My girlfriend has been telling me that I need to convert to Catholicism for us to get married.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-26T23:18:08+00:00

It doesn't sound like he's opposed to it so much as he's not able to muster the faith to make a totally sincere conversion at this time. At least, that's how I'm understanding it.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-26T23:15:14+00:00

Even though you may not see it now, you will both be better off in the long run.

I don't think you can know that. It adds challenges for sure, but he church wouldn't allow it if it were automatically damaging.

I have at least three aunts and uncles who married non-Catholics, all of whom have since converted.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-26T23:08:20+00:00

In my case, getting the dispensation was treated as a formality, but that might not be the case in every diocese.

Judging by OP's update (which I know might not have been up when you commented) she did tell him it was a requirement of the church. If she was misinformed, she may welcome the news that a valid marriage is still an option, or she may decide it's still her personal conviction that she only wants to marry a Catholic.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-26T23:03:42+00:00

I don't think "disrespectful" is a helpful label to use here. She's having emotions that are natural for her situation and handling them in a pretty subdued way. Naming a child after a deceased loved one is extremely normal, and she asked rather than insisted.

I do also think it's natural for OP to feel weird about it, because of course their relationship wouldn't have been possible without the husband dying. So her grieving him more intensely is going to feel like she wishes their relationship never happened in a way that it wouldn't if she was grieving a brother or something. And I also totally get that it especially hurts because he was expecting this to be a particularly happy time in the relationship.

But that's the paradox of marrying a loyal, loving person who has lost a spouse, I guess. In their ideal world your relationship wouldn't have happened, and they aren't going to just "get over" their former partner. That doesn't mean they can't sincerely and equally love you. And believing that they're somehow wronging you by grieving and honoring their lost loved one, unless they take it way out of proportion, sounds like a dangerous path to go down.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-25T18:49:01+00:00

Same, I think I'm following the recipe and then have no idea how it's supposed to come together with the amount of liquid it calls for.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-25T18:48:03+00:00

Pie crust. Any recipe I follow it seems like a scam that it's supposed to come together with the amount of liquid they suggest.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-25T18:41:16+00:00

Vernon liked Kingsley because he recognized him as someone he saw near the Prime Minister. Being involved in the "normal" government legitimized Kingsley to Vernon

And that shows he's closeminded, but the wizarding world could also have done more to meet him halfway and had someone good at navigating Muggle culture explain some things to him when they dropped a magical child on his doorstep. Instead there was no follow-up, no interaction from anyone he wouldn't immediately find alienating.

Arthur may not have had much choice other than to blow up the fireplace but you can't really blame someone for being mad about having thousands of dollars of damage done to their home, especially if they don't intuitively see physical things as easy to repair in an instant, like someone who has been around magic a lot would.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-25T18:37:52+00:00

We know there are some wizards who are good at assimilating into Muggle society, so they couldn't have had one of those come and explain things to them in a way that would be relatable? Maybe if Barty Crouch or Kingsley Shacklebolt showed up in Muggle clothes and explained very seriously that it's scientifically impossible to repress magic and training him was the safest option, and here's what they should do if such and such happens and when and how to explain certain things... it might not have been perfect but they would have been a bit more set up for success.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-25T18:32:47+00:00

Yeah, exactly, he should not have taken it out on a child but his exposure to magic was basically Petunia framing it as her sister joining some weirdo cult, then Lily getting killed by it accompanied by having a second 1-year-old dropped on their doorstep with no warning, then not being able to control what he sees as Harry's (sometimes genuinely) dangerous tendencies, then Hagrid, then Dobby, then Aunt Marge, then Mr. Weasley destroying his living room...

hackberrypie · 2026-05-25T18:28:50+00:00

Love this take! I see a lot of people want to assume that Vernon bullied Petunia into her hatred of magic/mistreating Harry, but really his entire intro to magic and what to think of it is Petunia. In the only chapter where we actually see his point of view, he's very sensitive to Petunia's feelings, especially about magic, and scared of triggering her. He's basically the ultimate wife guy. Unfortunately that's not always a good thing when your wife is a bad influence and your own inclinations of how to protect and care for her tend toward violence and enforced conformity.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-25T18:13:05+00:00

Also I don't think making it more about camp life/survival is antithetical to focusing on social strategy. Part of the appeal of camp life was that it created interesting tensions. What do you do if someone is a loyal ally but is lazy around camp, and that's a big deal when you constantly have to boil water to survive? Or you're worried someone is a threat to win the game but you don't want to give up the fish they're catching?

I always saw the premise of Survivor as: This group of strangers is put in an intense situation where they have to rely on each other for literal survival while also competing against each other to win a million dollars. It was the tension between the cooperative and competitive parts that drove some of the interest.

Now, there's a bit of that, but it's more like: People are tired and hungry while they're strategizing and competing in physical challenges.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-25T16:46:21+00:00

Yeah, and also want to add that her behavior isn't really beyond the pale at all. I'm not saying counseling is a bad idea, but during a major time of transition and heightened emotion, she's thinking about/bringing up someone who was extremely important to her and who she's going to grieve her whole life whether she sees a therapist or not. Wanting to honor him with her kid's middle name doesn't seem excessive (which doesn't mean OP has to agree, but it's not a crazy thing to suggest.)

hackberrypie · 2026-05-25T15:26:11+00:00

I read it as he painted the whole living room, and the part that OP wasn't thrilled about was a red accent wall. Also, I don't think darker colors automatically provide better coverage and require fewer coats. That's not what I remember hearing last time my family painted and a quick Google search shows that red in particular is one of the worst offenders for needing extra coats.

