Ikar

I agree with @Icandothis that everyone has their own perspective. Everyone is wired differently. I'd say both "feeling alike" - emotional compassion and "thinking alike" - intellectual compassion are ways of relating to others. I'd plant myself firmly into the second realm, but I make sure my comments and insights are put in a manner that I don't give people advice, because everyone absolutely hates unsolicited advice, as I've already found out in my life.

Good for you on finding someone you can admire! You want to have a few people like that in your life, so that when you meet them, you are in a bit of an awe. I guess I met my ex on OKC (they've been doing their best to turn it into a browser version of Tinder recently, though people write their bios there more often), but it's been the same story with me. I share your opinion. Tinder's average in my area seems to be an 18-year old girl that looks good, but on pictures has facial expressions as if she was to die (or blank stares), a couple of "memes", no bio and if there's one, it's a variant of "I'm bored". I think my profile inversed to this average in all regards. Keeping the nihilism at bay. There are some nicely made profiles of women as well, but they are few and far between, generally in their mid 20s. In a way, I'm happy my profile is construed in such a way it keeps 99% girls away. Maybe there are sites for an older (and hopefully more mature) demographic? I don't worry about it too much though, as for dating, I think it's better for me to put more time into being outside, be it through hobbies, work or other events.

The trouble with that is, the power dynamic in the family is such that it would seem that my dad perceives both my mom and me in a subordinate way, every now and then perhaps showing a glimpse of genuine respect for who we are. It would also seem to me that I have a better relationship with my mom than my mom has with my dad. I know it sounds oedipal, but all I do for that is play Scrabble with her semi-daily and talk to her about how she's doing every couple of days. I also know she can't be a saint either, because you need two to make or break the relationship. I am trying to make her aware (and perhaps self-aware) of what I think by the talks I mentioned above. It's depressing. I wish they just had a better relationship. The influence of that would be unprecedented.

Day 182: I did a lot of thinking today, but unfortunately it really took me a lot of time to write something reasonable. I did Duolingo and played Scrabble. We had a family visit in the afternoon and in the evening we went to another stand-up comedy with my mom, my brother and his girlfriend. Today it felt like the day was gone in a snap. I had a simple thought recurring the past week. I realized there is not one thing do I that I couldn't quit. On the other hand, it's more difficult to get something started. Turning on the computer only when something really needs to be done relatively quickly (homework, emails etc.) could help me out in the future - remove some clutter and make the mind sharper. I'll keep this idea in mind.

Great post! I'm happy to share my perspective with you (and everyone else) regarding serious topics. It makes me think myself. One nice thing I noticed was that you stopped editing your posts out completely after you wrote them in a fit of rage. Keep up the good work!

What I was thinking of is that I am not in a very supportive environment when it comes to planning and I don't think I can ever get better in my home environment. I'd like to get better at scheduling, so I can actually push through some more difficult things that I'd love to procrastinate on. Mom's fine in that regard, but my dad is certainly not. The thing is, I can't reliably watch an hour two long lecture/film without the gnawing in the back of my head that I have to assist, drive or whatever else in moment's notice. I don't think it's a way to treat your employees if you are a boss, let alone your family members. And I'm not happy about that, at all, so I am beginning to show my teeth. I started keeping track of all the infractions where I am "on call" pulled somewhere by him. It boils down to this; I'm either a kid and I have to obey (more or less unconditionally) or I am an adult and I don't have to obey (as I pay rent). I think his expectations are unreasonable, as he wants both me to basically work at home and pay rent. On the other hand, I know he's very conscientious and wants everything to be perfect. I think his mistake is that he throws every single bit of it into the material world, blinded to the negative effects it has, even in the family circle. I'll try to consult the uni psychologist about that, as it's not an easy topic to resolve and I don't want to handle it too stupidly. Nice work! I think a lot of Cam's videos provide background on addiction. I think that was my main source within the first few weeks of quitting gaming. Yup, Nietzsche was certainly right, I think Peterson is saying the same thing as well. How else can you truly tell good from evil? You just need to know both and then discover your capability for both of them, but you truly need to be aware of that, otherwise you are weak and naive. I really enjoy reading Gulag Archipelago and not only for this reason. Imagine being one of the bad guys in history. Imagine being one of the bad guys today. Maybe only then, if you imagine it honestly, you have some resistance in you against these things, if they were to happen. Maybe.

