First comment!
I married my ex husband in large part due to sunk costs, which was really stupid. The costs on all levels of a divorce are much higher than the costs of breaking up. I also think that there's a lot of BS advice about "marriage/relationships are hard you should stick it out."* I believed that, and figured that I wasn't working hard enough. Now I realize if your relationship mostly feels like hard work, it's probably because it's shitty and you could find someone more compatible.
*Not that you should abandon a relationship at the first sign of trouble, but if you're early in a relationship and it's already rocky, that's a really bad sign.
My grad school era LTR lasted about 1.5 years longer than it should have, but I'm not sure if "sunk costs" fully describes the reasons. That was part of it, but this was also my first serious long term relationship, and I think "inability to imagine alternatives" was probably a contributing factor.
In retrospect it's a very good thing that we parted (amicably) when we did, because I'm pretty sure we would have been miserable if we had determined to carry on for the long haul.
I've stuck around out of inertia but never out of concerns about sunk costs. I have a problem of sticking with the relationship when somebody really needs to drag it out back and put a bullet in it send it to live on a farm in the countryside.
I'm a firm believer in the idea that no one should enter into a LTR until they are 27 at least. And 30 would be better!
But I have a hard time getting anyone else to sign onto this worldview. Go figure.
send it to live on a farm in the countryside.
If your relationship is already in trouble, moving to a place where you don't know anybody and there are no restaurants and no movies is a really bad idea.
I mean, not that you can't mess around before that. But they should just be practice relationships.
Fucking around, as it were.
Obligatory comment: marry early and often!
HB nails it: people under-think, under-explore, and hurry up.
The more I live the more I become convinced of the truth of my core conviction -- I don't have a fucking clue.
So sunk costs would be a relationship that is actively awful, but 4 is more of a low profitability situation that calls for a private equity takeover and forced breakup?
Presumably we are observing an inefficiency in the marriage market caused by suffocating regulation. Protectionist barriers to low cost foreign and domestically genetically related competitors need to be torn down for the good of all.
where I delve into even more of the gory details and deftly weave it together with the sad saga of GM's decline, which happened for much the same reasons that my failed relationship did.
(a) leave it to others to say how deftly you weave it together, McMegan;
(b) that sure sounds weird.
Japanese corporations have used plants in Ohio to make more reliable, cheaper relationships.
8: So complicated, though. I know a lot of people who take a long time to decide if they want to get married at all, because they watched a really bad divorce as a child. Once they decide that marriage is something they do want, they realize that the person they've been with for a while is the one they want to marry.
Tim knew he wanted to marry me, before I knew that I wanted to marry him, and then we've had a long-ish engagement, because we just had so much crap to deal with because of my parents.
And there are no guarantees no matter what.
It's why Honda opened a plant in Marrysville.
9: Oh, peep, I love you. I'm sure that your food safety standards are more clued-in than urple's. They must be.
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Is there good, free software for the Mac that will temporarily block a website. I need to do some work today and need more than will power to help me stay away from unfogged.
@5: So you want women to enter their first relationship when their fertility is already declining? That would just increase the pressure to stay in a mediocre relationship.
11 a) : She's not waiting on someone else to give her what she needs ever again
b) weird sounds accurate, but the word I would choose is stupid.
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This is my guest post, so I'll derail it early if I want to!
In short, by 8am CST tomorrow I need to come up with 2-3 mins worth of thoughts on the general topic of feminist assessments of R/ussell B/rand's political activism. Does anyone have strong (or even just existent) opinions? At this moment in time, I do not.
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20. Heart in the right place > thinks nothing through > sets himself up as a patsy > ultimately more harm than good. (Probably a nice guy to have a drink with though.)
I love you too. Bostonian Girl, but now you need to leave me and go do your work.
Also, I've never understood why everybody gives urple such a hard time about his food safety standards.
This is a ludicrous account of why GM declined and the sunk cost analogy is facile (with a grain of truth). McMegan: still the worst, still an idiot.
22.2 You may have missed a few threads. RTFA.
18. (a) I discount all the hysteria about declining fertility post-25. It doesn't decline that fast in most women. These are scare tactics started by anti-feminists.
(b) Do you really think we need that many more babies anyway?
(c) Women -- most of us -- don't want that many babies. [I make an obvious exception for Heebie.]
(d) Even granting that fertility declines like a fucking rocket post-25, which it ain't, holy Jebus, do you think babies are the only thing that matters in a relationship? Get a fucking cat.
Or, you know, adopt. Foster children are also a thing.
I second 25 and 26. We have too many incentives and pressures to have kids. Lessening that pressure is good.
24: I beg your pardon! I have read every single one of the fucking archives, and am fully aware of all unfogged traditions. I just happen to disagree with all you worry-warts.
I also should get back to work.
16: There's a text file on your machine called /private/etc/hosts
Edit it, and add the following lines:
127.0.0.1 unfogged.com
127.0.0.1 www.unfogged.com
That should make it so you are unable to reach the website, until you remove that change. You may have to restart your browser for it to work.
Declining fertility basically means that you have to have way more sex in order to conceive, right? I think if you're committing to someone really fast because you don't want to have as much sex then maybe there's a reason not to commit to that person...
I never understood the bad rap that marriage ultimatums get. Ultimatums, in general, are wisely frowned upon, but that doesn't mean that they are always inappropriate.
There was a Meatloaf song about that. Or at least about ultimatums of love "until the end of time."
Marriage ultimatums are weird. If you want to know if someone will marry you ask them to marry you. Threatening them into asking you is weird.
