She Wanted a Man with a Good Job Who Is Nice to Animals
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This was the front page story: https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2019-08-16/causing-trou...
It may appear to be the same story, but it is a completely separate article on the same topic written by the same author and published the same day.
> A version of this article appeared in print on August 16, 2019 with the headline: Causing Trouble as We Smiled
I wonder if that accounts for the differences?
The article timing couldn't be better. Definitely a touching piece.
I've had dogs all 30 years of my life. I'm not reading this. Nope.
The whole article reads like a submarine advertisement about how the author checks all the boxes a stereotypical millennial urbanite is supposed to check.
The next month after Sadie's passing my wife and my two boys introduced me to Freddy. And so goes our family with another happy member to share our love.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/fashion/dog-anchors-man-f...
We lost our cat to cancer this year. She was everything to my SO. The cat and I got my SO through grad school and really helped out my SO with a pain disorder that my SO has been battling. We had her euthanized at home as well and I was lucky enough to be the one that plunged the vial into her, relieving her of the pain. She was my cat afterall, just as I was her human. Then we wrapped her in her favorite blanket and the specalist took her away. We got the ashes a while later. I still can't bear to open the bag that they sit in.
It was ... tough. It is tough still. She is everywhere and I still look for her when something perks just outside of my sight. I still think she's just in another room. But she is not. The cancer took her away from us.
Pets are amazing, and it's a testament to the love they reflect that we miss them so much. I wish the author the best in the new journey and the new life, I'm certain that the new couple will find another pet to love and care for. Based on the essay, it will be a very lucky pet to have such great owners to love.
I cannot, for the life of me, see organizing and playing a twenty one kazoo salute for a dog I loved. Dear God, Ilse made him change his clothes. The article is so bloodless.
>After a year of dating, Ilse began pushing for marriage >She said it’s difficult for an entrepreneurial woman in her 30s to find love with someone who has a good job >We had a back and forth, like playing chess. So she's actively trying to convince him to do something she knows he doesn't want to do.
>One evening, Ilse said if I wasn’t going to be with her, I had to let her go so she could find someone else.
"Giving ultimatums" appears on every single list of "signs of abusive relationships" you could care to find.
If I had been this guy's friend I'd have been telling him to break up with her, and saying so regularly.
"Give up the bottle, or I leave."
"Stop hitting the kids, or I call the cops."
(Other ultimatums, such as "Marry me or I kill the dog" are obviously abusive.)
In this case, the woman is forcing the man into a choice, but he still has a choice. "Show me that I'm not wasting my time or I leave" is in the grand scheme of things quite tame.
There are many reasons to call attention to things not working (e.g. the bottle example given above) and the ultimatum can be the last step. And when kids are involved (not in this case) it’s typically better for all concerned to have two parents if that’s possible. So you may hang in there longer than might look sensible from the outside.
Perhaps, maybe even probably — but what about two messed-up single-parent households?
In particular, textual flirting with the opposite sex is something that is easy to fall into, starting innocently and delivering a strong dopamine hit with each correspondence. The dopamine-addled S.O. can easily rationalize to themselves that they are just writing, that their privacy is suddenly Very Important, it's not cheating, and surely that's not innuendo! ("When we finally meet for coffee we'll just be friends.")
The well-delivered ultimatum, although blunt, makes the situation clear and leaves no room for rationalization: the emotions associated with the proto-affair are inappropriate to an exclusive relationship.
I've had to make this ultimatum twice. 50% of the time it has resulted in the recipient suddenly becoming self-aware and making an effort to change her behavior. As a result, I'm quite certain the current S.O. is not BPD.
That's not an ultimatum, though I can see how it might read that way. She felt a need, which he wasn't meeting. She told him that if he wouldn't meet it, he needed to let her go seek its fulfillment elsewhere.
This seems like a vague sense of displaced blame, however; so I can understand how people will view it as a red flag: There's nothing preventing her from leaving of her own volition but it's inferred that she has no possibility of choice (without him having to have made a choice) - even though he's already signaled his desires multiple times before.
In that sense, it is an ultimatum but one that tries to absolve guilt by making the "decision-maker" the "owner" of the result/consequence - even though, in reality, both would suffer the consequences of the choice.
Further still, is the impression inferred that she's a prisoner because she's "bound" to him because he needs to "let her go" if he won't fulfill her desire[s]; inferring that, somehow, he - alone - wields power over her self-agency.
That doesn't quite make sense - when a healthy relationship should be two independent people sharing in the relationship "power" dynamic. In other words, it should not be so skewed that one has power/control over life, destiny, etc. of another.
