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'd consider laying out the consequences of getting it wrong. Paint a picture of a bad marriage and downstream consequences (like the opportunity cost of wasting 10 years in a bad relationship, stress/financial impact of divorce, dating as a single mum, dating in your 40's). Balance this out with talk about pre-wedding jitters, what it would feel like to break things off with a 'good guy', could she deal live with her decision. Painting a picture of the consequences of her choice and then avoiding advising her on which choice to make could be a path here while avoiding saying anything about her partner directly (which you can never take back and will cloud your future friendship if this guy stays in the picture). Telling her 'I can't make this choice for you' with a concerned look on your face would be advised. Heck, you could even go mask off and say 'I can't tell you which choice you should make because I've seen friendships ruined over things like this'.
Regarding the last part I have seen friendships ruined over things like this. I knew two guys when I was younger (still do). They were best friends. One guy had a long term (8+ years) partner who was an overweight, lazy, emotionally manipulative woman who others in our friendship circle disliked. Upon hearing that the boyfriend was going to propose, his friend decided to intervene and had a heart to heart discussion over alcohol (which is the culturally appropriate way of having these sorts of talks between men where I come from). The friend said he was making a mistake and that this girl was not right him. This went about as well as you'd expect. Their friendship was fractured and they didn't speak for several years. The boyfriend ended up breaking up with the girl and eventually settling down with a different girl (who was also overweight, an 'actress' in her local drama troupe, with no career to speak of). The friends eventually mended their friendship after several years, but it was never as close or as strong as it was. In this case the friend's advice was unsolicited and we have no idea if it impacted on the boyfriend's decision to break up with his partner.
I think if your friend has any maturity she will understand why you frame your advice so as not to cast judgment on this guy.
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