So again I’m basing this on myself. I think a healthy relationship doesn’t necessarily require a lot of personal change. It requires healthy communication, it requires healthy compromise, but if you’re compatible (and something of this comes with the maturity to understand who you are and what your needs are, versus your wants) then you can fit together well with the right person without needing to change who you are.

And I don’t love the pairing of the concept of growing (as a person) to growing to be something, or someone, who fits someone else. When I grow as a person it’s learning new skills or trying a new hobby, it’s growing me. Not conforming myself to someone else.

Which is a very important distinction because I grew up with a narcissist for a mother and it made me very codependent, and I essentially lost my 20s to failed relationships spent learning that it isn’t about making whoever I’m with happy, and it isn’t about making myself better to them. It’s about knowing who I am, and embracing that so I don’t enter or stay in a relationship that isn’t already a good fit.

I’m with someone now who had the same trauma. We’ve discussed these observations. We know who we both are, and we fit. And as we grow, individually, as we pursue knowledge and hobbies and help others, we communicate, we care for one another, and we continue to fit.

So again, I’m only pulling from my life experience, but I feel like anyone can settle down or find the right person. They just have to know who they are and what they want, and find someone else who knows who they are and what they want.

I have no idea what that means.

She’s only a few years younger than I am and I only just now found someone to settle down with who makes me happy. Based on that and nothing else, I think she’ll get there as long as she keeps trying.

If I ever embrace my fate as a lonely housewife book author, I’m going to have a rough time, because the kind of people who would forever love me for producing my books and sharing them as free (with the option to donate) and the kind of people who buy lonely housewife books are two completely different circles and I wouldn’t be able to spend all the time necessary to ‘market’ myself online to get the books in the hands of people who want them, if I’m trying to spend that time writing.

Maybe what we need is an apparatus. A website where authors can share full-size books, users can vote on them, and if you like them enough you can give money to those writers.

I just don’t know how we’d get that, be able to allow any author to share their book, and still have quality control.

I haven’t looked at or held or otherwise directly perceived a kindle in many years now, but when I did it was insanely easy to just pop any old file into a converter and slip that onto the kindle and pirate and read as you like. Did they put a stop to that with some proprietary nonsense?

This’ll only work if they also buy everyone else who sells the solution, and shut them down.

There’s also this thing that happens where, as a whole, we’ll just act capriciously.

I don’t know if it’s true of younger gamers but my generation seems to really choose at random whether we like your product or want you to die in a fire. Any fishy behavior can tip that scale pretty quickly, and if we already recognize a brand, and it’s not one of our arbitrarily Chosen Few, then we might not even give you a chance. Just because we know the name, and that’s already a strike against you.

Not to be annoying but I actually carry a nice steel thermos with me and pour anything I might drink into the thermos.

It only feels like a hassle the first time. You get a steel thermos with a steel straw and now you’re really cooking with gas.

I’m agreeing with all the people who say they don’t notice until after they’ve read a post, but I wanted to add a Yo ho! to my comment.

Are you kidding? The nails are also pirates!

My main problem with them is that they were on a federal goddamned holiday.

Everyone met at empty state capitols to protest, in a way that would inconvenience and send a message to literally none of the people who should be receiving it.

“Sword of Damocles” like bitch we used service pack 2 XP for ever. “We won’t support something” means nothing if the original product was built right.

…Ohhh now I see the problem. Nevermind, everybody, carry on.

My favorite example of this is when Scrubs added Dr. Grace Miller, she was literally written to be Dr. Cox, if he was a woman.

And people despised her.

My entire counterargument is the fast fashion episode. That one was brilliant.

I haven’t seen him all week because he’s been pondering his orb.

You’ll have to try harder to dox me, agent!

I die in a conflict where I tell a Wizards of the Coast zombie that Paizo and Pathfinder are the best, which, honestly, I should’ve seen coming.

Raphael from Baldur’s Gate 3.

Oh and I’m not not a nudist because of prude things. I run chilly so if I don’t have clothes on, it’s because I’m uncomfortably hot. Just a quick of my biology- I come in two settings, blankets and hoodies, or soaked in sweat.

I’m not anemic anymore either so 🤷

I’m not really planning on pushing the issue, for all I know Janet got cold feet and is using him as an excuse

I was actually going to point this out. I’m glad you anticipated it.

But also I want to add that I’m a woman in a relationship with a man who would support me doing whatever I want in life, and if I wanted to go on a trip to a nudist place and he didn’t, I wouldn’t want to go. Not only because I like spending time with him most of all people, but also because, while I don’t imagine I’d need to defend myself at such a location, I prefer to have him around in case I ever feel the need for violence. He keeps my hands clean quite nicely.

But it’s mostly the “he’s my favorite person so if enjoy doing something more if he were there” thing.

The funny thing about this is, my partner is a nudist, and I’m not. I asked him if he would want to go to a nudist resort if I wanted to say no, and he said he’d rather spend time with me at home than go somewhere to be nude (and he doesn’t wear anything at home anyway).