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What's something you've learned about yourself recently?
This can be anything, big or small, serious or funny. What's something you've learned about yourself recently? How and why did it happen?
I was mostly thinking of this in terms of what the pandemic has brought to light for us, as it's undoubtedly caused a lot of self-reflection, but answers don't have to be related to that (though they certainly can be). The question is fully open to any realizations you've had for any reason.
Recently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I spent about a month away from my significant other and it has me.....questioning....my commitment to the relationship. Not in a "I want to see other people" kind of way but just.....I want to be alone. I don't know if I want to be in this relationship anymore.
For some background, we've been together for 11 years. We had plans, for marriage and kids, that were always out of reach due to finances. I watched my mother and father divorce, due to various contributing factors but money was arguably the biggest, and I have refused to marry or have kids until I was in a strong enough financial position to do so.
It took some years but within the last couple, it's become more of a possibility. And for the last couple years, I've grown increasingly disillusioned with my relationship and I think I've been harboring a resentment to having kids. To getting married. It was starting to feel more and more like I no longer wanted those things because I wanted them but because she did and we were at the age where "it's what you're supposed to do". Its like....the closer we got to those goals, the less I actually wanted them because it also meant I was closer to other goals I had never thought possible
I've been struggling with these feelings for the better part of a year now and it's completely frozen my emotional state with regards to my relationship.
But to get more to the point, she went to go stay out with my brother and sister in law in a nearby town about an hour's drive from me. My brother and sister in law were expecting their second child and my brother was going through the fire academy to become a firefighter for a local FD. Given his work environment, and mine, it was decided that it would be safest for an expectant mother, already with a 3 year old, to be isolated as much as possible and my girlfriend would go out there to be an extra set of hands for said 3 year old, who is quite rambunctious, and to help my SIL when my other nephew decided to escape his wretched prison. My brother would stay at my dads which was much closer to his training academy anyway.
For a month, I was pretty much by myself
And it....was....glorious.
Never before had I been alone to such an extent. I grew up with 5 brothers and sisters between two households(Mother/Stepfather, Father/Stepmother) so alone....what even was that? And when I grew up(legally, anyway, mentally and emotionally is another story), and moved out, I always had roommates.
I've never had my own place or my own space. This was the closest I had ever been.
And I think I've realized that's what I've been wanting. Or at least...haven't experienced and thus, feel a certain, growing regret over it. I feel like I'm approaching a certain crossroads in my life where I'm going to have a make a decision over the sort of life I'm wanting for myself and I'm not sure anymore that the whole "marriage and kids" is the one I'm going to choose.
What shocked me the most was that, when she asked me if I missed her, I had to lie and say yes. Because I didn't. We talked nearly every day so it wasn't like we were completely cut off but didn't see each other except for one Sunday night. But I didn't miss her. At all. I was enjoying being alone too much. Just being responsible and accountable only to myself. Not having to argue with her about what to eat for dinner. Not having to do so much damn laundry. Not having her coffee cups left on my computer desk to grow mold because she refuses to take them to the sink. Being able to play on my Xbox or my PC and never having to contend with her for the TV......
I realize this is pretty much the epitome of "first world emotional problems". I've got a good woman who loves me dearly and I'm not happy with it. All things considered, I'm in a much better place than a lot of people right now and I'm not happy and I feel like absolute scum for it.
And I do apologize for rambling.......this was a little more of a dump than I initially intended
I read and processed everything you said and I think that I understand how you're feeling, and have gotten through the "other side" of those feelings in my own relationship, so I would like to offer some perspective for someone who stuck it out. I am not advocating for staying in a relationship or leaving it; I'm advocating for introspection, thought, and counselling with someone to figure out what works for you.
A bit about my perspective: I have been with my wife for a long time. There are occasions where we end up being apart for one or two weeks - she has a conference in Europe, I have a conference in California, she books vacation with the kids during summer while I work or vice versa. I look forward to those times, and I enjoy them a lot. My wife looks forward to those times, and she enjoys them a lot.
