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).
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I've been seeing a woman for two months now. Both early 30s. She's very busy with work (which often takes her out of town), but even so, we've had an all-day date each weekend. She's finally in town during the week, so we're getting dinner tonight. I think I'm going to ask her to be my girlfriend. We talked about things a couple dates ago and established that we're not seeing other people. I feel like exclusive and girlfriend aren't even very different, but a little. More expression of intent to grow things. It's not that we discussed and avoided bf/gf labels last time, we just didn't talk about it.
It's been a minute since I've gotten this far into things with someone. (Four years ago, a three month relationship; seven years ago, 7 months; some fucking the ex mixed in there...) And the last couple times I have, I felt like I had more sense that there was a reason things wouldn't work out. This one actually seems plausible, which is scary. It's not entirely clear to me how I feel about her, which is reasonable for two months. But it just makes me feel guilty, like am I just saying things and following steps because it seems like the thing to do (and also, sex)?. I don't think so, I really think there's something here, but feelings are confusing. Who knew.
We've both basically lived alone and had intense jobs forever. It's weird imagining fitting someone into my life, maybe even living with someone eventually. Weirder, I think I like the idea. This just in: even programmers are social mammals.
Also weird is that I'm in good shape and have money now. I've never been terrible on either front, but man, does seem to be helpful. How to split expenses is an awkward thing I haven't figured out yet, and I just don't care that much. She seems quite well off actually, for not being a programmer/doctor/lawyer. Also, hot. And not crazy. Didn't seem to particularly care for my briefly discussing the motte style politics, but also just doesn't seem to care about politics or generally be terminally online, which might be better than agreeing with me in the first place...
I don't have a dog in this fight anymore, but god, I hope American dating conventions stay in America. This whole "we're dating but we're not exclusive"/"we're exclusive but we're not girlfriend/boyfriend" business makes me want to ask Gabriel to blow the horn.
How does the rest of the world do it? I feel like "dating but not exclusive" is a fairly natural thing: when you're out there trying to meet people, you go on dates, and since you barely know the other person, of course it's not exclusive. But I agree that "exclusive but not boyfriend/girlfriend" is a silly or meaningless thing to be.
Usually I'd already knew the person a bit from hanging out in a group, so if you make a pass at someone, it was implied I wouldn't make more at different people until this one is resolved one way or he other.
Though to be honest I don't think knowing someone is that much of a factor. I wasn't doing it that often, but even when I picked a girl up at a pub, it was implied I wouldn't try to pick a different one up on another day. At least if I didn't want to get slapped by one or both of them.
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As an American, if you wanted to blow the horn I'll be right there with you.
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