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:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Notes -
Well, I'd hoped it would never come for me...
Last night my girlfriend, I and a mutual friend got into a discussion about nonbinary people. I put forward my position, basically that it's a fashion statement for people who want to feel different and special. My girlfriend has a couple of friends (I've only met one of them once) who prefer 'they' pronouns. Both are men, dress and act like men, although one has changed his name to a rather ironic noun (equivalent to someone renaming himself 'Drama', although not exactly that.
Anyway, now she's not happy. I attempted to compromise by agreeing to use they/them in their presence, but not when speaking to my girlfriend. Apparently this isn't sufficient. She feels it's akin to using racial slurs to refer to someone when they're out of earshot, even if you don't use slurs to their face.
I can't really see any third way beyond conceding or sticking to my guns. It's frustrating, because she is very much not the intolerant idpol type. Indeed her political beliefs are broadly conservative. Apparently not for this topic.
Stick to your guns. There is no value to conceding. Because if you must concede for her to continue to love you, she doesn't love you.
There was a popular meme that ran around on twitter (I think from this guy for a while that ran something like: If she's still a feminist, you're not the guy. That matches my experience. When a woman is really into you, she is not going to care about your politics. The most progressive women in the world will make every excuse for you, if you get her juices flowing. For that matter, I can't imagine divorcing my wife over politics short of something so insane as to be absurd.
Therefore conceding is pointless. If you must concede to retain the relationship, the relationship has no value, because she isn't really that into you. Find someone who is. If she is into you, stick to your guns and she'll get over it. Simple as.
FWIW: Personally I'm closer to your compromise position in general life to begin with. If someone asks me to use different pronouns, I do, I find it polite (though despite moving in prog circles I've never been asked to use any outlandish ones). I've never actually had anyone police my use of pronouns irl, even given the occasional slip-up. But I can't imagine my wife policing my pronoun usage in our private conversations, largely because when we talk that kind of thing gets slid over in our sheer frenetic effort to empty our brains to each other at the end of every day. If she policed how I talked that way, I wouldn't like that.
The twitter post (tweet?) is in this article:
https://extradeadjcb.substack.com/p/10-you-can-save-her
The tweet:
https://twitter.com/extradeadjcb/status/1432558778541559808
Alternatively, the tweet:
Thanks Bro! Did me a real solid.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link