Tag Archives: how to be happy

October 4, 2017

Stages Of A Romantic Relationship

By wise sloth

1. Anonymity

You don’t know your future partner exists.

 

2. Strangers

You meet your future partner, but you don’t know what their name is or who they are.

 

3. Acquaintance

You break the barrier of anonymity. You talk, and then they’re no longer a stranger. They now have a connection to your life even if it’s a part as small as “friend of a friend.”

 

4. Interest

Eventually, you take an interest in one another. In this stage, you act like cats sniffing a treat and deciding whether or not it smells good enough to eat.

 

5. The Hunt

After passing the smell test, you make a conscious decision to pursue the other person. This is the chase. It’s exhilarating, expensive, sometimes unsuccessful, sometimes discouraging, and you have to exert a lot of energy pretending to be cooler and more collected than you really are to compete against other people who have more experience pretending to be cooler and more collected than you.

 

6. The Salad Days

Following the catch at the end of the hunt, you gorge yourself on each other for as long as your stamina holds out. During the salad days, children hold hands on the playground, teens make out in public, and adults try to have sex in every room of their house.

 

7. The Trial Commitment

People tend to assume that once they’ve reached the salad days they’ve found true love. Contrary to what Disney or the pop music industry would have you believe, this is not the time to propose for marriage. Though at some point in the salad days you’re going to have to consider where your relationship is going. If the salad days don’t end as just a successful fling then the next step is a trial commitment.

You may have already considered yourself a couple, but this move ups the ante. You may transition from “going out” to “going steady” or from “dating” to “being engaged.” You’ll spend this phase looking at your partner more seriously, and you’ll probably pretend to act like what you think a serious adult who is in a committed relationship acts like.

 

8. The Breeze Days

If things go well and your lifestyle and personality are compatible with your partner’s then you will find yourself working together like a finely tuned machine. You’ll act like twins who are so in tune with each other that you can complete complex tasks together with minimal verbal communication. Like twins, you’ll also develop a secret language of your own based on shared references and inside jokes. Life will operate so smoothly that time can fly by without you noticing it.

 

9. Deep Appreciation and Familiarity

One day you’ll roll over and see your partner lying next to you in bed and you’ll realize they know you better than anyone else, and you know them as well as yourself. You’ll have come to depend on this person like your right hand, and losing them would leave you more lost and helpless than losing your job. If there is a thing called love then this stage is it, but it can’t last forever. And the fact that you may have had it once with someone doesn’t mean you always have to have it with them or that either of you owes the other anything for having had it.

 

10. The “Washing Machine You Take For Granted” Days

It’s a wonderful thing if you can work with another person like a well-oiled machine, but when a machine works perfectly for long enough we tend to take it for granted. Even though you work well with the other person your heart’s somehow not in it anymore. You’re walking through your relationship and life on autopilot.

 

11. Full-on Boredom

One day you roll over and see your partner lying next to you in bed and you realize you’re tired of looking at them just like you’re tired of having to step around that damned washing machine you’re always bumping into on the way out the door. You’ll be surprised to find yourself actually bored of sex. You’ll fake enthusiasm during sex. You might even fake orgasms. You’ll yearn for the hunt and wonder where the magic in your relationship went. You’ll blame the other person when in reality the problem is that that’s what happens when two people share a pair of golden handcuffs for long enough.

 

12. The Pretend Days

You’re fully aware that you’re bored of the other person. You always think about someone else when you masturbate, but out of respect and obligation to your partner, you don’t let them know how far your heart has drifted away from them.  So even if you don’t lie to yourself about your feelings you lie to the other person to keep the boat from rocking.

 

13. The Onset of Resentment

You can only pretend to be happy for so long before it gets old and the cracks in the walls start showing. You’ll start dropping your mask more often and compromising less.

 

14. Outright Resentment

If you don’t talk openly to your partner, reassess your relationship, get some space, pursue separate interests or break up (if need be) then your resentment for one another will cross the line into open hostility. You may not act on this hostility yet, but you’ll feel it and be fully conscious of it. You’ll carry it with you all day and won’t be able to stand to look at your partner. Everything they say will sound like fingernails on a chalkboard, and everything they do will be wrong. This phase has ended in murder and/or suicide for millions of people.

