Goals >interesting job >wife >stable family >not

Most people here will tell you no, but that's not true. It will be hard to find a good balance between all of those, and part of finding that balance will have to do with how well you can realize not everything is perfect. Learn to be happy with what you have, and I'm not saying you need to settle or lower your standards but you need to be realistic. It's a fine line though.

That being said, it's hard to achieve all that in life. The roller coaster has to come down sometimes.

>>17916939

possible to happen yes, but possible to achieve? well its kidn of hard to say you can achieve a wife or stable family.

you ahve to remember that despite all the psychology books out there, there aren't very many cures to the human mind. you can't control whether or not your kid comes out with a physical defect, much less a personality flaw that tears the family apart.

stable is definitely different than 'perfect' but its the kind of thing thats hard to sit down and appreciate.

same thing goes for wife. i mean you can get a wife tomorrow if you lowered your standards. a lot of men say they 'cant get a gf' but what they really mean is that they can't get one who is attractive to them. they refuse to date within their league and call others shallow for it but not themselves.

the problem with making a 'wife' a goal is that you're just trying to check something off of a list. you could get married tomorow and hate it for the rest of your life and miss out on everything the world has to offer... including the possibility of a wife you actually like.

unfortunately the top two causes of marriage are 'im pregnant' and 'well we've been dating for a whole year, i guess we have no choice but to get married'.

>not being absolutely miserable

those three things above won't cure misery, so consider figuring out WHY you're miserable... or even if you're actually miserable and just not wallowing in misery.

>>17916966
My parents divorced. A lot of people who are married seem absolutely miserable and I don't want to end up like them. I really think the key is marring someone who isn't extremely flawed and has some values aside from just doing what is fun.
I just want to be good enough to earn all of those things.

>>17917005

>i think the key is marrying someone who isn't extremely flawed and has some values aside from just doing what is fun

thats one of the best values to have in my opinion, but perhaps you and I are not meant to get married.

one thing you have to remember is that we live in a more self interested tiem. i dont want to call it selfish because I personally like it, but it does cause us to leave relationships instead of fixing them. and perhaps thats okay, because despite how romantic we make old school marriage out to be, it really wasn't. it wasn't two people over coming their differences and finding a way to make it work. it was generally one partner simply giving in over and over again for the other person. not always the women either, there's quite a history of men becoming more or less subservient to their wives.

the point im making is that back then they had very little choice in who they married or if they could escape it. we do now, and its about the same, people still end up miserable.

so maybe marriage has little to nothing to do with whether or not you're miserable. I think trying to project what someone will be like twenty years into the future when you are barely 20 years old is pretty silly. I think projecting 5 years into the future when you've only dated someone for 2 is also very silly.

i just dont understand why people think they need to find something that works now and say 'THIS WILL TOTALLY LAST FOREVER HAHA, WHY WOULDN'T IT?'.

maybe, just maybe, even the greatest person in the world, the people you think are more than 'good enough' to earn those things, still don't get them. cuz the universe doesn't operate on whats earned or deserved. the universe doesn't say "OP is just, therefore he gets blessed with obedient children''. it does not say 'OP is noble, therefore his wife will always have feelings for him'. nor does it guarantee that you will always have feelings for your partner.

>>17917005
>>17917037

all the universe can do is continue to hurdle whatever it has at some. some of it good, some of it bad. and all we can do is react.

you can react badly, and say its a punishment, or you can be a good human and face adversity while doing your best to simply be happy.

you want to be a conscious human with free will to live happily. but you want a loving wife who never leaves and a stable home life, and those two things contradict free will. they are things to be desired, yes, but ultimately to try and force that sort of situation takes away the free will of your wife and children, essentially creating a dollhouse where you're the only human, and the others are just toys there to act out your fantasies.

people with bad marriages and horrible kids still manage to turn out happy. people with great marriages and amazing kids still manage to be pretty miserable.

the two are unrelated. its what you do with what you got, good or bad, that decides how you feel.

>>17917037
I think that someone else lives their life just seeking out "fun" then you will always be unsatisfied. Your value system isn't any different than a drug addict. I would rather work at building something and fulfilling my obligation that I have to other people.

It takes two people to make a marriage work and I think you are right about the problems with the traditional life commitment marriage because it gives someone an excuse to stop trying.
Isn't it wrong to break up your family and destroy your children's stable home simply because your don't have strong enough feelings for your partner?
>>17917046
I get what you are saying about controlling other people. You can't really control kids so it is possible that the end up being pieces of shit. I am just holding out hope that it is possible to find someone with similar values.

>>17916939
The last three are pretty damn common and they all have more to do with perspective than achievement.

>>17917079

the biggest issue here is you are creating a clash in your own logic. you're two big things here are

>stable family
>have a wife

and then

>not be miserable.

but if you are staying with someone you dont have strong feelings for (or worse, have come to hate) then unfortunately, you're going to be miserable.

you are also being a bit too insistent that divorce is the end all for kids.
>isn't it wrong to break up your family and destroy your children's stable home simply because you don't have strong feelings for your partner

is a very narcissitic way to word that. when you could also word it as
>its okay to be with someone who isn't fulfilling you anymore, and create a larger sense of home.

im biased because I come from a family of divorce, and while it was sad, it is not a parents job to prevent real world sadness. it is, as you said, to provide a stable home. divorce doesn't have to be any rockier than simply moving. military kids move every year, so why can't a civilian child like myself adjust to staying with mom most of the time, but seeing dad every week / whenever i want?

as long as the parents livei n the same town and preferrably close enough, its still stable.

what isn't 'stable' is coming home to your parents arguing every night.

unfortunately even when two people truly love each other, it doesn't mean things can work out. wanting to put up with it for the sake of kids wears thin really fast.

try not to pigeonhole yourself by saying that divorce has to be entirely destructive. plenty of people come from divorced homes and come out fine. plenty of people come from marriages and come are shitty fucking people.

its how you use it to teach your children that matters most. beyond that, your child will simply react the way they are designed to, something even parents can't take blame/credit for.

