“It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.”
Things that piss me off, amuse or bemuse me, including cheating ex's, INTJ's, scam schools, hypocrites, karma, cakewalks and dishonor. I bought the ticket and am taking the ride.
Special dedication to Raymond Lambert and Marie Hanna for providing the inspiration.
Perhaps a slight overstatement. You have to register for some of the good stuff. No naked women allowed. Here it is:
ADVRIDER.Com
Some pretty smart independent folks. I enjoy the writing, the banter and the knowledge. I fit the demographics.
I have many interests. Most, if not all, are discussed in this site in one form or another. Motorcycles, travel, photography, mechanical things and toys, politics, health, love, sex and divorce. Knowing that there are others out there with similar interests and problems helps keep me sane.
An interesting thread on one man's divorce. I can relate all too well. Some great stuff here. Maybe a trip to Montana is in the works.
Originally Posted by Simplyred View Post
Thinking about this a bit longer: from personal experience (so that's rather limited, isn't it) I think that I can safely say, that no woman I ever had a longer relationship with, or was married to, asked me if I were happy. They only always are/were concerned about their own happiness. Never someone asked me: "Hey, are you happy, do you get out of our relationship what is important to you?".
So is this a common experience? If so, is it then really the case that these relationships are no more then a trade off in "interests" like: I fancy you if you keep me safe, if you do this, if you do that, if you provide, if you........
I have always seen this as a two-way street, not 2 one-way-streets.
This experience from ShadyRascal actually brings forth some questions about life with the other gender in our Western societies in general. Do women really just flip a switch and dump us regardless of how many years we provided and worked for the family, just because one of their unknowingly created criteria on the virtual list is not met? That would (in my eyes) be a horrible conclusion. Quite devastating.
Is it true that WE (men) just keep fighting and trying until the tank is completely empty, whereas "they" simply flip a switch and walk away? If so, then what is all the marriage counseling good for, if the mind has already been made up to "just walk away on first chance"?
This is a sad story, with probably an even more sad theory behind it.
I think you are on to something with your comment with older couple divorces. In fact, I think there is a biological aspect to it. Women have a biologically imperative to have children which for most women means being married or having a financially supportive partner to help raise the children. Once the children are grown up and gone then the whole equation changes. The biological need for a husband ceases to some extent.
I'm an older guy and in my circle of older friends I have heard the same scenario as the OP's about six times during a divorce. "This isn't working for me" (if you are lucky), or, just a plain old day in and day out attitude that this relationship is only about financial security and otherwise I don't need you. When it comes to the couple's decisions it is often stated that it is "my way or the highway".
My point is that a lot of what is going on may just be a product of the natural life cycle and neither the man or the woman should take what is happening, as unpleasant as it is, personally. Does this make sense to anyone else?
From Heyload
As men, we tend to be simple creatures, and simple things make us happy for the most part. Women tend to be a bit more complicated in that regard.
I heard the "I'm just not happy here" statement a lot from my wife, but she never made any attempt to make friends here, or talk to our neighbors, or get involved with anything outside of the home other than her job...which she loved but couldn't stand the people she worked for.
She's pretty happy now that she's back home, and has pretty much picked up her life there where she left off.
But now that it's been brought up...I don't think she's ever asked me if I was happy about this situation. I know I've told her often enough and tried to explain my take on things, but she doesn't really seem all that interested. In fact, she always comes back with reasons why it's worse for her, etc. If I say I'm sad, she's miserable. If I say I had a rough day at work, she has had a horrific day. If I tell her I'm feeling a bit under the weather, she's got full blown flu, etc.
So I'm thinking about this now. Am I happy? Not most of the time...but more frequently than right after she left. I guess it comes back after a while, once we wrap our heads around the new reality of our lives.
I'm reminded of something I came across. It was a question. "What is the meaning of life?" The answer given was "Life is empty and meaningless."
Now, I didn't agree with that a bit, but they went on to explain, using this analogy.
"Life is like a cup. What is the purpose of a cup? To hold something..water, coffee, beer, whatever. That is it's purpose. When the cup in empty, it has no use and is meaningless.
Life is like that cup. You have to fill it with something to give it meaning and purpose. We spend a life time filling that cup, then one day, everything in that cup can suddenly spill out. The cup is empty...and therefore meaningless.
Now at this point, you might say "Damn, that is depressing. My life is an empty cup and is meaningless. Everything I filled it with is gone now, so what is the point?"
