You shouldn't be seeking relationship advice from random strangers or a reality show in the first place. Given that no one is a verified counselor the sub is largely redundant at best, knowingly harmful at worse. It is rife with low-effort karma farming, and toxicity, among the defaults.
Although the number of 'white knights' on that subreddit is very high which leads to very skewed opinions on who is the asshole for relationship advice.
Pretty much the same as /r/relationshipadvice. I would advice everyone not to listen to __strangers__ opinions on the __internet__ on behavioral subjects based on a short description.
> There are various subreddits where young people ask for advice and other young people with no experience are giving advice that might influence others negatively.
I've yet to see a relationships advice thread where the top comment isn't "get divorced immediately"
Which is scary, because these people are taking OP's comment at face value and only hearing one side of the story.
You don't need to spend very long on that subreddit to see that it's just as susceptible to the typical narrow-minded, black and white Reddit justice as every other subreddit. When it's not crystal clear whether the OP is asshole, there is little room for any kind of nuance and people pile on. It's very similar to relationship_advice. Full of people who should be well aware that they don't have the whole story and that life can be complicated, but don't really care, since it's not their life, so it's easy to tell people they're an asshole or that they should break up with their partner of 5+ years or some such.
It's actually good advice. If you're the sort of person who's seeking out those narcissistic writing excersise subs for relationship advice you probably should get divorced.
> So a less misleading headline might be: Couples that refuse relationship counselling have higher divorce rates. But that would surprise noone.
Relationship counseling is delegating responsibility for your relationship to a third party. Or, in most cases, transferring blame for your psychological shortcomings to your spouse via a faux neutral third party.
(I don't doubt that there are good counselor, but they are probably even rarer than good psychologists.)
It's not that i disagree that work/life balance isn't a serious issue, and a worthwhile topic of discussion, but why do people keep posting these threads in this sort of manner?
Asking advice of strangers without any suitable knowledge of you or your significant other, or your relationship is not going to result in good advice, if one is genuinely unsure of where life is leading.
In fact, most of the threads started in this manner, contain so little information that one can do little but caricature the participants. If you seriously want relationship advice, there are relationship/marriage councilors, if you think it's worth sorting out.
Advice is also particularly pointless, again lacking any proper context for relating to the situation at hand.
So i'm left wondering why these threads are started. Are these attempts at trolling? Flame bait? Is it an attempt to get something down on paper, to clarify the author's own thoughts on the subject (in which case, why post it to Hacker News)?
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As to the respondents, how on earth are you making the judgement that he should or shouldn't leave his girlfriend, given a total lack of knowledge regarding his startup? How can you possibly engage in a responsible cost-benefit analysis (even if it's not really quantifiable anyway), without receiving more than a 215 word description?
The answer to that is probably just "attachment disorder'. There's nothing wrong with stable relationships, and the way you describe your preferences sounds completely healthy to me. It definitely does happen in practice, even if it's not the default, so don't give up!
(I post not-a-mod comments semi-regularly, but they drown in the ocean of "if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd sure appreciate it ?g?r?r?r?r?r?r?r?r?r?r?r?r??".)
A more charitable interpretation is that people have gotten into situations bad enough where they've ended up seeking advice from strangers on the internet. (Not every relationship squabble ends up in a reddit post.)
Tbh, it reeks of self-help guru. It's almost a meme now, along with "delete facebook, hit the gym, lawyer up" circlejerk you see in relationship forums.
Didn't downvote, but online forums are rarely a good place for relationship advice.
In particular, if you're marrying someone, getting a grip on what she might appreciate for years is a good first step, especially as the premise is the discussion has already been started in the couple and she voices her own opinions.
How it goes down from there is probably a microcosm of how they'll deal with their future decisions.
> I find it funny that the article's conclusion is "stop giving informational support when emotional support is asked for" rather than "stop asking for emotional support when only informational support is up for offer".
The article does give advice on how to get better at offering emotional support. Relationship counselors can probably give better advice. I know it's harder for some people than for others, but you have to make compromises and step out of your comfort zone to maintain a relationship.
If things have reached a point where the best advice one can offer is "stop asking your partner to support you emotionally," then I don't think that relationship has a future.
> online support for people in this sort of relationship
For sociological reasons that bear discussion, there is very little support for men in this situation. You may need to depend heavily on strong, close friends and family members. There is rarely a village to support a modern marriage.
Do not isolate yourself.
A relationship can be good or bad or some kind of stable compromise. When things go sour, one has to take a hard look at the risk to oneself in trying to personally support another person whom the psychiatric field may or may not be able to help. Then there is also the sunken cost of marriage, with home, children, and economic risks.
If I may offer a final personal observation... by the time you feel you are hurt by the situation, you have been hurting for a long time and worse than you realised.
> Can I agree with his overall premise but disagree with thinking that scheduling weekly one-on-one's with your wife is in any way a good idea?
Some folks have a gut-level extremely bad reaction to structuring or treating relationships (romantic or otherwise) "scientifically" or in some structured way. I'm one of them. Grosses me out as surely as seeing maggots burrowing in my steak. It's not rational and goes against everything I rationally believe about the power of systems and environment to engineer success, and I've had to learn to work against that feeling pretty often, but, there you go. Knowing that doesn't get rid of the feeling and tendency toward aversion.
I suspect the people making posts that "pissed off" OP were largely having this reaction and didn't get that not everyone has it.
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