I sort of agree with 31. If an ultimatum is delivered:
"You need to propose, or else I will throw one holy hell of a tantrum and neither one of us is really thinking about breaking up, but you're just going to otherwise stay in this dating stage and I'm fed up and moving into ongoing-nagging-land," then that's bad.
If the ultimatum is:
"I'm ready to move this relationship forward or end it, so that I can find someone else who I'm a better fit with. Can we agree on a reasonably short length of time, at the end of which you'll have your decision?" then that's fine.
There was a Meatloaf song about that. Or at least about ultimatums of love "until the end of time."
That they're paradise!
32: I'm now imagining McMegan and Meatloaf doing Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
I'm just wondering if there isn't a hidden dark side to giving an ultimatum in the midst of foreplay while parking in a car whose battery is probably running down.
Other than the downside mentioned in 36.
34 is right. The "sunk cost" analogy is stupid (among many other reasons) because one of the advantages of a long-term relationship is precisely that it's been long term; that's not a "sunk cost" but something more akin to a long-term powerful brand valued for its longevity. You still might want to abandon the brand for other reasons, and in many cases should do so, but it's long-termness is an asset not a sunk cost. You'll note that GM didn't improve by simply abandoning the name "Cadillac" and starting up a new brand (call it, say, "Saturn"). McMegan: still the worst, still glib, still a terrible business historian, still an idiot, still a horrible person.
39: Wise of McMegan to stay true to her brand.
Standing athwart history saying Stop right there!
Besides, it's well known that GM failed because Roger Smith became frigid.
42: He couldn't get it up, because he always thought Michael Moore was about to walk in on him.
33: A proposal is one perfectly legitimate way to deliver an ultimatum. (A proposal isn't always have to be an ultimatum, of course, but that's one thing it can be.)
the "sunk cost" analogy is stupid (among many other reasons) because one of the advantages of a long-term relationship is precisely that it's been long term; that's not a "sunk cost" but something more akin to a long-term powerful brand valued for its longevity.
I agree. But that is a common refrain from people. "You wasted your time!"
True. If the overriding goal was to get married, then a long-term relationship that doesn't result is marriage was a waste. But, then you are an idiot for not expressing that earlier. Or addressing it earlier.
20. Possible source material: Female-authored reviews of Katy Perry's film "Part of Me", which prominently deals with her response to the breakup.
I have no idea which one of you is to blame, but "Sometimes when we touch" is now going through my head. I demand you stop this.
I started to read 47, but the honesty was too much and I had to close my eyes and cry.
39: I've always said, "It's not chemistry, it's history."
39. Telenovela idea: Rise and fall of McMegan and Russell Brand's romance, filmed in the style of Inarritu.
47: So Meatloaf isn't a match for Dan Hill? So sad...
It seems like every time I go to the Guardian website one of the most read stories is either "Why Russell Brand is a hero who speaks to those who otherwise ignore politics" or "Why Russell Brand is a buffoon who speaks for nobody". So just do a website search there.
Laurie Penny has mixed feelings about Russell Brand, to wit, she thinks he's cute but too much of a brocialist.
Laurie Penny is someone whose romantic life - and way of writing about it - I really don't understand. She's pretty, young, thin, famous, has a great haircut - she presumably has, relatively speaking, her pick of young men. And yet she is consciously and inexorably drawn to brooding prats. I mean, once I figured out that I was drawn only to short, mean people who hated me for being smart, I at least was able to stop....and I have always lacked almost all of Penny's advantages.
53.2: It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.
Yeats was a strict iceberg lettuce and tomato kind of guy.
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The new Taylor Swift video about Dirk Nowitzki and Tim Duncan is one of the strangest things I've seen.
No, really, listen to the lyrics, ("I got that one-legged lean-back thing you can't block.") It's bizarre.
|>
I bet she gets the good looking, thin, young, and famous brooding prats.
55: Oh, no, I mean that she is unhappy being drawn to brooding prats, and writes about that. I know none of her dates, but I know a good deal about her presentation of her regrets about them - if dating brooding prats made her happy that would be another matter.
See, trying to date short mean people who hated me made me miserable - not unlike Laurie Penny with the prats - and being able to stop was a huge achievement. I had assumed that because I had fewer choices with the dating that it would be extra difficult to stop with the short mean people because I didn't have a range to choose from, and that if I had been good-looking and thin and so on I would have had a broader range and been able to replace the short mean people with better ones more easily.
Laurie Penny is someone whose romantic life - and way of writing about it - I really don't understand.
She's 28.
She'd better hurry and get married.
60: But tall mean people are a lot easier to find in a crowd. Also you can borrow and wear their overcoats to comic effect.
Plus, shelves are sometimes too high for short people.
But when you are dating tall mean people, they refuse to get things down from the high shelves, or else put things up there on purpose.
20:Russell Brand brosocialists vs Brit feminists
North Star search term "Vampire Castle", 5 articles, ~300 comments was inspired by the Russell Brand speech
From the original Mark Davies article "Exiting the Vampire Castle"
Brand's intervention was not a bid for leadership; it was an inspiration, a call to arms. And I for one was inspired. Where a few months before, I would have stayed silent as the PoshLeft moralisers subjected Brand to their kangaroo courts and character assassinations - with 'evidence' usually gleaned from the right-wing press, always available to lend a hand - this time I was prepared to take them on. The response to Brand quickly became as significant as the Paxman exchange itself. As Laura Oldfield Ford pointed out, this was a clarifying moment.