>>17917079

as far as fun goes, i disagree. as long as you aren't short sighted. just because you seek out fun doesn't mean you go for the nearest simplest option of fun. THAT is definitely drug abuser behavior.

but i find it fun to give /adv/ice. to make movies. hell i find it fun to work at my office. you yourself seek an 'interesting' job. and that's just barely not a synonym for fun.

you have to not be too short sighted, you need to be willing to work for future fun, but if you are foresaking fun simply because its 'DRUG ABUSER BEHAVIOR' than you're goign to have a hard time not being miserable.

im a child of divorce. im extremely successful, and im the happiest person i know. i dont have a wife or kids, not sure i ever will.

im not perfect, nor is my life, but even after all ive suffered through this year, I'm still happier than most of the people i know and meet. im not only happy, I'm very fulfilled by what I created and continue to create.

>>17917101
I understand divorcing because you hate your partner, but if the situation is still tolerable don't you think you should stay by their side and hold your family together?

>im biased because I come from a family of divorce, and while it was sad, it is not a parents job to prevent real world sadness. it is, as you said, to provide a stable home. divorce doesn't have to be any rockier than simply moving. military kids move every year, so why can't a civilian child like myself adjust to staying with mom most of the time, but seeing dad every week / whenever i want?

I came from a divorced household and while moving constantly wasn't that bad it was disruptive. If I forgot a book at one house then I wouldn't be able to do my homework and nowhere ever felt like home. It felt like I was constantly traveling.

When I come home from college both of my parents are dating other people and it is uncomfortable being around them.


You said that you are okay, but are you really? You have this view of relationships where you should break them off if it isn't completely perfect anymore. Maybe the reason you have that view is because you come from divorced parents and have never seen a successful marriage.

>>17917105
>im a child of divorce. im extremely successful,
>im the happiest person i know.
>i dont have a wife or kids, not sure i ever will.

Don't you think that is a little messed up? You were raised in a divorced household so now you are only thinking about yourself?

>>17917137

>if its tolerable

yes, if its tolerable, but how do you define that? logically speaking people arent saying 'my situations tolerable but im getting a divorce for the fuck of it'.

but again that depends on your definition of tolerable. people get divorces cuz they reach an impasse.

>but are you really

yes

>you have this view of relationsihps hwere you shoudl break them off if it isn't compeltely perfect anymore

again, you're jumping to extremes. first you said divorce destroys a childs stable home. now you're saying that just because i dont believe in marriage it means leaving soemone when its not perfect.

thats not the case at all. i am a flawed person. so are my last few girlfriends. i didn't leave because they werent perfect. if that was the case, we never would have dated to begin with. hell my last girlfriend was arguably a step down from anyone i have ever dated, but i pursued her relentlessly because despite her flaws, she set my heart on fire.

and for the first two years we were able to work through what troubles we had, but by the end of the third year we realized that neither of us were happy anymore. not for any single one reason, but we just werent the match we were before.

other relationships ended more so over arguments of extreme incompatibility. and others ended for stupid or silly reasons.

but they didn't end just because soemone wasn't perfect. they ended because we were no longer happy together, for one reason or another. most of the time (especially after a long investment) we try to make things wokr. but wanting things to work out doesn't make them work out.

>now you're only thinkibng about yourself

i think about lots of people. your post in particular is about ending misery and having a stable family. my intent here is to show you that the two aren't related, and how having one can mean not having the other.

i have family and friends and other relationships where i give unselfishly.

>>17917137
>>17917157

just because i dont know if i will have kids doesn't make me selfish. how can it be, they don't even exist.

you act like its wrong to be happy just because I'm happy by myself.

>>17916939

i have all these things. i am a computer programmer. i take problems that are hard and annoying and time-consuming and make them easy and automated using computers.

>>17917168
Is it worth getting into that field or is it flooded?

>>17917217

every field is flooded.

>>17917217

the field is flooded with morons who take 2 weeks to do something i can do in 2 hours. if you are naturally inclined to solve puzzles, do math, think outside the box, its a great choice. if not, youll have to struggle long hours with people like me. you can still make a living but its not glamorous.

>>17917250
I can code well, but it always seems to easy to me and that eventually the market will self correct and salaries will drop. I just don't see how I will maintain a comparative advantage that keeps me getting payed well.

>>17917280

>eventually the market will self correct

uh, are you kidding? software skills are about to be the only useful skill left. in a world where everything is run by computers and algorithms, why wouldnt you want to understand them?

do you think rockefeller said, "eventually people will have all the oil they want and ill be out of a job"? of course fucking not. there is not limit to human desire and want. i can create software out of thin air that will solve real business problems. its a translatable analytic skill.

>>17917246
Except being a plumber

>>17917313
Eventually there will be enough programmers out there to meet the demands of the market and prices will start to fall. Since the barrier to entry is not that large the self correction will happen quickly. I am already hearing about programmers not making as much as they think they deserve (~60K)