 

15. Bursting out of the Bottle

The hate-charade can’t last forever. Eventually, the crack in the dam will burst and everything will come out. If this process is managed productively it can be a euphoric release that takes the weight of the world off your shoulders. If this process is managed unproductively it can lead to broken hearts, burned bridged and closed doors.

 

16. (A) Reconciliation or (B) Break Up

At this point, your old relationship is over. You can never go back to the way things were. Your only choice is to start a new relationship with your partner or end the relationship. Below is a list of the steps of the stages your life will go in if you reconcile. After that is another list that starts back over at #17 and traces the stages your life will take if you break up.

 

The Path of Reconciliation Leads to:

17A. The Kicked Puppy Days

You may have reconciled your differences with your partner, but you’ve both just come out of a traumatic experience. One sweaty night and a few heart felt words aren’t going to fill those wounds. There will be a short time where you’ll both still feel hurt and ashamed of your past behavior.

 

18A. The Trial Recommitment

Once the dust has settled and emotions have calmed you’ll find yourself looking at your partner soberly. Both of your punishments may be over, but you’re both still on notice.

 

19A. The Recovery Days

If you’re both truly sorry for hurting each other and earnestly want to be together you’ll try to make it up to the other person. This phase of your relationship will find you going out of your way again to do nice things for each other and say nice things to each other. These will be days full of pampering and feel like stages 6 (The Salad Days) and 9 (Deep Appreciation and Familiarity) combined.

 

20A. Return to the Breezy Days

You can’t keep up that intensity forever. Life goes on. The best place you can go from here is back to the Breezy Days. Where you go from there is up to you.

 

Breaking up Leads to:

17B. The Free Fall

If you break up with your partner at any stage of your relationship you’ll end up in a free fall. The intensity of the free fall experience for you will be relative to how long you’ve been with your partner, how strong of an emotional attachment you had with them and how strong your dependency on them was.

You will feel lost in space. You’ll feel disconnected from your environment. You’ll feel like you just stepped into a new universe, and you may or may not want to be there.

 

18B. The Landing

One day all the emotions left up in the air after your break up will come back down to earth. It’s like coming to terms with the fact that your dead relative really isn’t just sleeping in a box. They’re never coming back. Your life will go on, and you will be alone. Again, this can be a good thing or a bad thing.

 

19B. The New Underwear/Phantom Limb

So you move on with your life, but you’ll be so used to sharing a life with your partner that you’ll have some trouble readjusting to life without them. Sometimes it can feel like you’re missing a limb. Sometimes it’ll feel like you’re getting to stretch your limbs after years of being tied down in a contorted position.

 

20B. The Great Wide Open

When you finally get used to living on your own again and doing things your way then the world is your oyster. Life is there for the taking. Your plans may include hunting another partner or it may not, but either way, you have a new chance to get what you want.

 

21B. Normalcy

The things you’re doing with your freedom will lose their novelty, and if you don’t keep your life interesting, then the repetitiveness of your daily life will lull you into a dream state where you just go about your business on autopilot and not really notice time passing.

 

22B. Boredom

If you do the same thing over and over long enough eventually you’ll get bored with it. Technically you’ll have everything you need to survive. You may even have a giant television and a well-worn stack of awesome video games collecting dust in the corner of your living room, but you’ll feel an inexplicable sense of boredom and lack of satisfaction in life.

 

23. Desperation

After you feel bored long enough the boredom will turn to despair. You’ll put pictures of island beaches on your desktop background and/or screensavers and fantasize regularly about escaping the grinding, suffocating darkness of your normal yet “privileged” life. You’ll masturbate more, and you’ll have dirty thoughts about almost anything with two legs that walks past you.

 

24. Forever Alone

The longer you’re alone the older you get. The older you get the farther you’re removed from the dating pool. Eventually, there comes a point where you just have to face the fact that you’ll be forever alone.

 

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October 4, 2017

The 13 Rules Of Successful Relationships

By wise sloth

1: Be kind to one another

As a general rule, your partners will tend to treat you as well as you treat them. After all, the better you treat them the more reason they’ll have to admire you and care about you. The less often you reciprocate kindness the less lovable you’ll be and the less motivation your partner will have to be kind to you. If your relationship is having trouble the first step you should always take is to be extra kind to your partner every day. If you think belittling, harassing, snapping, or yelling at your partner will ever accomplish anything other than destroying your relationship, then you’re ignorant and should be alone.

