I’ll go first…after 10 years of speculating in the market (read: gambling in high risk assets) I realized I shouldn’t ever touch a brokerage account in my lifetime. A monkey would have made better choices than I did. Greed has altered the course of life many times over. I am at an age where I may recover from my actions over the decades, but it has taken its toll. I am frugal and have a good head on me, but having such impulsivity in financial instruments was not how I envisioned my adulthood. Its a bitter pill to swallow, since money is livelihood of my family, but I need to “invest” all I have into relationships, meaningful moments, and fulfilling hobbies.
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it’s welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
Icon by @Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de
- 0 users online
- 694 users / day
- 1.09K users / week
- 2.56K users / month
- 5.85K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 3.13K Posts
- 121K Comments
- Modlog
Being safe in my marriage wasn’t the same as being happy. We didn’t fight or argue, we didn’t hate each other or even dislike each other. We didn’t throw things at each other and scream at each other. After my childhood, I thought this was a happy healthy relationship. Turns out, we’re great friends but we aren’t in love. Now that I’ve discovered what happy, healthy AND in love is like, my mind is blown.
I never understood the comments from my friends that I didn’t seem happy. I thought I was…
That choosing a relationship with someone who is monkeybranching into the relationship with you directly from another relationship is you allowing someone in your life who is fundamentally dishonest and manipulative. It’s one thing to be casually dating in general, and just finding someone you click with and ending it with the people you are casually dating, but entering a relationship with someone who pursues you even though they’re in an ostensibly committed relationship is choosing to accept someone who is really not a good person, because they will just do whatever they want and eventually hurt you without a qualm too. Tolerating any of this means you are tolerating abuse, really.
Unfortunately he didn’t tell me this fact until 18 months into it, but that should have been what made me realize that he wasn’t trustworthy and leave then.
Also committing from the get go and falling in love? That’s just also not valuing yourself. You’re just looking for someone to fit into your life because you don’t love yourself enough to wait and take your time and get to know someone, and you’re afraid to be alone and have nobody to care for you. And I did all of that, because I was immature, completely without any idea of how to make it in life alone or cope alone, and I thought that was all I deserved and was the only way to be safe. And it was all wrong.
That just meaning well or having good intentions, are not enough. You need to actually show up and make time for the things, and people, you value.
Thinking of a great friend who had the courage to break up with me, and tell me straight up it’s because I was a bad friend to them.
Great post!
that ending a relationship that isn’t working is also my responsibility, instead of postponing it, thinking “this time things will be alright” or “if i break up, everyone will think wrong of me” and letting dissatisfaction grow inside me, turning myself into an *sshole.
Pardon my language, though I heard this in an interview with Jimmy Carr, and it rather highlights this for me quite well:
I’m paraphrasing, though it was something like “if you’ve seen five cunts before noon, you’re the cunt”.
My sapphic brain wasn’t tuned to understand that quote properly at first. Instead of seeing an insult, I thought, “Wow, that sounds like a busy, but amazing, morning.”
This connect deserves a ⭐, just because 😊
i’ve recently had to accept that my neurodivergence makes managers, supervisors, etc. uneasy about me despite my stellar track record and the sole reason why i was able to maintain continuous employment was because of my high demand skill set; which means that employment will become increasingly difficult as i continue to age.
At least your quirks allowed you to create a track record that was seen as stellar by others.
My own Voltron of ADD and Asperger’s allows me to do impressive things. But without any significant ability to monetize those traits or for it to be visibly profitable to someone else, it’s been a much more impactful hell on my employability.
I’ve come to hate how capitalism only “works well” for the masses who stumble and fumble through life, but who can easily conform to the required soul-sucking shape of profitability for someone else. People are more than just how much profit can be squeezed from them, and can provide back to civilization a lot more than what the current capitalistic structures parasitize out of them.
There are other economic structures that are much more humane and planet-friendly, but as a civilization we have been indoctrinated into seeing those frameworks as being “irredeemably evil” simply because prior “implementations” used them as a veneer of legitimacy over despotic authoritarian regimes.
I qualify as an aspie too and I would likely be in the same boat were it not for my software development skills.
LOL 😂 I am also a software developer. 30 years in almost every sector of IT short of 3D animation and games development.
And no, AI hallucinates too gratuitously for me, and just pisses the hell outta me. It’s worse than a gaggle of juniors in terms of all the extra work it generates.
