Yes. I was exasperated with my wife many years ago and scolded her while pounding the table (and no, I don’t mean like a lunatic). She replied, “Finally”. I don’t recall any other “shit tests” during our time together. If I recall correctly, it occurred from her constantly overbooking our weekends when I had already made it clear that I wanted her to stop mapping out plan after plan after plan. My social life felt like it was becoming more tiresome than work. At first I thought, “Yeah, cool. Meeting up with people, going to events, spending time with other couples and family.” Maybe “finally” indicated that she wanted me to do some planning. I’m not sure.
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Another created female phenomenon. Points “ledgers” with skewed data.
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if you have 30 minutes here’s a (rather charismatic and energetic) divorce lawyers Q and A on divorce… which contains lots of interesting thoughts on divorce (rates, men v women divorcing, alimony, etc…), marriage, relationships, and fatherhood
Interesting thought on weddings being a waste… “if the first time everyone who loves you is in a room together is your funeral, you’re a fucking idiot”
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I’ll check it out. I’ve listened to James Sexton a few times, the first one being on the Soft White Underbelly channel. He routinely says “marriage is an outdated technology” while completely glossing over the negative consequences of the abolishment of marriage, some of which are covered in the video I last posted.
IHadn’t heard of him until YouTube thought I needed to watch that video yesterday. Which is a bit weird considering I have never looked for that kind of content before, but maybe it was because I watched your video before and they snuck that in there
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Symbolism, ritual and going inside of oneself to buy in to outwardly professing a commitment to another in front of community in a way that indirectly carries a sense of accountability broader than self all hold weight differently, and deeper, than dividing up assets as a contractual view of marriage. It’s inking commitment in an official vs. whimsical “when if feels right” sort of way.
It doesn’t surprise me a divorce lawyer would have a jaded view of marriage but the buy-in of marriage is half the magic.
I’ve been with my wife for a very long time. Such a length of time that if I take the time we’ve been together and look backwards from the point I met her, it would take me to childhood. I’m a continuation of the same person I was then, but am not at all the same at the same time.
Through those years I had many experiences, tried new things, quit things, learned, developed and morphed. Literally from childhood to adulthood. If something wasn’t serving me or felt like a burden for something else, it was easy enough to cut ties and let it sail.
It’s not all that different in my marriage, except for the professed commitment, except there is no leaving it when it feels inconvenient, tired or even at odds. It would take something very egregious. I am not the same person I was when I met her and then went forward in time either, neither is she, and we are not the same couple. We’ve grown through good and bad, thick and thin et cetera. And importantly there have been times when holding to the commitment we made was louder than the love in that effort. Most of that was an internal sense of duty to commitment, but given the wedding and outward profession I can willingly admit there was outside pressure to not fail too.
This is the piece that is missing from unmarried “life partners”. There hasn’t been a “burning of the ships” and true commitment. It’s top level love and emotional involvement, which is important and necessary, but there’s nothing for when the bottom falls out, or the love feels stagnant. Not really. Those late night promises during the early stage fluffy times don’t mean shit when you can just toss your TV in the trunk and drive off.
The unromantic side of marriage is that you’ve made a commitment to stay during these stretches, and contractually/publicly put your integrity to that on the line.
I can’t be convinced unmarried life partners hold this same level of accountability to either the relationship or to self. These relationships are always tagged with a safety release valve disguised as philosophical non participation in an outdated institution. It’s easier to sell that way.
The problem with marriage today isn’t that it’s outdated, it’s that we’ve allowed it to be as casual as dating, or life partnering.
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This! 
Whole post is spot on.
The divorce guy has a slew of cynical and witty zingers on marriage. Surprise.
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I need to go back to this, because “long relationship filled with abuse” is not fair to my ex, and I try to be honest, with others and myself. And I post about these things because I feel that online echo chambers are incredibly destructive. I want to add whatever balance I can. SO: the issue with my ex was that he was very externalized in his thinking and assumptions. If he was unhappy, something or someone caused it. He also looked for solutions outside of himself. I see a lot of that on these boards; externalization of blame. (You are not one of these externalizers, Njord.) He was also pessimistic and depressive by nature. More and more as he got older.
The positives of him were profound. He was an incredibly hard worker, at work and at home. We had four stair-step children, a labrador retriever, and a cat at any given time. We hosted holidays for his family easily, working together. We took our four children to the beach every year, starting when the youngest was 1 and the other three were 2, 4, and 6. We rollerbladed through parks with two kids in a double stroller and one in a single, with the oldest riding on training wheels beside us. As they got older we hiked and played kickball together. We took our bikes on trail rides. We built a house filled with light and hosted parties there. He built and sold a business, allowing us to relocate from Dallas/Ft Worth to a 200 year old house on 5 acres in New England. I was a SAHM and did college and grad school as such, now with medium aged kids, a labrador, and a cat. We all cleaned house during those years. We were a well-oiled and effective parenting machine.
Life is more complicated than the internet would have us think.
The dark side of that marriage is known here. His anger and outbursts were present throughout that really golden time. Along and along I discovered infidelity, squandering of both the significant money he made and also money my father left when he died - some of which I locked into a trust, which was all that remained at the end despite my eventually earning money as well. There were fights about money, which I never won. His untreated depression kept getting worse, causing the slide of his career and earning power as his reckless spending increased. His sense of himself as victimized because I wouldn’t swing. All valid reasons, in my opinion, to leave. That guy had everything, as far as I can tell, before he lost interest in caring for or about it. Our kids (all successful, 3 of the 4 homeowners) seem to agree that the divorce was justified, though they may regret that I didn’t continue to stabilize him, which put them on the hook eventually.
