August27th

I grew up in a city of 1M, moved to a city of 100K, moved to a town of 7K, and then back to the city of 100K at my wife's behest. I was happiest in the town, because it was uncrowded and affordable.

she explains that life in the city isn't all that great and I ain't missing out because most people aren't more social in cities than in our town or small city next to our town.

Your wife is completely right, in my opinion. Quite frankly, it comes down to what you make of it. If you don't make the effort to make friends, it doesn't matter where you are, you are going to be lonely. The bigger the city, there is going to be a better opportunity to meet people of your type, sure, but the odds of getting together regularly, let alone finding them, are slim because everyone is busy working to afford where they are.

it would be awesome to have a gym in the same block, a grocery store under my flat, a nice bar or coffee around the corner where I could socialize with others. But then my wife comes again with reality: "And it all costs money.

You are right, it would be awesome. And your wife is right, that setup is expensive AF. The people living that life are trust fund beneficiaries. But you should know the coffee shop is just a whirlwind of all the other people getting in, getting their morning stimulant, and getting out to get to their job to afford it all.

The time to have the city experience that you are wishing for was more than 30 to 40 years ago, when houses were affordable, and there was more free time, so you could afford to get together, and the odds of other people being available was greater again, because they could afford it too.

Your fomo is not just for another place, but for a bygone era.

There are many things I also don't like about the city, for example sometimes the smell, the homeless, the traffic, and I sometimes think I'd still need a car because of groceries, visiting family in the country side where I live now so I couldn't sell my car anyways.

Please believe me that this is the reality of city life today. I'm so glad you notice it. All of it is wearing.

I visit the city to go shopping for clothes or just eat out I am always glad I can leave again. [...] I was always happy leaving the city and I still am happy when I can leave after a whole day in the city

IMO, you are getting a taste of the wear.

I feel like I [am not allowed an] opinion on this subject and this makes me crazy.

This is really where the problem lies I think. You have a dream you can't shake, but all external signs are pointing to it not being a good one.

Can I give you some perspective from your wife's side? My wife is a bit like you, trying to move to a bigger center for dream reasons.

It drives me crazy when she talks about moving to a bigger center that is unaffordable, and is not what it is cracked up to be. She even knows it, but still insists. Her dreams are not founded in the reality of our times, but that's just my opinion. And it is wearing to have the same conversation about it over and over.

From one married guy to another, if your sex life, home life, and job life is otherwise good, for the love of god, try to invest in inventing something social where you are already at, to fill that missing piece. The city is a shitty, expensive, noisy place now. If your relationship with your wife is good, and you trust your wife, just believe her, she has your best intentions at heart. If you have all of that, and live away from it all, man, I envy you deeply.

Sorry to hear that. My ex was neglected in a bunch of ways as a child, and both her parents are narcissists. She may never fully heal from that, but she is better now than when we were together, she took the time to focus on herself better. That said, I'd never go back to her in a million years, I will never be able to be the person she needs. I can see the person she was supposed to be, she can too, but there's nothing I can do, the damage was done before I even met her.

Don't feel pressured to reply, reply more, nor even at all if you aren't feeling it. I understand, and you owe no obligations. If I got you amped up, I apologize. If I didn't, don't worry that I apologized. Just chill and take it easy. You take care of you, one step at a time.

Don't let your RSD get to you in this post. Convince yourself I wrote this for another person.

Bro, you are in a bad way, and I'm going to talk to you like no therapist ever would, because they have certain obligations and will dance around things until you finally get it on your own while they waste years of your life waiting for you to do so. I have ADHD and was in a relationship with a person with undiagnosed (at the time) BPD, which was no picnic, and some of your writings give me flashbacks.

I will be blunt with you, because I wish someone had been blunt with me and gave me direct advice. Get out, the relationship is not worth it, and the really unfortunate thing is that you can only really comprehend this properly once you are out.

If I could give you a gift, it would be to advance your life 15 years into the future when you are well out of this relationship -- the moment you finally snapped you were so fed up and realized there was more to life is all but a distant memory -- so that you finally have some perspective and relief. Your future self is glad that's all in the past, and that you are finally safe and free of the toxicity you were living in.

Most of the time, it's good.

I wish you knew how truly miserable this phrase is. You think you know, but you don't, I can tell from how you defend things. I used to tell myself that same thing.

Our fucked up brains are just great at causing unintentional harm from time to time.

