> Traditional marriage is the ultimate form of this ideal. You're supposed to stick to it until you die, no matter what, come hell or high water, even if it makes you and everybody around you miserable. That is neither sane nor healthy!
An interesting philosophy, but I don’t think marriage is the best place to apply it. Writing a README and then never starting a project has practically no consequences. Same for picking up a book and then ditching it after a few minutes. Marriage? That’s a whole different ball game, especially when children are involved.
Swizec 7 hours ago [-]
SOFA works great for marriage, if you tweak the params a little. Most secular people arrive at this by default: You marry your 3rd serious partner sometime in your late 20’s.
Start a lot of long term relationships, finish the one that sticks when both partners are mature and more or less done growing up.
I think there’s another shakeup period (statistically) in your mid to late 40’s. That seems related to when kids start being old enough that they don’t act as a forcing function as much.
triyambakam 7 hours ago [-]
And that's when those couples often get divorced.
There's strong value in staying with a first partner, like a high school sweetheart. Growing together through life's challenges creates deep emotional bonds and shared experiences. Long-term stability comes from building trust over time and avoiding the emotional toll of repeated breakups.
Couples who navigate growth together often develop stronger, more resilient partnerships.
aliasxneo 7 hours ago [-]
I highly censor myself on HN as I know most of my views are in the minority, but I'm happy to see your response.
To add to your point, I've also found that developing the relational skills necessary to bring a marriage relationship through tricky waters often leads to success in similar, but perhaps not so dire, circumstances.
It's also been common knowledge for some time now that children tend to do much better when stability is present in the home. If a child always thinks one of their parents might just up and leave one day, they tend to act accordingly (read: exhibit undesired behaviors).
I understand marriage isn't for everyone, and I certainly don't promote it as such, but I also wouldn't advise people to treat marriage as no more than something that can start today and end tomorrow, on a whim.
bigfudge 3 hours ago [-]
There is massive confounding here. Think of the counterfactual — kids who live in a house with a failing relationship, or one where the adults can’t meet each other’s needs.
It’s not at all obvious this would be better, and none of the research suggests it’s better for kids for adults to stay in a troubled relationship. In fact the reverse - conflict in the home is a much stronger predictor of poor outcomes than divorce per se.
andai 41 minutes ago [-]
Interesting, that's a great point. Last I checked the negative effects of fatherlessness were well studied, but I don't know if it's been compared with the alternative, i.e. being raised by someone who rather would have left!
IIRC a low quality father is still better than none (barring abuse, though emotional neglect is now finally coming to be recognized as developmentally impactful), but I really don't know...
eastbound 4 hours ago [-]
> children tend to do much better when stability is present in the home
Encouraging relation instability creates children which don’t have the funding on their own to be students. It makes them great candidates for both student loans (US) and subsidies (EU). As a society, that’s what we want; It’s makes every individual miserable, but it fuels the need for public funding.
olivermuty 3 hours ago [-]
I think this take is weird in many ways, but I wanted to focus especially on the fact that in the EU where its free it costs the exact same to fund a student regardless of if parents are divorced.
lolinder 6 hours ago [-]
To add to this—most of the marriages I've seen that have come after multiple serious relationships struggle with baggage from those previous relationships.
Often it's obvious things like kids, but it's also more pernicious things like expectations, comparisons, and even just different worldviews. A couple that grows up together can end up substantially more unified than is possible when you're joining lives after a decade of adulthood shaped by multiple partners.
There are obviously exceptions on both sides—first-timers that were toxic and 'experienced' partners who work well—but I certainly haven't seen an unqualified series of successes in the pattern described by OP.
bee_rider 4 hours ago [-]
I haven’t seen any patterns, and I’m wondering where people are getting these kinds of insights.
Like I have 1 friend that married somebody who could reasonably be described as like a first serious relationship. Other than that… everybody tended to settle down after college, after a few more serious relationships. Nobody has gotten divorced yet (late 30’s). But (and this is being generous to myself), I’ll say I probably only have like 5 friends who I’d really be confident in saying much about the health of their relationships.
I think everybody in this thread is just making things up, tbh.
pjc50 2 hours ago [-]
Our sample sizes are small, our circumstances vary, and people are too unique.
Nevermark 6 hours ago [-]
> Couples who navigate growth together often develop stronger, more resilient partnerships.
Nowhere in that wisdom did the word “first” appear.
If at “first” you don’t succeed, keep looking for that partner who, by character, and suitability to you, who will “ navigate growth together”.