Linked for names and mentions of Britfems or other PoshLeft moralisers you might find in the articles or comments
Also, related but not searched, the breakup of the SWP over an unnamed (Libel) harasser/rapist in high places; Seymour and Mieville left; and Seymour then leaving getting kicked out of the new organization by Laurie Penny and allies over support of edgy sexworkers; Seymour was for, Penny against.
The last story was a blast; the sex workers in question were black, dressed as slaves, and got paid for being whipped and groveling.
My adviser had dinner at her apartment with Bi/ll Br/adley a million years ago. After she did the dishes he put them all away on shelves she couldn't reach.
67: Was he being innocently nice in a not actually helpful way or deliberately plotting to become a necessary part of her life?
I think he just put them at (his) eyelevel.
A friend-of-a-friend is in a wheelchair, and (apparently) has a hideous mother-in-law who does things like rearrange her kitchen and put things way up high.
The "sunk cost" analogy is stupid (among many other reasons) because one of the advantages of a long-term relationship is precisely that it's been long term
That's one of the advantages, but hopefully it's among the lesser ones. Surely the greater advantages include: enjoying time spent with that partner! Learning new things with that person! Exploring one's one self with the help and encouragement of that person! Developing a nuanced sex life with that person, dependent on learning one another's, erm, hot spots.
But wait, what counts as a long-term relationship here? I'm disinclined to read the McMegan piece.
filmed in the style of Inarritu
It's not exactly--close!--in the style of Iñárritu, but because the last sequence relates kinda sorta to the OP, I urge you to see Wild Tales. Totes amazeballs.
Also, John McPhee's profile of Bradley, A Sense of Where You Are, is really good. Also also, McMegan wasting years on a bad relationship, then blaming it on the guy and subjecting the thing to pseudo-economic analysis is just rich.
|| For the Joe Biden lovers, a friend captioned this montage, "Shhh . . . Uncle Joe is here." |>
70 - Thus the McPhee biography, A Sense of Where Things Are.
Painfully on topic, Pat and I mad it official Monday night. We're getting divorced. I'm alternating between shock, relief, and thinking about what it would be like to have sex with someone new for the first time in 17 years.
Best wishes, RM. I hope it's the start of many new good things.
77: Seriously. I don't read McMegan on any regular basis, but she's got a thing up now on why there are no arguments in favor of Obamacare, in which she flatly says that she's a libertarian. Somehow I'd thought she'd always pretended that she wasn't (despite the Jane Galt pseud). In any case, she and whatever his name is are two peas in a pod. So, a good marriage for them if you like looking in a mirror.
Indeed, RM, try to look forward rather than back. Even aside from possible sex with someone new, think of the little things as well, those things you perhaps felt constrained by, and will no longer be constrained by. Remember to breathe.
78: So terribly sorry to hear it, RM. I hope you get to keep Checkers and that you regain your footing quickly. What a terrible few months for you.
Thanks Parsi. The sex thing was more of a joke than anything, but it's good advice anyway since so many of our issues were around control.
Thanks everyone. Aside from the shock, I'm actually feeling pretty good at the moment.
Aw, dammit. No need to redact at this point. Stupid phone.
So sorry/congrats, etc. Choose whichever is appropriate at any given moment. xoxo
Welcome to the merry divorcee club, RM. It takes some getting used to but it's not so bad once you adjust. The shell-shocked feeling comes and goes for a while.
89: Maybe send the poor guy some Tinder tips? (Not really, and was it torque who was getting it on within 30 min? Maybe he's a better one for tips.)
Too soon to ask if you can give Mrs. Nixon my number?
Good luck, Chopped RM.
A chance to start over...
RM, good luck-- I'm hoping to be in the same position real soon now. The definite decision with a date attached part, of the position, that is. I'll go out on a limb and say congratulations-- change from a bad situation is most likely an improvement.
90. I figure the right outfit is a basic starting point.
Condolences on your loss, and congratulations on your new future.
85: Right, if issues were about control, just think: you can leave your coffee cup on the table for as long as you like. Or, you can let that one plant that you never liked anyway die. Or, you don't need to vacuum out the {whatever} if you don't feel like it.
I've never been divorced, as I've never been married, but I've had a number of long-term relationships break up, and it always felt that recalling what felt so constraining is now ... gone ... was really the aspect to hang on to.
but for my money, 91 went beyond them
It wasn't me, but I won't pretend I didn't laugh.
90: Torque is the resident Tinder Don Juan. Maybe once a respectful interval has passed we can organize a competition of some sort to initiate our newly single friends into the wonderful world of online dating. Certainly a lot has changed in 17 years.
93: Sorry and congratulations.
Fuck, Chopper, I feel bad for you, but having been through it myself, I can say that it does in fact get better. Best of luck in keeping things civil.
Knecht, your memory for TFA never fails to amaze me.
I wish our Quaker President nothing but the best. And LW too.
102: we can organize a competition of some sort to initiate our newly single friends into the wonderful world of online dating
No. No no no. It's a dreadful business, and I won't stray from that view. jeez. Join a club, get political, start helping out in a community garden or something, just don't start online dating. Good grief. Go to a local herb festival. Or the garlic festival. Or in RM's case, a smoked meat festival. Join a CSA and meet the other members.
You can see my ideas are food oriented, go figure, but there would be similar things for the athletically inclined, and similar things for the literarily or artistically inclined.
Look forward, in any case, as best as possible, but online dating is for when you have no time at all or have completely tapped out the real-life possibilities. Which can happen.
So I think we can say with certainty that RM is not going to match with parsimon on Tinder.
online dating is for when you have no time at all or have completely tapped out the real-life possibilities.
