I do think there's an argument to be made that there is exactly one skill in all of this: getting yourself to [do/not do] stuff you [don't/do] want to do. Nobody gets lucky and is perfectly able to do whatever they need/want.
Most of the advice here is, like, "play to your strengths", but I think almost everybody will also need to compensate for at least one weakness.
I love this. Another thing: people who seem to have "strong will" or "self control" ie don't "give in to temptations" actually do nothing of the sort. They're just not all that tempted most of the time. They literally USE their self control much much less. There's even research evidence for this, I forgot references but it's out there somewhere.
As an aside, the narrative over non monogamous constantly struggling with brain melting soul destroying jealousy often seemed mistyfying to me. Why would you adopt a lifestyle that's hurting you so? Perhaps because they struggle more with their inability to be monogamous?
It's said that the way to diet is by buying healthy food at the grocery store, not by choosing healthy food when you're hungry and standing in the kitchen.
Likewise, I find that if I spend a lot of time watching TV and playing videogames, then the desire and the temptation to do that builds up. But making other decisions with my time also builds up.
So, at least to some extent, we invite our temptations in.
Yes, environment makes a massive difference and yes we "invite" temptations in (tho this is also arguable because after a day vegging out on the sofa talking to LLMs and Virtual Humans I feel so sticky I usually do something wholesome or productive the next day ;) and we can achieve a lot by shaking the immediate environment. Getting rid of cigarettes/ bread/ booze, or putting a pause block on apps is a good idea. I've just cancelled my CHATGPT subscription which did wonders to my huge timesuck simply because I can't spend so much time there.
But the general point I'm making (and I think Ozy is in the OP) is more meta: some people don't need to do those things anywhere near as much. They can keep bread in the house without eating 4 pieces of buttered toast with marmite in a moment of temptation because it's either natural for them to say AND FEEL "this is too much" or they *don't even get tempted*.
They could want to eat their cake and have it too. I want multiple partners and can’t handle my partner straying, and I’m not dishonorable enough to cheat. But most people who are sexually exclusive to you expect exclusivity in return. I mean I’m not an Ottoman sultan. So I’m monogamous. That’s how I resolve it. But someone else could easily decide that wants to be polyamorous but miserable.
Jealousy is not toxic when you consider what happens when you have sex. Historically you had babies. Men are jealous because they want the babies to be theirs. Women are jealous because generally speaking, if the man has children with multiple women, he invests resources in the children based on which mother he has the best relationship with. Chimp fathers do this. So do human fathers, if you look at how often a father will often invest more in his wife’s children (bio or step) than children from ex wives and girlfriends that he doesn’t have full custody of, whose mothers’ displeasure affects his life less. Whoever has the man’s favor at the moment has influence over him, and he will invest more in her children.
Right. So ideology/value stance ("monogamy good") struggles with personal preference/ temperament/individual differences.
I kinda get that in principle (I refuse to accept certain limitations of my brain in the name of certain values too) but it sure looks like an extremely gay person actively converting to traditional Christianity.
I mean, there are tons of classic conversion stories where somebody goes from some self-destructive habit absorbing their life to a hard-fought better status, from St Augustine to your local AA meeting. People do in fact sometimes work really hard at stuff!
Of course, I'm not saying by any means that change against grain is impossible and that hard work doesn't create results --- in fact it clearly DOES, in exactly the cases you mention and many others. That's unquestionable.
I think what the OP is saying (and what I'm seconding) is something about the view from the other side: not that hard effort is pointless at all. I CAN make myself excercise regularly by a force of will, Ozy CAN (I think?) get employed if very necessary. People CAN do non monogamy even when very jealous and they can do monogamy even when they really don't want to. Etc etc. The interesting point isn't that painfully laborious conversion is impossible. But that for many people who were "like this" from the start it was never painfully laborious.
See also: Ozy's example about writing. It'd be like asking me how the hell do I manage to speak to strangers at a gathering or take my clothes off for a life drawing class despite being old, saggy and fat. The answer is, I don't know? I just do. It was never hard to start with.
[On the other hand how people manage to express themselves in few concise sentences??? MUST BE REALLY REALLY HARD WORK.]
The example that struck me the most intensely in my own life is anger issues, which I noticed acutely during high school.