——
I feel like there is a stay-with-your-first crowd that has a lot of wisdom to share, but logically needs to recognize that commitment to an unworkable situation isn’t really what they are trying to promote.
Props to those that find that person, who will co-invest, can be co-patient, co-flexible, co-loyal, co-appreciative, co-vision the first time.
But those things are just as great, and important to find, regardless of the ordinal.
—
I think I have that! Number 3. Wish me luck for the future, but 8 years in I am very and honored happy now.
HKH2 4 hours ago [-]
> Props to those that find that person, who will co-invest, can be co-patient, co-flexible, co-loyal, co-appreciative, co-vision the first time.
That's what dating is for. It's not magic if you've got your priorities figured out.
TeMPOraL 4 hours ago [-]
> It's not magic if you've got your priorities figured out.
I doubt most people have their priorities figured out before their 30s. I envy those who do.
HeWhoLurksLate 3 hours ago [-]
Religion seems to help a lot with figuring out a purpose in life at a young age, too
bigfudge 3 hours ago [-]
Provided you don’t later conclude it’s an unsatisfying account of many fundamental questions for modern humans, and then need to leave a community or repress interesting and valid ideas.
matthewmacleod 3 hours ago [-]
The impression I get—without being too dismissive—is that it gives you the opportunity to not bother figuring it out.
pjc50 2 hours ago [-]
> Couples who navigate growth together often develop stronger, more resilient partnerships.
Thinking of someone I used to know who sarcastically referred to her many relationship blowups as "another fucking 'opportunity for growth'".
I see a lot of people talking past each other in this thread. There's several layers at work:
- "marriage is good"
- "people should make an effort to keep their relationship together"
- "people should make an effort to keep their relationship together, even at the cost of their own happiness, regardless of whether their partner is also doing the work"
- "marriage should be socially encouraged"
- "marriage should be socially enforced with censure of the unmarried"
- "marriage and its permanency should be legally enforced, regardless of harm including rape and domestic violence" (the pre-1950ish position)
You can see poster A making one of these statements and another poster B replying as if they'd said another one down the slippery slope.
0xEF 1 hours ago [-]
What about the "hey, marriage is just not for everybody" position? I did not get married until my very late 30's, having spend enough time with my partner to have built something worth keeping, but at least two of my friends have been married so many times that it seems like an occasional hobby they indulge in. The idea works for some people, but not all, and that's just fine. The arguments you listed all assume a one-size-fits-all solution, which I suppose is why they are circular and absurd.
bigfudge 3 hours ago [-]
There is a strong winners history effect driving your thinking here.
Marrying the wrong person and sticking with them does not make anyone happy. Some of us resist SOFA as late as our mid 40s on the basis that we made a promise, marriage is forever etc. it’s a massive mistake in almost every case. I know nobody who regrets a divorce and isn’t substantially happier after it.
If you have kids don’t blow up a relationship on a whim. But at the same time know that divorcing when kids are in their teens is absolutely no easier on them then when they are younger. In many ways my perspective is that it only makes life for the adults easier.
dmje 4 hours ago [-]
Strong disagree on the "childhood sweetheart" thing.
In my experience / opinion there is more to be said for a (gentle) bit of "playing the field" when you're in your teens and early twenties. Get that stuff out of the way - get to know some different people, different ways of being, different dynamics in sex / friendship / beliefs. Get to know yourself, mainly - figure out the person you are. Because you sure as shit don't know when you're 16, and you probably don't really know until you're 20 or probably even 25.
I'd say the same about getting out there and socialising - drink some drink, smoke some weed, take some mushrooms, travel the world. Don't get stuck in one thing straight away - in any direction, whether that's location or relationship or job or misc life situation.
Obviously everyone's MMV and there may be some people who do find that person when they're 16, but even then you've got to ask "how do you actually know that's the right person if you've never experienced any other kind of people?".
It's like travelling - say you got on a plane to an island on your first day of your first expedition away from home and had such a great time that you just stopped there, cancelling your future travel plans. Seems foolish and small minded to me.
Obviously long and beautiful and balanced relationships are what most of us aim for - and that's great and a brilliant thing if you find it (I'm ~25 years into the best possible relationship and marriage I could possibly have hoped for) - but I (and my wife) got here via a whole bunch of teen and early 20s relationships - some brilliant, some silly, some deeply hurtful, some short, some long, some with people that really suited us, some with complete howlers that were destined for disaster from day one. And that whole journey enabled us to discover who we were individually - and then when we met in our mid 20s we had a much better understanding of who and where we wanted to be, both individually and as a couple.