Stop trying to justify it. That's what I did. I can tell you this is a bad defense. Things are much better with a partner without a fucked up brain, or at least a lesser one. I'd bet money that you'd find your brain less fucked up without hers around. Just because you are both fucked up doesn't mean you can help each other, it makes it worse. Just because you are both fucked up, doesn't mean you deserve each other or are right for each other even with therapy.

Our increasing [ability] to better express ourselves [...] amplifies our ability to hurt one another

Isn't that telling you something?

I'm madly in love with her and she with me

Yes, and? So what? This can be true even while she is still hurting you and you are miserable. People think this is mutually exclusive, but it isn't. "I'm madly in love with her and she with me" what does this even matter if you are miserable?

She [...] regrets [things] deeply. There was a lot of good that came out of our previous attempt at couples therapy and she's made concrete changes, in addition to apologies.

That's nice and all, but what good is this if you are still getting hurt and are miserable?

You have been patient, more than patient. You think there is an end in sight to your misery while remaining in this relationship, but it's an illusion.

In my opinion, you've been strung along enough. You've given it way more than enough time for you to be happy, it's time to try something new, something different, free of the encumbrances of this relationship. It's probably scary to you. I know it was for me. But damn if it isn't eye opening to be in a relationship where you aren't being made miserable, your partner genuinely cares about you, and the physicality is a match. It's exciting, refreshing, freeing. You can start fresh and put all that you've learned to use with someone who genuinely makes you happy, and you do the same for them. Things can get better.

The wrong way. *flip* The wrong way. *flip* The right way.

Fuck's sake.

Exactly

Same old, same old

Translation: still stuck in some horrible cycle

Tell me you are too oblivious to implement CI/CD without telling me you're too oblivious to to implement CI/CD. Their builds and packaging should have been fully automated if it was such a pain. If you can make a Mac version of any software, you can make a Linux version. The debate internally was likely management being dumb as rocks and overruling anyone who actually knows anything.

I have not read your whole comment yet, but I apologize for my heated reaction. Your post came off as oil and gas promotion to me, but that's clearly not the case. Thank you for your thoughtful response. I will read it more fully later.

Edit: thank you to people upvoting this comment, but I do regret it. The only good I now see in it is that it spurned further discussion and clarity. If you upvote this post, do read and upvote the parent comment and reply comment from anon6789, there are good insights there, at the very least.

Then any carbon removed from the atmosphere gets released when the pellet fuel is burned. Add in the carbon from making the pellets and all the shipping and cutting down the trees and replanting, and we're worse off than when we started. The net pollution they say is greater than coal or natural gas.

This makes no sense.

The net pollution they say is greater than coal or natural gas.

If "they" are oil and gas corporations, I'd say that too, if I were them. Any move against our bottom line, or competition to our subsidies is fair game for attack.

any carbon removed from the atmosphere gets released when the pellet fuel is burned

How is that wood's problem exactly? How did that carbon get into the atmosphere in the first place to be turned into wood? If there had been no coal, gas, or oil, that atmospheric carbon would have been from burning wood in the first place, making it a net cycle of wood. It grows in short order regardless of what we do with it; it's renewable.

There's a competitor to fossil fuels, returning carbon to the atmosphere, it's been burned literally forever, and oooh suddenly it's the one to be concerned about, not the other carbon emitters that can only emit, never absorb? Come on.

carbon from [harvest, manufacturing, packaging, shipping] ... we're worse off than when we started

As if the extraction, manufacturing, packaging, and shipping for fossil fuels doesn't emit vast amounts of carbon? If wood was harvested, manufactured, packaged and shipped with renewable energy, what's the problem? Why couldn't it be? If fossil fuels were harvested, manufactured, packaged and shipped with renewable energy, I'd say "cut out the middle man" and just use the renewables directly for energy. Is that your beef?

In that case, let's harvest that wood anyway, turn it into charcoal, and sink it to the bottom of the ocean to get carbon back out of our atmosphere permanently. If you think that's a ridiculous undertaking, it's even crazier to think about the absurd amounts of carbon we are digging up and plain dumping into the atmosphere every day, and that wasn't complained about first, before complaining about wood of all things. We don't just need to stop emitting new carbon, we need to get it back out of the atmosphere forever, and that's not even on the radar? Hmm.

What do you suggest we do? All I'm seeing is rhetoric is that trees are a grift, while suspiciously overlooking the fossil fuel subsidy grift.

Evolution doesn't demand anything, it's literally about adaptation. The expectation of infinite growth inside an obviously finite system is the death cult.