In this perspective, it does seem to be a very troubling red flag.
If you reverse it - the man says "If you don't marry me, I'll get another dog" - it looks rather less convincing.
Also, i do not understand why ever speak about guilt in this case - if there is no commitment then there is no guilt when relationship is dissolved.
Frankly, I find this to be far more a "My way or the highway" kind of attitude than the quoted bit from The Fine Article — you don't seem even to concede the possibility of marriage being more than a "contract", when, for most people, that's among the least of what it's about.
Does this change of perspective mean anything or help at all to anyone?
I've been crying all night, almost every night for about 3 weeks now, sleeping 0 to 3 hours a night, because Google's Recapcha service a few weeks ago, for no apparent, communicated, or appealable reason decided to reject all of my captcha answers no matter how accurate they may be. This means I have been sent out to an internet leper colony so hideously lonely that I can no longer even post on 4chan or talk on Omegle.
And you would tell this person to dumpster a real life in-person human being because she was worried she'd wind up as defenseless and alone as me.
...relationships have to get way more actually abusive to be worse than no relationship at all, which is the threat we frankly all face.
Help please
It's a terrible state of affairs that this might be what's required to access the fucking internet (@Google, @Cloudflare), but it's better than what it sounds like your alternative has become.
On a different note, here's what you might tell yourself if you were in a relaxed and emotionally healthy enough state to think clearly and positively (it's very hard like to think like this when you're deep in the mires of it all, but maybe it will help):
- if you're in a part of the world which allows it this time of year, get outside and get a little sun most days.
- find a hobby which needs to be done outside of the house. Even if you only like to read, do it outside where you will come into contact with other people outside of a work environment. Then work up to other hobbies which can be done either individually or socially (indoor rock climbing, learning a language, music, cycling, lifting weights, whatever).
- get and appreciate some little wins in your hobbies and reconnect that pathway which says that if you work at something you can achieve it, that you can enjoy yourself and that you're a normal human.
- go to places regularly and smile and nod at the people who you recognise. If you like music, go to gigs or places where people with similar tastes tend to be.
- start face to face conversations with people with no expectations for where it will go, even if it's ordering a coffee or commenting on the weather. Ideally, look for something (non-sexual) which you appreciate about someone and casually let them know. Maybe aim for doing this once per day. Start conversations with "wow, I wish I could do that/that looks like so much fun. How did you get started?"
- when you get talking to people, mention any interests which come up which you also share (or might share, if you explored it). Mention any hurdles you've had in pursuing them and that you'd like to find a way to overcome them. If they extend an offer to help (by offering to let you know the next time they're doing it, for example), take the chance to exchange details.
- follow up with people, if you feel like it makes sense. A lot of "ohh for sure, we should definitely do something!" talk happens, particularly when alcohol is involved, but you can break through that (or see it for what it is) with a follow-up message some time later. Don't be needy, but you're basically just letting them know that you meant what you said about wanting to hang out.
- find some friends this way before you let yourself start thinking about a relationship. Relationships are messy and it helps to have friends who can help you ride out the lows, and, as you mentioned, share the highs.
The thing is, being social and having a social life both take work and can be forgotten, just like any other skill. Despite the dystopia which we can be mistaken in believing when we look at the state of social media and the internet, the real world is still out there to be a part of, more or less just like it was before.
This varies a lot depending on where you are, but in general people are looking to get through their day as positively as possible and if they can make a new friend and it feels natural enough then they would generally like to.
“If you don't ____, I will ____.” boundary setting statements with consequences are as likely to show up on lists of how to deal with relationships with communication problems as ultimatums are to show up on lists of signs of abusive relationship.
Once drove an old Toyota... check
Plastered said Toyota in the kind of bumper stickers you usually have to be a Prius driving tenured professor to amass... check
Ethically sourced pet... check
Uses said dog to woo women on tinder... check
Girlfriend makes demands and he caves to them... check
Doubles down by marrying her... check
Had the author gone on to discuss his preferred micro-brews, farmers markets and the best way to die your hair blue I would have assumed this was a satirical piece.
I have no problems with the people who do all these things. I check a few of these boxes myself. I take issue with the people who broadcast it like it's something virtuous.
All I get from this is that Dusty was an awesome celebrity dog who died and this guy's wife whom he met on Tinder sucks and is diabetic. The structure also implies that he put his dog down so that he wouldn't get in between him and his bullying wife.
I would never write anything disparaging or potentially embarrassing about my wife in a public article.
As far as I can tell, "basic" as an insult usually means "having a sincere and unashamed interest in something I'm not into."
