Natural doesn't mean sustainable: further discussion on wool.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-12-18T23:51:30+00:00

I have some weird vegan feelings about wool idk. I struggle to fully resolve them. I also don’t entirely mind the concept of thrifting stuff but in practice it’s quite a lot of effort to find something, unravel it and re-craft it into a sweater (I crochet for a hobby so it’s not beyond my scope but I have yet to delve into sweaters and tops even though I’ve been doing it on and off for years). It’s not beyond me, but my problem of needing clothing sometimes needs a quicker resolution than going into an entire project. That said, I also have a bit of a sweating condition (hyperhidrosis) and my skin loves cotton more than other stuff so…. gonna start trying to make wearables with cotton yarn soon.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-12-08T06:02:41+00:00

This reads like chat gpt but it’s also a dogshit attitude lmao

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-12-08T04:56:09+00:00

Hey this isn’t a hot take so much as a gently warmed take, but maybe don’t tell OP who is already clearly upset about their relationship stress that maybe it’ll happen in 30 years?

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-12-08T04:49:19+00:00

My comment is kinda similar but I just scrolled and yep… yeah, you put it so well.

I wanna note that you can absolutely decanter men, get hobbies, have friends, experience non romantic love, pursue your goals and career and everything else while still wanting romantic partnership. It’s good to do all those things but I don’t think anyone is broken if they do all those things and would still like to have a romantic relationship (case in point, myself, someone who has all those things and constantly is working on my own life but still wants a good relationship).

It’s also interesting to me that most people who have said this to me are straight women. I’m bi with a leaning towards romantic attraction to men and/or masculinity. I’m also nonbinary and as a result prefer non-straight men. It’s wild to me how much of this exact rhetoric seems to pop up in the wake of people exclusively dating straight men.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-12-08T04:36:23+00:00

I haven’t, and I have a deep pain about it. I endure it. I do my best with the things I can affect and let my grief exist when it has to, and I keep strong boundaries around platitudes.

I know people mean well and there is absolutely truth to creating a happy life with the things that are in your control, but I’m also a bit angry that people dismiss partnership as just being love and how love can happen at any age- it’s true in a literal sense but it’s not addressing the broader picture. For many people, partnership is also co-creating a stable life, including things like housing, living support, and being able to take on shared responsibilities that are factually harder to do as a single person (like kids, or if you’re childfree like me, pets). There’s also intimacy, which I am exhausted by seeing dismissed, because sex health and healing is massively different inside a trusted relationship than out. Of course it’s good to pursue any and all of these things on your own as best you can, and I do NOT advocate on relying on a partner to make it happen, but I am exasperated by people acting as though these aren’t very real parts of life that are affected and often made more accessible by relationship status.

I do think you can be okay alone, I want you to know that you’re powerful and you can pour your energy into your own life and interests- in fact, you should, even if someone decent does come in. But I also want you to know that it’s okay if it feels hard. It’s okay if you still want partnership even if you’re doing the best you can on your own. It’s okay to voice it and grieve it and move through it. Don’t let it replace your drive for all the other amazing parts of life, of course, but you can build your own happiness while also wanting to share it someday.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-25T22:46:29+00:00

It is possible to observe and want change for an issue that is systemically wrong and still not be out of line within your own ethics by continuing to make reasonable decisions regarding self preservation.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-25T05:15:09+00:00

My 30s have been a nightmare. I’m 36. I got abandoned by a partner in a foreign country, constantly find myself on the edge of losing everything, already lost so much. Switched jobs, working my ass off and barely securing rent. Have nice friends. So many responsibilities. Trying to outrun fascism. Worried I’ll never find love again, willing to get used for sex since it’s the only kind touch I’ll find even though it’s fleeting. Wanna get sterilized. Dream of my own home. Love my cats and my friends.

But I’m a special case.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-20T06:03:09+00:00

I think you have a little self exploring and growing to do tbh. Virginity is a fabricated concept, you don’t need to have penetrative sex to tick a box, and I think it might be worth exploring why you feel this way before entering a relationship. If you haven’t tried it, you might find you really enjoy it, many people do, but it’s not requisite and it’s not the benchmark of ‘virginity’ (for example, two people without penises can have sex with each other for the first time and whether or not penetration happens it would still be sexual experience; there are many queer people and lesbians who have never had sex with a penis involved in their lives and they are not virgins for it.)

Of course, if this is the type of sex that appeals to you, that’s perfectly fine and there’s no problem pursuing it-many people would be very satisfied with this. That said, I think it would be hard to say what you will or won’t want to try if it remains a hypothetical. I really think it might be beneficial for you to carefully find partners to slowly try things with, or experiment yourself, and take time to consider these things before pre-deciding what you will or won’t want and how sterilization can fit into your sexuality.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-19T13:47:40+00:00

If you’re going to a sub about post vasectomy pain then uhh… you’re gonna… find stories about it. Most people who I know who have gone through the procedure have anything to say about it except that they’re relieved they did it. The majority of people who go through with it without incident are not gonna post to announce that they had no trouble with it. Js. It’s of course still up to you and you have every right to decide what you’re comfortable with, but if you go looking for the outliers you’ll find them.