This is crazy talk.
Sympathy and best wishes from yet another member of the club.
online dating is for when you have no time at all or have completely tapped out the real-life possibilities.
Unfogged is for when you have unlimited time and have completely tapped out the real-life possibilities.
No. No no no. It's a dreadful business, and I won't stray from that view. jeez. Join a club, get political, start helping out in a community garden or something, just don't start online dating. Good grief. Go to a local herb festival. Or the garlic festival. Or in RM's case, a smoked meat festival. Join a CSA and meet the other members.
This is silly. Pick hobbies with an express purpose of using them to search for a love interest? What if you like hobbies that don't attract people you're attracted to, ie mostly populated by the wrong gender? Just because the whole wide internet is...dreadful business?
Lw, RM, I'm going with congratulations. I mean, what a hard situation and you're successfully moving out of it and onto greener pastures.
Is there anything sadder than seeing the person who clearly came to the Hobby or Interest Event to meet people rather than for the hobby or interest? Besides Gaza or being beheaded on youtube I mean.
114. Yes, there is. Hey whats up, I like you're profile.
Alternately, Elvis Costello's accurately evocative description of many bars
My head is spinning and my legs are weak
Who's step dancin', can't hear myself speak
Hopin' the eyes of the ugly girls
Will settle for the lies of the last chances
I would never join a club that would have me as a memberpresent me with realistic dating options.
The first part of Up is sadder. I don't know about the rest of it. I got sad and left.
Good grief. Go to a local herb festival.
Oh parsimon. I love your hippie spirit, but this made me laugh in the out-loud manner, and it really should be the mouseover text.
114: People who show up to the beheadings, not because they're really into it, but because they're just looking for a date, are indeed sad.
I don't know. People go to horror movies on dates for a reason. Something about terror brings people together. Obviously, you shouldn't behead anyone to help you get a date. But if somebody else is going to be doing a beheading regardless....
119: Have you ever gone to a local herb festival? Awesome!
Oh and thanks for the kind words, and JMcQ, for the movie tip, I would not have picked up on that one.
124: I live in western Oregon. It's a local herb festival basically all the time, IYKWIMAITYD.
What 109 said. I had a great divorce, although I don't recommend them for everybody. Cry on the freeway, get exercise, listen to (or even write) sad songs, go to you. Bright things are ahead, and the misery en route is very normal.
FWIW she moved out in May and we severed in October. I made a profile right away but decided it would be wise to wait until after Thanksgiving to start actually asking women out. It's no more a dreadful business than any human folly.
If he is going to be single, that prob means we need another meetup.
Oh. No, I meant actual herbs. You know, people growing and cooking with fresh herbs. There's a lot of sniffing and aromatic stuff going on. Pretty good. And no, FL, this doesn't mean going to a Hobby or Interest Event to meet people rather than for the hobby or interest.
Oh and lw good luck too, and I still listen to your reggae mix.
I wish our Quaker President nothing but the best.
But not Herbert Hoover. Damn him.
I bet herb festivals (the real ones) smell really good.
Cry on the freeway
Los Angeles area, right?
Cry, cry, masturbate, cry on the freeway
132. http://8tracks.com/lw208xx/reggae-splash
Also... aand with that I should get this new piece of code less broken so that I can think about the data.
137.2: Not directly related, but one of my goals is to avoid dying in a way that seems likely to make Fark.
134: The couple I've been to do, most definitely. It's been a number of years now, though: I should pay more attention to when the local one here occurs.
114: You left off the best bit! "When slow-motion drunks take wallflower dancers."
We are amused. We met through online dating and now we are reading this thread together, in circumstances where Our imperial Dignity has been laid to one side, with Our orders, insignia, clothes, etc.
If online dating leads to commenting here, clearly there is something wrong with it.
Best wishes, Dick. And, FWIW, this piece of advice fresh from Monday's NPR: talking over the breakup is, apparently, much the better tack. Stressful and even painful, but better for your self-esteem, says the recent research.
Just remember: if you're not dating someone else by April, it's probably because there's something wrong with you. Your watchword should be Urgency.
talking over the breakup is, apparently, much the better tack.
With the ex? Or with us here on Unfogged?
143: They specifically instructed people to talk over their break-up on Unfogged. That's why we suddenly have so many commenters getting divorced.
I'm so glad I missed that segment.
Divorce will help us have more dating threads.
145: Why? I thought you have liked the part where they discussed heebie always being right.
So I just checked out Tinder. What an interesting mix of profile photo strategies.
148: Jeesh! I'm pretty sure JRoth was kidding.
147: Oh, I'm too humble to revel in my greatness being broadcast nationally.
I'm just looking Parsi. Engaging my newfound freedom and all that.
I'm behind on the archives. Whose in-laws bought a car?
(I'm on the bus, so this comment does not count as procrastination.)
I guess I should update that I'm sticking to my resolution of not leaving unless thinags get much worse but doing predictably poorly at not being annoyed and grumpy too much of the time. Lee still thinks I'm the only real problem, I guess.
154: Thorn, you deserve better. Make whatever choice you want but remember that you deserve to be happy.
138: Not directly related, but one of my goals is to avoid dying in a way that seems likely to make Fark.
Ok, so no masturbating on the freeway for Mobes.
Everyone post income, SAT score, and number of times they've come on the freeway (rest areas don't count). Bonus points for not being in a vehicle.
That sucks Chopper. Sympathies. IME, the day after the decision to get divorced sucks unbelievably hard. The day after getting the divorce judgment is fantastic.