If you’re never kind to your partner and they always go out of their way to be kind to you then over time they’ll empty out all of their passion, and when they run out they’ll turn as cold and passionless as you. Then the coldness will turn to bitterness and the person who was once your lover will become your enemy. At that point, you might be able to turn your relationship around by being nice to each other again, but you’ll probably break up and resent each other.

This is very simple. If you’re not going to be kind to one another then there’s no point being together.

 

2: Communicate intimately and regularly

Human beings grow and change as they learn more, have new experiences, change jobs, move and meet new people. As we age we change, and when we change our expectations and goals change. Two people may be perfect for one another one year and then hold each other back the next year not because either of them did anything wrong but because they grew into themselves and outgrew their current relationship. This is the nature of relationships, and the only way to manage this risk by communicating intimately and regularly.

You can’t have a healthy, functional relationship with a stranger. You can’t resolve interpersonal problems between yourself and a stranger. In order to nurture and monitor your relationship, you and your partner need to tell each other everything that’s going on in your head all the time (within reason). The point is the only way to see eye to eye is to see mind to mind.

If you can’t talk to your partner, or your partner won’t open up to you, then one of you needs to walk away because a silent relationship is like driving with your headlights off; you’re going to run into problems.You should want to open up to your lover anyway. If you don’t have the motivation to open up to your partner or they don’t have the motivation to let you in then you’re not really in love, and you should strongly consider separating because neither of you are going to get the emotional nourishment you need from your relationship.

If you’re missing something in your relationship the only way you’re ever going to get it is by telling the other person about it. You need to encourage your partner to tell you if they’re missing anything so you’ll know what you need to do to improve your relationship and give the person you love a chance at happiness.

 

 

3: Don’t accept being treated poorly; stand up for yourself, and don’t be afraid to leave.

The promises you made to your partner and the contracts you’ve signed aren’t more important than your happiness. Staying in a relationship that makes you unhappy is throwing your life away for nothing. You’re not upholding a virtuous moral ideal by staying in an unfulfilling relationship. All you’re doing is hurting yourself.

Nobody deserves to be made unhappy. You can’t screw up in any way that would justify being treated poorly. If your partner can’t treat you with the dignity, respect, and empathy you deserve then they don’t deserve you. Stand up for yourself. Communicate your expectations, and if they’re not met then the mature, wise thing to do is leave. That’s not being unfaithful. That’s not giving up. That’s self-preservation. That’s making the most out of life.

 

4: Do things you enjoy together regularly (hobbies not events), and get away from each other regularly.

In order to be happy you need to do things you enjoy. If you can do things that make you happiest with the person who makes you happiest, then you’re winning at life. You’re also building great memories of one another. So at the end of your life, you’ll look back and see the best times of your life were with that person instead of the best times of your life being when they weren’t there.

Going to movies with another person doesn’t count. If you’re just going to be sitting somewhere staring ahead you could have anyone next to you. It’s not enough for you to go somewhere with your partner. You need to do meaningful, enjoyable things that involve you working together somehow.

As important as it is to do meaningful activities together it’s equally important to get away from each other on a regular basis. No matter how wonderful another person is, if you spend 24 hours per day with them every day you’re going to get bored of each other, and you’re going to get on each other’s nerves. So if you want to stay together for the long haul you need to get away from each other on a regular basis.

 

5: Maintain an active, dynamic sex life

Humans are sexual creatures. We need to have sex, and if we don’t we suffer physically and psychologically. Every time you and your partner’s sex life suffers your relationship will suffer. So both of you need to be proactive about initiating sex and spicing up your sex life.

There’s no one right way to structure your sex life. It depends on the individuals involved. So you need to regularly communicate with your partner about your sex life. Let them know your needs, expectations, fantasies, and disappointments. Help them help you and visa versa.

Even though everyone is different I would still give everyone one piece of advice: oral sex is the magic bullet. It’s hard to be unhappy when you’re getting great oral sex all the time. If your relationship is suffering, give each other more oral sex. You’ll see immediate improvements. And everybody wants oral sex anyway. So you should be giving each other great oral sex already because you care about each other and want to fulfill each other’s wants.