I've been immensely lucky in my journey but it's because of that journey, and it's because quite a lot of that journey was sometimes hard. Breakups and dating the wrong person and getting it wrong are part of that journey, and it sometimes hurts. So does life, and to expect otherwise is deeply unrealistic.
I'm already fascinated as my two kids (20/17) do this themselves - but my strong advice to them and to anyone else is that getting to know who you are involves bashing into the world a whole bunch - it can be painful and difficult but that's what a satisfying and realistic life looks like.
anal_reactor 3 hours ago [-]
Honestly, I don't get it how people find relationships in the first place. I feel like at this point of my life I have developed my own personality and lifestyle which don't match other people, and therefore I can't really connect with anyone.
auggierose 2 hours ago [-]
I think that is just a cop-out born out of fear of rejection. If you don't want to connect with anyone, that is fine. I doubt that you can't.
anal_reactor 33 minutes ago [-]
Yes, I'm afraid of rejection, but not of being rejected, but rather of spending my time rejecting people instead of doing something pleasant or useful.
nonameiguess 15 minutes ago [-]
Nah, man, the people saying we all have too limited of a perspective and draw conclusions too readily are right. Every possible course of action involves risk and uncertain outcomes. My parents married at 18 and 20, a few weeks after my mom graduated high school. They're still together in their mid-60s, have a disturbingly great and loud sex life, are the epitome of lifelong friends. I tried to marry at 21 and my first wife descended into a drug habit, destroyed our apartment and got the lease terminated, was committed to a psych ward and left me temporarily homeless. That didn't work out, though arguably, maybe it could have. She'd be in her 50s now and I don't know if she's even still alive, but last I had contact with her a decade ago, she seemed to be doing well. I finally married someone that stuck later on and we're past a decade, inside of two still, and she's been in the ICU seemingly inches from death twice in that time due to alcoholism, but I guess it's just different being older, more experienced, somehow able to deal with that and not have your entire life necessarily spiral into complete chaos.
My actual first girlfriend from high school isn't a person I kept in touch with, but from what I saw of the 20 year reunion a while back, she got really fat, became a bizarrely hardcore religious fundamentalist, and was extremely into Trump. I can't imagine a world in which a marriage with her would have worked. I don't see how you can possibly hope to imagine what a person might become decades later when you're 16.
I agree entirely with you about growing together through challenges and creating deep bonds through shared experiences. I'm just not sure why you think those don't continue happening past childhood. My 30s were by far the toughest decade due to unexpected physical challenges from spinal degeneration, and having someone there for it made all the difference in the world. I will love and cherish her forever for that, no matter what else happens. I didn't need to know her in high school for that to be possible.
And all the breakups of the past didn't take a toll on me. They taught me that loss isn't really that big of a deal. Life doesn't have to be constant and predictable. People come and go. Jobs come and go. The world turns, life goes on, and I'll be fine. Some other opportunity always comes along. More often than not, each one turns out to be better than the last one. I certainly don't want my wife to die and have no intention of ever divorcing her, but if something does happen, I have no doubt I'll be fine. Grieve, sure. Be crushed for maybe a year or two. But life is long as fuck and a year or two fades into nothing decades later when you're happy again.
dash2 2 hours ago [-]
>SOFA works great for marriage, if you tweak the params a little. Most secular people arrive at this by default: You marry your 3rd serious partner sometime in your late 20’s.
This doesn't really work great:
* Some people get really good at starting and not so good at finishing. They hurt a lot of people, eventually including themselves.
* Many people find it is too late to have the number of children they would have liked, or any children at all. This causes a lot of personal tragedy.
* Birth rates are well below replacement everywhere in the developed world, which is causing serious social problems.
james-bcn 2 hours ago [-]
> mature and more or less done growing up.
People finish growing up?
pb060 2 hours ago [-]
Use to do SOFA without knowing about it. Then marriage came, then children and boom, collapse of the wave function.
7 hours ago [-]
andai 37 minutes ago [-]
This is just my normal approach to life, owing mostly to low conscientiousness (and probably unmedicated ADHD).
The result has been thousands of side projects but nothing I can actually put on a portfolio or monetize (and as a result, poverty).
It's sort of bizarre and hilarious to see people glorify and promote it?
Do normal people have to make a significant conscious effort not to finish what they start?!
triyambakam 7 hours ago [-]
I think this sounds good but is ultimately not good advice.
Finishing, as in will power, focus, and vision, is like a muscle that you can take to the gym.
This advice is the equivalent of going for a run one day and never picking up the habit. I don't think it will lead to fitness.
michaelt 33 minutes ago [-]
Personally, I'd say it's situational advice.
