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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Ethical Quandaries: What do we owe to a friend who comes to us for advice? Should we privilege a person's presumably-rational-and-considered long term statements regarding an action, or should we privilege their reactions and realizations immediately before taking an action? Is it legitimate, as an advice-giver, to consider the utilitarian impact to oneself of having given the advice, or should one be completely selfless?
My priors: Marriage is good, ceteris paribus being married is better than not being married. One should choose one's spouse carefully, and choice can make a huge difference in outcomes. Honesty is best as a first choice. Friends owe another their best efforts to improve each others' lives.
Background: My wife and I have a friend of over a decade, T. My wife is much closer with her, but I would say that T and I have enough of a relationship that I have subordinate but independent duties of care towards her. We all met in undergrad at the same university, where we took classes together. T was single throughout undergrad, with a fun series of romantic misadventures, but we were young and we figured everyone had a lot of time to figure it all out. My wife and I have been together since undergrad, and around the time we got married T started dating a new guy, D. My wife and I both disliked D from the start, he's the obese embodiment of generic New England beer commercial masculinity. Our dislike sharpened over time, as we saw more of him and heard more about him from T: T was trying to lose weight and D constantly undermined her efforts to diet and exercise, he wanted T to move in with him in the house he owned but insisted that she pay rent, he makes more money than T but insists on very strict 50/50 splits on all bills (from early things like vacations to after cohabiting things like groceries), he didn't want to propose even after T made clear she wanted it soon, and he just generally doesn't seem to be that nice to her. But hey, D has a good job (engineer), and T seemed to like him, so how much is it our place to criticize? And besides, he does some things better than I do (he T buys a LOT of gaudy jewelry). Ultimately, he did propose (just a week before a planned ultimatum!), and they have a radically enormous wedding planned for a month from now.
Current Situation: T calls my wife in tears two days ago. She thinks she no longer wants to marry D. She's not sure she ever wanted to marry D, really. She thinks they are totally incompatible, she's come to certain sudden realizations on some issues that she thinks make things irreconcilable with D. She's thinking of calling off the wedding, which would mean informing 300 odd people, losing out on mid-five figures in deposits, returning gifts from two separate bridal showers, etc. She keeps asking us for advice.
On the one hand, we both wanted to tell her to leave him, like, two years ago before they got engaged. I can't, hand on the Bible, say that he's a good guy and she should marry him. Once, she was visiting my house, and I came home and as I was taking things out of my pockets I mentioned to my wife "Thanks for doing the laundry." T looked at me and asked if I was being ironic. The idea of her bf actually thanking her for doing something around the house. I just don't think they have a good relationship.
On the other hand, she's understandably nervous about her upcoming marriage, but up to this point she seemed to really want to do this. So it feels like I shouldn't give in to her attack of nervousness. Like, if you go up a ski-slope with your friend, and then your friend gets scared when they look down the slope, you should encourage them to ski their way down and get over their nerves. I should probably encourage her to follow her rational impulses rather than her emotional fears.
On the third hand, I wonder whether she can really do better? She's put on a LOT of weight, it's tragic. She's in her 30s. Do I give her optimistic advice ("You'll get on Ozempic*, lose the weight, and find yourself a much better man!") or do I give her realistic advice ("He's not great but it's time to settle down...")?
On the fourth hand (I am an advice-giving Hindu god-ling), she's probably going to do whatever she wants to do regardless of what I say, so should I give my advice with an eye to protecting myself? If I tell her not to marry him and she marries him, that will create a rift. If I tell her she'd be better off single and she doesn't marry him, she might hold me responsible for whatever happens to her later. Don't make waves and ruin a long friendship.
What's your take, Mottizens? How should I handle this?
*D is very anti Ozempic, which I consider another strike against him.
I watched as my brother married a woman that I thought was a bad idea. I tried to have a talk with him "are you really sure about this?"
They have three kids together. She spends them into financial problems constantly. She has driven drunk to pick up her kids.
Their marriage seems to be barely holding together. I think if divorce wasn't a complete financial non-starter she would have already tried to initiate it. She might do so anyways since she is financially illiterate.
In general I regret not being more forceful that "this is a bad idea". Plenty of marriages that look like good ideas don't even work out. I've never heard of a marriage that looked like a terrible idea turn out to be great. Marriage is hard and failure is more likely than success.
Do you think her prospects for finding a partner will improve if she becomes a single mother of 40 with a decade of stress spent trying to save a struggling marriage? If you believe that is likely to happen and you said nothing, can you count yourself as a friend of this woman?
My younger sister was engaged to a man while she was in medical school. She was doing her residency when he suddenly broke things off with her. Refused to even talk with her. Wedding was cancelled, people had to be told, some things returned. Some non-refundable deposits lost. Thank goodness it was called off though. The social embarrassment seems so minor compared to the suffering that might have taken place had she married that d-bag. He and his new girlfriend had a child about 8 months after he called off the wedding with my sister.
Here are some potential outcomes:
I think you are likely to lose her as a friend as soon as this whole situation started. But I feel the best chances of retaining her as a friend and her not being miserable are the ones where you say something.
Obviously not directly related to OP, but I'm familiar with one instance where this happened. A close family member, single at the time, dropped "you could do better". Still together a fairly happy decade later, notwithstanding the usual ups and downs inherent in any marriage. Said family member is still close, and still single.
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