Sometimes, a friend would get some explosive bout of anger. They would shout in frustration, punch the wall, stomp around in circles for a bit. And for the longest time, I figured it was a performance. A way of communicating something, or sometimes a way of explicitly threatening someone else. Or maybe a sort of social ritual, learned from family or something. It seemed to work pretty badly though, so I didn't really get why people would do that.
But as someone whose body just naturally doesn't have that sort of anger issues, deep inside I didn't believe it was _real_, y'know?
So I was pretty confused... until the day where I discovered that a close friend of mine had, during a video gaming session at home alone, PHYSICALLY PUNCHED A HOLE in his computer case. Now all of my "social" reasons to perform anger flew straight out the window. He was alone in his room, with nobody watching him. I knew for a fact he would never want to damage his expensive computer like that, there was zero rational reason to do it. And my friend said as much to me: he was just genuinely angry during that one second, and that's why he punched his computer, immediately regretting it.
THAT was the day where I understood 1) that some people actually, really get super intense physiological anger and it's terrifyingly real, and 2) that people really are just built different. My egalitarianism didn't want to consider that whatever was a total non-issue for me could be an existential danger for another (why not just not get angry? it's trivial?), but holy shit, after getting shocked by that experience, I started considering things differently. People sure are different.
You aren’t the first person I’ve met that have had a hard time understanding that there are sometimes deep differences in people’s lives outside of their control. Recently I found out that not everyone sees objects in motion quite clearly. They rely on light and color and grey cars are almost invisible even during the day out on the road. Wild to me!
Yes, as someone with rage issues its challenging given that there is just very little that can be done to control it. I structure my routine around not having high stress situations come up (which rules out certain video games) and make sure to channel the energy into less problematic outlets than lashing out at others. But its easy for people to see my coping strategies and get the wrong idea.
I learned this from tutoring. The average person who paid to get tutored spent more time studying than me. They didn’t appreciate my math advice that sounded like, “first read the word problem and write down the equation that instantly appears in your head. Then remember the 5 step algorithm you need to do to solve the problem. Then execute the 5 steps.”
I really had to change my teaching style to figure out how to explain math to people 25 IQ points lower than me.
I think most people realize this intuitively but they don't want it to be true. It's why they hate the GLP-1 agonists and keep insisting there must be some horrible unknown side effect, it makes it obvious by altering biochemistry to turn a hard thing easy.
Same dynamic with stimulants, tempered somewhat by the fact that more people are willing to medicalize and out-category ADHD symptoms (such that "you have a disease and you need a medicine for it" is a viable argument) than they are obesity.
Yeah this is another hill I'll die on, ADHD is not an disease with a distinct etiology, it's just a name for the bottom end of the executive function bell curve and American society's acceptance/suppression of this knowledge and wide availability of amphetamine as a result is a major factor of our economic miracle. It certainly did for me. The rest of the world restricts the stuff way harder and they're all poor and unproductive. The connection is clear... maybe we should just do what we can to improve our lives even if it makes us feel icky because we're forced to confront our nature as imperfect biological beings.
Pet peeve of mine: people who explain to other people that their problems aren't real because the explainer doesn't have them.
You know. Like someone who'll click on a page where others are sharing weight-loss tips so they can write "It is very simple. You just need to consume fewer calories than you burn."
This seems like the same issue in reverse, only caused by low confidence instead of assholery.
Mine has been about dating. Other people I’m surrounded by tend to have no problem getting dates or - when not self-defeating - relationships. I can’t even get a date - so the internet and people in general assume you must be a terrible human being.
Nope, just ugly. Born this way. I’m in shape, I groom, have had multiple cosmetic surgeries, microneedling, Botox, etc etc. and I’m still ugly. People don’t get that some folks just really do be playing on a level that they can’t imagine. Imagine every conversation with someone you wish to even get to know romantically is immediately shutdown or standoffish. Most people can’t imagine *every* interaction being like that.
I think part of people's lack of empathy here is that they can imagine attractiveness matters, but they imagine it to be a smooth gradient rather than there being a cutoff at which getting any interest whatsoever, even from other equally attractive people, becomes extremely difficult.
I’ll probably use that in the future. Because yes, it’s a cut off. There’s a minimum floor for attractiveness for basically everyone out there. And I do think there are a lot of people who just won’t ever meet that floor.
