domain:questioner.substack.com
faceh
1hr ago
I think the main feature male friends can't provide is being the confidant of deep secrets and more purely emotional revelations from the inner reaches of your psyche. Intimacy, as you say.
For that, you want a partner that has some buy-in and is committed to sticking around for the long term and thus has a greater familiarity with your personal foibles and hangups and struggles, and has accepted you 'in spite' of those. i.e. they make you comfortable enough to be open.
So in that case yeah, you'd want somebody who is emotionally mature and a decent communicator, which would be rarer to find among 18-20 year olds.
But it also doesn't take too much experience to just let someone put their head in your lap and talk about their inner world while providing the occasional constructive response or affirmation, and remember enough of the details that they can build on it as you go.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
specific niche
This weekend, I stumbled into a crossover post 1) between my favorite world-war-punk logistics MMO and 2) Steel Panzer. That wasn’t the weird part. Apparently the mod author had commissioned unit art from a Twitter artist with the following bio:
I may be drawing furries, femboys, NSFW, and guns. I realize some of you may not be comfortable with one of these.
I suspect—but I can never be sure—that the guns are supposed to be the dealbreaker. Twitter is a foreign country.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1hr ago
Most guys with jobs complain about their jobs, it is nonetheless easier to have a job than not to have one.
Leaving aside those who can get all the benefits of a job without one, but those are rare individuals.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
there was nothing stopping past students from having a big brother or a stranger from Craigslist do the actual writing,
Well, nothing besides integrity.
rokmonster
Lives under a rok.
1hr ago
SIS
Sorry, but what is SIS? Neither a search for "SIS homelessness" nor "SIS NYC" turned up anything related.
Eupraxia
Shut up and quantify
1hr ago
You might want to remove the part of that link after ”?igsh=”, because it’s showing me your insta account.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
That sounds either kickass or pornographic. I could believe both.
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
It's much harder to explain how you legally acquired said seeds. Especially with the effort that it takes to get the kind of cannabis people want (not talking any bullshit about roadside trash grass).
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1hr ago
If I were writing to a public forum, asking for advice about my lurid love affair, I’d take any opsec I could get.
I should probably do more here.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
I once had a professor who knew psychometrics so well, including its history but many ways as well that statistics could be used within methodology, and why, and when, and which types were preferable and which types to avoid and which types revealed nothing, that he seemed eerily erudite. He taught us the ins and outs of SPSS and Winsteps (R was just coming in) and we were eventually doing structural equation modeling. The last of his classes I took was my introduction to Bayesian reasoning. He really was brilliant and made me want to rise to his expectations.
But as a teacher pedagogically he was pretty bad. I didn't really understand his grading. He'd answer questions in such a way that I would become even more lost. But I was probably a better student in his doctoral class than I had been in the entirety of my (years earlier) time as an undergraduate.
I don't envy those whose job it is to evaluate teachers. I suppose a pre post assessment of student ability (at whatever), averaged across a large enough population, might be one way. Just looking at post scores or student evaluations wouldn't be enough.
Of course a school's PR team might likely be more concerned with shiny markers such as popularity with students. That certainly doesn't threaten the school's funding.
Rosencrantz2
1hr ago
Gonna disagree, why wouldn't evolution just make it feel good to be attractive, without providing us with its chain of reasoning?
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
1hr ago
I suppose male friends can, in theory, account for all the interpersonal interaction a man needs while women solely provide the occasional intercorporeal fling. It seems, however, that many men desire more than their male friends can give, or are willing to give in the age where male friendship is notably less intimate in many aspects than it had been.
And hell, with most one-night-stands among people similar in age... what are you going to talk about, if the whole intention is not to see one another again?
I wouldn't know, I've never had a one-night stand that I intended to never see again.
Rosencrantz2
1hr ago
"The way I dress/makeup is solely to feel good about myself! That it happens to 90% coincide with what makes men lust after me is completely irrelevant, its not about men's desires!" is the purest cope imaginable.
