For anyone struggling with this, two hints that might help you frame your role better:
Listening is the solution. By trying to solve what your SO told you, you are actually trying to solve the wrong problem. Their real problem is that their brain needs to say things aloud to someone in order to correctly process it's own thoughts. Therapists make a frickin' living off of that quirk of our brains and it's the actual problem they come to you with. Even better: By listening you can not only advise on solutions, you can be the solution! Neat, huh?
Listening and solving aren't mutually exclusive. If you stick to listening first, your SO might actually come to a point where your advice is wanted. Pro tip: Once their thoughts slow down, ask if they want to hear what you think about the issue. From my experience, the answer will be "yes" very often. That way, your thoughts will actually reach your SO and not get blocked by frustration outright. Yet, as with everything else: No means no. So if you get a no, don't try again, shut the fuck up, alright?
Or yet another way to look at it is that when people are venting it’s not the actual problem that they’re venting about it’s the uncomfortable emotions that come about as a result of problem. Very usually, someone is doing something that makes their lives harder but it is within a very specific environment, e.g. work, school, some kind of committee, where there are rules against settling disputes by right of arms. So even though I might have a really elegant solution for ‘solving’ that particular dispute, what I tend to be listening to long term tends to be, 'Coworkers… can’t live with 'em, can’t kill ‘em’. To which the correct answer is obviously not ‘You could solve that problem with Piranha Solution - removes organic material from the substrate’, it’s ‘Yes, we do have to put up with annoying people for a long time sometimes.’
In case you were seriously asking, “lighter fluid” is just fuel/gas to quickly (an accelerant) start a fire. So the fuel you might find in a cigarette lighter. Typically when people say “lighter fluid”, in this case, they mean the giant squirt bottle that you use on a barbecue pit to get the coals to light faster.
I have always been prone to having horrible hangovers, even in my twenties. Dihydromyricetin has saved my almost forty year old ass from the worst of them by now.
I was way too old when I learned that you should ask if someone wants advice or just wants to vent. “Are we fixing or bitching?” is what I ask my best friend nowadays and it’s made us less likely to butt heads when one of us just wants to talk shit to get it out.
Unironically, why would anyone expect anything that happens after you die to be any less arbitrary and unpredictable than anything that happened while you were alive? Could be nothingness, but it could just as easily be Poseidon, or Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Kitty Cat Thanksgiving.
People love to attribute meaning and purpose to the randomness that occurs in life because the randomness can be scary, confusing, and frustrating. I don’t blame them for that.
But perhaps if we all learned to properly cope with the difficulties in all our lives (rather than fool ourselves into thinking there is a mystical being controlling it all and judging us), we might be able to be nicer to each other.
When I hit my 30s it’s like my body just stopped being and to digest alcohol correctly. I wouldn’t even call it a hangover. Just a lingering uncomfortable feeling my stomach and a more than usual number of trips to the bathroom for 24 hours after. Even if I only have a few beers.
It sometimes blows my mind that if I ever beat my dick more or less times than I did growing up, I wouldn’t have fathered the exact children I have and love currently.
I wouldn’t change anything about my past. I love my wife, I like my kids, I would probably end up ruining something along the way that would change that.
I think that’s an important thing that seems to get overlooked when this topic comes up. It’s a two-way street- if you just want to vent, be sure to say so. Don’t get upset when your partner doesn’t just assume that’s what you want.
Of course, the “two-way street” thing really needs to be emphasized, since the person venting is likely frustrated and can’t always be expected to be clearheaded enough to remember to communicate it properly. Also, if all they ever want to do is vent, y’know…maybe that’s a pattern you should pick up on eventually (the hypothetical “you,” of course. Not the person I’m specifically replying to :P)
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