We share our lives together, and our lives are better for it, but we are still two people with two slightly different sets of needs and wants, and it is 100% okay to love time on your own and still be in a relationship.
I'm not telling you this to say "just stick it out" but to provide some shared experience in the same sort of matter. It's entirely possible that what you need is being always on your own, but it's also possible that what you need is being sometimes on your own, and if you need to be on your own sometimes then you need to have those times when you're not. I need to be alone sometimes and I have a partner who understands that and has similar needs. Sometimes in the evening we spend some time together, but sometimes we just head for different rooms and do different things, which is like the separate trips, but on a smaller scale.
Some of the specifics of things that you enjoy sounded to me like things that you could enjoy without cutting someone out of your life. Again, I'm not trying to just "fix a problem" but I want to share an alternate point of view, because my wife and I had analogous issues that we worked through over a period of years:
These are all issues that we have had and have worked through, and it's glorious to not have to deal with them, but it's also glorious to have dealt with them. I'm happy to talk about more personal experiences regarding each of these if you want more perspective on them; I'm not just saying "this fixes that" but that these feelings of happiness you get from not dealing with the problem can be achieved through alternate options.
The big issues that I see are the ones that you listed them before these other things that made you happy in your current situation:
I feel like it is important to focus on this part; the feelings of happiness you get from not having to deal with solvable problems likely starts here. If you no longer want to get married for whatever reason, that's a valid way to live your life, and it doesn't mean that you can't share your life with someone - one of my best friends is not married to his partner of 20 years, and they're happy - but it does present a problem if your partner is not on the same page. Similarly, not wanting children is a 100% reasonable thing - my aforementioned friend is childless and happy about it, and happy to be a relatively involved godparent to one of my kids - but it presents a problem if your partner isn't in the same boat. So I would recommend a good level of introspection and then perhaps to get counselling about it with a professional. It's really helpful to be able to speak your thoughts aloud to someone who is going to listen to you non-judgmentally, and give you honest opinions and feedback.
Here is the only part where I will state what I think is an absolute truth and recommend that you listen to advice that I'm giving:
In no uncertain terms: you are not scum for this. You should not base your emotional state on how you are doing relative to other people. It is okay to be in an objectively good place and to feel bad. You are trying to work through a difficult situation wrapped inside a difficult situation with a side order of difficult situation. The fact that other people have other, perhaps more difficult, situations does not make your difficulties any less meaningful to you. There are a lot of potential scummy reactions to the situation you're in, and as far as you have presented to us, you have done zero scummy things. It is okay to feel like this is hard, tragic, sad, or however you feel about it; it is!
Good luck - if you want to chat more, you are welcome to DM me.
I'm not an expert in those things, but if you feel happier without her that with, it doesn't sound so great. That said one month alone isn't long, the novelty factor is probably still at work. I've been living alone for about 5 years and while I enjoy it, it can be a bit straining.
Yea I won’t be making any rash decisions any time soon
But it’s given me a lot to think about.
In my last relationship, there was a series of us both taking extended trips apart from each other for various reasons. This led to a month of me not seeing her, and my initial feeling was relief. I eventually came to the conclusion that I had started to dislike hanging out with my girlfriend because her personality was more extroverted than my introverted self could handle. I had brought up trying to spend some more time alone (we were not living together at the time) so I can have more energy and enthusiasm when we do spend time together, but she could not understand my needs as an introvert.
We made a few attempts at being better about how we spend our free time, but it wasn't until I was completely free of obligation from her (she was in a completely different time zone so I didn't even feel the need to text frequently) where I had a glimmer of the idea that I needed to breakup with her. It was a difficult prospect at the time because on paper the relationship was a good thing for me, but as I discussed this new feeling of uncomfortableness with friends I eventually found myself circling back to the idea that I had to break up with her for our own best interests.