Aw hell, Chopper, that's rough. I hope it goes as easily as can be for you.
Thanks to everyone who weighed in on Brand and feminism! I'll let y'all know how it goes.
Sympathies and/or congratulations as desired.
And condolences to Chopper. Right this second I am sitting here at a conference listening to one of my favorite professors from your alma mater.
Bringing all of the sub-threads together, Chopper's alma mater, where I taught a few courses as an adjunct, is in the metro area in which I met my husband. On Match.com.
I don't actually think anyone deserves happiness, though I also don't think suffering is noble. I'm happy enough through a general day, which is why I think Lee is wrong that I'm depressed, but just get mad when for instance she skips my birthday dinner date to go off on her own even if it was my frustrated suggestion that that's what she should do if she's so sick of me. I think we're getting closer to being quasi-separated co-parents, though we still love each other. I should probably try to figure out if my parents would be at all supportive of me if I left her. They've said things that make me think no, but I could be wrong. Really, if I were single the only difference to my day would be the dog wouldn't be barking because she'd be with Lee and then I wouldn't be able to tell Mara that she can wait to get her hair washed until Lee gets home and can watch Selah. Dishes, laundry, dinner , ridiculous things the girls say and do, that's all just normal life no matter what and my happiness is probably constant.
One thing that does seem to have changed is that the neighborhood at large reached some sort of tipping point and people no longer think it's charming and fun to see Lee out but have started to think it's alarming that she leaves me here so much and that she's missing out on time with the girls. That's a little reassuring to me but will probably just make her feel persecuted if people do start saying things to her.
I had a "Wow, gender roles are powerful" moment reading McMegan's piece. She's in a relationship with her current guy, and she tells him that she wants to be married to him, and if he doesn't want to marry her the relationship is over -- she doesn't need an immediate answer, but sometime soon. And sometime soon, he 'spontaneously' proposes.
Call me crazy, but isn't what she said a proposal of marriage? What, when a woman tells a man she wants to marry him, that's something completely different from a 'proposal'? (I don't think McMegan is being particularly weird here, I think it's fairly standard, ordinary weirdness. But it is weird.)
And all my sympathy to both Millhouse and Thorn. I think someone just said this a couple of days ago here, but as lousy as breakups/divorces are, by the time you've gotten to the point where that's what's going to happen, it's almost certainly going to ultimately make you happier.
She proposed marriage, but not in ways she can understand.
I would probably be happier if we could at least redefine the relationship to clarify that it's not like normal relationships, but I don't really believe breakup is imminent. Lee is sure she'd be no happier single or in a different relationship. I don't know how much happier I'd be either. But it really seems deeply unfair to the girls when we're at minimum their third home and family in the last few years. We're almost always able to keep bickering and sarcasm away from them, though sometimes that means we don't talk. I think we should be able to string this out for quite always while before we get to the point where things are sufficiently better or worse that a decision is clear.
As someone who's very blissfully dating a recent divorcee, I have to say: divorces are awesome! Er, eventually anyway.
170: Is the term divorcee still in common use? It seems kind of quaint and mid-twentieth century somehow. Maybe that's just me.
Let me add my condolences/congratulations/occasion appropriate sentiments to Nixon/Chopper. I think 167 is right.
If a divorced woman is a divorcee, what is a divorced man? A divorcer?
If a divorced woman is a divorcee, a divorced man is a divorce. But there should be és in those words.
174: I know how French works (at least, this part of French). I was just going for the lame joke, like... employee/employer? Never mind.
166 huzzah. Is it as unusual for women to propose as for them to keep their names? Maybe even more unusual?
Thorn, I'm sorry any fucking person in your life communicates to you that you're the only real problem, because fuck that a bunch of times. I assume more shrieking on this theme would not be helpful. (I am also about to lose internet access for a time and will be forced to shut up.)
I'm happy enough through a general day, which is why I think Lee is wrong that I'm depressed
Not to say anything about your relationship with Lee (or to try to convince you that you're really depressed) but goddamn, that's not how it works for me. When I've been my most depressed, "happy enough" is exactly how I'd describe my mood. It's never that I think things are utterly bleak, it's just that there's a constant fog that never lifts.
It's never that I think things are utterly bleak, it's just that there's a constant fog that never lifts.
Could just move further inland.
unfoggedivorçon
The next meetup!
Count me among the satisfied customers of a divorce attorney. It was a spectacularly miserable experience for me, but absolutely necessary, and led to much better things. (And the ex would offer a similar testimonial, I'm quite sure.)
Can't find it in the hoohole, but I'm pretty sure I've mentioned the great benefit of getting divorced in Los Angeles County: you can google to find out what celebrity divorces your judge presided over. I have Sheen-Richards and Anderson-Lee.
Wow, congrats/condolences on all the divorces. I hope that everyone is able to move on and upwards afterwards. When my parents' generation (baby boomers) hit 25-30 years of marriage, there was a rash of divorces, and now about 10 years later everyone is re-partnered and seems to be doing much better, even if there were a few rocky years in there.* It seems like the unfogged commentariat has a high proportion of divorces/ees. I wonder how we compare to the general population?
Also, I hear live blogging tinder exploits really speeds up the healing process.
*I had a rocky two months before feeling immensely better than I'd felt at any point during my marriage, but my marriage only lasted a year so it's not comparable to a 17+ year marriage.
179: How I feel now is not how I've felt in any of my past depressions, anyway. I'm probably to see someone about anxiety and that may lead to a depression diagnosis or something too. I just don't want to go back to individual therapy because talking about our relationship too much makes me miserable and hopeless, which I realize is not a great sign. And really, I'm plenty human and get snappish and passive-aggressive and whatnot, far from perfect.
unfoggedivorçon
I love you people.