I don’t feel well represented online in this way but I think that’s because people like myself get punished brutally for expressing any opinions like this whatsoever.
Yes, that is sad. I wish people didn't introduce an ethical dimension into dating. I'm pretty sure that dimension isn't there, or not as heavy a factor as most people think. You can be a hot mess, as in, real mental health issues, either man or woman, and get plenty of dates and sex, but be physically unattractive enough, or have enough autism going on, and it's all going to be very dry.
I'm guessing you're a man? Either way, I would be interested in chatting more about this, you can DM me on here. My background is that I'm a 37 year old virgin, at least I managed to go on some dates this past year, even a second date, which was a first. I think my main blocker is lack of social awareness (I think it's getting better), possibly also not finding a great way to organically meet women IRL.
Eh, I think most people struggle with both jealousy and the urge to have sex outside their relationship sometimes. Or I guess it depends what one means by "struggle".
I think it’s a matter of degree. I am monogamously married and wouldn’t have it any other way. I do sometimes feel messy ambiguous feelings for people other than my spouse, or occasionally wish I had the freedom to act on sexy opportunities. But it's rare, it’s not a problem, and it doesn’t feel like a cage. It’s not constant struggle against temptation; it’s occasional mild impulse that I can pretty easily ignore.
Yep I read this and thought wait I thought we all had both problems. She does say in her footnote that such people are screwed. I think that's most of us.
You may be right—I have no idea what most people are like—but I, like Ozy, assumed this was an uncommon problem and find the idea that most people would be stuck in such an unpleasant trap a bit shocking. If you are right, I suppose I got really lucky and didn’t realize it…
Honestly, it's not that other people aren't attractive to me, but I'm just not that tempted. I made the marriage vow, that switch of possibility got turned off in my head.
I'm not particularly jealous either, though, and never have been (I had to be coached a bit to perform some mild jealousy for relationship success). I've got 99 issues but fidelity and jealousy aren't amongst them.
I'm also not naturally flirtatious (all of my partners, bless their hearts, had to be very forward) so that probably helps.
At risk of being too self-pitying, having ADHD sometimes feels like not being good at applying yourself to *anything*. You struggle with work, with hobbies, with relationships, with finances, with your mood… it’s not that you don’t have any natural skills of course, but being consistent at anything can feel like crawling uphill in a way that most people may only experience in one or two areas of their lives.
It’s not inevitable that easy, skilful competence is evenly distributed between people, so that for every guy that has no problem with exercising and writing there’s a girl who can easily work and do chores. Sometimes people are just generally super competent, and sometimes the opposite. You should still think about your comparative advantages of course, but it’s worth recognising I think.
For me the repeated surprise about other people is how heavily infidelity is weighted, compared with other more abstract (values & morals drift somewhere you're uncomfortable with) or pedestrian (neglecting what you want/need and being a dick when you trying to negotiate) relationship difficulties. (Exposure therapy: become poly, await jealousy's arrival like a fucking anvil, go "oh right, I get it now", become born-again monogamist)
in theory the extrarelational sex+jealousy problem can be solved by selecting partners who are cool with you hooking up/dating/falling in love with other people but don't do so themselves. this squeezes your dating pool substantially, and of course there's also the thing where many people who ask for arrangements like this are assholes in a way that can affect your chances of making it work, and if you have an accidental falling in love problem things can get Very Dicey, but possibly it could work out
There’s a lot of education and career advice that says “find the thing you’re good at and do it”. A friend of mine pointed out that a much more actionable version of this is “find the thing you’re bad at, but it seems like everyone else is abjectly failing at and do it”, because that’s often how it feels to people about the thing they’re good at (compared to everyone else).
I do think there's an argument to be made that there is exactly one skill in all of this: getting yourself to [do/not do] stuff you [don't/do] want to do. Nobody gets lucky and is perfectly able to do whatever they need/want.
Most of the advice here is, like, "play to your strengths", but I think almost everybody will also need to compensate for at least one weakness.
I love this. Another thing: people who seem to have "strong will" or "self control" ie don't "give in to temptations" actually do nothing of the sort. They're just not all that tempted most of the time. They literally USE their self control much much less. There's even research evidence for this, I forgot references but it's out there somewhere.