That relationship only lasted a year, so I can't imagine what it must be like to be in one for 11. I think there's a healthy need to have some time apart from your partner, especially the longer you spent together. It gives you an outlet to experience life individually, which you can bring back and share in when you are together again. However, when you desire to be apart while you're still with the person there might be a problem in the relationship. There certainly was one in mine, and I probably spent about 6 months in denial before I actually recognized I needed to do something about it.
Best of luck in your situation. I hope you find the right path that works for you.
I'm 33 and lived with my parents until one year ago. I moved to another city 4 hours away from were i was living.
I didn't start living alone, i got in a house with a bunch of people to save money and not buy so much stuff first. I started living completely alone 4 months ago.
It is awesome. I'm growing as a person, i feel happy and independent and i started thinking what you are thinking.
I'm in a relationship of 3.5 years. I come back almost every weekend to see her and my family, but when i'm alone at my new home i feel more free and happy.
Now with this COVID thing i'm back at home with my parents and i'm a mess, but i think everybody is a little depressed because of this pandemic.
Anyway... I attribute that to the novelty of living all by yourself and not needing to compromise for anything. I don't dislike being with my SO. We get along well. It's just that i've been living with people for 32 years and only now i'm learning how to live alone.
Now my SO will move to another city to live alone too. I think she will have more problems because she dislikes being alone even in her house when her parents are away, but i hope she can learn to appreciate it.
Probably every person who lives with another one for some time have the same feeling when they are away. Is not the first time i read about this.
I too prefer to have alone time to do my things, so i think this has to be clear if you choose to stay with her and live together in the future.
Anyway, i don't really know if being alone in my case is better or worse. What i know is that i like her and we are good together and this is hard to find nowadays. Just offering my perspective, but in the end it's up to you.
Give it half a year or more living alone and see if things change.
Going through the Crisis Text Line training, I've realized that the place my need to "fix" people comes from isn't entirely good. The desire to minimize my own empathetic suffering leads me to stop listening and dive in with solutions as soon as I think I understand the root of someone's issues. That's both dismissive and counterproductive - I'm not capable of reading minds. I think I would have been a more capable engineer and manager, as well as a better friend and spouse, if I'd grasped that earlier.
The shutdowns just kinda feel like an unexpected vacation period to me, which is a pretty good indicator of how much I engage with the world around me outside the Internet. This is not a particularly recent observation to me nor what I intended or chose/would choose for myself, but it's pretty telling nonetheless.
I definitely feel very lucky right now. Because of the pandemic I'm now requirement to work remotely, which means I now live in a cabin instead of the suburbs of San Francisco.
So since all classes are online, I went ahead and did 21 credits. I FUCKING LOVE THE STRESS. All stress is not created equal. The stress caused by the lies perpetrated by my inner dialogue is not the same as the stress of deadlines. I prefer and thrive with deadline stress, and I never knew that. My inner dialogue has been silenced. SILENCED. No longer is there no point to any of it. No longer do I wake up imagining a bullet going through my head (really, wtf is that, I thought I was okay). No longer do I despair over our species fucking each other over. Like really, none of it enters my consciousness except right now when I am trying to show the difference. I've always been happier when working hard, but I never knew why, I never knew what the mechanism was. I need a fire under my ass.
I also found out I do not know what to say to people when they are grieving. My grandmother died recently, and though it didn't bother me, it did bother my half sister. I really felt for her and feel like I let her down because I didn't know what to say. Then my mom had to put her dog down, and I didn't know what to say to her either. It's weird because I didn't really feel anything about either of those things happening except that I was letting people down. Once upon a time I had a saying, "I don't do death." I didn't do death because I never got close enough to anyone for their death to matter. I have kids and a husband, so I probably do death now.
Anyway those are recent things I have learned about myself recently
I'm really unhappy, and I don't know why.
Have you thought about making some lifestyle changes? Exercising?
Depression can form from a lack of sunlight (Vitamin D) and can lead to lack of exercise (which may also be a cause). With everyone quarantined in their respective homes all day, most of the world is not getting enough of either. I know it's been difficult to get outside to exercise (although I do go biking every now and then), but I've been taking Vitamin D supplements for years to help stave off depression (among other benefits).