Knecht: I love my aeropress and my divorce.
I hear live blogging tinder exploits really speeds up the healing proces
Excellent idea! hook ups too
Around here, it's reasonably common for some of the Mormon crowd* to get engaged basically because they want to have sex, and so there's a lot of ill-conceived (har) first marriages.
I get them crying in my office sometimes. When I was pregnant, one woman was having a particularly hard time, because she'd bought into the idea that all she needed was a man, and he'd work, and she'd have babies, and then they'd be happy and it hadn't worked out, and she'd been taught any other life was less happy; and I was a very gravid counterexample cheerfully teaching her class.
*of course, not uniquely a Mormon thing. Lots of starter marriages among my friends breaking up now.
33 to 166
189: BYU was unreal in that regard. I did it the old fashioned way and got engaged after I knocked her up. 18 years this May! Holy shit that could have gone badly.
16: You want http://selfcontrolapp.com, I think.
I will say that (having done both!) divorce with kids is 10 billion times more difficult and annoying than divorce without. The latter is just a logistically difficult breakup. The former requires a new, ongoing, never-ending relationship with the ex spouse, who is now basically your permanent business partner in the business of child rearing, and like all business partners that relationship can range from professional and OK to untrusting and litigious.
I will say that (having done both!)
No pressure, try not to think about how you're on your last strike.
And now he has a kid with this one, too.
The triumph of hope over hope over experience.
Huh wow in 11th grade I drove to DC to see my sister with a friend of hers and we listened to that album by Mr. Loaf about seventeen times because that's what my sister's friend had in the car and I just now googled the lyrics to Paradise by the &c and they are even more inane than I remembered. Heterosexuality sounds like a real shitshow.
Is the term divorcee still in common use? It seems kind of quaint and mid-twentieth century somehow. Maybe that's just me.
You and Norma Shearer.
To be serious, divorce without kids, which I have never done, seems exactly as described by TRO. Divorce with kids is a fundamentally awful life-changing experience. At least for me, the sense that I have betrayed and let down someone small who should have been able to trust me and to whom I had implicitly promised always to be reliable is very hard to bear. And then of course one of them turns out Catholic and the other two Protestant.
Sometimes I think the Pope had a point though of course it's easier to take a hard line when you can just execute the really unsatisfactory wives for treason. In any case, I suppose I believe in the indissolubility of families, rather than of relationships between grownups.
186: Thorn, in individual therapy you can talk about so much more than your relationship with Lee.
Some people I know from HS were coached by Mr. Loaf, for some reason he became a girls' softball coach near where I grew up. Apparently if you did well he would actually sing on the bus ride home.
And that's how Celine Dion got her start.
Bus driver: "I WANNA KNOW RIGHT NOW before we go any further if anyone needs a bathroom break!"
"Dad, Meatloaf is our coach."
"I'll be attending every practice and game."
Oh I just woke up and got to the part of the thread where it is explained that online dating is the worst thing ever and I wish to disagree for reasons that will be obvious. The reasons in question don't even go to local herb festivals so I'm glad I didn't rely on that.
I assumed the Norma Shearer reference was going to be something along the lines of "where does it get you? On the train to Reno!" I have been out-Shearered. The Divorcee is a really enjoyable film, in any case. And I think the commentary track may have taught me the word strabismus, alas too late for its Times puzzle appearance.
Instead of online dating and the potential divorce with kids, why not just skip the queue and go straight to co-parenting with some weirdo?
For tax reasons, that's not the same.
Without divorce, reunions and triathlons would be less fun. what is the point of going through that pain!?
||
NMM to my student loans.
|>
Can you see paradise by the cash hoard fight?
212: HOORAY! Whenever I think about what I would do if I won the lottery, the very first thing (other than maybe call a lawyer--if it was a very big number) I would do is pay off my student loans.
212: you know what that means! It's MFA time!
You mean he can buy more opera tickets so it's Mother Fucking Aria time.
That's something opera people say, as far as I know.
Are you ready for some opera?!
I may not know opera much, but I'm esteemed enough to have received a formal invitation to join the editorial board of a journal that produces no hits on google that aren't its own website.
I am getting my divorce as well. 18 years/ 4 kids. Good lord. I am pretty much just looking forward to it now.
Lordy, we have a veritable divorsplosion. Best of luck, Mr President.
Yeah, maybe Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon can share an apartment together.
[ Of all the horrible things that Nietzsche has been accused of -- well, I guess the Holocaust is still the worst -- but this has to be the most preposterous.
If Nietzsche were to create a sitcom, it might well look like the show that started out as a Charlie Sheen vehicle and that was transformed into an Ashton Kutcher vehicle with barely a second thought
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/failure-to-raunch-two-and-a-half-men-is-being-put-out-of-its-misery/385656/ ]
So you're saying Nietzsche should get praise for creating 2.5 Men.
226: I expect that will be the consensus of 25th century historians.
My opera tickets are free lately so I'll have to find something else to throw my extra money at. Professional house cleaning is seeming likely. The futile exercise of trying again to get my LCSW is also a possibility but I just feel like Charlie Brown with the football with that whole thing so probably I'd rather have someone mop the floors.
9th grade, 8th grade, 6th grade, 3rd grade.
Was aiming to push it off until they were out of the house, but that was not to be.
229: Well, don't let Lucy trick you into trying to kick the football when the floors are still wet.