May I ask on what authority you say this? Because you say, essentially, that “absolutely, the self-aware ones will say so” and I say “no, this is silly, all people behave poorly at times and their partner has to either react to it or not.” My authority is my exposure to vast numbers of people who are not as exposed to these online tropes as you and I and who never use these terms or seem to observe them. And also maybe my master’s degree in behavioral sciences. Why such certainty on your part? Which is not even to say that you stand no chance of being correct, but…??
And since I’m here, is this meant to be serious? Scorekeeping as a female construct, along with cheating? Lol.
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For a period of time, I listened to Laura Schlessinger’s radio show while waiting for kids to come out of school or sports or what have you. One day she said “Commitment is what keeps you together while love comes and goes.” It’s stuck with me.
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Sounds like a bumpy road for sure and I appreciate the context.
But again, women will absolutely emotionally manipulate a scenario or person to gauge response. This really isn’t as strange a phenomenon as it’s being made out.
Do women hold and draw on long gone disagreements and events as argument fuel to gaslight with? Yes.
You do it on these boards 
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“Shit test” isn’t an online trope, it’s been around forever. Lol.
Maybe a difference is that given your role, you’re skewed to seeing the underdeveloped and non-self aware contingency. Or one that would take high offense at personal ownership of a toxic behavior.
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Anyways,
How did ya’ll get your kid to start shitting in a toilet?
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Regarding “shite tests”, is it really a female specific thing? Or relegated to partnerships?
My understanding is that within friend groups, men tend do things like come up with nicknames that push boundaries or play practical jokes on each other as a way to see who can stick around.
Does that not count as a “shite test”?
Also, a couple of my male friends have pushed my buttons, then said more or less “I like to challenge you”. Maybe in those cases they were trying to cover their own mistake, but it seemed like an odd way to do so.
100’s of attempts over several months or years lol, That’s one of those you look back on and are glad it’s over
Though I think many people will disagree with me, what you wrote is why I consider women to be in only two relationship-status categories: single or married. The way I see it, the constructs of “boyfriend and girlfriend,” “relationships,” and “dating” mean jack shit in most, though not all, cases, and have been huge causes of the arrested development and infantilization of young people and the fertility and divorce crises.
Under “modern” conditions, to get girlfriends, men have had to take them from others because many women are never actually single.
“Single,” “relationships,” “dating,” are variations of having one foot in the sexual market and one foot out.
My closest friend since eight years old, now 47, a kind, very good-looking and tall guy, was an incel until 21 years old (before the term meant womanless madman). He had three girlfriends over time. The last one became his wife. He met all three while they had “bf’s”.
A 24-year-old woman he works with confided in him that she has a “bf” who she has no intention of marrying. So when someone else comes along, she’s going to dump this placeholder of hers. A “relationship”.
The first woman I screwed had a “bf” I had no clue about until he found out and called me up to scream at me. His words were so garbled and the only sentence I understood was “You f— my girlfriend!”
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Let them know that they are loved.
This solves everything.
Don’t try to force it!
Present the toilet as an option, then just be patient. When little one is comfortable and ready, they’ll hop right up there. Until then, making a big deal out of using the toilet can just upset them and make the process take longer.
Getting them around a kid you uses the bathroom and not diapers can be motivating.
This strikes me again as a generalization. You are using examples of a behavior that some women engage in to say that its a universal applied to all women.
To extrapolate the inference in your post, you are basically saying no woman with a boyfriend is committed to them (to the point that another guy cant woo them away while they are in the relationship)
And conversely, no married woman should ever cheat or be woo’d away because they arent in the sexual market place (because they are married, and not merely boyfriend/girlfriend). And yet married women leave their husbands and cheat, so they are still “in the marketplace” even in a marriage, no? Theyre just in the back room and not on the shelf maybe.
Neither of those strike me as universally correct, even if there are instances of them happening.
I watched that video I posted and a few of his shorts, I came away with the opposite impression. His familiarity with divorce actually leads him to be quite insightful about why relationships break down, and he actually says that one of the big problems in society is that its not “cool” to take about what makes a relationship work so no one really talks about it with each other.
Have any of us? Have any of us (men) had a conversation with our male friends or talked about how to make our current relationship better/sustain while its going well already? Or do we only talk about stuff when shit hits the fan?
He mentions that you should build up your partner and not tear them down, keep doing the little things that make your partner feel valued, You shouldnt try to “win” an argument with your spouse, etc… Hes actually not really big on the zingers, and most of his content seems to be how to avoid a divorce by making your relationship stronger NOW instead of waiting for it to crumble
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Haha fair enough!
That’s pretty much what I do so I’ll just keep on with it. He’s been pee trained since he was 2-1/2 (he’s coming up on 4), has had only 2 accidents since then, and hasn’t needed to sleep in a diaper since then also.
Since he is not in diapers anymore, he just tells me when he has to poop and brings me a diaper. I usually know when it’s coming cause it’s after breakfast, dinner, or both. My rule is though, that he must do his business in the bathroom.
It’s funny, piss training him was super easy and took literally 3 days. Every time I change a shit diaper I think to myself, “Someday I’m gonna miss this.”
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It kinda does. Like a mild hazing of sorts. Done with good humor and no serious injury it does kinda sort out the people you don’t want around, and keep who you do want around.
One place I’ve been lacking on fitting in is with drinking and drugs. Like, if you party like us, you’re one of us. If you don’t, you aren’t. That goes a long way with work and social groups.
It really depends on how, why, and to what degree.
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