I think you won just by getting such a reaction out of them. Imagine splitting your finances with someone with a behavior like this! My grandma always split or paid her share when she was out and that was back in the 50s/60s. Women had to go to work in the Eastern Bloc during that time. I think the general guideline is that the place for the first date should be public, but you can achieve that by meeting in a park with a few benches and some nice view, while grabbing coffee. It's certainly a better option, if you are worried about bleeding too much money. Besides, you are kind of "stuck" with each other's full attention, not distracted by food, noise or anything else.

@ConstantlyLost Could you quote out the exact part? I'm not sure if you mean the last paragraph "paragraph" or last paragraph "sentence" ? Yeah, it's good if you have at least someone to lean on, to empathize with what you're going through. In our early 20s, addiction is almost always a result of some pathological pattern in the family (be it neglect, abuse, missing parent or whatever else). On the bright side, you have option to learn not only for yourself, but also for everyone you know and can influence, since you are already aware of it. I guess you have this supreme responsibility especially towards your future kids. I'm quite used to living outside my family. Out of the last 39 months (since I got off of high school), I lived on various dorms for 24 months and overall I'm very happy about that experience, as it gave me some perspective. I did not bring my notebook when I was working in Iceland for the summer. It goes back to how your parents raised you, if you are gonna completely unravel outside of the family circle and become a drug addict, but you are no longer under such heavy influence of the patterns that have been imposed on you, so there is a chance you might start questioning them and start building better patterns for yourself, once you are reasonably independent. The self-discovery is rough. The state I am right now currently is that I know everything I do is sort of a grind (whether I perceive it as such depends on how much I enjoy doing those things), but I also know that doing nothing at all would be WAY worse. Whether you feel good (challenge/opportunity) or bad (nuisance) about what you currently do is your choice though. Related to that, you also want to feel good about doing things that are good and feel bad about things that are bad. And sometimes you just run into a situation where you are clueless about what's good and what's bad, you have to pick something anyway and only time will tell. I'll put a short Peterson video into the spoiler, where he discusses the fundamental (Buddhist) idea that "Life is suffering."

Day 181: Today was just school, Scrabble and some languages.

@ConstantlyLost It's a pretty harsh thing to say, but I only started caring about my family on a more serious level only after I quit gaming, both in what was good and what was wrong about it. I don't think the result of me (and my ex) unconsciously still using our parents' behaviors as "default" was surprising then. It's good to be aware of that now though. People hate unsolicited advice. This I learned as well. I mean, any addictive behavior you take part in basically means you hate yourself a little bit, want to make yourself miserable and perhaps eventually die. I also think it helps to confront addicts that the results of their self-destructive behavior also affect everyone around them. Yet, it's their decision to stop. I talk to mom every now and then about the more serious things, my dad hardly knows I am off games. I think my parents tried to bridge a great temperamental gap and that they (and I guess partly me) are paying for it in their marriage. There's more topics, like me moving out, but I have to sort that out in my head first. My ex's parents also felt like they were co-dependent. They even cheated on one another and somehow kept on living together. To spice it up, her mom and brother were addicts, she was really ashamed whenever I came in contact with them when they were under influence. I wonder how much this applied to mine, but objectively, at least drugs are not involved. I found out making paper/Excel plans involving other people generally get completely ignored. My ex wouldn't have anything to do with it (and I was actually willing to plan, even if I gamed double digit hours daily) and I guess it's better for my parents (especially dad) to always have me "on call" and disrespect my flow of time (I pay them rent already as well - that's why I am thinking of moving to the dorm too). I'll see how that goes, especially with finding a girl I click with temperamentally.

Day 180: I got up on the alarm, even if I had a "free" day. I watched a lecture by Robert Sapolsky who is sort of a behavioral biologist. I also did my languages, some paperwork and I wrote a bit of my report. I had a blast reading the 4th chapter in Gulag Archipelago. I went to the doctor's and the foot seems fine. I also pondered around a bit on finance blogs. I'm also thinking about the situation in my family. I felt a bit strange during the day. I did not know if I was pushing myself too hard to do my chores, or whether taking some leisure time was justified.

