Comment by unethical_ban | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unethical_ban | Hacker News Reader

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"What, then, fills the void where possibility once lived?"

I am 36. This captures my greatest fears. That finding one woman anything less than immediately perfect will cut me off from all the small, lovely moments I have had with women across the world in my life. That if I buy a house in my imperfect city, that that's the ball game. I'm here for a decade or more (even though let's face it, I probably am anyway).

I had a similar interaction with a 31 year old friend who has a beautiful wife, love of his life, and two daughters, a PhD and a position at a startup. He said "What are my goals supposed to be now?" The answer is clearly to be a good father and husband, and I think he knew and was happy with that. But it represented the sea change between youth, singleness and research vs. middle age, familial responsibility and work.

"He wants his home and security, he wants to live like a sailor at sea. Beautiful loser, where will you fall, when you find out you just can't have it all?"

> That finding one woman anything less than immediately perfect will cut me off from all the small, lovely moments I have had with women across the world in my life.

You had those moments. You could keep trying to chase that bouncing between different partners going forward, but consider: a) more women exit the dating market with age (especially the good ones), b) there is a richness of experience also to be found with a devoted lifelong partner which can't be had with a mere fling.

As time goes on, your odds of success are harsher either way, risking being alone much of the time. But in particular, good long-term prospects more rapidly diminish.

Opportunity-cost goes both ways. Speaking from my own bias and experience, investing and relishing in a life-long relationship with a flawed-but-loving partner is worth it, having had the non-committal phase when I was younger.

It's difficult to maximize for some characteristics in a partner. Beauty, sure, you know what you like so you can ball-park. Many traits/qualities are difficult to discern and luck-of-the-draw: reliability and trust, compatibility and love, capacity to raise children well, etc.

No one is perfect and there is no unicorn, novelty is attractive in itself. My heuristic is if a partner can be assessed as "good", holding on is the right move.

I think about Voltaire's Candide often, and the lesson applies here.

Are you anything less than immediately perfect? I mean this in the way that inverting a question sometimes snaps me out of some loop or rut of indecision.

I think it's important to remember we're happily compatible with many people, many houses, and many entire existences.

Have you considered what's said in "Why you will marry the wrong person"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EvvPZFdjyk

I'm single in my 40s. I was the same way. Just pick one. Soon there won't be any to pick from my friend.

the way I've always thought about this uncertainty - the time will pass anyway. good choice or bad, but you can't avoid the time passing by trying to carefully consider which one to choose, and indecision eats the same time away, right?

as you note you're already probably living in some imperfect city. you might consider buying a house more of a commitment to it, but how much more than coasting along in apartments thinking of where to buy the house, for example? you'll live somewhere in that time either way. you might as well commit to things.

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