But here is the neat part. It's your cup. Fill it with whatever you want. You've got a whole new start there, so fill the cup with what makes you happy. And suddenly, you'll have a life filled with meaning." I think about that analogy a lot. I'm coming to realize that life is about choices. Our happiness is our choice and ours alone. Right now that cup is pretty empty for me. But slowly I'm beginning to fill it again. Very slowly, but it's a start. So right now, there is a lot of pain, confusion and hurt in your head and heart. Maybe even some anger and resentment. I know there is for me. After a while, you'll dump that shit out and start filling that cup again, man. It won't be easy, at first. But at least YOU will make the choices of what to fill your life with again. And I think...and hope, for you as well as me and a lot of others...that we can choose to be happy and find some meaning again.
Anyway...that is just something I've been tossing around in my brain. Maybe it's just a bunch of mumbo jumbo, but it makes a kind of sense as well. Maybe it will help you get through things.
Or you can just tell me to STFU.
Either way, I hope it gets better for you, amigo. I'm not too far from gone here, and there have been nights, in the wee, wee lonely hours, that I've seriously considered death as a better alternative.
But everyday I get up and do it all again, and little by little, it's getting better. Everyday I find a little more humor, I laugh a little bit more and bit by bit the pain and hurt is falling away. In survival school, they taught us when things are really bad and hopeless, go to your happy place. That will help you survive mentally through all the pain and hurt and sadness, and you'll come home again.
Find your happy place, Shady. Just hang in there and take it day by day.
And you have a wonderful bunch of people here, and they are holding their hands out to pull you up.
I know, because a lot of them have lifted me when things were bad.
So keep the faith. Carry that load. It will get lighter. And things will get better.
__________________
"Would you care for some left-over bacon?"...said no man, ever.
When life gives you melons, you might be dyslexic.
And finally:
@Heyload and SimplyRed.....fucking bravo, men.
Quote:
Originally Posted by K. L. Rocket View Post
Big respect on how you eschew a victimization mindset by owning your decisions and outcomes.
Also, O Wise One, why would women need to monitor the happiness of men who claim they're such "simple creatures" they merely need food and sex to be happy? Are men confused or "complicated" too?
No, men are very simple creatures. Fuck us, feed us, show a tiny bit of adoration and respect and we are fine.
Couple of blowjobs a week doesn't hurt either.
Simple.
I actually said this to the prim and proper marriage counselor the ex and I started seeing when my marriage augered.
"Seriously, 1-2 blowjobs a week, and I would move mountains for her."
This is related to my last post regarding military service. It is all in the marketing. Stephen Hawkings is a pretty smart guy. Technology has made this a very dangerous world.
“The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression,” said Hawking. “It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.”
Nature or nurture? Perhaps women would do a better job running the world except most of the women leaders must act like men to secure the position.
I always thought the sounded a little trite. I read an excellent article in the New York Times about some veterans reaction to this. A shallow reflexive offering seems to me to be a fair description of this acknowledgment. Perhaps there should be a separate acknowledgment for those who's lives really were on the line and those who's lives were not. No, that is not workable. All gave some, some gave all. It is not an easy life. They agree to write a check payable to the USA up to and including their life. The department of defense is one of the biggest advertisers out there. A marketing machine. It is a great motivator for young men and women. The economy is also a great recruiter. Lack of economic opportunity, lack of education and lack of critical thinking are also factors. Full disclosure. My son is a Marine. Living the dream. My understanding is that they have two labels; people other than grunts (POGs) and grunts. Simplifies things.
HUNTER GARTH was in a gunfight for his life — and about to lose.He and seven other Marines were huddled in a mud hut, their only refuge after they walked into an ambush in Trek Nawa, a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan. Down to his last 15 bullets, one buddy already terribly wounded, Mr. Garth pulled off his helmet, smoked a cheap Afghan cigarette, and “came to terms with what was happening.”“I’m going to die here with my best friends,” he recalled thinking.I didn’t know any of this — nor the remarkable story of his survival that day — when I met him two months ago in Colorado while reporting for an article about the marijuana industry, for which Mr. Garth and his company provide security. But I did know he was a vet and so I did what seemed natural: I thanked him for his service.“No problem,” he said. It wasn’t true. Therewasa problem. I could see it from the way he looked down. And I could see it on the faces of some of the other vets who work with Mr. Garth when I thanked them too. What gives, I asked? Who doesn’t want to be thanked for their military service?Many people, it turns out. Mike Freedman, a Green Beret, calls it the “thank you for your service phenomenon.” To some recent vets — by no stretch all of them — the thanks comes across as shallow, disconnected, a reflexive offering from people who, while meaning well, have no clue what soldiers did over there or what motivated them to go, and who would never have gone themselves nor sent their own sons and daughters.To these vets, thanking soldiers for their service symbolizes the ease of sending a volunteer army to wage war at great distance — physically, spiritually, economically. It raises questions of the meaning of patriotism, shared purpose and, pointedly, what you’re supposed to say to those who put their lives on the line and are uncomfortable about being thanked for it.Mr. Garth, 26, said that when he gets thanked it can feel self-serving for the thankers, suggesting that he did it for them, and that they somehow understand the sacrifice, night terrors, feelings of loss and bewilderment. Or don’t think about it at all. “I pulled the trigger,” he said. “You didn’t. Don’t take that away from me.” The issue has been percolating for a few years, elucidated memorably in “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” a 2012National Book Award finalistabout a group of soldiers being feted at halftime of a Dallas Cowboys game. The soldiers express dread over people rushing to offer thanks, pregnant with obligation and blood lust and “their voices throbbing like lovers.” The issue has also surfaced, at least tangentially, withBrian Williams’s admissionthat he’d exaggerated about being in a Chinook helicopter hit by enemy fire. In explaining his failed memory, the NBC News anchor said: “This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and by extension our brave military men and women veterans everywhere, those who have served while I did not.”