6th, 8th and 9th graders are remarkably resilient. I'm sure the 3rd grader will be fine but might need some extra attention.
The futile exercise of trying again to get my LCSW is also a possibility
Try. I will be rooting for you. I want to sue the ABA, myself.
233: First Teo, now you. What is with this hatred of birds.
I've been saying there really needs to be some kind of acronym registry. I was speaking at my session at the conference last week and the guy right before me used the exact same acronym I was about to propose. Awkward informatics turtle!
230, 232: Nia is the age of a third grader and has gone through a lot and continually shows me how amazingly resilient and insightful kids that age can be too.
Smearcase, I'm sure I've said here or elsewhere that we traded paying for couples therapy twice a month for having a cleaner come twice a month since the cost was the same and in theory at least should solve more of our problems. I've gotten pretty good at doing extra cleaning and tidying in preparation for their visits, which helps.
233: I was actually confirmed as eligible to get my LCSW in Massachusetts. I just had to take the test. I looked into this when there was some possibility we might move to Boston. Then it turned out we were moving to the other state that is as fucked up about it as NY. I can't even really think about the whole racket because my thoughts dissolve into incoherent rage after about five seconds.
236: I might have enough money for therapy AND cleaning. Or, you know, I could save for retirement but whatevs.
237: CA is pretty messed up about licenses. MA is a lot easier. We have something called an LICSW which I'm not sure that other people do. You get it after 2 years of supervised work as an LC.
A comittee to create an acronym registry has been proposed, and the procedure by which members may be proposed is due to be released in 2018.
You could go back to school for a MSWPL.
That degree is only offered by some online "university".
I'm very jealous of all the divorcing people. Probably just a grass is always greener thing.
Oh, hey, to all those snorting at my declaration in 106 that online dating is dreadful, let me clarify: I really had in mind the circumstances of someone who's just coming out of a 17-year-long marriage. 102 had suggested (jokingly, probably) that such a person should enter into online dating, like, right away. That's what I was protesting.
Everything I've heard from people who've done it says that you have to develop a relatively thick skin, since rejection can occur fairly frequently. A date or three, maybe you sleep together, and poof! the other person disappears off the face of the planet. Someone just coming out of a divorce might not have the easiest time developing such a thick skin. It seems to me that reminding yourself of your true areas of interest is a better course for reintroducing yourself to socializing.
That's what I had in mind.
I keep thinking that if it was going to happen then it would have happened a long time ago. Then we have this thread where two people who've been married the same amount of time as me are announcing their splits. 245 is going to turn out to be my wife.
That's not to say that some people might *want* to have a date or three, some sex, and move on. A divorce after 17 years could leave you a little raw, though.
Dating again sounds kind of awful but I imagine the online thing would at least to help avoid buying drinks for a chick only to find out later that she's really into Jesus and owns three dogs.
I don't know that I've got Ripper levels of fortitude to keep trying. Maybe I'd just roll the dice with a Russian bride site.
247:Isn't that a weird thought. Sometime when I wasn't paying attention, Buck and I moved into the 'long married' category, but I suppose long-married couples do break up. I do wonder if long-married couples who break up mostly started wanting to break up fairly soon, and just suffered for a long time, or if there are any significant number of genuinely contented long-term marriages that eventually break up anyway.
250: I do wonder if long-married couples who break up mostly started wanting to break up fairly soon, and just suffered for a long time, or if there are any significant number of genuinely contented long-term marriages that eventually break up anyway.
It seems a bit heartless to discuss this in cold observational terms, but that's what we sometimes do here, I suppose. Um, my parents split up after 22 years. They'd been discontented from an early stage, but were dedicated to the notion that loyalty was essential, plus the kids, so they split when we were adults.
I've certainly heard of any number of long-married couples who were otherwise contented splitting up once the kids leave home: life patterns change once kids are no longer in the home.
For those that remember my story, I am still married. Like Thorn, ours is a purely business relationship but, unlike hers, it is a pretty amicable one: we're just coworkers, but we're coworkers who can easily tolerate each other. Many of you are probably wondering what exactly is missing from the relationship if we generally like each other and it's any sort of intimacy or connection. We have none. None. But I find the situation totally manageable if not ideal. I am at peace about my decision to stay at least for the time being.
I can completely understand how couples can be together for years or decades and then split up. One or both of them probably made a calculated decision to stay despite the relationship's flaws and they were content to wait for years until the time to right time to split up became apparent (i.e., when the kids were grown). I can also see how one partner could be totally blindsided the eventually split if the calculation has been one-sided. That is my situation. He seems, and has said, that he is very happy so I think he would be shocked to know how I really feel.
251: Also imagining acquiring new in-laws.
Best wishes to everyone going through divorces. I hope the inevitable hard parts are far outweighed by more peace and joy afterward.
While we're on the topic...a friend is getting divorced and wants a recommendation for a lawyer (in PA). He married money and I don't know if there's a prenup. It's a longtime marriage with kids. Any ideas, e-mail me at the link.
Hillary, I appreciate the update and appreciate your presidential candor in general. Your comments have been extremely helpful and I hope one way or another there's been some better sex for you.