 

 

6: Proactively try to grow and articulate yourself

Your relationship is only as strong as its weakest member. If you don’t proactively teach yourself new knowledge and seek out edifying experiences your mind will atrophy. You’ll forget what you already know. You’ll get stuck in your ways, and regress into a boring old idiot. In that state, you won’t be able to fulfill your own potential much less help your partner through their personal saga of life. If your life only has a vague direction, you’ll bumble through life semi-lucidly never really getting anywhere, and you’ll keep your partner in life from getting anywhere as well.

Learn. Think. Grow.

 

7: Learn about the differences between men and women.

If you’re going to be proactively studying important subjects anyway, you may as well start with learning the differences between how men and women think. After all, if you’re going to spend the rest of your life with a member of the opposite sex it’s important that you understand them. Even if you’re going to spend the rest of your life with a member of your own sex, half the world’s population is still made up of the opposite sex. So it would serve you well to understand them.

There have been dozens, possibly hundreds of books written on the psychology of the sexes. There are even university courses on the subject. Read those textbooks before you buy self-help books written by self-proclaimed gurus with dubious credentials… such as myself.

 

8: Don’t date stupid or crazy people

Crazy, stupid people do crazy stupid things. If you let a cloud of bats live in your bedroom then your life is going to be hell. Learn how to spot crazy and stupid and stay far, far away from them.

 

 

9: Your happiness is your own responsibility.

This last rule is a combination of rule #3 and rule #9. Your partner should want you to be happy. After all, if they don’t, then why are they there? Yet at the same time, your happiness is ultimately your responsibility. If you can’t be happy without someone else constantly checking up on you and tending to your every, need then you’re behaving like a parasite, and you’re going to consume your partner. Once you’ve nibbled away your partner’s soul your relationship is going to crumble and your own chances of happiness will crumble right along with it.

Do what you need to do to keep yourself happy. Give what you expect to get back and more. Don’t rely on someone else to keep you happy. If you can’t keep yourself happy then they won’t be able to either. Then nobody will get to be happy and it would have been better for both of you if you’d never met.

 

10: A lover who doesn’t let you be yourself doesn’t love you for who you are.

If you lover constantly harasses you for going out with your friends or doing the things you want to do until you break down and behave the way they want you to behave then they must dislike who you are and what you want out of life. You’re never going to share and celebrate your life with one another. You’re just going to fight until you either leave or become their willing slave. No matter how many positive traits your partner may have, if they don’t respect you for who you are and give you space to do the things you enjoy then you don’t have a healthy relationship. You’re just being taken advantage of by someone who cares more about themself than you.

 

11: Don’t confuse co-dependency with love.

If you base your perception of love on Disney movies and pop music then what you call love is actually co-dependency. I’m not saying you’re codependent if your partner still takes your breath away even after ten years. I’m saying you’re codependent if you can’t breathe without them being right next to you worshiping you every moment of every day. If you can’t live without your partner’s love and affection you’re going to smother and cripple them, and when they’re too worn down and stressed out to live up to your unrealistic expectations you’re going to hate them, yourself and life itself because your life will be meaningless without a host to feed on.

Don’t confuse co-dependency with love.  Couples should be able to stand alone as individuals. Two individuals who are complete alone, will make a greater whole when they’re together than two people who need someone else to use as a crutch. So base your philosophy on relationships on reason, not oversimplified commercial children’s stories.

 

 

12: Learn how to argue for truth as opposed to winning.

Inevitably you’re going to have a disagreement with your partner, and often times little disagreements can escalate into big ones, especially when couples are already stressed out. Disagreements aren’t inherently a bad thing. They’re an opportunity to bridge a gap that’s come between you and your lover, but immature people don’t see it that way. Immature people see a disagreement a challenge to be won, but that means there has to be a loser. That means in order for you to win your lover has to lose. When you beat or shout your lover into submission you might win the battle, but you lose the war. It doesn’t matter who “wins” an argument. All that matters is your relationship.

When you argue, listen to your partner’s entire argument before uttering a word. When you do speak, ask for clarifications and elaborations. Find out everything on their mind and then think about that. Bend over backward to look at the situation from their point of view, and assume (for the sake of argument) that you’re wrong. Even if you’re right you’re probably wrong about something. In order to win the war, you need to find out what that is and correct it. If you’d proactively analyzed yourself for flaws beforehand you wouldn’t have to wait for them to drive your partner to the breaking point where they feel the need to confront you about your flaws.