Continue reading the main storyThe idea of giving thanks while not participating themselves is one of the core vet quibbles, said Mr. Freedman, the Green Beret. The joke has become so prevalent, he said, that servicemen and women sometimes walk up to one another pretending to be “misty-eyed” and mockingly say “Thanks for your service.”Mr. Freedman, 33, feels like the thanks “alleviates some of the civilian guilt,” adding: “They have no skin in the game with these wars. There’s no draft.”
No real opinions either, he said. “At least with Vietnam, people spit on you and you knew they had an opinion.”
Photo“Thank you for your service,” he said, is almost the equivalent of “I haven’t thought about any of this.”For most of us, I suspect, offering thanks reflects genuine appreciation — even if ill-defined. It was a dirty job and someone had to do it. If not these men and women, then us or our children.
Tim O’Brien, a Vietnam vet and the author of the acclaimed book “The Things They Carried,” told me that his war’s vets who believed in the mission like to be thanked. Others, himself included, find that “something in the stomach tumbles” from expressions of appreciation that are so disconnected from the “evil, nasty stuff you do in war.”
The more so, he said, “when your war turns out to have feet of clay” — whether fighting peasants in Vietnam or in the name of eradicating weapons of mass destruction that never materialized.
But doesn’t their sacrifice merit thanks? “Patriotic gloss,” responded Mr. O’Brien, an unofficial poet laureate of war who essentially elevates the issue to the philosophical; to him, we’re thanking without having the courage to ask whether the mission is even right.
It’s hard to assess how widespread such ideas are among the men and women of today’s generation. So, rather than try to sum up what invariably are many views on the subject, I’ll relate more of Mr. Garth’s story.
He grew up in Florida, son of a Vietnam vet, grandson of a decorated World War II vet, himself a bit of a class clown who drank his way out of college and wound up working the docks. The Marines offered a chance to make something of himself and, despite his parents’ pleadings otherwise, to fight.
It wasn’t what he romanticized. First training and waiting. Then the reality that he might die, along with his friends — 17 of them did, in action, by accident or by suicide. And, he now asks, for what?
His ideas about the need to prove himself slipped away, along with any patriotic fervor. He hates it when people dismiss the Taliban as imbeciles when he saw them as cunning warriors. To Mr. Garth, the war became solely about survival among brothers in arms.
Like that day in September 2011 when Mr. Garth was surrounded in the hut. A last-ditch call for help over the radio prompted a small group of fellow Marines to run three miles to save the day, one of them carrying 170 pounds of gear, including a 22-pound machine gun and 50 pounds of ammo.
THE thanks Mr. Garth gets today remind him of both the bad times and the good, all of which carry more meaning than he has now in civilian life. Hardest is the gratitude from parents of fallen comrades. “That’s the most painful thank you,” he said. “It’s not for me, and I’m not your son.”
He struggled to explain his irritation. “It’s not your fault,” he said of those thanking him. “But it’s not my fault either.”
So what to say to a vet? Maybe promise to vote next time, Mr. Freedman said, or offer a scholarship or job (as, he said, some places have stepped up and done). Stand up for what’s right, suggested Mr. O’Brien. Give $100 to a vet, Ben Fountain, author of the “Billy Lynn” book, half-joked, saying it would at least show some sacrifice on the thanker’s part.
Mr. Garth appreciates thanks from someone who makes an effort to invest in the relationship and experience. Or a fellow vet who gets it. Several weeks ago, he visited one of his soul mates from the mud hut firefight, which they refer to as the Battle of the Unmarked Compound. They drank Jameson whiskey in gulps.
“We cried in each other’s arms until we both could tell each other we loved each other,” Mr. Garth said. “We each said, thank you for what you’ve done for me.”
"Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors."
"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence."
"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly."
"The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher."
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
"If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?"
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."
"There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite."
"The most considerable difference I note among men is not in their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses."
"Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely."
