Asklemmy

43857 readers

1695 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

486

What is the most unhelpful advice you have received? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

261 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'll go first: "You have to have children when you're young," told to me when I was in my late 20s, with no desire to ever have kids, and no means to support them, by someone divorced multiple times with at least one adult child who does not speak to them.

Also: Responding to "How do I deal with this problem?" questions with "Oh, don't worry about it, it's enough that you're even thinking about it!"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Just be yourself also is good advice. Not that it will always be successful in advancing the relationship. But it will be less stressful for you and prevent you from wasting years of your life with someone who only likes you for your fake personality.

If you have a horrible personality work on that so just being yourself doesn't mean being an asshole. Even then though at least anyone getting into the relationship will know that ahead of time and not after the divorce.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Being yourself" can be somewhat complex, though.

Our concept of self is more fluid than most people realise, and we will often be very different in different social groups. We might not even notice this until those social groups collide. Each version of yourself is no more or less "you" than any other.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for the quality comment. It really is difficult to define since the sense of self is just a concept to begin with.

By being yourself, I would take that to mean being true to your intentions, interests, and general demeanor in the moment. All those can change with time.

Avoiding things like pretending to be interested in sports, pretending to hate comics, pretending to be a "player", pretending to be overly macho, hiding politics, etc are all things that I have seen people do. If your interests change that's normal but I wouldn't recommend feigning things that are untrue for you in the moment.

I think aspiring for self improvement would still count as being true to yourself if you genuinely want to improve.