 

13: Don’t hold back.

There are two parts to this piece of advice. First, don’t be afraid to love. Holding back and waiting to let yourself love someone or to tell them you love them until after you have ten tons of proof to justify your emotions doesn’t defend the integrity of love. It merely postpones your connection with the most important person in your life. Granted, there’s a limit. You don’t want to tell someone you love them on the first date; that’s just co-dependency. Having said that, there’s also a line where withholding your emotions is just being cold, and the consequences of holding back a little too long are worse than jumping the gun a little bit.

The other way you don’t want to hold back is by not letting the other person in. It’s understandable that you don’t want to be hurt. It’s understandable that you don’t want to share your deepest secrets with a complete stranger. However, if you’re in a committed relationship with someone and you keep holding them at arm’s length and never letting them swim through your soul then you’re just torturing the most important person in your life, and you’ll never be able to build a deeper relationship if they can’t dive into you.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Sex positions and techniques
General Sex Advice
Dating Advice
Relationship Advice
Philosophy of Sexuality
Friendship
My Tweets About Romance

 

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Relationship Advice

October 3, 2017

10 Character Traits To Look For In A Long-Term Romantic Partner

By wise sloth

1: They’re proactively engaged in a lifelong quest for knowledge and growth.

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who actively, consciously and consistently learn new things, explore their interests and expand their horizons… and those who sit there and stagnate and become dull and flawed. If you spend your life with the first kind of person, they’ll lift you up as they lift themselves up. The latter type will drag you down like a boat anchor. Not only will they keep you from achieving your external goals, but after you spend enough years with another person you’ll adopt their personality. If that person is a dullard, you’ll become one too. Then that will be the reality you’ll experience for the rest of your life.

Facing life alone will make you a more vibrant person than living in cold comfort with a child stuck in an adult’s body. The more time you spend becoming a strong individual, the more you’ll attract similar mates. Once you find the right one, you can spend the rest of your lives moving forward together.

 

 

2: They’re not self-centered, demanding, or judgmental

When two people share their time, resources and energy equally, they can accomplish more together than they could have alone. That’s called a symbiotic relationship. When one person takes everything the other has and barely gives anything back, that’s called a parasitic relationship, and it’s not sustainable. When one person constantly empties their bucket and never gets it replenished, they eventually run dry. Then they start acting frustrated and resentful. When the spoiled, codependent parasite doesn’t get what they want, they start throwing tantrums. It’s a vicious cycle that inevitably ends in a dramatic breakup that leaves the host broke and depressed while the parasite just moves on to the next host without learning any life lessons.

Nobody is all-good or all-bad. There are millions of self-centered, demanding, judgmental parasites out there who are smart, interesting, funny, strong, successful, attractive and moderately generous. They have enough going for them to make you consider looking past their selfishness. Maybe they do deserve a chance, but if you give it to them, proceed with caution. Self-centered people can be generous and charming when they want something from you, but their prime prerogative is themselves. Sooner or later you’re going to take a back seat to their ego, and your needs will be treated as less important than their wants. Don’t be surprised when you wake up one day and realize that your life is just an accessory to theirs.

 

3: They’re able to take criticism and accept responsibility for their actions.

You can’t become a better person if you never change. Specifically, you need to figure out what your bad habits and character flaws are, and fix them. You shouldn’t even wait for someone else to point out your flaws. You should be proactively searching yourself for them and finding ways to fix them before they bother anyone else enough to call you out. If you do that, not only will you be happier and more successful in life, but you’ll be an ideal mate. Someone would be very lucky to spend the rest of their life with you.

You don’t need luck to find the right person to spend the rest of your life with. Pay attention to your dates. If they automatically get defensive and angry every time anyone points out their flaws, then be very cautious of that person. They’re probably never going to change. They’re going to build an impenetrable wall of circular, logic-proof, self-fulfilling excuses around their ego that will protect them from ever having to accept responsibility for their actions. They’ll never grow because they already believe they’re perfect. As they stagnate in their own ignorant arrogance, they’re going to get more toxic and more stuck in their ways.