The real moral of this story is to not have any attachments. It’s all fleeting in the end. When the time comes, you need to accept it with open arms, instead of holding on in futility. Death comes for us all eventually.
sorry, you should correct that to :
you will miss out on everything worthwhile
Do other people's lives seem more worthwhile to you because they have some relationships with people you'd care nothing for? Not to me -- the worthwhileness is an entirely subjective feeling for them. Whereas suffering is a real thing that subtracts much more from life than worthwhile adds.
It's the thesis behind one of the world's great religions.
If you are talking just from the elimination of suffering angle, sure. But they make the theological case that the absence of suffering itself leads to a state that is far more than just the absence of suffering. I don't think we can or should take that as a given, just as we don't take other theological truths as a given.
Imagine for a moment a person makes the decision to commit suicide but needs to stay alive for a while longer in order to complete certain professional obligations. Would it be appropriate for that someone to form attachments, to be selfish and make friends knowing that he will hurt them terribly when he kills himself? If one of them were to be the one that discovers his dead body, or by the ones coping with his disappearance?
Or is it better that he do the right thing, and sever any attachments that may exist so that they won't get hurt when he does kill himself? To contain the suffering to just one single individual.
I find it hard to believe that you could read a story like this one and what you come away with is the idea that dogs bring suffering.
> Dusty taught me everything I needed to know about life, but over the years there had been something missing. My friends Ben and Rachel insisted I join a dating app to expand my horizons. That’s how they met, but I loathed the idea.
> Why would I want to expand my life? I had a dog, a place to live, a pickup truck smothered in bumper stickers. But out of curiosity (or God knows what), I humored them. I created a Tinder account with a picture of Dusty as my profile picture. No one matched with me until Rachel explained that I was swiping in the wrong direction. The first time I swiped right, I matched.
> The first time I swiped right, I matched.
There is a link between cruelty to animals and violence against women, murder, etc.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/domestic-viole...
Owning a cat however isn't the same, and could have a negative effect.
Huh?
All of my ~longtime girlfriends and wives have been cat people. Two out of three wives, at one point in their lives, had more than five cats. The first, when I met her, had over 20 cats. Counting kittens and loosely attached males.
So why not cats?
As the initial poster was stating, men who have dogs seem to fare better at attracting women, while men who have cats seem to fare worse. There was nothing about women's success at attracting men, and the effect different animals have on it.
What's your evidence for that? There's nothing in the Independent article about it.
If this is a thing, I guess that "likes Lassie" is as good an explanation as any.
Different rules for girls, though single and more than a handful of cats and people start whispering Crazy Cat Lady.
Most people I know would identify as dog people and the stats for Australian households with one but not the other are 2:1 in favour of dogs.
Disclaimer: I currently have two dogs, one cat
But why would women not like guys who like cats?
I have a theory. I like cats more than dogs because cats are independent and self-possessed. Whereas dogs are pack animals, seem to always be testing dominance order, and demand lots of maintenance.
So I can see how women who are looking for fathers would prefer dog people. Whereas women looking for friends would prefer cat people.
Unless you mean they have daddy issues and are looking for a partner that's just like their dad, no. In my experience of dating in a big city, every 30+ white American woman who has no kids, and doesn't even want kids, still goes on and on in her dating profile about how "obsessed" with dogs she is. These women only want men with dogs. It's not because they're looking for someone to be a father to her kids, it's just because that's the fad she's jumped on and decided to center her whole life around, and any man who isn't into that same fad isn't going to interest her.
It's just like women who are all into veganism, or social justice, or Trumpism, or some particular religon, or keto/paleo diets, or whatever. Americans these days all have to have some cause to rally around, and they don't want to date someone who isn't into that same cause, or can't be easily converted to adopt their cause.
Caring for cute, furry little sociopaths with razor sharp claws should be the gold standard of signalling patience and niceness.
In America, being an extremely LOUD, boorish, extroverted person is esteemed, and that's who white American women want to date and marry (regardless of whether they want kids or not, as many of them these days don't). Men with dogs fit into this stereotype well, whereas men with cats don't, they're stereotyped as "nerds" and introverts, and white American women have no interest in dating them.
Again, note that this is entirely cultural (subcultural?), and not universal, even within America. Immigrant women are usually not like this at all (which is part of why I only date non-American women these days), and also black American women aren't real keen on pets either.
I am from central Europe, but have travelled in America and have family over there too, I can tell you that women being attracted to loud, boorish, extroverts its not at all specific to white Americans. This is pretty much a universal human trait.
Its also interesting that you say that immigrants in America are not like that at all? Because in my experience, at least in the black and hispanic communities - they have far more of a macho culture than most white Americans do.