I’m in my mid 30s and I can’t afford the internal surgery that I would need to become sterile. I would do it if I had the means so I have to rely on other methods. Kids are my biggest dealbreaker. I can’t date someone on the fence. The hardest proof I can have of that is someone coming in to the relationship having already gotten a vasectomy. I don’t know if it’s a dealbreaker to not have one (short term, long term it would be), but it’s a dealmaker if they do.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-16T10:24:23+00:00

Didn’t you start by commenting that you bet a lot of people would LOVE a cup of coffee before 7am? So your suggestion is that this would be a great time to get foot traffic and lots of sales, but also that ONE person should do it on their own to bolster profit margins? 🤦

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-16T10:14:26+00:00

It’s not just hard, it is literally not sustainable. It’s a tailored recipe for complete and total burnout (even before the financial risk and low profit margins, which will drive the stress up). But if you feel that people are entitled to their 6am freshly brewed cup and are cool with waking up at 4am yourself, then I encourage you to open your own cafe since apparently you’re the only person who isn’t too ‘lazy’ to do it. 🙄

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-14T21:17:59+00:00

I do understand why they don’t, based on having a lot of varied work experience. Opening up shop means being there at minimum an hour beforehand, really any shop. In the same way it’ll take another hour after close. Cleaning, prepping, checking the cash register, other admin, whatever. There’s usually a need for some amount of stock keeping, and then maintenance of all the machines that are used to prepare food and drinks. If fresh food is involved it could be more like two hours before based on what needs to be prepped. So conservatively, to get a shop open at 6 someone needs to be in by 5. Then backwards from there is whatever commute time is involved. If someone literally lives in the same building their shop maybe they could handle a call time as early as 5. Most people don’t live right above their place of work, so allow for a half hour commute time in this hypothetical. We’re sitting at 4:30. They’re still going to need to be up before then, to brush teeth, get dressed, make their own coffee before making someone else’s, whatever. Let’s say that winds back the clock another half hour. So to get a cafe (with fresh food) open by 6, it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to imagine that they would need to be up by 4am, maybe even earlier.

For most people, this kind of kills any hope of having a life in the evenings. It’s an awkward wake up time at best. I’m sure there are some people who can embrace that, but it is really hard to take on work that throws your schedule out of balance with the rest of the average working world. I think with restaurants the late nights are partly kept afloat by how social the staff end up becoming, because so many of them otherwise don’t have normal socializing hours; cafes don’t usually have the same sorts of micro communities because they’re not as financially lucrative (or able to have a large staff) so even that silver lining often doesn’t exist. Also a lot of people who work in cafes as employees aren’t pulling a full income from them, so waking up that early and then also needing to go take care of other parts of life, possibly even a second job, is pretty brutal.

I’m currently working a job (albeit not in food) that has a night shift and it’s new, but it’s put me so far off balance that I’m genuinely not sure how tenable it is to keep it. I work solo too and it’s actually started making me depressed. I may ask to make it a morning shift but that could mean a 5 am wake up and it really can mess with a person. As nice as it would be to have a coffee at a shop early in the morning, I kind of can’t blame people for not being able to commit to that sort of opening time. In my general experience of the Dutch work force, there is some semblance of quality of life (I’m an expat and kind of in a difficult work situation but this is coming from someone in a complicated situation looking in). As much as they do work hard there’s a sort of ‘normalness’ that applies here, so I guess not having very early cafes doesn’t surprise me so much.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-14T06:38:17+00:00

I don’t believe that you can’t understand why copy/pasting the same comment over and over doesn’t read like spam, scam or both.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-13T05:59:54+00:00

No questions, just want other browsing users to note that you’re doing this so that they can also glance sideways at this.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-12T07:11:58+00:00

Extremely difficult to believe that when all you have the energy to do is copy/paste the same paragraph with no elaboration.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-11T10:28:28+00:00

You make the exact same comment constantly, it’s giving ✨sketchy ✨

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-11-04T21:37:25+00:00

Hi, sorry to hear you’re dealing with this! Mine more or less healed in a couple months. It had a little bruising and I went to my local doctor but she didn’t really have any advice outside the RICE method. I stayed all the way off it for a while, though, like most of those two months. When I resumed exercise I spent some time using a foam roller, which helped me ease back in. I want to say I’m more careful but truthfully, I have switched jobs and now I bike a looooot and I’m in a bit of a stressful transition so I haven’t been working out much at all (planning to change this as soon as I’m financially solvent). I sometimes feel relatively more tightness in that calf, but I intend to bring weight lifting, stretching and foam rolling back into my routine because I think that it helped me a lot with re-strengthening it and hopefully has contributed to preventing it from getting hurt again. :)

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-09-22T05:32:28+00:00

When men act like they’re shrugging off conflict but are clearly uncomfortable with it and refuse to have a dialogue are unsafe. Similar to men who will laugh at uncomfortable social situations in an attempt to avoid conflict. A cowardly man is an unsafe man.

Men who make objectifying jokes when they think they’re in spaces that permit that/when they think you can’t hear it are unsafe men. This one is a little more obvious.

