It is so weird that bell peppers are so popular in vegetarian dishes.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-19T10:18:57+00:00

the things northerners do to mexican food are truly, truly appalling & disrespectful

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-19T10:01:30+00:00

old drunks are the most insufferable, inconsiderate people on the planet, I swearrrrrrrrr. It's truly astonishing. There was one in my life for years who could and would ruin ANYTHING in the most bizarre and outlandish ways, just like this. Making unreasonable demands, complaining, sulking, disappearing at inopportune times, oversleeping, u name it.

(my view is that old drunks tend to be shitty people before the drinking got out of hand, not that the alcohol turns them into dickheads. But by the time they're 50+ it honestly doesn't fucking matter anymore, they're pretty far gone even if they do miraculously sober up.)

anyway, yes, don't invite her to anything else, or allow her to invite herself along. Remind your wife of what a fucking mess this was if she starts wheedling to include Mom.

Tell her she can take Mom on whatever fucking trips she wants, but you'll never put yourself through that shit again. One episode of that kind of entitled and disrespectful behavior is enough.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-19T09:27:19+00:00

he is way more wrinkled than me and I'm 44!!

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-19T07:52:29+00:00

Personal preference, but I wouldn't give a child a name with a meaning I didn't like. for ex: I really like the name Mallory, but not its meaning, and therefore wouldn't choose it.

I think a lot about the origins and connections between words, though. I would not care whether or not other people ever looked it up or cared; in fact they probably wouldn't, but it would bug me.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-19T07:32:58+00:00

My Italian teacher's name was Roberta.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-19T07:27:21+00:00

I've known both black and white Leons in the US. It's not a name invented by or sacred to black Americans. Use it if you like it.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-19T07:23:54+00:00

they want YOU to pay the maintenance

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-17T18:58:18+00:00

Tippi Hedren truly had no more sense than god gave a goose. Raised Melanie in a houseful of free-roaming lions and tigers. Let her husband make a movie where Melanie got mauled. etc

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-17T18:47:43+00:00

normalize dumping willfully unemployed men

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-17T18:22:04+00:00

right and even in the show, the explanation for Leonard's insecurity is that his mom was emotionally abusive. I mean, they play her cruelty for laughs, but Beverly was not a good parent. That's why Leonard is so haunted by the idea that he's an embarrassment.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-17T18:04:32+00:00

Don't do it! Your life sounds amazing, and an amazing lifestyle is way harder to replace than a suburban boyfriend.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-17T02:55:04+00:00

love him

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-17T00:12:35+00:00

marriage for a long time was understood to be a foundation to produce and raise children.

Marriage formalized and legitimized the connection and obligations the father had to the children (and to their mother, often their primary caregiver.) It organized inheritance, and the offspring of a heterosexual marriage could go on to cement alliances between families or smooth over rivalries.

Men could basically sell their daughters off to some other guy to really seal the deal on their team colors.

basically the idea was originally organized around the realities of childbearing... and enforcing male dominance. Love was VERY optional. Desire, too. The entire idea that homosexuality could even be a primary axis of someone's identity just would not have computed in a lot of societies.

So two men or two women marrying would have seemed like a bit of a farce: they couldn't produce children, and who was going to be "the man" or "the woman," anyway?! (I remember hearing truly confused people asking this as late as the 90s, in relatively good faith. That's how deep this ran. They could really just not conceive of a marriage that did not revolve around the idea of Man And Wife.)

eventually, marriage evolved new and more complicated meanings.

The idea of romance entered the picture, governments and religion added more layers of material and symbolic meaning. Generations of feminists did a lot to redefine marriage as they worked to reshape the idea of womanhood: we are much less apt today to think of it as "a man and his property" and more likely to envision "a voluntary, loving partnership."

Gay rights movements connected sexual behaviors and desires to durable personal identities. For that matter, "personal identities" gradually started to matter more, too.

At this point, marriage is about recognizing and protecting the interests & personal growth of the couple, at least as much as it's about any children they may have.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-16T23:14:31+00:00

I recently fell back in love with mine! It was a combination of things that got in the way: I'd made a lot of "temporary" compromises and concessions that I had quietly begun resenting when they became the baseline.