As an aside, the narrative over non monogamous constantly struggling with brain melting soul destroying jealousy often seemed mistyfying to me. Why would you adopt a lifestyle that's hurting you so? Perhaps because they struggle more with their inability to be monogamous?
In my experience this is only half true.
It's said that the way to diet is by buying healthy food at the grocery store, not by choosing healthy food when you're hungry and standing in the kitchen.
Likewise, I find that if I spend a lot of time watching TV and playing videogames, then the desire and the temptation to do that builds up. But making other decisions with my time also builds up.
So, at least to some extent, we invite our temptations in.
Yes, environment makes a massive difference and yes we "invite" temptations in (tho this is also arguable because after a day vegging out on the sofa talking to LLMs and Virtual Humans I feel so sticky I usually do something wholesome or productive the next day ;) and we can achieve a lot by shaking the immediate environment. Getting rid of cigarettes/ bread/ booze, or putting a pause block on apps is a good idea. I've just cancelled my CHATGPT subscription which did wonders to my huge timesuck simply because I can't spend so much time there.
But the general point I'm making (and I think Ozy is in the OP) is more meta: some people don't need to do those things anywhere near as much. They can keep bread in the house without eating 4 pieces of buttered toast with marmite in a moment of temptation because it's either natural for them to say AND FEEL "this is too much" or they *don't even get tempted*.
They could want to eat their cake and have it too. I want multiple partners and can’t handle my partner straying, and I’m not dishonorable enough to cheat. But most people who are sexually exclusive to you expect exclusivity in return. I mean I’m not an Ottoman sultan. So I’m monogamous. That’s how I resolve it. But someone else could easily decide that wants to be polyamorous but miserable.
Yes this seems very plausible.
Because jealousy is toxic and you should just get over it (I don't agree with this, but I think that is the starting point for many).
Jealousy is not toxic when you consider what happens when you have sex. Historically you had babies. Men are jealous because they want the babies to be theirs. Women are jealous because generally speaking, if the man has children with multiple women, he invests resources in the children based on which mother he has the best relationship with. Chimp fathers do this. So do human fathers, if you look at how often a father will often invest more in his wife’s children (bio or step) than children from ex wives and girlfriends that he doesn’t have full custody of, whose mothers’ displeasure affects his life less. Whoever has the man’s favor at the moment has influence over him, and he will invest more in her children.
Right. So ideology/value stance ("monogamy good") struggles with personal preference/ temperament/individual differences.
I kinda get that in principle (I refuse to accept certain limitations of my brain in the name of certain values too) but it sure looks like an extremely gay person actively converting to traditional Christianity.
I mean, there are tons of classic conversion stories where somebody goes from some self-destructive habit absorbing their life to a hard-fought better status, from St Augustine to your local AA meeting. People do in fact sometimes work really hard at stuff!
Of course, I'm not saying by any means that change against grain is impossible and that hard work doesn't create results --- in fact it clearly DOES, in exactly the cases you mention and many others. That's unquestionable.
I think what the OP is saying (and what I'm seconding) is something about the view from the other side: not that hard effort is pointless at all. I CAN make myself excercise regularly by a force of will, Ozy CAN (I think?) get employed if very necessary. People CAN do non monogamy even when very jealous and they can do monogamy even when they really don't want to. Etc etc. The interesting point isn't that painfully laborious conversion is impossible. But that for many people who were "like this" from the start it was never painfully laborious.
See also: Ozy's example about writing. It'd be like asking me how the hell do I manage to speak to strangers at a gathering or take my clothes off for a life drawing class despite being old, saggy and fat. The answer is, I don't know? I just do. It was never hard to start with.
[On the other hand how people manage to express themselves in few concise sentences??? MUST BE REALLY REALLY HARD WORK.]
The example that struck me the most intensely in my own life is anger issues, which I noticed acutely during high school.
Sometimes, a friend would get some explosive bout of anger. They would shout in frustration, punch the wall, stomp around in circles for a bit. And for the longest time, I figured it was a performance. A way of communicating something, or sometimes a way of explicitly threatening someone else. Or maybe a sort of social ritual, learned from family or something. It seemed to work pretty badly though, so I didn't really get why people would do that.
But as someone whose body just naturally doesn't have that sort of anger issues, deep inside I didn't believe it was _real_, y'know?