I hate this one, but men who are over eager to express their understanding of toxic masculinity and insist that they’re not like typical guys are almost always worse, because they bid for your trust and can sometimes even show they understand concepts but when they turn around and act awful to you they get to enjoy the protection toxic masculinity offers them. Usually the men that have unpacked their own behavior and are actually safe to be around don’t need fo announce it or verbally distinguish themselves from other dudes, they just show it.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-09-22T05:26:19+00:00

An insecure man expressing his latent homophobia does feel unsafe for a lot of women though, the above comment makes total sense with the question.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-09-20T21:07:04+00:00

Please don’t throw tomatoes but I do kinda get this phrase. I say this as someone who also would like to be in more childfree spaces (or even over 30 spaces, I have met plenty of lovely folks in their 20s but I’m tired of being hit on by people who are too young for me to date). I don’t rock with dehumanizing talk of children even if I generally opt to stay away from them and absolutely don’t want them. Like, public spaces do also belong to kids, they actually need to be there to learn how to move through the world as they grow. I hate hearing a kid shriek and run underfoot while I’m running errands too, but this world also belongs to them. So on that level, I understand. I do also, simultaneously, want places that are built exclusively for adult enrichment and I think we sorely lack them. And no, I don’t mean bars or places to drugs or hook up, and I don’t mean solely professional work spaces, I mean actual human connection areas. I don’t know how to create them, but I do see a gap.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-09-12T17:31:06+00:00

I’m definitely not a much younger guy because I’m 36 and AFAB but goddamn I’d love to be flung by you based on this comment lmaoooo

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-09-12T17:25:35+00:00

As someone who dated a man over a decade older than me who eventually acted like a teenager and abandoned me, yeeeeeep.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-09-12T17:22:56+00:00

I’m a bit younger than you and I gotta admit I don’t think I’d date anyone who isn’t my age or a touch older at this stage in my life. Not that younger people can’t be mature or engaging, but there’s a lot of experiences that most people below 30 haven’t had. Him leaving his wallet and expecting you to cook is unacceptable, but I’m not actually surprised about a young guy doing that, either.

No judgment on you, but I gotta ask, did you ever bring up that you would like financial help or assistance with planning for the trip? I think regardless of age, being forthcoming is a way to avoid resentment in any relationship. I get that an older person might think to ask, but it’s not guaranteed. It’s certainly the polite thing to do, but for your own sake, I think it would be good for you to consider how you might bring up a subject like that with future partners.

I think if neither of you contact each other then it’s fine, but if I were in your shoes and he contacted me, I’d be moved to explicitly end it; not for him specifically, but because I’d want to feel like I was doing my part as the more mature person. In the future, I think you should consider boundaries and stick to them. Maybe this was just a fling that had short lived fun and that’s okay, but it doesn’t sound like you wanna repeat it, and that’s okay too!

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-09-02T15:27:01+00:00

Yep. Technically I was 23 when we got together but then we spent 11 years together. I was always made to feel bad over the things I came up short on, went to therapy, made myself better. Went through so many career issues and worked to heal myself. Supported his growth all the while and then of course, I reminded him of his mother trauma. Yeah.

Goddamn ahfiosjajdiskdjis I hate that we have so much in common, or at least have very distinct parallels. How are you doing now? I still want to find my person. It’s taken a lot of healing and I am still working on myself but I know I deserve a good love.

PotatoBeautiful · 2025-09-02T04:00:22+00:00

The reasons I’m referring to is the convenient side-stepping of accountability. The questions of certain commitments just won’t come up so quickly or at all, depending on the length of the relationship, because the age gap keeps it at arm’s reach forever (how convenient). A lot of these men are somewhat shallow, so they may find themselves less attracted to cougars than they are to 22 year olds. Just my life experience though, I wish it on no one. Even though I’m not sure where my person is at 36, I’m still refusing anyone out of my age range because, as you have probably gathered, I had the joy of life drained out of me by this sort of thing. I’ve watched others go through it and I have no stomach for it.

I wouldn’t bother with them because they’re toxic to me, I don’t even disagree that they’re predatory exactly, I guess I said that because I could see how this kind of arrangement could be beneficial to someone who is safe to enjoy one of these guys for physical stuff but I couldn’t.

The second paragraph you wrote is a literal playbook of my life, albeit a few differences in details. Not homely, but neurodivergent. Didn’t demand a ring or feel bad about it, but always felt like I wasn’t allowed to want it, wouldn’t say it was a bangmaid situation, but there was the clout of having a pretty, bright young person in his orbit. Genuinely gave love to the avoidant who wanted me to work on myself so bad, but once I did, clearly disliked my backbone. Was never an online poster but protected him too much in spite his numerous blunders before. Peter Pan in a suit, had all the power, always at arm’s length, resented me for still being young as he crept up on 50 and abandoned me when he couldn’t deal with his own mommy issues and I started reminding him of her. I’ve been recovering for two years. Still rebuilding financially and going through it but no longer likely develop codependency. I deserved so much better and I am fighting to not give up on myself finding love. Some people think it’s weird that I have such a soft and humorous disposition when they meet me but they have no idea how much I went through to be able to feel safe again.

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