If they’re unwilling to accept responsibility for the problems they create, they’re going to have to find someone else to blame, and it will inevitably be you. You have precious little time on this Earth to find yourself, identify your dreams and work towards achieving them. If you have to spend half your life defending yourself from irrational accusations and cleaning up someone else’s messes, you’re probably not going achieve your dreams. Even if you do make it, you’ll probably still be miserable. You’ll also find that as you grow and change while your partner stays the same, your goals will gradually become different. Eventually, you’ll probably find that you’re both moving in different directions. When that happens your toxic partner will probably harass you to give up your stupid dreams. They’ll continue to make you feel bad for being yourself and hold you back from fulfilling your potential.

 

 

4: They think rationally.

Sanity is defined: “having or showing reason, sound judgment, or good sense.”

A mental illness exists when “ongoing signs and symptoms cause frequent stress and affect your ability to function.”

Unreasonable people with bad judgment and no common sense are always stressed out over nothing, and they turn simple tasks into major disasters. Irrational people are effectively insane. I’m not saying they’re bad people. None of us are perfect, and we all deserve to be loved. I’m just saying, spending the rest of your life with someone who has a condition that causes them to be a danger to themselves and others and needs to be managed constantly, is a huge and costly responsibility.

Hunky meat head studs and ditzy blonde bimbos make great one night stands (if you use a condom), but they make bad life-partners because they’re better at ignoring and creating problems than solving them. Improving your quality of life depends on solving the problems that make your life suck. So if you want to be happy and secure in your old age (when you and your partner’s looks have faded) then marry Sherlock Holmes.

 

5: They have the same or compatible domestic goals/standards.

You’re going to spend most of your life either at work or at home. When you look back at life on your deathbed, about half of what you see will be your house. It’s half of your reality. It’s half of your universe. Spending that much time in the same environment will shape who you are and how you feel. So it’s vitally important that your home fits you. The decorations, cost, noise-level, pace, cleaning schedule, etc. should fit your personality. If your environment fits you like a glove, you’re going to find it pretty easy to be happy. If your environment doesn’t fit you at all, you’re going to find it pretty hard to be happy.

When you move in with another person, you have to share your environment. So it’s equally important that both of you fit your environment. If your partner is stifled by your environment, then they’ll get frustrated and stressed. Then you’ll have to live with a frustrated, stressed person, and that will frustrate and stress you out. The cycle can escalate quickly and lead to new problems.

Obviously, people who share a house will have to make compromises, and couples who communicate rationally will be able to find common ground peacefully. But the more you have to compromise, the less often both people get what they want. If nobody ever really gets what they want, you have to wonder why you’re together when you could just as easily be with someone else who wants to live the same way you do.

 

6: They have the same or compatible interests and passions.

If you have no personality, interests, hobbies, ambition or style then you’ll be happiest living with another blank person. Ideally, you have found some topic or hobby that you’re so passionate about that you clear your schedule to make time for it. That will give your life meaning and direction, which will make you a healthy life-partner. If you’re going to share a house with another person for the rest of your life, you should pick someone else who has a passion of their own. It’ll keep them growing and glowing, which will make them a positive force in your life.

If your partner discourages you from doing the thing that defines you and gives you joy then they either don’t understand or care about you. You’re not going to be happy if you spend the rest of your life with someone who doesn’t understand and care about you. If your partner loved you, they would encourage your hobby. If your passion is bowling, then you should find someone who will buy you bowling-related gifts on your birthday and won’t mind coming to watch you bowl. You might also strongly consider finding someone who enjoys bowling as much as you do. Then neither of you will have to take time out of your schedule to support the other’s passion. Plus, sharing your passion is a profound connection for you to bond over.

 

7: They have the same or compatible philosophies on life.

No two people are going to see eye to eye on everything. So finding the perfect person for you isn’t a matter of finding someone who always agrees with you. You can be perfectly happy with someone who doesn’t even believe in the same religion as you. The thing about that is, your belief system guides your actions. People with the same belief system as you are likely to have compatible domestic and long-term goals as you. Plus, sharing similar beliefs is a huge bond you share. You don’t have to share that bond, but it’s nice if you can get it… and with over 7 billion people in the world, you can find it if you look hard enough.

 

 

8: They’re financially responsible.

When most people move in with a long-term partner, they do it for love, not because it’s a cold, calculated business decision. Little did you know, moving in with someone is the biggest financial decision you’ll ever make in your life. Live with someone long enough, and all of your finances will become tied together.