This field is so incredibly lousy w people like us that it makes me marvel at the ones w the kind of job security that I crave because it means that their hyper focus not only aligns w the company’s profit line but they’ve also managed to have a tenure that steered clear of enough clueless neurotypicals to keep them from getting fired or on the chopping block for a layoff.
Lol people like you will be useless in a few years. Its a tool, use it like one.
That I wasted over a decade trying to figure out what was wrong with me on my own before I finally got professional help.
When people told me I was smart as a child/young adult, what they really meant was I was showcasing a skill they lacked, which the overwhelming majority of people don’t give a shit about an adult having.
Often synonymous with just having an above average vocabulary. Ohhhh if only that’s all it took to be truly smart …
That trauma is not an identity and if I want to grow as a person I have to resolve that trauma and let go of the past.
Alcohol isn’t everyone’s friend, I was an alcoholic at 18, and refused to acknowlege that fact and kept denying it in the face of all the evidence. When I finally asked for help and quit drinking at 45, I realised how much of a mess I’d made of my life. Thankfully I’ve been sober since (going on 7 years now). Addiction is not a joke people.
Same, although I’m shy about the alcoholic label. But the fact is I was sadder and less motivated, even when I managed to drink “moderately,” and I feel better in every conceivable way since I stopped. I feel like I can trust myself to handle things straight-on now.
Honestly I understand what you mean, for me it was the opposite, my family and close friends had been telling me about my abuse for decades. So when I finally admitted I owned the word Alcoholic. I’m a happily recovering one. Good on you for managing!
Good for you, brother! Stay strong. I’ve stayed drug-free/alcohol free my entire life, but only because I’ve watched loved ones go thru addiction, so I realize how tough it is. The fact that you got out of it after so long, is a major accomplishment. Good on ya, mate.
This is why I hate to see how casual Lemmy is about drugs and alcohol. Some actually brag about posing while high or drunk–and then get a shitton of upvotes for it. They don’t realize how quick it happens. and how addiction doesn’t care who you are. It can happen to anyone.
Thank you brother 🙏
I’ve basically learned that drinking sucks. A long time ago I would drink 1 beer a day, 2-3 on weekends. A few years later I cut it down to 1 a day. A few years after that I cut to 3 a week. This year I do 1 occasionally. When I have that 1 I sleep like crap, my stress score is higher, I gain weight and feel bloated, and it’s just not worth the buzz. I am considering a full quit, or cut back to 4 a year. I have quite the liquor cabinet, lots of good stuff, but basically stopped drinking it.
The biggest pill was that I am not intelligent. I was just studious and invested enough time to pass exams. People not doing what they should do is not them being stupid but me not grasping the full picture.
The second biggest pill that I am still swallowing is that I am not a good person. I try to behave in a good way, but it’s manipulative and not authentic. People don’t like goodness if it doesn’t come from the heart.
The fact that you’re even saying this implies that you’re more intelligent than so many people.
Knowing the limits of your own understanding is a big part of intelligence imo
Top shelf introspection here.
Re being a good person I wouldn’t sweat your mirror neurons over it too much. I suspect that if most people did the kind of self-analysis you’ve done, they would find similar, ulterior drives.
Anyway, so while I’ve long since shelved the fantasy of “true altruism” I have noticed that I’m more likely to behave nicely if I can set myself up for success by doing things like eating enough, working out, avoiding running late, etc. In a very real way I am a nicer person when I’m, for example, not running late.
I do this because behaving nicely is important to my self image, and leads to a more pleasant feeling life.
It’s something.
I’m curious if you mean in an abstract way, of if you’ve done nice-seeming things for people only for them to call you out on whatever ulterior motives.
Cool that you’re way at the end of the willing-to-face-facts bell curve, though.
The latter made me aware of the former.
The thing with the former case is that basically nobody does nice things out of pure abstract altruism. Being nice can bring pleasure, be part of an identity, avoid shame and maybe boost your ego. That’s why people do it, and why they can turn around and be a monster the next moment if a new way to meet those needs becomes dominant (just open a history book). So, I wouldn’t worry too much.
Edit: Where that leaves human kindness and relationships morally speaking is a bigger question. And given that we’ve just established how little people care about abstract things, a weirdly irrelevant one.