I like open source software. And I could write some code that works for me, then generalise it to be useful to more people, then increase the robustness so it's easier for users who aren't the author, then clearly document it, then make a flashy website for it, then do branding and marketing to get users, then add support for OSes I don't use and languages I don't speak, then build a community of contributors and maintain a presence on reddit and twitter and stackoverflow and discord and github and mailing lists, then engage with the community with polite professionalism at all times, then do paperwork like choosing a license and a code of conduct and a security policy, then convince major distributions to package it, then maintain it for 30 years.
So long as it's a recreational hobby, I'll do whichever steps I feel like. Marketing? Support? Fundraising? Test coverage? Nah, I don't think I will, I'd rather spend that time going on a bike ride.
On the other hand, for things that aren't a recreational hobby? That might be a different matter.
safety1st 6 hours ago [-]
I think a better alternative is the concept of the minimum viable habit from James Clear's Atomic Habits.
SOFA gets one thing right which is it reduces the pressure and the expectations. But it doesn't seem like an approach to life which results in anything permanent. This post literally says "nothing is permanent, nothing lasts" which is a nihilistic and self-defeating view of life - perhaps technically true but not useful. Contrast with "play long term games" which is the idea that good things compound over years and even decades and this compounding is how you can lead a truly extraordinary life.
So with Clear's concept of minimum viable habits the focus is on building something permanent (the habit) but the expectations are removed, which makes it feel easy. If you want to be a runner, you start by setting an alarm and putting on your running shoes every day. That's it, once the shoes are on, you declare victory and you may take them right back off again and go on with your day, running is strictly optional (and even discouraged at the start).
After doing this for a while it's going to be second nature. It will become an unconscious habit to put on those shoes at the same time every day, and it will also feel a little ridiculous that you're not even stepping out the door. It will then feel completely natural to take the next step and walk outside and enjoy the fresh air as part of the habit. Once you're doing that regularly, it's almost inevitable that you'll start taking a small walk or something and one day boom you've made it a jog. Three years later if it's really what you want you've become a serious runner and practicing for your first marathon.
It really works in my experience (it got me going to the gym, improved my work productivity and improved my diet). The key is your perspective: you want to build an extensive new, permanent habit that will improve your life for many years to come. But this is hard to do so you're layering on one easy piece at a time, removing the friction.
It doesn't require manning up and being superhuman. Just the desire for the change, some patience and the willingness to take the first step.
trumpeta 3 hours ago [-]
I think it's great advice, but the "finish rarely" part is maybe understated. The goal is to try as many things as possible, as quickly as possible in order to find your true calling. You'll stick with it once found.
nonameiguess 3 minutes ago [-]
I hate to keep doing this to you, but I am yet again an existence proof that you're wrong about this. I've tried and played many sports in my life, on again, off again. Baseball and basketball mostly as a child, a bit of tennis. Lettered in high school in cross country, track (where I did hurdles rather than middle distance), basketball, and volleyball when I changed my mind from track. I did intramural soccer and dodgeball in college. Picked up running again in the Army and got into various outdoorsy stuff. Kayaking. Open-water swimming. Multi-day hikes. Alpine mountaineering. Rock climbing. I had terrible injuries through my late 30s and did next to nothing. In my 40s, picked up lifting, eventually got back into running, have recently started to learn how to surf and skateboard.
I can assure you that, in spite of not really mastering or finishing any of these things and being kind of flaky about it, it has at least lead to very good fitness.
In the same vein, I see no reason you can't simply practice and get in the habit of learning and being curious even if you never master a specific craft.
ilrwbwrkhv 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, a weak work ethic takes years to rectify. I had a very bad weak work ethic because of health issues when I was a kid and only in my 30s did I finally fix it.
strken 5 hours ago [-]
It would be interesting to try the opposed but similar strategy of finishing absolutely everything but half-arsing the stuff I don't care about.
Might give more psychological closure, prevent me giving up, and could yield good results if there are a lot of cases where I was overthinking it.
TeMPOraL 4 hours ago [-]
That's interesting. FEATHER - Finish Everything And Triumph, Half-assing Every choRe[0].
I think both this and the article's "SOFA" are useful frameworks to deal with perfectionism.
--
[0] - Which I should have done here, instead of spending 10 minutes trying to find the right words for the acronym, and ultimately failing.
kqr 2 hours ago [-]
I'm trying to decide if I prefer
- LIMP – Low-effort Implementation Makes Progress; or
- FINAL – Finish It Now, Amplify Later.