In a world that revolves around finance, you can’t live a decent quality of life without money. Housing, food, clothes, and free time all cost money. Nothing is more expensive than retirement, and that takes a lifetime of financial responsibility to save up for. You might find temporary happiness with a poor, charming, irresponsible job-hopper, but they’re not going to help you build a secure life for you and your children. They’re going to bleed you into perpetual poverty. Since one of the biggest causes of divorce is financial problems, your relationship probably isn’t going to last forever anyway. It’ll just hold you back for a while.

 

9: They treat you with kindness.

There’s no point being in a relationship with someone who doesn’t treat you with kindness. That’s half the point of being with someone: they treat you well, and your life is better with them than without them. Even if you’re patient enough to put up with an unkind lover (which is an oxymoron), they’re going to empty your bucket sooner rather than later, and the longer you stay with them, the more miserable you’re going to be. There’s no point being with someone who isn’t kind. Even if they’re a good provider, they’re just helping you survive to be miserable another day. You should spend the rest of your life with someone who regularly goes out of their way to say and do little things to make you smile and feel good about yourself. That’s a person worth waking up next to every day for the rest of your life.

 

10: They build you up.

When assessing potential long-term romantic partners, the question you have to ask yourself is, “Do they build me up, or tear me down?” The more they build you up, the more seriously you should consider spending more time with them. The more they tear you down, the quicker you should untether your life from theirs.

 

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Sex positions and techniques
General Sex Advice
Dating Advice
Relationship Advice
Philosophy of Sexuality
Friendship
My Tweets About Romance

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October 28, 2009

No Action Is An Island

By wise sloth

 

Have you ever known anyone who dated an asshole and was miserable because of it? Did it ever annoy you how they’d constantly make excuses for why their significant other was an asshole and why they were going to put up with it? The whole time they were making excuses you were probably thinking, “That person was an asshole yesterday. That person is an asshole today. That person is going to be an asshole tomorrow. Why don’t you understand that?” Well, your friend was oblivious yesterday. They’re oblivious today, and they’re going to be oblivious tomorrow. Why don’t you understand that?

How you act in a given situation is how you can be expected to act in any other similar situation. Everything you do or think is a piece of a pattern of thoughts and behavior that has existed in your past and will exist in your future.

No action is an isolated incident. Everything is part of a pattern. This is why psychologists and fake psychics understand you so well even if they only know a little bit about you. They understand that every little detail they know about you is indicative of a larger whole.

This is why bad drivers and people who stand in the middle of the aisle at the grocery store blocking 15 shoppers while they stare mindlessly at a jar of pickles should piss you off. If they’re dumb enough to do that one seemingly idiotic thing, then how far does that pattern stretch throughout the rest of their lives?

So you have to ask yourself, what are your tendencies? Are there any tendencies you have that you try to minimalize or make excuses for? The next time you do some small irrational thing, stop and try to find how that irrational action fits into a pattern in your life because I guarantee it does.

Next time someone is mean to you and comes up with a seemingly valid excuse for why their meanness was an accident, don’t believe them. The only accident was that they let you see the real pattern beneath the mask they’re wearing.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Growing up and Becoming You
Happiness and Peace
Self-Esteem
Health
Drugs and Addiction
Achieving a Healthy Work/Life Balance
Leadership and Authority
My Tweets About Self-Help

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Growing up and Becoming You

October 28, 2009

My Philosophy On Being Calm

By wise sloth

As a child, my favorite characters on television were the old guys (usually Asian karate masters) who were always perfectly calm and had everything figured out. They’d sit there and smirk as the young fledgling hero fumbled through their quests like a clueless 11-year-old lost in a big city.

 

Black and white photo of Mr. Miyagi (from the movie, "The Karate Kid) holding chopsticks and looking calm and wise.

 

One day it dawned on me that I’d been fumbling through life crippled by my own ignorance just like the fledgling heroes on my favorite Saturday morning cartoons, and just like the young heroes on television, I was the only obstacle keeping me from becoming a calm, centered Zen master too. All I had to do was figure out the supreme truth they understood. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ask my parents or any other old people in my real life to teach that secret to me, because they didn’t know it either.

If nobody would tell me the secret to supreme calmness then I’d just have to figure it out for myself, and I reasoned I could do it without having to go through a lifetime of meditation and martial arts training if I just worked backward and reverse engineered the process from the conclusion.

