Roy

This is where fostering and integrating some stoic attitudes can be really beneficial. It may be the case and actually true that systems in our world might be flawed or doomed, and there may be some good reasons to be pessimistic. But so what? Reality is built to be stark. We are all going to die anyways, so why care so fucking much about things going well ALL the time? It's wasteful childishness to assume we ought to be positive about everything. We are all helplessly thrust into this human condition when we are born and have to make due with this imperfect world. Spoiler alert; Everything is already exactly perfect the way it is, and anything less than that is because we are making selfish/biased distinctions. All you can do, is simply do your best to shape the world while you're still here. Ground yourself IN yourself. The power and solution you seek will be found in realizing you can choose to be a beacon of light in SPITE of whatever darkness may surround you in the external world. Here is a realization for you - It's the people that don't ground themselves that will be the ones most likely to commit atrocities and great acts of selfishness in the name of correcting what they perceive to be unjust about the world. It's only from a place of ever growing acceptance can you start to do the real work to change things for the "better", whatever that may mean.

If you could replace smoking with something, what would it be?

It's not how much you drink (hopefully not dehydrated), it's what you drink.

This will sound insultingly simple, but what is your liquid intake like? What do you drink over the course of a week, list your averages for everything.

Do not poach or sabotage other peoples relationships, it's unethical and selfish. We don't condone such behavior around here. Either keep yourself occupied until she is single or better yet, find your own girlfriend.

What you really want is to escape suffering, and there are ways to do that without hurting or killing yourself. You might not be able to see those ways from where you are right now, but if you give yourself time you will able to. Right now you should talk to some friends or family, or to the people right here.

That's not an insult at all lol. It's a statement that accurately reflects how absurd the position is. "Just have completely different behavior and ignore geopolitics and historical dynamics Russia. Then everything will be fine." It says nothing and is naïve.

You dodged a mismatch. It's one thing to have the standard of saying you won't date someone who DOES drink or smoke, but it's not fair to have the opposite standard of EXPECTING someone to drink or smoke. That's a little fucked up.

It's mostly just silly internet lingo, don't invest too much stock into it. It doesn't really have to do that much with reality. If you go out and talk to people you'll find they are way more complicated than any label, identity, or map you could ascribe to them. There is a disconnection that happens online vs real life where you notice things are far more subtle and dynamic. Be an individual and experience life and people in the raw. Connection to reality is found that way, not by maps.

A good answer I like to use for this that defuses this kind of conversation, is give a smirk and say, "Ohhh. You don't wanna know ." That leaves things ambiguous and playfully confuses them. If they keep asking just keep playing coy and say, "You're smart, I'll let you figure it out." These kind of questions are ONLY things you want to know the real answers to once you've been in a deep relationship for a few years when it's no longer consequential. It's going to seriously fuck with you hearing your girlfriend of 2 months has slept with 40 guys, versus her telling you that after you've already lived together for 4 years. Don't let curiosity kill the cat. Relationships can be tricky vulnerable things and get spoiled early on for unpredictable reasons. So you want to play a careful dance of what information you reveal to each other over time, while consciously building solid steps of trust in each stage. Lying and withholding information might have the same desired result, but they are different mechanisms with different ethical impacts. Sometimes you can't withhold information and lying is the most ethical option in order to spare needless suffering. Be careful not to get into these situations too often, but also don't hate yourself when you have to make that choice, or you find out someone had to do it to you.

I would say what's the harm in trying? If it ends up giving you some benefits and it's really just a placebo, then that is still a net positive. With some things when the risk is low, don't hold yourself back from trying because you're waiting to be validated or convinced, especially by science. Personally I'd put it back in the fridge after. Room temperature/heated water may hydrate you, but not cool you down much.