@LucasR There can be temperamental differences too. My ex was fairly orderly (or disgust sensitive), whereas I am fairly unmoved when it comes to mess. On the extreme, this allowed me to work on a pig farm unscathed, since animal death occurred on a daily basis. I think I got better at that cleaning up my room after I quit gaming though. I think females in general are more drawn towards psychological aspects, rather than physical ones. I think my ideal girlfriend right now would at least have the hint of being responsible or time sacrifice (trading insufficient present for better future), because I seem to oscillate around these values as well, though I enjoy my leisure time as well. After all, if she want to start a family with me, she'd better make sure I am not gonna run the first time I hear she's pregnant! @ConstantlyLost I felt like gaming/Twitch and the relationship were the only two things I had before which was a pretty stupid idea, but I was basically working all the time on making it happen. I hope I learned my lesson, since I am willing to date again! Time will tell. One scary thing I want to mention is that the relationship between me and my ex was very similar to our own respective parents' relationships. Even if they are married, I wouldn't like to have my parents' marriage in the future. The old adage goes that "daughters marry their fathers and sons marry their mothers" and it seems to be the case that your parents' own relationship sets the baseline for your own romantic relationships. When seeking out romantic partners, we seem to choose partners based on familiarity, rather than some "objective virtues". The good news is, once you are aware, you can use this to your advantage, since like attracts like! Thanks for posting to both of you!

Hi Lucas!

Day 179: I was teaching English, I visited my grandma, played Scrabble with mom and wrote a lot on GQ forums today. That's it!

I could behind the idea she was over me faster than I was over her, as that makes sense if she happened to dump me. I just don't think she cared to look into the mirror - me - to avoid making a similar mistake of dating someone like I was (a double digit hours computer addict). I have a feeling she needs to have a similar "existential crisis", comparable to the one I had. "Normal healthy" people would just stay away from me back then and I think for a good reason. It was a letter with 2 A4s. In fact, I actually deviated from it being a letter to her (to get her back or whatever) and it's more about my new stance towards life in general, something along the lines people might call "personal mission statement" or "personal constitution". I opted for a few personal comparisons to demonstrate some of the philosophical points, though I wouldn't mind sharing it here and it'd probably be here already, if I wanted to translate it into English. The response I got from her was a weird amalgam of insufficiency/unwillingness to even attempt to truly reply to the letter. I think to try and get back together (or to start dating in the first place), you need to draw similar conclusions about how to live and then actually act it out. To put it shortly, if I believe being responsible is a good long-term strategy for life as a whole and she's essentially a nihilist and moral relativist, it'd be a suicide to try to bridge such a great gap. I think we started out both as nihilists. You can read a bit more about my relationship here:

I guess daycare jobs of any sort are carried out by women rather than men from a purely statistic viewpoint, but it's always a good idea to keep your eyes open! I also attend university classes once a week, so I meet my classmates there as well. Other than that, I am generally able to go out at least one more time per week, either with some of my other friends or family. I generally exercise alone, but I've been thinking about some collective sport recently. I also want to get back to drumming, but only on a local amateur scale with a bunch of beginners.

I think I can relate with my own past relationship, it's been half a year since the breakup. I'm 22 and male. Everything below is my own experience. I was in denial for the first two weeks. After I got told that she really means the breakup, I started my search for answers. Two weeks after that, I decided I would ditch gaming, partly because I was thinking we could still get together and partly out of the plain realization that this double digit hours on games/Twitch daily is just not sustainable. I was writing with her a bit after quitting gaming, but I was fairly set on the idea of a "breakup talk". She wouldn't have any of that and I think she had a bunch of reasons for that too. From what I understood, she seemed to rebound into another relationship. I could've been also jealous to an extent, but regardless of that, I still suggested her to take a break from dating. I started seeing her less and less as a dating target and more and more as a person with psychological scars that need to be treated. I also realized I was looking into a mirror. I managed to turn a person from being quite nice to me to a person with a full-blown hatred for me. At that point, I realized we both had to mess up somewhere along the way (or that our families also messed us up to a great degree as well). A few moths after that, I tried to look at the relationship pragmatically from the perspective of what we actually did, not what we said. Aside from having sex, going out for a meal or a walk, we couldn't really agree on anything. We'd just shut down each others' idea and bored ourselves to tears. We would also lie a lot, neither of us really started exercising on a regular basis despite stating that multiple times. After gradually discovering all this, I was fairly exhilarated and I wanted to share my ideas (both on my ex and my present and future) with virtually anyone, just like I shared it with you now in a short version. I think it was an important experience to incorporate into myself, as now I can screen for dates better and find out who to bloody stay away from. I hope this helps! Take your time untangling your own past.

