If we as humans didn’t have the propensity to feel that something is missing, we’d stop striving. Seems it’s just a natural part of the human condition.
Like you, I’ve never had an interest in kids. So, there’s none of the underlying shit going on inside of us that leads others to make the types of sacrifices or changes to accommodate a partner if we don’t find them ideal. I spent 8.5 years of my 30’s single and very happy to be single. Like Neil McCaully said: I’m alone, I am not lonely.
Besides, my favorite person to hang out with is me. Because coincidentally I always want to do what me wants to do, so we get on fabulously.
Obv I wasn’t there, but I would guess it was less agreeing with him and more letting him speak what is true for him. Therapists are not there to agree or disagree. They’re there to facilitate the process of you making yourself whole.
As for jmakin, I believe he is taking a very healthy assessment. There are compromises whichever way a person goes, and it’s great to see him take an honest look at what life would look like for him long term. It’s brave to say well these things are kind of assumed pieces of everyone’s lives, but there are things you lose from aggressively pursuing one thing over the other. There are great pluses to never being in a primary or closed relationship if that’s right for him. It may not always be, but if it is for now, the things he loses may be more than worth what he gets.
I made sacrifices to my career in order to have a family a little older. I was at an age where I had to decide which direction, because I wouldn’t be able to do both. Some people in my field would say wtf, because there are some things I had to say goodbye to. I’m too old now to do those things or even be considered for them, but I’m happy with the tradeoff.
Having high standards is definitely a problem to be worked on. It’s not that you shouldn’t have standards, it’s that you should really think super super hard about where you can cut them without losing anything you actually care about.
Marriage is absolutely not like being a single person out there fucking around. A single dude would rather have an annoying significantly mentally ill 10 over a 6 with an absurdly compatible personality. When it comes to marriage I’d take a 3 with an absurdly compatible personality over a 10 that wasn’t and it isn’t close. Just totally different metrics when you’re going to spend that much time around someone.
So basically if you ever decide you want to get married the best advice I can give is to figure out how you can set your physical standards as low as possible and your expectations of the other persons personality match with you as high as possible. You’re not shopping for your next sexual adventure you’re shopping for a best friend/business partner who you also have sex with. Having a good sex life is important, but it’s not going to do you much good if you can barely stand being around that person 5-10 hours a week and they have none of the same goals that you do.
If it sounds like there are huge tradeoffs going on with marriage that would be totally correct. The person you marry is not going to be perfect for you. That I promise. One of the worst things our culture did to us as kids is give us totally unrealistic ideas about what a long term partnership would be like. It’s not happily ever after, she isn’t a princess, and you aren’t a prince. You’re both going to be deeply flawed human beings and you’re going to help each other in some ways and hurt each other in other ways.
That’s not true. Or it doesn’t have to be. There’s a time component to intimacy and trust you just can’t bypass. It takes time, a long time, and a lot of people aren’t ready or willing to go through that next phase. They only want New Relationship Energy and how that makes the same stuff feel new again each time. They may even take tiny risks thanks to the NRE invigorating their courage.
But then there’s a long-term healthy relationship between two people. You have trust and safety, and you regularly cultivate a sense of play and fun. You don’t have to be super creative in bed to begin to imagine how just having a partner who has learned what works (and doesn’t) for you, and you’ve done the same for them, begins to create a dynamic that easily competes against the NRE a lot of people never get past.
So to your point, compatibility means everything and ultimately can contribute to a degree of attraction for the other person that far exceeds mere physical attraction. They’re hot for how they look and because of all of the OTHER things that took years to figure out together and now works so damn well so consistently that the temptation to stray may as well be like the temptation to buy your own private island. Sounds cool, but lol why bother with such a silly fantasy that would ruin what’s right in front of you?
That’s a great idea. I did the same when I was in a crisis and worried for my safety. That therapist got me through a tough time until I found someone in my new location.
Thanks for sharing ITT. We want to know if you’re not doing well (or when you are!).