Leaving only the unorganized, unintelligent, resource starved poor to manage and control over. That sounds like an awfully effective way to maintain power indefinitely, which is the ultimate goal of any large, corrupt ego. It's interesting seeing the contrast between collective egos taking place here. From most peoples (particularly Western) POV this whole maneuver seems absolutely insane. That there is nothing to gain from this war, and it's strategically bankrupt on every level. That may be true, but that's only because it's being viewed through the lens of a different value system. From Putin's POV and from his desires, he will take whatever course of action he deems necessary to maintain or increase the level and duration of his power, regardless of the costs he has to pay (and unfortunately make others pay). No cost is too high to pay because everything else is of comparatively lower value. He will sacrifice personal reputation, Russian lives, Ukrainian lives, the future of the economy, Russian geopolitical standing, etc. if the means help him reach his ends. This is what ego does, it exploits. Go wherever you see inequality and suffering, and corruption, and not too far from it you'll be guaranteed to find some fat monkey holding more bananas than they could possibly eat. To truly understand this you just have to play the mental game of imagining what it's like to be him or someone like him, and suddenly it's not so hard to rationalize all the terrible shit you see happening. Of course it's difficult to detach and do that temporary cognitive transplant because we have all our own biases, hate, and own personal and collective value systems we like to hold onto at every moment. So from where most of us stand we righteously brand it as insanity. To discover ones true values and motives, is to begin to understand their actions. If this war doesn't literally end Putin and his most loyal likeminded peers, and they maintain a grasp on their personal positions and wealth for the next 10-20 years until they're dead, then the risk will have paid off and they will have won the selfish game they chose to play. If one doesn't understand that risk it's because they simply don't value the same things. The problem is these games aren't played in a vacuum. Everyone has to suffer the consequences of the selfishness of the few.

What section did you want it in? This already seems like the right one.

Absolutely is! The best cult there is, we love everybody, everyone is welcome, and we have cookies! P.s. The actual answer is no. It doesn't really qualify for a "cult". It's just a youtube channel and website, there is no deeper malicious form or organization going on. You can turn off your computer whenever you want, nobody stopping you. It's not like you are trapped on some farm in rural Pennsylvania somewhere being physically coerced from leaving lol. I will say though if you're worried you're getting attached to it in an unhealthy way to take a break and leave. That's a good way to treat anything.

I'm actually going to be a contrarian and say if it's the 1st date it's a BAD idea to put so much in to try and make it amazing. Chances are you won't be that compatible with most people anyways, so it's not a wise use of resources or emotional energy to invest that much into it. By all means you can make a 1st date a great time, but don't pin so much on it. It does need to have a level of casualness so there isn't that much pressure. Unless you are some sort of gigachad, only a low % of your dates will go to a 2nd one. So does it make sense to put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak? I usually do a 2 part date - cafe/snack first > then something physical like hiking or mini-golf. I find it's useful to sit down for 30-60 minutes to find out if you can even compatible talking to each other first. I've had times where either me or the other person politely cancelled the 2nd part of the date because we didn't have the same values, or that much chemistry socially. This strategic kind of set-up is important if you don't want to waste time or money, which you will end up using a lot of with women

I would say it's really important you stay together and work on maintaining the relationship for the kids, as having a childhood with separated parents is demonstrably terrible for development. People who are raised in single parent households suffer in many ways. It's good to go to therapy immediately, to work out what issues are instead of letting them fester. I think you need to set hard boundaries about what you will tolerate though. She needs to know she can't just use the excuse of the hard conversations making her "depressed" and "uncomfortable" to avoid confronting her own faults, and then childishly go behind your back breaking your trust. There needs to be some sort of consequence or punishment, whatever form that takes. A marriage is a two way street of commitment. You can't have one person working harder than the other all the time, or it just won't work. She needs to understand she doesn't get the choice of not working on her own stuff that negatively influences her behavior, it's not your job to solve that, just support her.

All you can do is keep being a loving and supportive boyfriend. Ultimately it's not your responsibility to "fix" her or make her improve herself, only she can do that.

Redpill is not supported here. If someone starts advertising redpill and preaching enough they will be banned.