Hello to both of you, welcome to my journal! The short version is that I feel like we're just too different at this point. I imagine she felt hatred towards me at the end of the relationship, but still mixed with a bit of compassion, since we were very similar in that, so I imagine it wasn't easy for her either. I tried contacting her in July (3-4 months after the breakup) with a thoughtful letter, but her response was basically zero. I was aiming towards having the "breakup talk" with her, but sadly she's not up for doing that. I don't plan to expend any more energy towards contacting her, unless she decides to contact me first. Did you manage to have a "breakup talk" with your exes, or are you avoiding it in your talks? Thanks! I will try to continue in an even better way in the future.

I'm not sure how your workplace looks like, but assuming you had the ability to choose your job, you also chose what people you see and how often. I wouldn't consider the classic 9-5 office job to be naturally hostile towards building relationships - high schools have schedule similar to them and even unis are not total anarchy schedule-wise (if you don't want them to be!). Myself, I teach English a few times a week. But since I am not a classic school teacher and instead I teach in a company, I don't have any colleagues and I see my students once a week. It took some adjustment for me to learn to live with that, but everything has its pros and cons.

Day 178: I nailed most of the errands I had to do yesterday, plus the chores for today. I'm still feeling pretty smashed though. It's hard to stay on the right track with the ATB nuking a lot of the bacteria in my body. I'm working on the half a year report as well.

I wouldn't think game addicts are always introverted, just because they spent double digit hours on PC. I've been streaming on a daily basis on Twitch and I basically used it as my extroverted social outlet. Half a year later, I'm still figuring out how extroverted am I IRL, so I can relate to @BooksandTrees. It was just that life outside of computer sucked, but the expression "digital world" is dead on, because it is indeed a whole second world. Don't worry about the demographic, it's just a statistic! As for online dating, it's just one possibility, but it's not mandatory. In on itself, I'm not even sure how valuable/useless it is as a whole. I think dating/romantic opportunities organically happen IRL, unless you just consciously decide to not date or something is out of order. In my case, it was double digit hours on computer + the social unawareness that stemmed from it, even though I still managed to have a relationship for a while. Welcome to the forum! Also, thanks for the reminder about LinkedIn, I got it updated. One never knows!

I watched two lectures by Peterson recently, they were probably one of the most practical ones that I've seen from him. I have some of my own thoughts combined with his ideas below then. He mentioned that by age of roughly 30 (from what I gather, you seem to be in your 30s), kids should be able to see their parents as peers, with their unique flaws and strengths. Added to that, with their unique opinions as well, but that you shouldn't consider their opinions to be worth more than anyone else's. After all, they had a lot of time to install their opinions into you anyway, for better and for worse. I tend to imagine love/hate as opposing sides of the same spectrum, in the case of my mom. In the case of my dad, it's rather respect/disrespect. I feel largely neutral towards them. I don't wish death and disease upon them, but I'd probably prefer some distance from them and see them once a week and I'll likely take any first good opportunity to move out and live on my own (or with a future girlfriend). It seems to me they are sort of alibistic and treat me as either an adult or a child, depending on what's more convenient, especially my dad. Good luck finding the girl ?

I guess it might have to do something with me being on the antibiotics and experiencing some minor, but annoying side effects like chills, intestinal upset, headache and general drowsiness. That aside, I made 6, 4 and 4 days without real masturbation, I just didn't put the counter in on my entries. I generally write them as the last thing of the day, which might be a mistake, because by then I am half asleep already at that point. I have it the other way around. Masturbation makes me energized or indifferent. Sex made me dead tired and exhausted, but in a good way, like some really long exercise does.

Day 177: I did about half the tasks I had planned for today, which is still good. I went out with a friend in the evening. NF - 0 days I keep messing around in bed again in the morning, so I confess to hold myself accountable again.

Hey! Don't worry, soon you'll fill the time gaps with other activities, hopefully ones that work out better than gaming. I use Excel spreadsheets to write sort of a list/schedule for my days!