
But the difference is that I'm not interested in resenting any one of them for this; they're not enemies that need to be destroyed. I'm not sure why I should (and I'm sure that doing this would kill the friendship even deader than just constantly complaining about things). Sure, there's limits on time and resources (and obviously you're more interested in some of them for reasons that have to do with sex), but that's true for everything else.
Maybe that is more sociopathic than anything else, I dunno- I guess you could call that being a
giant slut"vers" of sorts, since I tend to search/select what (as far as I can tell) people are expecting as part of the way I get to know them. Of course, that also leads to some problems, where time is treated as ante just to see if the build-up will occur, which also results in me not quite behaving the way anyone really expects.(Which makes actually being appropriately attractive/dominant on my own something I have to actively remember to do- as I understand it, this is more common in women than men, which is something that makes accepting... certain friends' claims unusually difficult. I only know better than everyone else once I know it's actually helpful or important to do so and tend to hedge harder than I should- probably sub-optimal, but so's the alternative.)
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