(Replying to PARENT post)
You don't have a happy marriage/partnership because you met the person of your dreams and then both accidentally stay the same person forever.
Happy marriages exist because people continuously and mutually change each other in a positive way.
(Replying to PARENT post)
David Whyte - Friendship
(Replying to PARENT post)
Yes, deep relationships take time to develop. But there needs to be a lot more than simply time spent together; you need to be compatible as well.
But when you DO develop these deep and meaningful relationships, it's the best thing in the world, and something to treasure!
I was a LOT more strategic in my relationships leading up to my second marriage, and it paid off in spades.
(Replying to PARENT post)
It refreshes every day (the amount depending on sleep quality) and even at the best of days it's not enough to do an iota of what I was previously capable of doing.
Personally, in my situation I believe the answer to be antidepressants and will likely be going on them soon. Once this "situation" becomes lived in, it becomes harder to escape from... especially whilst self-isolating. Antidepressants increase neurotransmitters (which ones depends on the class of drug) and aid in this positive-thinking and habit-formation. Psilocybin works acutely through this mechanism as well (increased serotonin -> neurogenesis -> escaping mental ruts + more easily forming habits).
(note: when people 'cure' depression through psilocybin it's typically by being exposed to an extremely different perspective of the world. For example, "I forgot how beautiful nature is" or "every stranger has an amazing story" or "the world is so big and so much to explore". Taking those learnings back with yourself is one way to help depression, but in that class the depression is usually sub-clinical.)
People who start Prozac, for example, and get positive results tend to report a much better ability to learn and to maintain hopefulness.
This situation is not always due a chemical root cause (i.e. passing of a loved one) but staying in that state for much too long will cause a learned depression that we will accept as our truth of the world. At that point, SSRIs and other medicines have a role.
(Replying to PARENT post)
https://alexpetralia.github.io/relationships/2019/02/22/what...
> "In essence, vulnerability engineers good conversation. Vulnerability appeals to our common humanity. In the real world, you and I may differ in every respect imaginable. But in the abstract world - in the world of beliefs and ideas and emotions - there is something fundamental that transcends all human division: divisions of language or race or culture or class. That something is the human condition. It is our primal beliefs in fairness and reason and competition, or emotions of pride and anger and revenge, all of which have been baked into our very existence over millenia of evolution. The common ground is there - with everyone; if you can’t find it, just go deeper."
(Replying to PARENT post)
Adding on:
- the perfect is the enemy of the good
- it gets easier, you just have to do it every day
- we forge the chains we wear in life - jibjab hotdogs
(Replying to PARENT post)
At least in my own relationships I have seen the pattern of escalating personal self-disclosure leading to deeper and more meaningful bonds.
Honestly I think this is why alcohol plays a role in so many early friendships - the disinhibiting effects make it easier to admit personal details to people you don’t already fully trust.
Doesn’t mean you need to get tipsy to make friends, but you’ll need to find other ways to open up.
1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014616729723400...
(Replying to PARENT post)
You love and connect with people because... you love and connect with them. The more time you spend, the more you share about yourself, the more moments you have together- relationships will usually become deep and meaningful as a result, almost regardless of where they started. If you ask questions that tug on the threads of a person's life, you'll find that almost everyone is interesting. If you take a leap and invest time and energy in people, you'll find life-giving connection you didn't even know could have been there.
It can be hard to bootstrap this process. Like financial poverty, it takes energy to invest in the interactions that eventually lift you out of the lack of energy, which can be a catch-22. But the advice is the same: scrimp and save at first, and then spend strategically until you can get the flywheel going.
But I can almost guarantee that the boundary you're facing is your own shortage of energy, not a shortage of opportunities for connection. Not to trivialize that; it's still a hard place to be in. But I think it would be more productive to re-frame things as such.