I don't think it has to be cope. Evolution isn't transparent to us: it is totally plausible that women naturally want to look good without actually 'feeling' the evolutionary reason why it benefits their genes to do so.
voters-eliot-azure
patently unbiased
1hr ago
If our core criterion for epithets was "one time said something in a speech" then we would be quite exhausted by the amount of "fascist", "Nazi", "communist", "socialist", etc. being thrown around.
Come to think of it, I am quite exhausted by the amount those terms are being thrown around. Maybe we shouldn't use "one time said something in a speech" as a criterion? Maybe we should judge people by what they're campaigning on, and their actions in office?
Edit:
he has called himself a socialist
Does he call himself a socialist now? I see "Democratic Socialist" on his webpage, which is distinct from other types of socialism (e.g. the flavors of authoritarian socialism that are the boogeymen).
iprayiam3
1hr ago
My wife has recently given me a little gentle ribbing about my softer than usual belly. We were at the beach last week, and she turned to me and said, "Yeah, seeing all these shirtless men makes, me realize how in shape you actually are."
Point being I agree.
hanikrummihundursvin
1hr ago
I think there are two moving parts here: Jeff's marriage and the average dudes marriage. I don't think these two are comparable. And I doubt Bezos doesn't have a bunch of personal assistants and potentially prostitutes.
To that extent the argument that monogamy is a huge time saver does not apply to someone who is in the position to outsource the work. Nor would it apply to Bezos like it would some average guy.
So I'd agree that the average guy is better of with a wife to the extent he can not achieve his wants without one, but that's not saying much in my mind.
hanikrummihundursvin
1hr ago
My recently divorced coworker begs to differ.
faceh
1hr ago
I've often heard an opinionoid about the idea of older guys dating 18 year olds that goes something like "there's nothing we can talk about after fucking", and while lately it does look like sour grapes/Havel's groceryism when it comes from older guys, there might be something to it.
The honest but misogynistic-sounding answer is "well that's why I have male friends, after all." Indeed, a guy who bags an stunning 18-22 year old will probably immediately text his best buds "BROOOOOOO!" since, you know, that itself is something worth crowing about for many men.
And hell, with most one-night-stands among people similar in age... what are you going to talk about, if the whole intention is not to see one another again?
Anyhow, not to derail, but it does seem best to model most complaints in this vein as intrasexual competition all the way down.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1hr ago
It's way easier to have a wife. And yeah a lot of guys complain about theirs, but that's generally venting about minor grievances rather than a serious complaint. In truth, most of those guys would be miserable without their wives, and they probably know it.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
1hr ago
This is exactly it. They often mean "guy who looks like he can deadlift and bench a VW Beetle, but has some softness around the midsection (so he's probably not insane about tracking his diet, but also so him having too-defined abs doesn't make me feel insecure about my own body)."
That's what I'm saying.
Eons of generations have gone into each facet of the female psyche. Their biological imperative is, to a large degree, to appeal to men's sexual desires. Even if its not literally about sex, that's where most of this is coming from.
Their own psychology is innately, inextricably entangled with making themselves appealing to the male brain. "Men like me if I'm pretty, therefore being pretty is good, therefore I feel good when I'm pretty."
So trying to rewrite it to seem like "I just like making my mouth look soft and kissable and pumping up my cleavage for prominent display and wearing painted on leggings that emphasize my rump because I feel good when I dress up this way completely independent of how any man might perceive it" is a tad farcical.
No woman puts in that much effort to make herself feel good and then chooses to just lounge around the house rather than going out in hopes of snagging some actual attention. And rightly so.
(and no, I ain't acting like men's fashion doesn't follow similar principles)
As a newly married man, my experience has definitely been that having a wife makes life easier. Pooling our social lives means that she picks up maybe 70% of the organising seeing friends, she organises most of the house stuff, she helps me draft tactful messages with her womanly social skills. Plus even if I'm working from home I'm guaranteed to spend at least some time socialising every day. 12/10 would wife again.
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