So I was pretty confused... until the day where I discovered that a close friend of mine had, during a video gaming session at home alone, PHYSICALLY PUNCHED A HOLE in his computer case. Now all of my "social" reasons to perform anger flew straight out the window. He was alone in his room, with nobody watching him. I knew for a fact he would never want to damage his expensive computer like that, there was zero rational reason to do it. And my friend said as much to me: he was just genuinely angry during that one second, and that's why he punched his computer, immediately regretting it.
THAT was the day where I understood 1) that some people actually, really get super intense physiological anger and it's terrifyingly real, and 2) that people really are just built different. My egalitarianism didn't want to consider that whatever was a total non-issue for me could be an existential danger for another (why not just not get angry? it's trivial?), but holy shit, after getting shocked by that experience, I started considering things differently. People sure are different.
You aren’t the first person I’ve met that have had a hard time understanding that there are sometimes deep differences in people’s lives outside of their control. Recently I found out that not everyone sees objects in motion quite clearly. They rely on light and color and grey cars are almost invisible even during the day out on the road. Wild to me!
Oh my god. This might be me, mildly. This explains so much. I need to test this.
Do you have a link/source for this?
Nope. Just multiple people in my apt and at work confirming that they either experienced that or know someone who does
Yes, as someone with rage issues its challenging given that there is just very little that can be done to control it. I structure my routine around not having high stress situations come up (which rules out certain video games) and make sure to channel the energy into less problematic outlets than lashing out at others. But its easy for people to see my coping strategies and get the wrong idea.
I learned this from tutoring. The average person who paid to get tutored spent more time studying than me. They didn’t appreciate my math advice that sounded like, “first read the word problem and write down the equation that instantly appears in your head. Then remember the 5 step algorithm you need to do to solve the problem. Then execute the 5 steps.”
I really had to change my teaching style to figure out how to explain math to people 25 IQ points lower than me.
I think most people realize this intuitively but they don't want it to be true. It's why they hate the GLP-1 agonists and keep insisting there must be some horrible unknown side effect, it makes it obvious by altering biochemistry to turn a hard thing easy.
Same dynamic with stimulants, tempered somewhat by the fact that more people are willing to medicalize and out-category ADHD symptoms (such that "you have a disease and you need a medicine for it" is a viable argument) than they are obesity.
Yeah this is another hill I'll die on, ADHD is not an disease with a distinct etiology, it's just a name for the bottom end of the executive function bell curve and American society's acceptance/suppression of this knowledge and wide availability of amphetamine as a result is a major factor of our economic miracle. It certainly did for me. The rest of the world restricts the stuff way harder and they're all poor and unproductive. The connection is clear... maybe we should just do what we can to improve our lives even if it makes us feel icky because we're forced to confront our nature as imperfect biological beings.
Is that true? Because I have talked to multiple people, both in person and online, who think ADHD is a conspiracy to medicalize normal behavior.
I wasn't endorsing or denying that claim about ADHD, just noting the analogous relationship between popular conceptualization and moral judgements.
Pet peeve of mine: people who explain to other people that their problems aren't real because the explainer doesn't have them.
You know. Like someone who'll click on a page where others are sharing weight-loss tips so they can write "It is very simple. You just need to consume fewer calories than you burn."
This seems like the same issue in reverse, only caused by low confidence instead of assholery.
Love it. I will henceforth refer to this as "I guess I'm just built different 😤" theory
Mine has been about dating. Other people I’m surrounded by tend to have no problem getting dates or - when not self-defeating - relationships. I can’t even get a date - so the internet and people in general assume you must be a terrible human being.
Nope, just ugly. Born this way. I’m in shape, I groom, have had multiple cosmetic surgeries, microneedling, Botox, etc etc. and I’m still ugly. People don’t get that some folks just really do be playing on a level that they can’t imagine. Imagine every conversation with someone you wish to even get to know romantically is immediately shutdown or standoffish. Most people can’t imagine *every* interaction being like that.
I think part of people's lack of empathy here is that they can imagine attractiveness matters, but they imagine it to be a smooth gradient rather than there being a cutoff at which getting any interest whatsoever, even from other equally attractive people, becomes extremely difficult.