This is the part where I’d normally give practical advice, if I wasn’t staring straight into the existentialist abyss. Anyway…
You sound like a very interesting person if I may say so (: Love me some folks who were brave enough to have faced these gigantic pillbottles.
Don’t they?? I’m instantly charmed.
Im never going to get everything right. Allowing myself this allowed me to get some of the more important things right.
I’m a bitter, angry, mfer and I need to chill out sometimes
Same here. I lose my temper too easily then I get back to normal quickly and wonder why I was so upset.
Relatable tbh. I think a good part of it was depression in my younger years, but, I used to be an incredibly angry person.
It took a long time for me to accept that the truth is, you don’t get angry about shit you don’t care about. Hard to accept that half the things I’d get angry at weren’t worth it. The other half anger just wasn’t a helpful response. Been a long process of learning to have a better reaction for me.
Yeah I had a lot of issues as a kid too and being angry felt a hell of a lot better than being sad. Eventually it just got exhausting though. I can only imagine how annoying I was for other people to deal with. At least I was never one to lash out at others too much thanks to my mother showing me how it felt to be on the receiving end of that all the time.
Being angry is still basically my default emotional state but it’s at least much less intense than it used to be which I think is a decent achievement considering how much there is to be angry about these days
You are me.
I play shitty passive-aggressive mindgames. When I bleed, scorpions and stinging-flies spawn from the puddles.
For me, it was “saying no doesn’t make me a bad person.” I was raised around extremely Christian people who emphasized that you should be there for everyone, even at the expense of self.
The problem is, people eventually take advantage of you. Also, when you finally say “no” to them, they act as though you’re a terrible person.
I had this recently. My parents wanted me to make a full hour round trip drive across town to pick them up in the middle of the night so they could save $50 on a taxi. I said, “No,” as I have kids to look after now, and my mom launched into how I’m not family first anymore and after all the things she did for me as a kid, she can’t depend on me to pick her up.
I stuck to my guns though. They conned my brother with the same story, but I set a boundary.
Wow, the “family first” remark, while you’re taking care of your kids, gets me. That’s so familiar.
It’s as if people hearing “no” from you, when you would normally just cave in and do whatever was requested, is an act of aggression from people. It’s strange… they become so hateful.
Good on you for sticking with your boundaries!
Agree with the other commenter. If she ever pulls that line with you again make sure you throw it right back at her. “You’re right, family first. That’s my kids and my spouse.” Maybe she’ll start to realize the family shifts as you age.
I’ve experience this first hand, and watched it from the other side. My mother is extremely “Christian”, and that’s one of her phrases there. To her, people helping her became an expectation, not an act of kindness. She was a single mom, and so people around town would help her out. Like our local appliance guy, he’d give her a deal on a new dishwasher - and then she would push her luck and ask him to install it. And then start calling him directly when the slightest thing might be wrong with it. And then for other appliances. And then for random handiman stuff. She of course never repaid him for everything he did.
Because he’s a Christian, and so was she. So of course he was “happy” to do it for her. A few people eventually did tell her no, and she would immediately convince herself that they were bad people and that she “had to cut them out of her life” because of the negativity.
Reading this shocks me. This is my own Catholic mom exactly! The phrase she always throws around is “family first”, and I’ve had to help her so many times of which she shows appreciation. But when I turn her down, she throws guilt trips at me and sometimes goes as far to suggest I don’t care. Despite setting boundaries for many years, she’ll still test the waters.
https://youtu.be/XeRYuMEM_4k
To them, it looks like they are the only person to which you say no. This means that you say no because of them. People don’t like being questioned like that.
Add some assurance that the no is not personal.
This is similar to “be a soldier and suck it up”. I used to keep my objections to myself and go along with things. This doesn’t make your feelings go away, instead it makes resentment build up along with passive aggression. I now speak up but do so reasonably nicely.
I try to remind myself that when I do say yes, they’re never quite as happy/appreciative/etc. as I expected or hoped for.
I try to please the people but the people aren’t even pleased, ugh.
“Yo, you could be at least a little happier and grateful about it, you know I could be {doing something else that I actually enjoy}, I’m just doing this for you!”
I felt this loaf
I have an unhealthy relationship with food. Oddly, the thing that really finally made it click was playing the Sims, and I noticed my Sim would get up & grab a snack from the fridge every single time they were bored.