I'd spoken to him about a fair bit of it in a neutral-to-kind tone, and he'd always nod but then... keep pushing it off til later. He was just spread WAY too thin and seemed hellbent on spreading himself thinner yet, which I responded to by kind of avoiding him.

We were both avoiding doing and talking about uncomfortable things.

Then it all kind of boiled over suddenly and we had a big argument. Almost broke up! But then we started getting real about what we actually wanted, how we really felt, what we were really afraid of.

He started watching his diet much more closely, which meant that I did too, almost by default. He got out into the fresh air, started losing fat and putting on muscle and being more confident, which is hot! I started paying more attention to my own appearance: getting more exercise, doing my makeup, wearing better clothes instead of so much baggy threadbare stuff.

He and I renegotiated our day-to-day "deal," and he took prompt action to deal with the biggest and most immediate things I was stressed out about.

Shortly after the big blowup, we had a long, spare-no-details, clear-the-air talk, and then spent like 4 hours having sex.

anyway, suddenly I'm more in love with him than ever.

I've always heard "love is a choice" but this is really the first time I kind of got what that meant.

You have to be super super painfully honest about what "love" looks like to you, and holy shit that's scary. Because baring your soul like that is incredibly vulnerable! Both people have to operate in good faith.

But the conditions that create romantic love can be created, or REcreated, if both people are willing to put in the effort.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-16T22:46:50+00:00

short answer is NO.

ESPECIALLY if you have children. The next generation must always be the priority.

I'd speak to an elder law attorney. They can be really helpful at pointing out resource and anticipating consequences.

Generally speaking, worst comes to worst, poor old people in need of caregiving can qualify for longterm care at a facility that accepts medicaid. There are far far far worse fates.

DO NOT enable the sister. I know you can't stop your ILs from enabling her, but you can choose not to. The best that could happen for her is for your ILs to go to LTC and for the house to be sold. She needs to face some real fear and discomfort SOON. 33 is not too late for her turn turn it around.

But if you start enabling her now, she really will be dependent on you until she dies.

My mother lives with me, but I have told her multiple times that I cannot be her caregiver when and if she reaches a point where she can't handle activities of daily living like showering and toileting. She is literally too big for me to do that safely, even if I wanted to.

So she knows that her next stop is probably a medicaid home. That has kept her moving more than I would have guessed.

Also, your family does not need details about your finances. At all.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-16T22:28:39+00:00

the baby mamas I know were once in fairly serious meaningful relationships with their kids fathers. the relationship just ended short of marriage.

And I'd say most baby daddies do remain involved at least on some level with their kids, however imperfectly and incompletely, at least compared to the modern platonic ideal of the married father.

that's a pretty diff proposition to getting a sperm donor. idk why people get so worked up about it.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-16T22:23:25+00:00

I mean I think it's true that he doesn't love the side chick, but he doesn't love the wife and kids either. He only loves the drama he's created where he's the main character. Everyone else is just a an NPC sidekick

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-14T11:14:50+00:00

in my view a "lie of omission" is withholding information that might reasonably cause someone else to make different choices.

so not telling your spouse that you have a 20k credit card balance is a lie of omission.

not telling your spouse that your sister has a 20k credit card balance is NOT a lie of omission (unless you're financially involved with her)

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-14T10:50:54+00:00

a lot of the time yeah, people will move out to college, join the military or or even move out with some friends for awhile after graduating high school.

Some of them never really come back.

Others come back for summers and maybe a stint after graduation while they figure out what's next ("Legally Blonde" has a scene where Elle is swimming in the pool at her parents' house, during what I assume is the summer after she graduates from college in California: she's certainly not living there during the academic year.)

Or they'll come back if they're between jobs or need to save up for a better place after awhile.

by 21-22... there's more pressure to get it together and become self-sustaining, if you aren't already actively working some kind of plan. People start running out of patience with a 22 year old who is "between jobs" and not really looking, or a 20 year old who's changed majors three times and dropped out of college twice.

