Young adults who "lie flat" also see romantic relationships as unnecessary | Hacker News Reader

Young adults who "lie flat" also see romantic relationships as unnecessary

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29 pointsamichail55 comments

I’m one of these people. I think romantic relationships are extremely important for pragmatic reasons (housing affordability, having children, as a safety net, etc) but I choose not to date because I don’t know how to find anyone I actually like. I don’t understand how people get into relationships without treating dating like a job search.

“Just put yourself out there”, “you’re overthinking it - a relationship will come when you least expect it”

But what if that doesn’t work? I’m pretty sure eventually I’ll need to settle for whatever I can get and try to make things work out like it’s an arranged marriage

I’m almost 30 years old and still in the closet because I feel like there’s no benefit to coming out. A straight and gay incel have the exact same life other than porn preferences.

Maybe I’m just asexual.

Most of the people I know that pursue relationships for purely pragmatic reasons and fail seem to forget that people won't fit into boxes because you want put them there. The people I see that are successful meet people where they are, and let their positions in their life reveal itself as they get to know the other person. I don't know if this applies to you or is even helpful, but it is a pattern I have noticed in my life.

Successful in pseudo arranged marriages, or just in general?

I haven’t been in a relationship yet so I have no idea if this will even work

I'm not sure what you mean by pseudo arranged marriages. I mean successful at building new interpersonal relationships in general, and generally that translates into more opportunity for romantic relationships.

I mean people who settle for somebody they don’t have romantic feelings for because it’s a pragmatic decision

The idea of romantic love is pretty new. Knowing how lame humanity is, I'm not surprised that no culture has found or integrated yet the replicable way to find and properly develop the relationship with a "soulmate". It doesn't mean that the way doesn't exist.

> without treating dating like a job search

You are right, but expand that horizon a little bit. Dating has to be given consistent time. You're unlikely to get lucky. But, it does not have to be separate activity.

Choose a co-ed hobby / co-ed workout, and stick to it. Your workout becomes where you find people to date. If you aren't actively looking, then see if you can build a rapport with someone first. If you see some potential, then you can make the move. If not, you still got a workout/hobby and a friend out of it.

The stigmatization of approaching someone in the workplace, and increasingly in any non-bar public places is an impractical solution with more negative side-effects than many realize. Work dating is becoming a no-no, but I would suggest that you be more brazen in otherwise semi-acceptable public places.

(p.s: make necessary adjustments to the comment acc. to your dating preferences)

> don’t know how to find anyone I actually like

That sounds like a bigger underlying problem. It is the same steps as I mentioned above, but finding your community is incredibly important to general well being.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping

Is this similar to hikimori, minus some of the extreme social withdrawal?

Is this the human equivalent of “the beautiful ones”, where the cut-throat resource hoarding and society’s enforcement of non-violence has lead to a somewhat different way of “checking out”?

As soon as one kid or dependent is involved there’s great pressure to participate in the rat race.

Per the 60s technology-positive Zeitgeist, we were all supposed to have flying cars by now. Oh and also 15-hour workweeks.

Maybe "lying flat" is about taking an honest stab at at least getting that second part, the workweek, sorted out.

I had not heard the term "lie flat" before, and immediately thought it was trying to make enough money so that whenever you flew, you could always fly business class in "lie flat" seats.

Can we match the article title and put quotes around "lying flatism" because without the quotation marks or existing knowledge of the term this sentence is aneurysm inducing.

The price for this lifestyle is paid after midlife. What are you going to do in your older days without a family?

Whatever makes you happy. If you’re emotionally insecure or codependent, that could pose a problem of course (I recommend a therapist). But a family is by no means necessary to live a life that optimizes for high happiness levels.

> If you’re emotionally insecure

Everyone is emotionally insecure. Some people are pathological insecure and need treatment, but no one is a paragon of emotional security.

The most emotionally secure people I know, do it by addressing their insecurity through external factors. Eg: Finding a partner who provides affirmation, dealing with death by passing on your genes, getting past judgement by working with a patient partner, etc etc. Some people have outsourced some of these tasks to be therapist, but a therapist isn't your friend. A transactional relationship will always feel transactional, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise.

The truth is, that a strong relationship is just objectively more rewarding and comforting than perpetual singledom. That's because throughout a relationship, both people demonstrate 'non-transactional actions' that provide security to the other person. Marriage places a 50% of your net-worth cost on breaking a deal, which makes the traction itself untenable. Might sound like golden handcuffs. But if you want to be hand cuffed to be person, then that's just a golden bracelet.

The second part of it is permanence. You might have a really strong community of people you aren't married to, but there is an upper bound of inconvenience past which you can't maintain a relationship. If they move to another town, its over. Your non-contract/blood-bound community does not persist over time. Marriage explicitly ties you together semi-permanently. People fly across oceans to be care takers for their family. That permanence gives you comfort.

Marriage and family are social technology. They solved problems faced by everyone afflicted by the human condition. Sure, they have inconvenient bits attached to them, and that's because they are also fair. You get what you put in.

It is not that it is impossible to live a happy life without family formalized in blood or a hefty contract. But, all alternative solutions I know of, are some version of building your own family. Just that those solutions usually require a lot more work to get the same level of comfort, belonging and security provided by a healthy traditional family.

For example, have a network of friends who follow the same path? Self-isolation in suburbs is a particular American bug. There are cultures where people actively socialise until death.

Somebody should invite these lay-flatters to Southern Europe. They will definitely like Spain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_choice

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