I dunno if this is necessarily true. I have a friend with an insanely hot, stable wife. And he is a total nitwit. It’s not like I have to settle for a 6, and I won’t. Your premise makes it sound like that really attractive women are not marriage material or are crazy. Sorry if you didnt mean that but that’s how I read it.
To be clear I have no issues finding a girlfriend, or even a very attractive one. It is a little bit like job hunting - you shop around, put in volume, make a good impression. It just never lasts more than a ~year. That seems to be the point where I either break people into cheating on me or I’m the one that loses interest and I break up with them.
I won’t cheat so the moment I get a wandering eye I cut the cord. Like I said I don’t think I can be monogamous. Sex is so incredibly easy to get if you look for it and know what buttons to push.
Yeah not how I meant it. I’m speaking of it like it’s a prioritization problem. I’m saying you want to have extremely high standards on stuff other than looks and the tighter you crank the looks metric the harder it’s going to be to find someone who matches well in other ways.
Totally agree that girlfriends and sex are both easy to find. As for your nitwit friend and his hot + awesome wife he might have some problems down the road if/when she gets offered something that is massively better in every single way. On the other hand she probably doesn’t agree that he’s a nitwit, or more likely has huge insecurities that caused her to settle possibly even gratefully for your friend.
I think mismatches in the marriage market are a pretty great way to have a marriage fall apart. Both people in the relationship have to keep up with each other to a certain degree or it won’t work. That’s why having common goals is so important. It’s super super common for people to get divorced in their 30’s when one spouse is just much more successful than the other one for whatever reason.
I think he’s more saying if a person is looking for a long-term partner, be willing to consider the whole package. Lots of hot crazy people are very impulsive and have thin or nonexistent boundaries.
Now to be fair, lots of NOT hot people are also very impulsive and have thin or nonexistent boundaries, but you’re probably not looking at the people you don’t consider physically appealing. I’m just saying that it’s easy to think the people who are the most readily available are the people best suited for us, but that’s like thinking I uniquely attract crazy hot people. No, those people are ready to abuse anyone who says yes. It’s just often been me who says yes.
The measures of compatibility you’ve trained yourself to respond to may need some cultivation and expansion to better engage with the things that excite and compel you longer than a year. Would you take twenty years with a person if you knew there’d be brief periods that either happen all at once or randomly but add up to two or three years of varied boredom and occasional discontent? To me that’s an amazing trade-off, but a lot of people call it quits at the first indication they’re moving into the less happy phase.
Note: I am the person who refuses to call it quits when it’s beyond awful for unacceptable periods of time, so I am somewhat learning to appreciate the healthy side of long-term relationships myself.
Yeah really important to note that you only need to marry one person. There’s a different corresponding problem that comes from having too low of standards. Standards are super important and, in my opinion the most important thing in finding and then building out a relationship that at least doesn’t make your life worse than it would have been without it.
There are lots and lots of people in long term relationships that they’d be infinitely better off without.
I guess if I’m trying to make a point it’s that looking for a spouse is a fundamentally different activity than casual dating for fun. One activity is about figuring out as quickly as possible whether a person is going to be as close to a frictionless part of your life as possible and the other is about having a good time in the moment. One is work and the other, if done correctly, is an awesome recreational activity.
I’m not saying you can’t have fun with it, but I am saying that you need to not be thinking with your dick if your actual goal is to get married.
Since you don’t want to have kids I’m not even sold that marriage is something desirable that you should even want @jmakin. It’s kind of a shitty one sided contract that is nothing but downside for someone in your position 99.9% of the time. I got married before I got successful, and I doubt I would have gone through with it (I love my wife, but it’s a bad contract) later in life. If I ever get divorced I 1000% guarantee I won’t be getting married again.
I don’t take his posts in here the same way. I ask that you leave him on ignore. Please allow us to continue to have what we are experiencing as a healthy and productive conversation with him.