Sometimes I worry people here think my life is unremitting misery when in fact we watched some dreadful reality TV (a matchmaker for Perez Hilton?? Really????) and then a decent netflix movie, no conversation except about what I'd cooked and who will drop the children at daycare tomorrow since it's a snow day. Not thrilling but there no pain either and then I have plans for the weekend to be out with the kids Saturday and part of Sunday as usual but also an unusual break for myself because I'm an extra in something my friend Is shooting. So there will even be a little quiet time to read. This is really not an awful life. But if you want to use that cheesy awful metaphor about how everyone has a (metaphorical) bucket and wants it full of love so that in the hard times there's a full tank to draw on, I've been empty but still emptying myself for years and years. And so even when Lee does something nice like thanking me for making the queso dip she asked for, I'm so far in the hole that it doesn't tide me over or make me a nicer person.a
everyone has a (metaphorical) bucket
Thanks for specifying that the bucket is metaphorical. Otherwise I wouldn't have been sad because I don't even own a bucket.
Uh, I mean that I would have been sad.
Actually I have no idea what I would have felt about my bucketlessness. But it doesn't matter because metaphors.
You're like that walrus meme, right, teo? Alaskan chicks presumably dig that, though possibly only metaphorically.
Anyway, my only goal in marking the metaphor was letting people know i wasn't claiming analogy. but let's not fool ourselves.
marking the metaphor
aka "peeing in the bucket"
264: Standard practice in many parts of rural Alaska, FWIW. I'm sure I've seen the walrus meme, but it's not coming to mind.
I only vaguely remembered, which I figure is all it takes to trash talk, but there is such a thing , even if I'd imagined something a bit different.
Oh, do I fail at html when I should have been in bed hours ago? What a surprise! This ?
212: I only have 10 more months of self-abuse to go on mine. Very exciting!
Huh, I had actually not seen that before. I now understand the origin of "I has a bucket" like never before.
Knecht, I thought the point of online dating was to have all the awkward conversation before the first date -- a kind of extended version of gswift's three dogs and Jesus. Thinking on, that won't work always because of the way that ending a long bad marriage strips the dressing off some festering loneliness and need. I suppose you overhear, or simply hear, two people bumping and scraping against each other without their accustomed protective numbness.
I'm currently taking an online sexual harassment training. Laydeez.
Aren't you good enough at online sexual harassment already?
272: Nice that work helps you up your sexual harrassment game.
I'm supposed to imagine that I'm supervising a group that includes a guy named "Don." I just can't manage that.
Don Juan? Don Johnson? Maybe it's over represented among womanizers?
Anyway, Don is an asshole but not enough of an asshole to create a hostile environment at one go. It takes an accumulation of Donness to make for the potential of hostile environment case.
If you refuse to hire a second Don, is it discriminatory? Is there a Don quota? Or a protected class of Don?
The River Don flows quietly. The Don in my department tells dirty jokes at staff meetings.
Anyway, the main thing I took from the training is that I can tell dirty jokes at one staff meeting. That was one more that I had thought previously.
281 -- They're not teaching you folk employment law? Does HR know?
281: That's more or less what I got out of my sexual harassment training. It's okay to do if it doesn't make anyone uncomfortable, and if it does make people uncomfortable, it might be okay to do it once. That's a weaker standard than I was applying.
285, this sort of thing lets us know how different people's mentalities are. Like how there's some men who go around hitting on 10 women a day, and other men who hear women complaining about this and decide to never hit on any women ever.
I remember that the trainer said it would be inappropriate to tell a co-worker that she had luscious lips. It had never occured to me say that before, but since then I regularly think of it when talking to female co-workers and have to stop myself from giggling like a crazy person.
It was a bit reassuring to see that "I didn't intend to be harass" was not at all a defense against being charged with harassment.
and have to stop myself from giggling like a crazy person
Can we start a movement to reclaim giggling for no apparent reason? Why should so-called crazy people have all the fun? If more and more people would spontaneously giggle without explanation, maybe it wouldn't seem so crazy anymore.
286: It is useful for that. There are norms here that are formed without much information; many of us don't have a good sense if we're in the 1st, 50th, or 99th percentile. I'm worried I'm always subtly reinforcing patriarchal norms (I mean, I certainly am), but I don't think I have to worry about being the hitting-on-women-constantly guy. But that guy exists, and this is (hopefully) helpful to him.
287: Goddammit, you meme vector.
Our training went over a scenario that was, essentially: if you slap a coworker's butt and she likes it, that's okay, unless another coworker sees it and is uncomfortable. So...make sure everybody's cool with your butt-slapping first. (And if your butt is slapped and you didn't like it, handle it privately through management...we don't want an incident.)
OK, so long as they don't make you read or listen to the jury instruction on hostile environment. That'd kill folk law altogether.
I had just assumed I was a reasonable person. Apparently, I'm more uptight that a reasonable person in some senses and less uptight in others.
We are all just a composition of eigenreasonablepeople.
Maybe, but it wouldn't have even occurred to me that I could slap somebody's butt at work.
And now I am unmovable in my certainty that I can do it at least once.
Yeah, see, it might not be a Title VII violation, but it's still battery. Which doesn't have fee shifting, so you don't have to worry about anyone bringing it.
I was recently on the receiving end of some nuisance flirting at work for the first time ever. I've read a whole lot of Internet Feminism (TM) on the subject of zero tolerance and reporting people for the collective good. None of it prepared me for my overwhelming need to show this guy that I could handle it myself, and he wasn't going to get me to call HR like a pussy. (It was pretty easy to deescalate in practice. But that "bring it on!" adrenaline rush: not what I was expecting.)
That's great, except for the being harassed part.
Butt battery.
If I observe that a coworker's butt battery is dead and kindly offer to jump start it, that's not harassment; it's just common courtesy.
A song for the divorcing members of the commentariat.
Your butt battery seems to be dead, can I jump it?
Damn it I should really read to the end of the comments before making what I think is a clever joke.