The first highlights how the point is to get somewhere, and floating around like a Brownian particle is not a good strategy for that. Setting up tiny gradients in the right direction will.
I like the second because it makes it clear that just because one finishes for now does not mean one cannot re-open the project later.
rkachowski 3 hours ago [-]
I like it, you have the FEATHER cushions of the SOFA.
> I think both this and the article's "SOFA" are useful frameworks to deal with perfectionism.
I feel it's understated how perfectionism and fear of failure are two sides of the same issue.
SOFA "call it quits and win" vs FEATHER "get to the end and celebrate" ideas both fight against an internalised conscientiousness where a thing is only done right if it's thoroughly explored and completed in all dimensions. Which isn't normally possible or worth it IMHO.
jan6 3 hours ago [-]
Finish It with Love & Interest But Undesired Stuff Therefore Exists Ramshackley
also known as FILIBUSTER - where you prioritize finishing stuff you like, pushing back the things you lack interest in, indefinitely ;P
andai 35 minutes ago [-]
To extend the article's marriage analogy, in this case you would be highly invested in a small number of partners you really care about, but also having a bit of fun on the side.
tzury 31 minutes ago [-]
Let’s procrastinate while telling ourselves we are onto something.
Hacking?
In my world, hacking includes hacking your brain to finish what you have started.
This is more of a cracking.
sundvor 7 hours ago [-]
The antithesis of discipline, what could possibly go wrong living your life this way?
hinkley 3 hours ago [-]
Discipline is good for repetitive tasks. But it's hell on creativity.
dash2 2 hours ago [-]
Look, this is a totally cool and fun approach to projects, always, and it's a totally cool life philosophy in your twenties. I wouldn't recommend it as a life philosophy for your thirties and beyond, and I suspect most people of that age know why.
meisel 6 hours ago [-]
When I start a lot of projects and only get halfway through them, I feel overwhelmed and frustrated by all the loose ends. I like to see projects through to release if I think they’re worth it, but that also requires a bit of self-imposed discipline. I don’t think there’s any shame in having a lot of half-finished projects, but I find more happiness in pushing myself to finish at least some of them.
TeMPOraL 4 hours ago [-]
> I feel overwhelmed and frustrated by all the loose ends.
I think the article is trying to help with exactly that: it's telling people to give themselves permission to abandon half-finished projects without guilt or frustration - so that you won't be immobilized by expecting those feelings every time you think about dabbling in something new.
I think pretty much everyone falls into SOFA by default. If your goal is to start a software business, it's almost impossible to achieve that. You don't need to aim for it. It will happen by default.
To finish something in such a way that a customer will be willing to pull their credit card out and pay for it is a very difficult point to arrive at.
I never tried this approach and yet I have 7 failed projects under my belt. Only 1 was a success but it only lasted for 3 years.
RajT88 8 hours ago [-]
As I age, I am getting better at finishing things. Partly because my side projects are intentionally more bite-sized.
Rather than write am application, maybe I will just write a module, or a useful script someone else can use to build or improve an application. I am much happier with this approach so far.
jongjong 6 hours ago [-]
I finished all my projects, met all technical requirements which I set for myself but I only met user requirements for one project. Hence I got paid. Ironically, it was the one which required the least amount of work and where I contributed the least socio-economic value. 3 years of passive income literally fell on my lap. I didn't even write a single line of code for that one. Just spoke to a bunch of people a couple of times.
It's definitely a lot easier if you set yourself goals which don't depend on other people. Having goals which depend on things that are outside of your control is a sure way to become miserable.
tomjakubowski 5 hours ago [-]
You completed your most successful project just by talking to other people -- your recommendation to go it alone seems to contradict that. Does it come from having had a bad experience?
jongjong 1 hours ago [-]
Yes that's true. The surest path to success doesn't generally align with happiness. People will frequently disappoint you. Yet unfortunately success in our current system is all about people and connections.
But if you focus on building stuff for its own sake and don't worry about financial success, you will be a lot happier because those goals are within your control. You will build the product and you will achieve your personal vision. Nobody else will care but that's going to be OK because you will prove to yourself that you're a capable individual and that's satisfying in itself.
0xEF 40 minutes ago [-]
I'm with you, although my personal acronym is SUFR; Start Up, Fail, Recover.
I don't know about anyone else, but I have learned far more from my mistakes than I have from my successes.
sugarkjube 4 hours ago [-]
The secret to success is not mentioning your failures.