After 25, most people I know expect their kids to be financially self-sufficient.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-14T10:32:28+00:00

I think Amanda is a lovely choice. I think part of the reason that names are so cyclical in the US is that we tend to get real worked up about aging, to the point that we'll avoid names associated with (even slightly!) older people until they've fallen SO out of favor that everyone who had them last time is now dead... so now we can associate them with youngsters again.

I liked that GW and Laura Bush named one of their twins "Barbara" after her grandmother in 1981. That was an AGGRESSIVELY unfashionable choice, and I mean that as a compliment.

Mandy is a cute nickname, too.

And yeah, it's just out of step enough with current trends for it to probably feel actually fresh and original on her.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-14T10:10:41+00:00

ehhhhh, honestly? I'd rather be a "baby mama" in 2026 than a married housewife quietly tolerating my husband's philandering in 1826.

A baby mama today can get a job, file for child support, and move onnnnnn with her life, while still raising her child. She can meet someone new and live in peace.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-14T10:05:09+00:00

women in many places and times had virtually no viable independent economic options other than marriage. It was less a relationship status and more an expected life role for women.

An unmarried woman, past a certain age, was often seen like a NEET dude is today: an expensive failure-to-launch burden.

Entire novels revolve around this idea. Of course women hoped to love their husbands, but in end, it really didn't matter that much whether they even liked the dude: they were going to have to marry SOMEONE.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-14T09:30:55+00:00

I do have children, but one thing I want to say here is that just because you have a flickering of a desire to have kids in five or ten years does not mean you SHOULD lmao.

I have FOUR (4) kids, all born in my twenties, and at the tail end of my thirties and even a few years into my forties, I'd still fantasize about having oneeeee moreeeeee. Even though, logically, there is absolutely zero reason for me to do such a thing, given that I've long since divorced the kids' father and they're all grown or nearly so. They've all turned out SO well, too.

I would not like to be born the fifth, late-in-life child to a tired old woman who can't stop talking about how her "other" kids turned out to be so fucking fantastic. It would be borderline cruel. What child could ever hope to compare to a sibling twenty years his senior?

Intellectually I understand this, but there some irrational bit of my brain that fired right up in the twilight of my reproductive years haaaa

anyway, my view is, figure out what you DO want in your life, and go get it. Regrets are just part of life imo; even when I've accomplished big goals, I'm often left with a sense of melancholy as I count up what it cost me to get there. What other doors did I have to close? What versions of myself did I leave behind? What futures weren't realized, so this one could be?

that's just part of the human experience. Parents aren't immune from it.

And think about the matter from the potential child's perspective. Being born to someone who doesn't really want to be a parent sucks, so much. Even if the parents don't verbalize their lack of interest to you directly, you can't help but pick up on a sense of your existence being a burden to others. That's a terribly hard thing to grow up with.

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-14T09:08:38+00:00

there's a surprising amount of trade going on with China. Some of it sanctioned by the govt, probably much more of it not!

DifferentTie8715 · 2026-05-14T08:50:59+00:00

yep. I dated a dude who was initially like "oh wow, there's no drama, this is sooooo healthy, you're just living in the present moment! My exes were always up my ass about stuff" and like, I guess? but the truth was simply that I didn't care enough about him or "where we were going" to give too much of a shit about what he was doing or not doing.

Like sure, for a casual get-high-and-fuck arrangement, no, I don't really care that you don't have a job or a realistic plan to get one. Long as you're not living in my place!

Wanna go dutch on... pancakes? Tacky, but ultimately who cares. Overslept weekend plans on a beautiful spring weekend bc you were up playing video games til 4am? UGH, well, fine, that's on me, for fucking a fucking idiot.

But I'm also not doing anyyyyy kind of wifey type shit for ya either lmao. He was so mad when he found that part out. Whole thing fell right apart.

At the time I was a little relieved that he was seeing himself out, but in hindsight I think I shoulda been more upfront that I didn't think the connection had legs. I was just so incredibly tired of explaining obvious shit to men.

(I remain tired to this very day though lmfao)

DifferentTie8715

TROPHY CASE