The unlived life of the parents

While I'm posting random quotes from Twitter (that's a reference to this post over on the Patio), here's one I found yesterday that is way too accurate.

"The unlived life of the parents," or in other words, we get stuck on the same things that our parents got stuck on. 

Is it true as a general rule? I haven't the slightest idea. But does it explain why I'm so stuck right now? O boy, howdy.

I don't even mean that it explains things at a causal level (though of course it might). But at a descriptive level, it is unerring. Father worked for years running a family business in a field that didn't espcially interest him, but in which he became (by necessity) something of an expert. Then events conspired to allow him to retire early, so that he could do whatever he wanted. He made a few half-hearted attempts to find other work—he got certified as a hypnotherapist, for example, and also as a college-loan planner, and for each job he set up an office for a little while. But what he really wanted to do was to act. And in fact he found work in a few small things here and there—commercials, and bit parts in unsuccessful movies. But he never made it big in acting, and he pissed away a lot of time on the Internet.

Sound like anyone else you know?

The worrying part is that if "the unlived life of the parents" really does affect the children, then I risk passing this very same stasis on to Son 1 and Son 2 in their turn. 

And as if that weren't enough motivation, you remember that Kimberly Steele told me that getting a book published is a major task of mine for this lifetime. So if she is right (and if I have more lives beyond this one), I'd better get my ass in gear or I'll be dumped into exactly the same situation next time (but with less favorable circumstances).

I don't know whether I believe in future lives (except in this sense), but I certainly believe in my children. So maybe I'd better get my ass in gear.

Maybe tomorrow.   

 

Years too late … an article about infidelity

A few days ago, I stumbled across an online article from Psychology Today (March 11, 2025) that would have been really useful if I had discovered it twenty or forty years ago. (Oops, bad news, it hadn't been written yet.) The title is "3 Traits That Can Make a Partner More Likely to Cheat," and yes, I have added it to my list of articles posted at the bottom of this page on the left. The short version is that it might have helped me decode Wife's infidelities a lot earlier, though some of what it says finally (belatedly) occurred to me too.

The three traits are these:

1. Narcissistic tendencies
2. Low self-esteem
3. Fear of vulnerability and emotional intimacy

I'll summarize how each of these is supposed to work.

Narcissistic tendencies

No surprise here. The article argues that narcissists use sex to bolster their own self-image, because they need constant validation and praise. So if the spouse falls down on the job—or gets tired, or mad, or bored, or boring—the narcissist seeks sexual validation elsewhere.

When I first married Wife, I didn't even know the word narcissism! The first time I heard about it as a psychiatric disorder was during this conversation with D. Even after that it took me a couple of years before I really understood it.

Does this explanation fit Wife? I think so. Whenever she started a new affair it always made her bubbly with New Relationship Energy, and confident enough to take on the world. I certainly saw that in her relationship with the Church Tenor, for instance. (See, for example, here or here.) Given how low she always crashed later, those highs must have been intoxicating.

Low self-esteem

Of course this explanation is the flip side of the earlier one. Desperately low self-esteem prods the sufferer to do anything to get external validation. I talked about this connection early on, in this post.

The article goes on to say that when one partner commits infidelity, that damages the relationship, which in turn gives the adulterer more to feel bad about (and even lower self-esteem). Interestingly, I caught that feature as well, in this post here. 

Fear of vulnerability and emotional intimacy

The third trait follows a slightly different tack:

For some, cheating is a way to avoid emotional closeness. They fear being vulnerable and may sabotage their own relationships by seeking external connections that require little emotional intimacy....

When they cheat, they often form external connections that demand little to no emotional investment. These brief encounters provide a temporary sense of control or detachment, allowing them to maintain a surface-level connection while avoiding the deeper emotional work required for a healthy, intimate partnership.

It took me a while to understand Wife's fear of vulnerability. I think the most extensive post I've written on it may be this one, which came some five years after the others that I've quoted. But there were certainly signs there earlier. Her willingness to be involved in the torrid BDSM fantasies of Boyfriend 5 was probably one of those signs. Or in any event I remember reading later the assertion that BDSM appeals precisely to people who are afraid of emotional intimacy, because it provides such a rigid framework for behavior that they never have to worry about not knowing where the boundaries are. And Wife regularly panicked over not knowing where the boundaries were.

I said that this article came along years too late. In some senses, I no longer need it because I ended up discovering all these same conclusions myself. But if I had had it available years ago, think how much time it might have saved me!        

           

"Just another mental disorder"

I just stumbled across a delightful video clip on Twitter. Curtis Yarvin explains that "at a certain level, intelligence is just another mental disorder."

Does anyone know how to embed Twitter videos in these blogposts? Here's the best I can do:

Curtis Yarvin Twitter video  

This ad really happened to us!

