SOURCE - https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/681806049845608448
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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
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Agree with most of these I guess, but marriage specifically is the one thing that’s intended to be forever. Til death do us part and all that jazz.
There’s nothing wrong with forever, but it shouldn’t be some sort of “standard” we hold everything to.
I think it definitely applies to relationships. It does you and any of your partners a disservice to say your relationship was only a success if one of you died.
A person isn’t a thing you possess. They have needs that grow and change with them. If those needs ever stop being compatible with the relationship, then the relationship should end. That’s not failure. It’s wanting the person you love to be happy.
Marriage is not just another relationship. It’s literally defined by people deciding, and vowing to stay together forever.
But realistically, we all know you can get divorced. While we might hope it’ll be forever, we also know we’re still not gonna stick around if things get too bad (nor should we). Nobody has the shocked pikachu face when marriage isn’t forever after all. No matter what the vows say, in practice we pretty well accept that it’s a big commitment, but not a permanent one.
How about this: things are allowed to fail and that’s OK.
If you marry someone with the intent of staying together for the rest of your lives but you don’t, the marriage failed. It doesn’t have to define you.
Wasn’t there a study about that Man instinctively looks for other partners after while, this being the natural behavior?
Given that, christianity sets unrealistic expectations.
99% percent of the times a study calls some ‘natural behaviors’ on humans, it’s just propaganda looking for legitimacy.
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Don’t know the study but any anthropologist can tell that’s a generalization on a certain time, place, and society. It’s (mostly) true, only under certain conditions.
Now did they study any other gender? Perhaps by Man they refer to all humans??
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Please, mother, stop slutshaming yourself…
Reminds me of last week when everyone was talking about how Bluesky is worthless because it’s just going to go the way of Twitter. And I’m like, Twitter was a good thing for like 15 years.
If Bluesky follows that same pattern, great.
Isn’t this more about things falling apart when the person wanted to continue doing it? If I want to run a shop but it doesn’t work financially, then my plan has failed.
Yeah, the OOP is a serious cope. They are basically saying “nothing is ever a failure in the world of unicorn sprinkles, weeeeee!” They are invalidating people’s negative emotions about failure by trying to reframe it - but this is the behavior of narcissists who never want to admit they have failed at anything.
It’s okay to fail. It sucks. It hurts. It happens. That’s life. Accept it, learn from it, and move on.
It’s a failure if it’s your experience and you think you failed. You don’t get to say others failed if they feel otherwise about their own experience.
You have no idea what narcissism means even if you’re using it in the colloquial form with is almost meaningless at this point. A narcissist wouldn’t put the question up for debate.
You pretending you get to decide how others should feel about anything is fucking ridiculous.
If someone says “I really wanted to keep my bakery open but the books didn’t balance” it’s a failed business. If someone says “I had a goal to get a book published but I could never get it accepted” they’re a failed writer.
Yes, they could have just gotten bored or stressed or retired or life happened, but that’s not the same thing. When someone set out to do something with their best effort but couldn’t, they failed.
Failing to do something isn’t shameful and it doesn’t devalue you. It doesn’t even mean you’ll never be able to do it (go start a new business, write another book, have a happy second marriage). You’re only a failure if you let yourself be one, nobody can tell you to feel anything.
OOPs post isn’t healthy because it validates the fear of failure with mental gymnastics. Sometimes you fail and you just gotta work through it, you can’t put your all into something and shrug it off at the same time.
This reminds me of a friend who opened a bakery. The business was successful, and the food was good, but she decided to give it up after a few years when she and her husband started a family.
I don’t consider that a “failure” by any definition. For her, it was a great experience that had run its course.
Yeah. I would usually see a business as failed only if it is going through bankruptcy.
If you “close” it, it’s because it failed. Successful business are transferred or sold, because a loyal customer base and a successful business model have a lot of value.
Same for 90% of the other things mentioned. If you do a hobby for a while and you abandon it, it’s by definition a phase. Etc.
Not really true. Plenty of mom and pop shops close because no one wants to run it and they don’t want to ruin the reputation of their family business by selling it to someone who might not run it well. I worked for a few places where this happened.
Who are these people that decline tens of thousands of dollars/euros/pounds for their image? Must be nice being that rich…
Plenty of otherwise successful businesses could not be sold for tens of thousands of dollars just for the name. Several are in business solely because of personal connections with other small businesses. Once that element is gone people go elsewhere. At least in my community/experience.
That’s freelancing then, not really a business, isn’t it?
- Freelancing is a valid business. I don’t know why there’d be a distinction in this case.
- I don’t think people would be considered freelancers just because they have personal relationships with other small businesses.
There was a dessert business I used to do work for that catered a lot of local businesses events. She got plenty of work there and then had a loyal customer base because of the introduction to her desserts at these events. That seems like a valid business to me. She retired and moved to be closer to her kids and that was it. No one to take her place. I don’t know what you consider freelancing but she put her kids through school off of it so I don’t know why it wouldn’t count as business even if she technically never had long term contracts. She had her stuff in stores in the area because she made a name for herself and her products. People liked her and her story as much as the food so I don’t think people would’ve kept buying it if they found out she didn’t own it anymore.
I think you might not be aware of how many people have small businesses. 10% of American workers are self employed. I have done a lot of work for small businesses and it’s very different than what a lot of people who had a teacher and a factory worker as parents think.
INFINITE GROWTH, BABYYYY WOOOOO WOOOO!!!
About marriage: the whole concept reside in the mutual promise of a “forever after”. If that’s not your thing, totally fine. But then you wouldn’t engage in it in the first place? In that sense, the marriage would indeed have failed (to deliver on its core premise).
I’m all for ridding our society of marriage and transitioning to civil unions instead. It’s a dumb-ass concept to promise to love someone for your entire life when both of you are bound to change a lot, sometimes becoming unrecognizable. The only reason it “worked” in the past is because the primary concern wasn’t actually love or happiness but rather performing the duties assigned to genders by patriarchy.
On a more philosophical note, did the marriage really “fail” if the person you promised to love changed so much so as to become a different person in the same body?
The “ship” of Theseus