(Think about a famous photographer who's showing a few great pictures you could never have made yourself. Well, he isn't showing the 10.000 others he made but were not good enough)
luis_cho 4 hours ago [-]
I haven't finished the reading of the post
jan6 3 hours ago [-]
I have finished the reading of the comment
ned99 4 hours ago [-]
What people calls 'love' is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. - Rick & Morty
youoy 2 hours ago [-]
What people calls 'life' is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to comment on HN - Mick & Rorty
Rendered at 10:17:51 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
An interesting philosophy, but I don’t think marriage is the best place to apply it. Writing a README and then never starting a project has practically no consequences. Same for picking up a book and then ditching it after a few minutes. Marriage? That’s a whole different ball game, especially when children are involved.
Start a lot of long term relationships, finish the one that sticks when both partners are mature and more or less done growing up.
I think there’s another shakeup period (statistically) in your mid to late 40’s. That seems related to when kids start being old enough that they don’t act as a forcing function as much.
There's strong value in staying with a first partner, like a high school sweetheart. Growing together through life's challenges creates deep emotional bonds and shared experiences. Long-term stability comes from building trust over time and avoiding the emotional toll of repeated breakups.
Couples who navigate growth together often develop stronger, more resilient partnerships.
To add to your point, I've also found that developing the relational skills necessary to bring a marriage relationship through tricky waters often leads to success in similar, but perhaps not so dire, circumstances.
It's also been common knowledge for some time now that children tend to do much better when stability is present in the home. If a child always thinks one of their parents might just up and leave one day, they tend to act accordingly (read: exhibit undesired behaviors).
I understand marriage isn't for everyone, and I certainly don't promote it as such, but I also wouldn't advise people to treat marriage as no more than something that can start today and end tomorrow, on a whim.
It’s not at all obvious this would be better, and none of the research suggests it’s better for kids for adults to stay in a troubled relationship. In fact the reverse - conflict in the home is a much stronger predictor of poor outcomes than divorce per se.
IIRC a low quality father is still better than none (barring abuse, though emotional neglect is now finally coming to be recognized as developmentally impactful), but I really don't know...
Encouraging relation instability creates children which don’t have the funding on their own to be students. It makes them great candidates for both student loans (US) and subsidies (EU). As a society, that’s what we want; It’s makes every individual miserable, but it fuels the need for public funding.
Often it's obvious things like kids, but it's also more pernicious things like expectations, comparisons, and even just different worldviews. A couple that grows up together can end up substantially more unified than is possible when you're joining lives after a decade of adulthood shaped by multiple partners.
There are obviously exceptions on both sides—first-timers that were toxic and 'experienced' partners who work well—but I certainly haven't seen an unqualified series of successes in the pattern described by OP.
Like I have 1 friend that married somebody who could reasonably be described as like a first serious relationship. Other than that… everybody tended to settle down after college, after a few more serious relationships. Nobody has gotten divorced yet (late 30’s). But (and this is being generous to myself), I’ll say I probably only have like 5 friends who I’d really be confident in saying much about the health of their relationships.
I think everybody in this thread is just making things up, tbh.
Nowhere in that wisdom did the word “first” appear.
If at “first” you don’t succeed, keep looking for that partner who, by character, and suitability to you, who will “ navigate growth together”.
——
I feel like there is a stay-with-your-first crowd that has a lot of wisdom to share, but logically needs to recognize that commitment to an unworkable situation isn’t really what they are trying to promote.
Props to those that find that person, who will co-invest, can be co-patient, co-flexible, co-loyal, co-appreciative, co-vision the first time.
But those things are just as great, and important to find, regardless of the ordinal.
—
I think I have that! Number 3. Wish me luck for the future, but 8 years in I am very and honored happy now.
That's what dating is for. It's not magic if you've got your priorities figured out.
I doubt most people have their priorities figured out before their 30s. I envy those who do.
Thinking of someone I used to know who sarcastically referred to her many relationship blowups as "another fucking 'opportunity for growth'".
I see a lot of people talking past each other in this thread. There's several layers at work:
- "marriage is good"
- "people should make an effort to keep their relationship together"
- "people should make an effort to keep their relationship together, even at the cost of their own happiness, regardless of whether their partner is also doing the work"
- "marriage should be socially encouraged"
- "marriage should be socially enforced with censure of the unmarried"
- "marriage and its permanency should be legally enforced, regardless of harm including rape and domestic violence" (the pre-1950ish position)
You can see poster A making one of these statements and another poster B replying as if they'd said another one down the slippery slope.
Marrying the wrong person and sticking with them does not make anyone happy. Some of us resist SOFA as late as our mid 40s on the basis that we made a promise, marriage is forever etc. it’s a massive mistake in almost every case. I know nobody who regrets a divorce and isn’t substantially happier after it.
