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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Notes -
Married men of The Motte, how do you “make peace with” life-long monogamy?
I’m a heterosexual male. During my 20s and early 30s, I had a non-trivial amount of novel sexual experience (probably averaging 2 or 3 new sex partners each year over this period, with exceptions for years in which I was in various committed relationships). Now, I’m old (40). I’ve had a girlfriend for a long time (5 years), and I’m considering marriage.
The thing is though, I’m freaked out by the idea of only having sex with one woman for the rest of my life. I get really uncomfortable watching Will Ferrell’s character in “Old School.”
I doubt my girlfriend would accept a non-monogamous relationship (I don’t even really want this myself), and I don't intend to be unfaithful (if only because the stress / feelings of guilt would eat me alive). I've always preferred vanilla sex; novelty's my only kink.
Should men like myself seek to "make peace with" life-long monogamy? If so, where do I start?
It depends. On what? In how much you love her. And your relationship. And whatever it is you both build out of it, whatever family you make. It depends on how committed you both are to fidelity, how much of a deal breaker it is. It will also depend on how careless you allow yourself to be by putting yourself into situations where you'll be tempted to stray--and let me assure you now that there are and will be many, many such situations unless you willfully and consciously navigate away from them. Pence isn't the fool people make him out to be, at least not in this regard. The clashing rocks, as it were. They'll get you. Then you'll be playing guilt and intrigue games forever. You needn't go far to find examples of this.
It frankly sounds to me that you're not ready. Sex is just sex. The variety of women and women's bodies, that thrill, the hunt, the look, that way a girl's eyes change when she realizes she wants you, how her body language picks up, the little pulses of interest, the smell of her make-up, and hers, and hers. I could go on. I won't. Gold can't buy this. (Of course it can, but not really. Gold buys the facsimile.) Juxtapose that next to growing old with one woman--will she lop off her hair? The inevitable graying and broadening. In both of you. But also the intimacy, the knowing without being told, the chatty suppers, the contented silences, the shared life. Trust. Is anything more valuable?
I won't--can't-- tell you which you are meant for. One or the other. Or maybe neither. If you're lucky you have a choice, and you can fuck up either one easily. Good luck.
Edit: 18 1/2 years of marriage here.
I think this nicely acknowledges some of the individual variation / tradeoffs involved. I've noticed a trend in life-advice-giving where people are often wrong, but never in doubt. So, you'll have someone ask whether he should pursue his dream of quitting accounting to become a painter, and one person will write back that he definitely, 100% should, and the next person will respond that he definitely, 100% shouldn't.
I don't understand the "clashing rocks" comparison. I understand (from Google) that it's a reference to the Symplegades from Greek myth, but what the relevance is of that story is lost on me.
My metaphors don't always hit. I was referring to the dangers of navigating interactions with other women, and how reading the wind wrong can sink your ship suddenly and unexpectedly, i.e. wreck your marriage or torpedo the trust of your marriage, which is little better.
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It frankly sounds to me like you've forgotten the lust you dealt with as a young man, or were never that driven by lust in the first place. Bully for you, but for most men it isn't this easy. Otherwise there wouldn't be reams and reams of novels and poetry written about the difficulty and seriousness of the commitment of marriage, not to mention the laws and religious sacraments.
Maybe my wording put you off, I was overly blunt, but you've got me wrong, for whatever it's worth. I married when I was 35, late for guys in my generation. We lived together two years prior to marriage. I'm not now nor was I then immune to lust. I'd have thought my earlier post made that clear.
Also I've seen most of my friends marry and divorce. One of my best friends is about to get married for a third time. I have seen very plainly the arc of love, disenchantment, and failure.
That said, no one has to listen to me. My advice has been ignored before and no doubt will be again.
Yeah sorry I’m projecting a bit here. I just wish the older generation encouraged marriage a bit more and took it more seriously.
I'd like to think I am encouraging it, and taking it very seriously, much like Kierkegaard wrote about Christianity:
Not to get too heavy. I thought your post offering your own advice was quite good.
To explain a bit more, I suppose I see older married men saying things like “you may not be ready” as part of the problem. I’d rather see older folks who have been through marriage say something more like “you’ll never be ready, it’s difficult, but it’s worth it.”
I’m not married myself so again and I can’t speak for the personal experience. I’m more talking about what would be healthy on a societal level.
I gotcha. I suppose in a way perhaps I think most people may just not be cut out for marriage in today's world because everything is telling them that marriage is a deal you can just renege on later. As opposed to a sacred vow. And I see the choice to opt out as preferable to screwing up kids who have to stomach seeing their parents divorce. But I see your point, certainly, and I'll give it some thought the next time I am tempted to jump in with dubious advice. Thanks for clarifying.
Yeah this is the shitty part. It's sad how normalized divorce has become, really shows just how heartbreakingly immature the West is. We can't have one damn adult commitment we don't break.
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