The conclusion was that all life’s problems aren’t worth stressing over. I just needed to know why.

The difference between the old, wise, tranquil guy and the man who jumps out of a skyscraper when the stock market dips, is perception of priorities. When you know what’s important then you don’t worry about the unimportant things. When you have a skewed perception of what’s important, then you overreact to unimportant events. So you have to ask yourself, what’s important and why?

Imagine all the worst possible things happening to you at once. Your loved ones die. You go bankrupt. You go to prison. You lose your legs. You lose your rank in your high school’s social hierarchy. Once you’ve lost in every way that you can possibly lose in life, what have you really lost? All you’ve lost is external luxury. But you still have your self, the only thing you ever truly owned. Nobody can take that away from you, and as long as you have yourself then you can still till a life for yourself.

The only time you’re taken from you is when you die. Even then, it’s not logical to fear the inevitable. And the big kicker about death is that when you die you lose everything in life anyway. So when you lose anything in life before death…shit…you were going to lose it anyway. So you can’t ever lose anything that you weren’t going to lose anyway.

This makes a lot of suicides ironic. The point of suicide is to escape your intolerable life. If people could choose between suicide and a better life they’d just choose the better life. So if you’re at the point that you’re willing to kill yourself then you’re free to do anything. If you’re willing to let go of all the ties that bind you to the earth then you’re free to fly to the ends of the earth.

Look, shit happens. So don’t be surprised when it does, and don’t freak out because you think it’s the end. It’s never the end until you’re dead, and in the meantime, shit happening doesn’t change the fact that you’re still you and you can still experience life.

So the old, wise guy realizes that nothing really matters. but the reason the young hero can’t achieve the same Fight Club-esque sense of freedom from worry is because he’s trying too hard. Don’t try to hold the philosophy that loss is unimportant tightly in your mind. Just let go. Say, “Fuck it.” All you have to lose is your anxiety.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Growing up and Becoming You
Happiness and Peace
Self-Esteem
Health
Drugs and Addiction
Achieving a Healthy Work/Life Balance
Leadership and Authority
My Tweets About Self-Help

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October 28, 2009

My Theory On Aggregate Happiness and Immediate Karma

By wise sloth

Aggregate Happiness

There are millions of moments throughout your life where you’re faced with a decision that can cause you a tiny bit of happiness or a tiny bit of distress. The amount of happiness and stress is so small that it basically doesn’t matter: like waiting to use the restroom until later, satisfying a slight hunger, resting for five minutes, rubbing one out before work, etc. These choices might seem inconsequential, but when you think of the millions upon millions of these tiny choices we make in our lifetimes, if we always choose to take that extra piss, snack, nap, or whatever then those millions of choices will add up to a huge chunk of happiness, but if we always choose to tough it out we will have amassed a huge pile of misery over the course of our lives.

Text: "It all adds up."

Immediate Karma

We only have so much time in this life. Therefore we only have so much time to be happy. Whenever you’re angry, confrontational, jealous, convincing, condescending, etc. you feel angry, confrontational, jealous, etc. If you’re always acting that way then you’re always feeling that way. So at the end of your life all you’ll have to look back on, all you’ll have experienced will have been negativity.

The second you’re mean to someone, you’ve already created an experience for yourself that is not worth remembering and is wasted time that could have been spent experiencing happiness. So when someone is being a dick to you, understand they may or may not ruin your day, but they sure as hell are ruining their own. Even if they look like they’re enjoying harassing you, they’re not experiencing pure, honest joy, and they’ll never be able to get that moment back. It will have been wasted on sub-par joy for the rest of eternity.

On the other hand, no selfless act is ever unrewarded. Anytime you do something virtuous you get the reward of feeling happy. Even if you don’t get a tangible reward, ask yourself why you would have wanted a tangible reward anyway. You would have wanted a tangible reward because it would have made you happy. Well, if you take joy in doing good without getting a tangible reward then you just skip straight to the end goal: immediate happiness.

Example of cause and effect: A man jumps on a see-saw with a boulder on the other end, causing the boulder to fly in the air and crush him.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

Growing up and Becoming You
Happiness and Peace
Self-Esteem
Health
Drugs and Addiction
Achieving a Healthy Work/Life Balance
Leadership and Authority
My Tweets About Self-Help

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Happiness and Peace