I saw this advertisement—for gun control, apparently—yesterday or the day before. Probably it was on Twitter, though I'm no longer sure. But it really happened at our house, when Son 1 and Son 2 were little.

Fortunately the dildo in question wasn't as … shapely … as the ones in the commercial. It was purely cylindrical, with no distinguishing features. Yes, it had batteries, but the boys assumed that it was "an automatic sword!" (I think they meant "electric," but no matter.) Anyway, they found it under Wife's side of the bed, and started jumping on our bed playing with it. Wife was out of the house somewhere; I think I was in the study paying bills. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that after a minute or so I shooed them out to play somewhere else on the grounds that jumping on the bed was against the rules. They dropped the "electric sword" and I put it back.

I forget whether I ever told Wife what happened.

                

Do men profit from marriage?

The second depressing article I read this evening was a long LinkedIn post under the heading "LES HOMMES NE PROFITENT PAS DU MARIAGE" ["Men don't profit from marriage"]. The English translation runs like this,

MEN DON'T PROFIT FROM MARRIAGE

1. He's 70 years old.

2. He has retired from active work.

3. He worked all his life to raise his children.

4. He has deprived himself of the pleasures of life to pay for expensive school fees and living expenses for his children.

5. They are now well-off in Europe, Australia, America, etc.

6. His wife, 62 years old, moved to live with their children.

7. He stays alone at home.

8. His children hardly call him.

9. He must start the single life again.

10. He fights high blood pressure and other ailments related to old age.

11. How long will he survive alone?

12. This is the reality for most monogamous working-class men: their old age is often lonely and, in many cases, sad.

13. No matter how good the man is, women tend to love their children more than their husbands. The older he gets, the less they seem to serve him.

14. So, what do men really benefit from marriage?

15. They sacrifice so much but receive little recognition for their hard work, while the woman seems to reap all the benefits.

It's a man's world, they said, but it's really for women and children. Dear men, this could be your situation over the next few decades. What are you doing about it? What is your retirement plan?

Take care of yourself as much as your family. Love yourself.

Learn or perish.

Again, really depressing—not least because there are elements in the description that could apply to me and to my life.

Does divorce make women hotter?

Wow, browsing the Internet this evening I ran across two really depressing articles.

The first is from The Free Press. It's an article by Kat Rosenfield that asks women, "Does Divorce Make You Hotter?" And apparently there is a whole theme in our culture today dedicated to the proposition that divorce is empowering and "badass". Not some divorces, mind you. Not divorces from abusive bums who put their wives' lives at risk. But all divorces, divorces in general, Divorce as such. And it is empowering because once divorced, a woman can attend costume parties in her lingerie, drink Jell-O shots, and look for handsome young men to fuck. I guess this is what empowerment looks like.

To be fair, the author of the article doesn't buy this definition of empowerment, and recognizes that divorce can come with a lot of anguish and regret as well. Some of the comments on the article seem to assume that she is endorsing the opinions she describes, but honestly she makes it obvious that she is merely diagnosing.

For my part, I can't imagine why anyone would find divorce exciting or empowering. It might be necessary—I still believe that my own separation from Wife was necessary—but it is always a kind of failure. It is true that I have written about the virtue of normalizing failure (see here, for example), and at a philosophical level I still think that kind of detachment can help. But that is a far cry from glamorizing or celebrating the thing.

Maybe I don't have a lot to say that the author hasn't already said, or at least implied. But I find it depressing that this attitude exists in the world for her to write about.    

          

Is a wedding an achievement?

Once again I'm posting something from Twitter, rather than taking the time to create original content. At least, it was original when I wrote it on Twitter. But now I guess it is just recycled.

To be fair, my wedding to Wife cost plenty but it did not go well. (She got into a fight with her mother, for example.) But it's also true that over the long haul of decades, the fact of being married was very important; but the day itself? Meh.

I took the line about "all downhill from there" from Miss Manners, who is far wittier than I am.

          

Of course it's political!

Just saw this post on LinkedIn. Someone argues that gender fluidity is spreading across the globe and then cautions, "This is not a political matter."

Of course it's a political matter. If it's not being caused by politics, then what's causing it? Biology? Doesn't change that fast. Social attitudes, values, cultural preferences? Those are all just part of politics writ large.

She links to this video, where she talks about the rate at which these changes are taking place. Nothing else besides politics moves that fast.

          

Gender role test

Meanwhile, I found a "gender role test" online, courtesy of some outfit called IDR Labs. Guess how I scored? 

(Right away I remembered having once written this post here.)

Or maybe all these generalizations are just a little silly.

          

Was Tacitus talking about my marriage?