I guess you've never met anyone from Asia.
Is this about the American attitude that dogs are always boys and cats are always girls, i.e. having a cat is "less manly"?
The only two things I can think of are that dogs naturally lend themselves to meeting people because they need to be walked, act as a conversation starter and may even approach strangers themselves; and that dogs are (apparently especially in the US) more socially accepted than cats, so the chances of someone being a dog person (or familiar with dogs) being higher than for cats.
These kinds of dog people tend to associate with the traits in their dogs they like or wish about themselves. I think they then associate cat owners with cat traits (particularly negative ones).
Really?
How odd.
Our one cat, on the other hand, though male, was presupposed to be female.
It's definitely a thing.
Personally, I would choose a female dog and male cat every time. Less dominant and more bidable dog and a less skitish cat who's more likely to not take crap from the dog at meal time.
I'm guessing 'certain forums' is code for the PUA community?
You might want to think of 'women' as being a category with a lot of different and divergent people in it. Some of them like animals. Some of them don't. If they're into pets and you're into pets, then that might help open a conversation. But that's more like 'women who have a thing for dogs'.
Nah, not really, this thing has been 'round since a 2008 study in pet owner forums/FB groups and gets recycled in the summer news hole every other year.
I understand that women are a diverse lot but there are articles which do talk about bond between women and dogs[1]. But since we cannot just accept articles as facts, I thought of enquiring if this has been academically studied.
The article also mentions other studies which focus on the "why" part.
If you're a guy with a cat, you will have a very hard time getting a date with a white American woman. Luckily, there's other (better) women out there who don't insist on having animals that are totally impractical in the city.
Having a dog signals that you will take on caring for another being even if it is not in your financial best interest and that you can at least keep the thing alive. Think with your lizard brain and it makes perfect sense why women are attracted to that.
Why childless American women who explicitly don't want children aren't attracted to men who like cats, I have no idea. It's not like this in other countries; this is mostly an American phenomenon.
That's exactly what I'm saying. The dog is conspicuous consumption. It's signaling that you are willing to burn resources (time in particular) in a similar manner you would on a child. The lizard brain eats that shit up and the human brain is none the wiser. As a byproduct of being far more practical in terms of time/money resources the cat does not broadcast that signal. Nobody is saying the cat is not more practical. That's a given.
In reality, most people don't truly know what they're looking for and definitely cannot afford to travel more than 1x a year, if that. Hell, I "travel" that much and it'll never be a bullet point on my profile because it's not something I really value.
People put in the most formulaic BS on their profiles in the hope of appearing "normal" to a potential match. The UX of most dating sites encourages this kind of self-pigeonholing as well.
In rare cases, people will actually write "I really don't know what to write here, it's hard to summarize myself this way". But I find that to be a truer reflection of a person rather than the boilerplate text people tend to post.
Sure, you can say things like "love to travel", "fluent in sarcasm", etc., without those being huge parts of your daily life. But you can't own a dog and not have it be a big part of your life.
I do see some women who don't own dogs, and will say stuff in there about how much she loves them, wants to get one, will totally swipe right for your dog, etc. But usually they actually do own one.
That's the scenario I was referring to. For potential matches that already have pets of some kind, I usually see that they ask that the other person be OK with dogs/cats, which is very reasonable compared to "you must also have pets".
https://web.archive.org/web/20110126111953/http://blog.okcup...
I agree that this is an American thing, but moreover, I think it's a relatively recent thing too. I don't remember this dog craze existing back in the 90s.
- author's fear of being left without companionship overcoming his fear of commitment/failure (seemingly): ... I didn’t want to lose Ilse, especially knowing I was about to lose Dusty ...
- author's POV about living for more than himself: ... I thought none of this was worth anything unless I had something more to live for.
- how his "youth"/carefree phase sort of died with his dog - travels ending in his truck, etc. - and a new chapter begins with his spouse
- near death experience + how that (seemingly?) kicked off his choice to marry his spouse
lots of good stuff to reflect on here, especially for lone ranger/loss-averse/single people types
Anyway, I don't even like dogs and I certainly don't have one but I was still touched by it.
Seems more Reddit or pulp magazine territory to me.
But when you're just softballing in "human interest" stories about pets then it's just reddit with less features.
- Man and dog are best long time friends
- Man meets over 30 yr old diabetic sexual abuse victim on Tinder
- Woman pushes him for marriage contract
- Dog dies 2 days before wedding
- She pushes him to still get married and cares more about "At least smile for the photos"
"Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode."
I guess Chrome incognito is still detectable. Hard pass.