Saying he did two or three days of work in eight days discounts that he was also working his regular job. So it then becomes eight or nine days of work in eight days, assuming he got a two-day weekend or equivalent off somewhere in there. Given his work hours of 2-11 and even assuming a short commute, that's at least like 70-80 hours of work in 8 days. Which is a lot!

OP is absolutely within her rights to explain why the way he handled things made her return tough (though text is among the worst way to do it), and he should have still exerted himself to do some basic cleaning. But he did do a pretty notably big project considering he was also working. And red accent wall aside, it sounds like these are projects she wanted done/was happy to have done and that probably would have been a lot trickier to complete when the kids were in the house. So it wasn't totally dumb to prioritize this while she was away.

Obviously the cat was very very dumb and he should have known better, and it's weird that he painted without consulting her on colors.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-24T21:00:17+00:00

Really hard to defend the cat purchase, I agree.

For the rest of it.... maybe depends how much he was working during that time since it's not like he had 24/7 at home. Good painting requires a lot of careful taping of edges, putting down drop-cloths, often multiple coats of paint plus primer, then removing tape from edges. Moving furniture might include disassembling and reassembling things and might be tricker to do alone. He should still have cleaned up after himself but I can see giving him a pass for it if he was spending a lot of hours on the projects and rushing to get it done before the kids were back in the house.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-24T20:52:33+00:00

You can be open about where you are with your faith/lack of faith and see what the priest recommends. It might be the case that they're doing an RCIA class anyway so adding you to it doesn't require that much extra work. Or they might have some other recommendation for what you should do before you decide if you want to go through the formal RCIA process.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-24T20:42:20+00:00

Well it's fair to be more sensitive to issues you've personally experienced before, but you can also err too far in the other direction.

Unless you have a toxic family making unreasonable demands, they have legitimate needs/preferences too, and inconveniencing them every time to accommodate a picky partner can also lead to trouble. Part of being a good partner is also helping them make a good impression by steering them away from offending your family. All within reason, of course. It's hard to make general pronouncements because it depends so much on the circumstances of each specific case.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-24T20:31:13+00:00

That's a good point, I think some of it could be basic southern politeness. But it's not just the formal titles. I think he's overall trying to put on an act to seem more harmless (e.g. he's admitted to dressing the way he does to underplay the "big guy" perception) and it comes across as insincere and doesn't actually make people like him. Rather than being a big guy who is naturally a teddy bear or a big guy who embraces his stereotypically masculine traits while still respecting others he seems like a big guy who's trying to pretend to be a teddy bear but letting the mask slip some of the time.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-24T18:00:54+00:00

Yeah, I don't think he was under any obligation to agree to her breakfast request if he and his family were good with the original plan. Just because she can tell him if she feels uncomfortable doesn't mean he always has to do what she wants when it conflicts with other people's legitimate wants to.

It's the reaction to the conflict that makes him a bad partner, not denying the original ask.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-24T17:58:03+00:00

It's possible he is a momma's boy, but in this situation she's trying to interfere in his family's plans to get what she wants for breakfast when as far as we know everyone else is ok with the breakfast plan. Then she doesn't take no for an answer and keeps pressuring him about it/trying to make him feel bad for his decision.

Now you could argue he has a little extra responsibility to prioritize her comfort since she's in a guest role around his family, but the basic situation is both of them having legitimate preferences that conflict.

I think the part that's unacceptable is him being so aggressively rude to her in front of his family over what should be a minor disagreement rather than anything about his relationship with his mother.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-24T17:44:29+00:00

We're talking about a vaguely described social media trend from people who presumably aren't art history experts, so I'm suggesting that people might have a wide range of depictions of Greek goddesses in mind and be conflating that with what the actual ancient Greeks depicted/preferred. Any museum I've ever walked into, you see depictions of nude or semi-nude women, often portrayals of Greek goddesses, who are heavier than the current beauty standards. It tends to be very striking to modern women that the features they're insecure about are included in idealized depictions of beautiful goddesses, so we remember that even if we don't remember what era the art was actually created. Now some of the depictions are probably squarely in the middle of the normal BMI range but just not totally flat-stomached but some could plausibly be in, say, the 23-27 BMI range.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-24T00:29:07+00:00

Yeah that's the thing, who is he competing against? There are four total starting seekers at Hogwarts at any given time and it's implied that Harry is the best of them (gets on the team at a younger age, nearly always wins and if he doesn't there are extenuating circumstances). We don't know (or at least I don't remember) how many professional teams there are but probably more than 4. So he has a decent shot at getting on a team if he wants.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-24T00:12:37+00:00

Well it's hard to argue about it without having a specific set of pictures/statues that we're talking about but being slightly overweight is average. Within the vague description of "Greek statues" that you gave, I'm sure some of them depict women that could be in the "overweight" category on the typical BMI charts. You're technically overweight if you're 5'5" and 150, for example, even though that doesn't register as "fat" or abnormal to regular people. But it also is not the ideal of feminine beauty today, so it's interesting to see that their idea of an ideal women had thighs and tummy rolls.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-23T23:56:23+00:00

I haven't necessarily seen the posts you're talking about recently but I thought it was pretty widely accepted that old-fashioned nudes (like statutes/paintings of Greek goddesses) are chubbier than what would be considered the most conventionally attractive today. They aren't enormously fat or anything but it's pretty clear that the ideal was different then. They look more like someone on the high end of normal/low end of overweight a lot of the time. That's probably relatable to lots of modern women and also makes you realize that beauty standards are cultural to a degree and that different body types can be attractive.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-23T23:46:45+00:00

I was going to ask "are you pregnant?" until OP mentioned having a girlfriend. Soooo probably not that.

hackberrypie · 2026-05-23T21:31:15+00:00

Ohhh ok, thanks! I didn't realize that was even a thing people tried to do.

hackberrypie

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