This morning I was reading this article by Charles Eisenstein (highly recommended!) and I stumbled across the following quote:

And … sure, I know he (Eisenstein, that is, not Tacitus) is talking about the relationship between the American government and the American people. But I can't help wondering whether these same principles also explain Wife's intense anger and animosity towards me for so many years? The idea would be consistent with this post, at any rate. Maybe there are others like it too, but I'm not going to hunt for them right now.

          

LinkedIn on tribalism

I saw this morning a post on LinkedIn about tribalism:

Right away it put me in mind of T. E. Lawrence, at least in the movie.

Maybe there are advantages (if only a few) to aligning with nobody. (Reference any number of my earlier posts.)

          

"Odiosa Ergo Vera"

Just found this on Twitter. I don't know if I believe it, but I love that the author bothered to put it in Latin. (You can find the original here.)

Kulak's First Principle, eh? Fine by me.

Why not to bring your whole self to work

Way more articulate than anything I've said on the subject. Agree 100%.

You can find the post on Twitter at this link here.

"Can't"—part 2

A while ago—gosh, it looks like it's been more than nine years already—I wrote a speculation about why Wife insists so devoutly on her illnesses and her incapacity. I said she must be getting something from seeing herself as weak.

Just this evening I read an article by the School of Life ("The Upsides of Being Ill") which proposes much the same thing. This article goes so far as to suggest, in fact, that every illness has a psychological upside, because it protects us from some realization we'd rather not face. Or at any rate the article suggests that we would do well to ask ourselves whether this is the root cause every time we get sick, as a way to keep honest with ourselves. It can be a kind of discipline, for the sake of moral and intellectual hygiene (at the very least).

So then I suppose that (rather than stopping with a discussion of Wife) I also have to ask myself … what benefit do I get out of compulsively reading Twitter? And while I recently stopped drinking for 30 days in a row, what benefit do I get when I start up again?

          

On lying, part 12

So it appears that Nature published an article a couple weeks ago under the title, "Deception is associated with reduced social connection." (You can download a PDF of the article here.) The conclusion includes such gems as:

"Our findings suggest that learning to engage in honest conversations—even when they may be difficult or uncomfortable—may provide an avenue for improving social relationships and well-being, more generally."

"Dishonesty, it seems, is detrimental to the sender’s well-being—breeding distrust and diminishing social connection."

"Findings underscore the consequences of deception in social life, even when undetected, and provide support for the old adage that honesty is the best policy."

It even comes with charts.

Well it's certainly nice to know. I'm pretty sure this is what I was trying to tell Wife for years. "Dishonesty … is detrimental to the sender's well-being"? Yup. I discussed that here. (Well, and for example here too, and other places.) "Honest conversations—even when … difficult or uncomfortable—may … [improve] social relationships"? That's exactly what I was saying here. And I'm pretty sure Plato and Aristotle got to the same conclusion long before I did.

In other breaking news, the best bait for mice is cheese.

          

So it's not just me?

Twitter says, apparently it's NOT just me. That's very reassuring.

     

Twitter talks about violent porn

Here's a topic I discussed … what was it? Twelve years ago? In this post here. And now someone has taken it up on Twitter. (Excuse me, I guess I'm supposed to call it X now.)

Here's a link to the initial Twitter post. The author spells out her basic point in the first four entries, and then it becomes a discussion.

Opinions on Twitter

Nothing new here, because you all know this is my opinion and has been for years. But hey, I got to chime in on someone else's post. So there's that.

Interview with a Cobra: the good

Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson posted on Twitter a two-and-a-half hour interview with Andrew Tate. (Here is the link.) Somehow despite all the time I waste on the Internet, I knew almost nothing about Andrew Tate before listening to this interview. I had heard the name, and I'd seen people allude to him as somehow a generically Bad Guy, but I couldn't have told you anything concrete about him. So I learned a lot by watching it.

Tate talked about his recent arrest on the charge of human trafficking, and insisted that he has never done any such thing. He added that there is no evidence of him having ever done any such thing (because he didn't do it), and therefore that he hopes the case will be dismissed when a judge finally looks over the evidence. Then he concluded that if he is somehow convicted anyway, he will accept the result as a test sent by God, and will take consequences with his head held high.

But after describing the formal accusation, Tate went on to explain (like Socrates in the Apology) that he has a large number of informal accusers* in the society at large, and that he believes it was their hostility towards him that precipitated his recent arrest. To explain this contention, he began to explain the message that he tries to teach his followers. And it was at this point that the interview became very interesting.**

A webcomic agrees with me about the future of marriage

Years ago I wrote a post on "The future of marriage" where I argued (among other things) that marriage does not have to be restricted to dyadic pairs—and, indeed, that "raising children is so much work that there is a good argument for spreading the burden among more than two people."

Well, I just saw the same suggestion in a recent webcomic, which makes me wonder if the idea is seeping out into the larger culture? Am I going to become—ever so improbably—a cultural prophet in my own time? Wow, who knew?