I've also found my sleep schedule to be completely chaotic, and I think part of it is attributable to disrupting my circadian rhythm due to lack of sunlight, and higher than normal energy due to lack of exercise. It's something I had been trying to work on prior to quarantine, but boy is it apparent how much the simple act of going outside can change your whole mood.
Our biology was not adapted for a quarantine lifestyle.
Agree. I'm not sleeping well at all. Sleeping late and waking up early.
Without the gym, walking everywhere and my vitamin d supplement, i'm a mess.
I'm not gonna lie and say that i'm hating not have to work, but the trade off is not worth it.
That's awesome! What are you most excited about? I didn't major in CS but I always wanted to. The various math pre-reqs seemed daunting at the time.
It's exciting indeed, and what makes it stand out to me has always been the creative approach that you have to take when designing a program; it's something of an art. Many STEM majors I know chose their field to escape the inherent subjectivity of the humanities, but I can assure you that the sciences are not nearly as "objective" as they claim to be. Programming may be guided by a few principles that make certain approaches "better" than others (like a script's efficiency), but the problem-solving techniques that you employ while writing code are not really that much different from the argumentative/conceptual techniques you'd use to structure an essay, or write a mathematical proof. You can definitely have a lot of fun with these things.
Some of your peers may erroneously imply otherwise, but you're not expected to know how to be a full-stack developer by the time you're 22. Coming into the major with some background in Python or another language is a good start for sure. If you've taken discrete math already, that will help a lot with any logic you use. I personally think that it can be valuable to take a computer organization class early on (even if it's not required); learning about how the circuits fundamentally work, why memory operates in the way it does, etc. makes some of the things you do in high-level languages like Python and Java less abstract. It's also just pretty cool. Find your niche and focus on whatever part of the field you're most interested in, though.
Don't worry. The point of studying computer science is to learn computer science, right? So it's not as if your peers will all be computer science experts, they'll be in the same boat you are.
If your university is anything like mine was then knowing how to make a basic Python script already puts you above average.
In many cases in the context of my internal monologue, sentences of the form "I should go on more walks" can effectively be replaced by "I enjoy going on walks!".
When doing this replacement while doing the thing I think I should be doing more, it's a reminder to step out of a past and future I'm feeling guilty for not achieving, and into a present that I'm enjoying.
Nice tip!
I’m doing something similar, replacing ‘should’ with ‘if x then y’ statements. I.e “I should go for a walk” turns into “if I go for a walk then I will feel more relaxed.”
I felt the ‘should’ sometimes hid my true reasons. Forcing the perspective change helps me keep honest with myself.
I guess it was something I already knew to some extent, but... holy shit do I hate studying. This is a stereotypical high schooler complaint I suppose. Before lockdown, I could just kinda absorb stuff in class and not really have to do any extra studying outside of class, but now, that's all there is. I guess it's better that I get used to studying now instead of getting blindsided later. At least thats what I tell myself as I cry my way through notes and PDFs and textbooks
Just to offer a perspective. I was like that. Never did anything and got good grades. Until i didn't because the subjects became much harder and i never learned how to study.
Learning how to study is something that will help you forever. I learned late at 30 and i regret not doing it when i was a kid.
The desire to push myself to the limit is at the root of many of my failures. I have severe ADHD, and every time I start something I want to dedicate 4-6 hours a day. That doesn’t work, and I give up stressed and burnt out.
So I established a cutoff: I won’t study more than 2.5 hours a day. I can and will increase the amount of time from there, but only when my brain acquires enough resilience to deal with the extra load.
2.5 hours may look like nothing, but it’s a great achievement for me.
I honestly kind of like the quarantine, or at least the work from home kinda thing. Not because l can perform properly, but because uni extended deadlines and expectations and pressure are generally lower.
For the first time in years I actually have creative output.
So generally today's society is too stressful for me l guess. Not sure how that'll ever work if l have a job, but l'm hoping l can do less stressed work.