I remember when I believed what I was told. I wore the suit, and then I even found a company that didn’t make me wear a suit. But there is a cost to everything.. things usually aren’t as they seem. Suits can come in all different styles and colors.
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I would say that your wife has had a dream to become a tech exec for many years - but at this point, it's difficult to know who's dream that was? was it hers? was it her parents? was it society's? after so many years, our personal dreams and those of society blend together
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after playing a game for so many years, we forget why we're playing the game
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She thinks it's hers.. in practice, I'm not sure theres much of a difference in how the "dream" was created, if it is still a current dream.
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Sounds like you’re good-hearted and don’t want to live by anyone else’s rules.
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Sounds like she, for some family or personal reasons, feels responsible for taking care of her family back home in the way that sons are traditionally expected to. Hard to unpack just via reading text.
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I'm sure she does. It's a different world over there, Logan. Having the ability to change tens of immediate family members lives is a heavy responsibility. Though it seems to me, it's mostly still driven by her own dreams.
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I imagine that her having a personal narrative that is about triumphing and being successful is much more cheerful and exciting for her than the alternative narrative “I need to relieve my family’s suffering”. Sounds like both may be true. I wish you both the best.
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Thoughtful thread. But aren't you contradicting yourself? You write: I will be "forever resentful of the culture that led me to believe it was worth achieving in the first place" and yet you emphasize your respect for your girlfriend wanting to become a "tech executive"...
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My respect is for her dreams, not the goal of being a tech executive.
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Ok, I just mean:most people dream of something like having a career, become rich, be influential etc.But as you achieved that (in part at least), you have realized that this is probably not something, which makes life worth living. Maybe you should talk to her about that?
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Find a way to talk about your individual and family goals with her. If you freely talk about these kinds of things in person, great. If not, I find it helpful to have some chats over Gchat or email or on a date night over a couple of beers.
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You evolved past one short term goal and found (perhaps) your final goal. Her work goal may only be short term. Or she might evolve past it. Find out if it's the end goal.
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And if it's a tough subject to breach, it can be helpful to use analogy to couple's in similar situations.
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We openly talk about all of it. But like I said, I really don’t like playing the “dream killer” role. She thinks she can do this for a while and then retire early.. but quite frankly it comes at the cost of the kind of life I want to lead.
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You may not want to be a “dream killer,” but she will kill yours if you proceed down a path that is not fundamentally aligned with the life you want to lead. Determine if this difference is reconcilable. If not, you must chose between your dreams and the relationship.
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It's unoriginal but what about a compromise? I keep reading about how vibrant are the tech scenes in many cities that are closer to the country (Boulder, Austin, ...) where she could continue persuing her tech exec career. It sounds her current co is not treating her well anyway!
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Sadly, realizing the futility of the rat race is not something you can easily transmit. I think it's more of an introspective task where you have to iteratively and honestly answer your own "why" questions until you run out.
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I think the hope of any relationship is the ability to be honest without being judged as selfish. As we grow I think we focus on the things we want consciously, and maybe the things we don’t want are observed a bit more passively through process of elimination.
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Meaning that until you got to experience for yourself that the ends of experiencing aspects of life didn’t justify the means of work it took, how else would you have been able to come to that conclusion?
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Maybe through your experience you can explain your frustrations with the paths of achievement and how we quantify the feeling of being fulfilled. She very well may understand and identify with those same frustrations in order to be a catalyst for change.
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