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Comment by 999900000999 | Hacker News Reader

Don't waste all day dwelling on negative things.

My first girlfriend, after we broke up gave me a lifelong lesson. You can always control your attitude, more specifically. You can always control what you tell people. If you tell people about all these bad things that are going on all the time, they're just not going to want to be around you.

With my first girlfriend, had I just closed my mouth and kept these things to myself. And it was bad stuff, I was going through an eviction.

Maybe things would have worked out .

The other thing though, you just have to be grateful for right now.

To paraphrase

Thich Nhat Hanh

Fine piece with every step

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> Maybe things would have worked out

It is highly unlikely that things would have worked out given your description. A healthy relationship is an honest one and sometimes life sucks and a supportive partner will help you through those times, and vice versa. Having said that, being constantly hyper-negative is also unhealthy and a relationship is unlikely to last if one only ever focuses on the negative side of things. If that describes you then that is something that a therapist can help you understand the address.

I'm going to disagree here, we were only 19. It was just too much for even me to handle, I did have another friend and she was very supportive but I absolutely don't blame my first girlfriend for leaving.

You should be able to find a counterfactual 19yo self, a person similar to you with similar stresses with a similar partner: a person who kept their “bad things” inside and did not share them with their partner. nyokodo‘s point is keeping stresses “hidden” is also probably similarly destructive in a relationship.

Either way, I am pleased you reflect on your past and try different techniques to avoid making the same mistakes. Personally, I just make different mistakes!

Another thing to be careful of is that we edit our pasts: getting reliable information on cause and effect is extremely difficult. We all create narratives that don’t exactly fit the facts. Not saying you did that, just to try and avoid making that mistake which is easy to see in others but hard to see in ourselves. Good luck.

I'll put it this way, if I would have met her... Just two or three months later, my life was in a phenomenally better state.

There was no reason for me to tell her on a second date or whatever about all of my problems.

I was a stupid 19-year-old.

Now I know, you just don't need to tell everybody everything. Particularly when you don't know the person that well, it doesn't help them to know what you're going through.

It's all love though, after my first girlfriend dumped me I probably went out with like 3 or 4 other girls within a year or so.

> I absolutely don't blame my first girlfriend for leaving.

Good, it shouldn’t be about blame, neither her nor you, it just wasn’t meant to be. I get the sense that you’d benefit from talking to a therapist about this if you aren’t already and have the means. Basically everyone benefits from talking through matters like this with a professional. Good luck!

I've actually tried therapy again rather recently.

I definitely have the income to afford it, but it hasn't been super effective so far. The money doesn't really matter, but I'm afraid I might just be wasting my time.

> I've actually tried therapy again rather recently....I'm afraid I might just be wasting my time

It can take a few tries to find the right therapist too. I encourage you to keep it up and see what happens.

There's balance to be had. Keeping everything inside isn't healthy either.

Sharing sadness and frustrations is different than complaining.

My approach to this is: I talk about the bad things that are going on in my life, but I always follow up with all of the good things: I live in a country that is not at war. I am not homeless. I have access to hot and cold running water that is (mostly) safe to drink. I even have air conditioning, which in many parts of the world is an unimaginable luxury. So yes, there might be some bad shit going on in my life at the moment, but no matter how bad things get they can almost certainly get worse. And unless you are living in an underdeveloped country or Ukraine, they can almost certainly get a whole lot worse [1]. So yes, I vent about things. But I always follow up by counting my blessings.

[1] https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/10/travelogue-beauty-and-de...

That sounds like an unnatural conversation to have with a partner. Sharing specific negative things about your immediate experience and then slapping “I am grateful that I don’t live in a war-torn country” on top.

Saying that, I agree that reminding _yourself_ of such things helps to keep a more healthy perspective, just not sure sharing that in a conversation is helpful.

Well, yeah, that was just the general idea, not a script. I usually just say something like “if this is the biggest challenge we will ever have to deal with then we are doing pretty well” or something like that.

> You can always control your attitude, more specifically. You can always control what you tell people.

Controlling one's attitude and tongue are excellent goals, and they usually pay great dividends.

It's probably worth mentioning that good mental health goes a long way in achieving those goals. Lack of sleep, high stress, drug addiction, etc. all make those things harder.

I just mention this so that people facing those headwinds don't add to their troubles by feeling guilty about things that (at the moment) are somewhat beyond their control.

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