I’ll probably use that in the future. Because yes, it’s a cut off. There’s a minimum floor for attractiveness for basically everyone out there. And I do think there are a lot of people who just won’t ever meet that floor.
I don’t feel well represented online in this way but I think that’s because people like myself get punished brutally for expressing any opinions like this whatsoever.
Yes, that is sad. I wish people didn't introduce an ethical dimension into dating. I'm pretty sure that dimension isn't there, or not as heavy a factor as most people think. You can be a hot mess, as in, real mental health issues, either man or woman, and get plenty of dates and sex, but be physically unattractive enough, or have enough autism going on, and it's all going to be very dry.
I'm guessing you're a man? Either way, I would be interested in chatting more about this, you can DM me on here. My background is that I'm a 37 year old virgin, at least I managed to go on some dates this past year, even a second date, which was a first. I think my main blocker is lack of social awareness (I think it's getting better), possibly also not finding a great way to organically meet women IRL.
Eh, I think most people struggle with both jealousy and the urge to have sex outside their relationship sometimes. Or I guess it depends what one means by "struggle".
I think it’s a matter of degree. I am monogamously married and wouldn’t have it any other way. I do sometimes feel messy ambiguous feelings for people other than my spouse, or occasionally wish I had the freedom to act on sexy opportunities. But it's rare, it’s not a problem, and it doesn’t feel like a cage. It’s not constant struggle against temptation; it’s occasional mild impulse that I can pretty easily ignore.
Yep I read this and thought wait I thought we all had both problems. She does say in her footnote that such people are screwed. I think that's most of us.
You may be right—I have no idea what most people are like—but I, like Ozy, assumed this was an uncommon problem and find the idea that most people would be stuck in such an unpleasant trap a bit shocking. If you are right, I suppose I got really lucky and didn’t realize it…
Honestly, it's not that other people aren't attractive to me, but I'm just not that tempted. I made the marriage vow, that switch of possibility got turned off in my head.
I'm not particularly jealous either, though, and never have been (I had to be coached a bit to perform some mild jealousy for relationship success). I've got 99 issues but fidelity and jealousy aren't amongst them.
I'm also not naturally flirtatious (all of my partners, bless their hearts, had to be very forward) so that probably helps.
At risk of being too self-pitying, having ADHD sometimes feels like not being good at applying yourself to *anything*. You struggle with work, with hobbies, with relationships, with finances, with your mood… it’s not that you don’t have any natural skills of course, but being consistent at anything can feel like crawling uphill in a way that most people may only experience in one or two areas of their lives.
It’s not inevitable that easy, skilful competence is evenly distributed between people, so that for every guy that has no problem with exercising and writing there’s a girl who can easily work and do chores. Sometimes people are just generally super competent, and sometimes the opposite. You should still think about your comparative advantages of course, but it’s worth recognising I think.
heh, alcoholics get that all the time. Most of the people don't have any understanding of what addiction is and how to work that problem.
I am really looking forward to extraterrestrial sex. But I am not holding my breath.
For me the repeated surprise about other people is how heavily infidelity is weighted, compared with other more abstract (values & morals drift somewhere you're uncomfortable with) or pedestrian (neglecting what you want/need and being a dick when you trying to negotiate) relationship difficulties. (Exposure therapy: become poly, await jealousy's arrival like a fucking anvil, go "oh right, I get it now", become born-again monogamist)
in theory the extrarelational sex+jealousy problem can be solved by selecting partners who are cool with you hooking up/dating/falling in love with other people but don't do so themselves. this squeezes your dating pool substantially, and of course there's also the thing where many people who ask for arrangements like this are assholes in a way that can affect your chances of making it work, and if you have an accidental falling in love problem things can get Very Dicey, but possibly it could work out
it seems this strategy only has a shot at working if you date exclusively shy nerds. https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/you-dont-want-to-date-multiple-people not gonna lie i forgot people who aren't shy nerds exist. my bad team.
There’s a lot of education and career advice that says “find the thing you’re good at and do it”. A friend of mine pointed out that a much more actionable version of this is “find the thing you’re bad at, but it seems like everyone else is abjectly failing at and do it”, because that’s often how it feels to people about the thing they’re good at (compared to everyone else).
Monogamy is a lot easier when you don't have more than one person that's willing to sleep with you. 😉