If you have kids don’t blow up a relationship on a whim. But at the same time know that divorcing when kids are in their teens is absolutely no easier on them then when they are younger. In many ways my perspective is that it only makes life for the adults easier.
In my experience / opinion there is more to be said for a (gentle) bit of "playing the field" when you're in your teens and early twenties. Get that stuff out of the way - get to know some different people, different ways of being, different dynamics in sex / friendship / beliefs. Get to know yourself, mainly - figure out the person you are. Because you sure as shit don't know when you're 16, and you probably don't really know until you're 20 or probably even 25.
I'd say the same about getting out there and socialising - drink some drink, smoke some weed, take some mushrooms, travel the world. Don't get stuck in one thing straight away - in any direction, whether that's location or relationship or job or misc life situation.
Obviously everyone's MMV and there may be some people who do find that person when they're 16, but even then you've got to ask "how do you actually know that's the right person if you've never experienced any other kind of people?".
It's like travelling - say you got on a plane to an island on your first day of your first expedition away from home and had such a great time that you just stopped there, cancelling your future travel plans. Seems foolish and small minded to me.
Obviously long and beautiful and balanced relationships are what most of us aim for - and that's great and a brilliant thing if you find it (I'm ~25 years into the best possible relationship and marriage I could possibly have hoped for) - but I (and my wife) got here via a whole bunch of teen and early 20s relationships - some brilliant, some silly, some deeply hurtful, some short, some long, some with people that really suited us, some with complete howlers that were destined for disaster from day one. And that whole journey enabled us to discover who we were individually - and then when we met in our mid 20s we had a much better understanding of who and where we wanted to be, both individually and as a couple.
I've been immensely lucky in my journey but it's because of that journey, and it's because quite a lot of that journey was sometimes hard. Breakups and dating the wrong person and getting it wrong are part of that journey, and it sometimes hurts. So does life, and to expect otherwise is deeply unrealistic.
I'm already fascinated as my two kids (20/17) do this themselves - but my strong advice to them and to anyone else is that getting to know who you are involves bashing into the world a whole bunch - it can be painful and difficult but that's what a satisfying and realistic life looks like.
My actual first girlfriend from high school isn't a person I kept in touch with, but from what I saw of the 20 year reunion a while back, she got really fat, became a bizarrely hardcore religious fundamentalist, and was extremely into Trump. I can't imagine a world in which a marriage with her would have worked. I don't see how you can possibly hope to imagine what a person might become decades later when you're 16.
I agree entirely with you about growing together through challenges and creating deep bonds through shared experiences. I'm just not sure why you think those don't continue happening past childhood. My 30s were by far the toughest decade due to unexpected physical challenges from spinal degeneration, and having someone there for it made all the difference in the world. I will love and cherish her forever for that, no matter what else happens. I didn't need to know her in high school for that to be possible.
And all the breakups of the past didn't take a toll on me. They taught me that loss isn't really that big of a deal. Life doesn't have to be constant and predictable. People come and go. Jobs come and go. The world turns, life goes on, and I'll be fine. Some other opportunity always comes along. More often than not, each one turns out to be better than the last one. I certainly don't want my wife to die and have no intention of ever divorcing her, but if something does happen, I have no doubt I'll be fine. Grieve, sure. Be crushed for maybe a year or two. But life is long as fuck and a year or two fades into nothing decades later when you're happy again.
This doesn't really work great:
* Some people get really good at starting and not so good at finishing. They hurt a lot of people, eventually including themselves.
* Many people find it is too late to have the number of children they would have liked, or any children at all. This causes a lot of personal tragedy.
* Birth rates are well below replacement everywhere in the developed world, which is causing serious social problems.
People finish growing up?
The result has been thousands of side projects but nothing I can actually put on a portfolio or monetize (and as a result, poverty).
It's sort of bizarre and hilarious to see people glorify and promote it?
Do normal people have to make a significant conscious effort not to finish what they start?!
Finishing, as in will power, focus, and vision, is like a muscle that you can take to the gym.
This advice is the equivalent of going for a run one day and never picking up the habit. I don't think it will lead to fitness.
I like open source software. And I could write some code that works for me, then generalise it to be useful to more people, then increase the robustness so it's easier for users who aren't the author, then clearly document it, then make a flashy website for it, then do branding and marketing to get users, then add support for OSes I don't use and languages I don't speak, then build a community of contributors and maintain a presence on reddit and twitter and stackoverflow and discord and github and mailing lists, then engage with the community with polite professionalism at all times, then do paperwork like choosing a license and a code of conduct and a security policy, then convince major distributions to package it, then maintain it for 30 years.