Redpill is 5% truth 95% toxic trash. Extract the few lessons you can from it and dispose of the rest like the waste it is. Pay attention to how every redpill teacher and ideologue isn't happy. That should tell you something pretty crucial.

A reminder to everyone to be really careful about who you're giving authority to inform you on geopolitics and delicate societal matters. Yes gurus and spiritual teachers may be able to point to subtle dynamics and larger pictures that many people may not be able to see, but remember we live in a relative world and espousing such things (especially blindly) without a proper level of tact can be highly offensive to some people, and sometimes paradoxically even serve as a way to stunt collective understanding. It's all good and well to hear about platitudes of loving nature of reality and how we should all hug each other and smoke DMT, but let's just say you won't give much of a fuck for those things when T-72's are rolling down your street killing your neighbors and family.

It's absolutely true and anything otherwise is self-hating delusion.

I know you're painting a raw and brutal picture to encourage him to do a ton of work, but things aren't that pessimistic. A lot of girls have neediness in them too and aren't all actualized, not even close actually. They want boyfriends just as much as guys want girlfriends. In fact I'd argue on average girls are more needy than guys because they seem to avoid long periods of downtime between relationships like it's the plague. Girls need a constant social life in place. I just think the threshold of work you have to do to get good results isn't that crazily high, and it can be off-putting to make it seem that way to someone who might be just starting their journey. I would agree there is a mountain to climb if you want the "9s and 10s" though.

I had a long term relationship with a girl once, it was monogamous and there was healthy open communication and understanding about our relationships sex component. We both had really high sex drives but understood we wouldn't always be "on it" at the same times, either because one of us would be busy and didn't want to be distracted, or away from each other for whatever reason. The first half of the relationship was long distance before we moved in together. We agreed with each other that it was totally ok to have solo sex, and we wouldn't get angry or shame the other person for doing it like a lot of couples do. We basically understood that neither of us was doing it because of lack of attraction or satisfaction with each other, because the sex was amazing and frequent. We just knew we had urges to fill and wouldn't beg the other person to participate if they weren't 100% into it. She especially hated morning sex, while I loved it. So needless to say that led to a lot of lonely mornings for me hahaha. However an issue arose one day when the topic came up again, I basically told her that I don't just use my imagination when I'm masturbating, I use porn sometimes (AKA images of other women). This upset her quite a bit and she got angry at me for it. Basically accusing me of some minor form of cheating. I found this kind of perplexing, because we were very straight forward about our loyalty to each other. Being ok with each other masturbating while in the relationship, it seemed implied to me that it's OK to fantasize about other people and not be crossing any boundaries of loyalty, because we'd obviously never act on those fantasies. They are just pixels, with zero emotional involvement. It just seemed very odd to me, like did she expect me to have a jerk off shrine dedicated to her or something when she wasn't in the mood? I never understood it and I don't think the issue was resolved, because to me it seems unhealthy and controlling to expect to police our own or each others minds about the matter, especially after we gave each other that freedom and had clear, healthy boundaries about loyalty. Anyways has anyone else dealt with this kind of thing in a relationship? How did you deal with it in a good way? I'm looking for other perspectives to help me in future relationships. I want to have brutally open communication, but experiences like this make it seem like it's not possible, because most times you can't dig into things explicitly, being extremely explicit spoils connection with women from my experiences. They say they want it, then when you give it to them they don't like it (usually). On the other hand I don't like hiding or reserving things too much either, it feels incongruent and inauthentic.

Also I don't need porn either or see it as necessary, as some people are bringing up the topic in the thread. I view porn kind of like icing, and getting off like a cupcake. Cupcakes are good on their own, you can have one by itself with nothing on it and it's satisfying. However once in a while having a cupcake with some icing can be pretty great too. Icing is tasty. You could eat it by itself if you wanted, but it's very rich and that isn't really what it's for. Icing is supposed to add to the cupcake, not replace it. If you ate only icing you'd get sick pretty quickly. I hope you understand this analogy. Hmmmmmm............. now I kinda want a cupcake (a real one )!