So long as it's a recreational hobby, I'll do whichever steps I feel like. Marketing? Support? Fundraising? Test coverage? Nah, I don't think I will, I'd rather spend that time going on a bike ride.
On the other hand, for things that aren't a recreational hobby? That might be a different matter.
SOFA gets one thing right which is it reduces the pressure and the expectations. But it doesn't seem like an approach to life which results in anything permanent. This post literally says "nothing is permanent, nothing lasts" which is a nihilistic and self-defeating view of life - perhaps technically true but not useful. Contrast with "play long term games" which is the idea that good things compound over years and even decades and this compounding is how you can lead a truly extraordinary life.
So with Clear's concept of minimum viable habits the focus is on building something permanent (the habit) but the expectations are removed, which makes it feel easy. If you want to be a runner, you start by setting an alarm and putting on your running shoes every day. That's it, once the shoes are on, you declare victory and you may take them right back off again and go on with your day, running is strictly optional (and even discouraged at the start).
After doing this for a while it's going to be second nature. It will become an unconscious habit to put on those shoes at the same time every day, and it will also feel a little ridiculous that you're not even stepping out the door. It will then feel completely natural to take the next step and walk outside and enjoy the fresh air as part of the habit. Once you're doing that regularly, it's almost inevitable that you'll start taking a small walk or something and one day boom you've made it a jog. Three years later if it's really what you want you've become a serious runner and practicing for your first marathon.
It really works in my experience (it got me going to the gym, improved my work productivity and improved my diet). The key is your perspective: you want to build an extensive new, permanent habit that will improve your life for many years to come. But this is hard to do so you're layering on one easy piece at a time, removing the friction.
It doesn't require manning up and being superhuman. Just the desire for the change, some patience and the willingness to take the first step.
I can assure you that, in spite of not really mastering or finishing any of these things and being kind of flaky about it, it has at least lead to very good fitness.
In the same vein, I see no reason you can't simply practice and get in the habit of learning and being curious even if you never master a specific craft.
Might give more psychological closure, prevent me giving up, and could yield good results if there are a lot of cases where I was overthinking it.
I think both this and the article's "SOFA" are useful frameworks to deal with perfectionism.
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[0] - Which I should have done here, instead of spending 10 minutes trying to find the right words for the acronym, and ultimately failing.
- LIMP – Low-effort Implementation Makes Progress; or
- FINAL – Finish It Now, Amplify Later.
The first highlights how the point is to get somewhere, and floating around like a Brownian particle is not a good strategy for that. Setting up tiny gradients in the right direction will.
I like the second because it makes it clear that just because one finishes for now does not mean one cannot re-open the project later.
> I think both this and the article's "SOFA" are useful frameworks to deal with perfectionism.
I feel it's understated how perfectionism and fear of failure are two sides of the same issue.
SOFA "call it quits and win" vs FEATHER "get to the end and celebrate" ideas both fight against an internalised conscientiousness where a thing is only done right if it's thoroughly explored and completed in all dimensions. Which isn't normally possible or worth it IMHO.
also known as FILIBUSTER - where you prioritize finishing stuff you like, pushing back the things you lack interest in, indefinitely ;P
Hacking?
In my world, hacking includes hacking your brain to finish what you have started.
This is more of a cracking.
I think the article is trying to help with exactly that: it's telling people to give themselves permission to abandon half-finished projects without guilt or frustration - so that you won't be immobilized by expecting those feelings every time you think about dabbling in something new.
https://zenmic.com/podcast/0wou
To finish something in such a way that a customer will be willing to pull their credit card out and pay for it is a very difficult point to arrive at.
I never tried this approach and yet I have 7 failed projects under my belt. Only 1 was a success but it only lasted for 3 years.
Rather than write am application, maybe I will just write a module, or a useful script someone else can use to build or improve an application. I am much happier with this approach so far.
It's definitely a lot easier if you set yourself goals which don't depend on other people. Having goals which depend on things that are outside of your control is a sure way to become miserable.
But if you focus on building stuff for its own sake and don't worry about financial success, you will be a lot happier because those goals are within your control. You will build the product and you will achieve your personal vision. Nobody else will care but that's going to be OK because you will prove to yourself that you're a capable individual and that's satisfying in itself.
I don't know about anyone else, but I have learned far more from my mistakes than I have from my successes.
(Think about a famous photographer who's showing a few great pictures you could never have made yourself. Well, he isn't showing the 10.000 others he made but were not good enough)