My regrets as a 46 year old, and advice to others at a crossroad | Hacker News Reader

My regrets as a 46 year old, and advice to others at a crossroad

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25 pointsfranze10 comments

The grass is always green, etc.

Someone else, also 46, could make a similar post talking about how they wasted their most productive years on trivialities and as a result they now struggle to pay their bills, and regret never having a "career."

Obviously 9-7, missing fathers funeral, having no relationship with your own family is an extreme example, but the OP wants us to think about how that could apply to "our" situation. I think for most people it won't.

The OP's story is a great allegory. And just like all great allegories you have to crank it up to 500% to make its inherent "truth" more self evident.

As an aside: The 10 year cheating wife is a scumbag. The OP takes that on the chin but she is clearly a very bad person in SO many ways. It is one thing if she cheated on a whim and then left him, 10 years ago, it is another thing entirely to keep it up for that period.

Yeah its easy to blame the wife. The wife who slept alone every night. That's like a 10-year prison sentence of celibacy. Why so hard on her, for essentially keeping the family together for 10 years? Would we be blaming her if she left after only 1 or 2 years of neglect?

> Yeah its easy to blame the wife. The wife who slept alone every night. That's like a 10-year prison sentence of celibacy.

It is 2014, not 1714, divorce is now a "thing." In most areas you don't even need concrete grounds for divorce, just run some paperwork and it will be approved.

> Why so hard on her, for essentially keeping the family together for 10 years?

Because she is a scumbag who cheated on her husband and someone who loved her for ten years? She kept a lie together for ten years and wasted both of their time.

She knew full well the marriage would eventually collapse but kept it going, why? For the money? Because she liked the excitement of sneaking around?

> Would we be blaming her if she left after only 1 or 2 years of neglect?

I'm not sure what you're asking there. Yes I'd blame her for cheating for 1-2 years. No I wouldn't blame her for leaving at any stage when she realised she was unhappy within the marriage.

Yeah because leaving is so simple and guilt-free? Because you know all about why she felt attached to him, but needed SOME outlet that he could no longer provide? Because of course marriage is all about sex and nothing else, not shared business, nor family, nor support. Just leave as soon as you're bored!

Maybe she was providing him money and support. Maybe she started out confiding in the other guy, and moved gradually from friend to more. Maybe divorce means a whole lot more to her than to you.

To be honest, we don't know anything about their relationship, but calling the last 10 years a prison sentence to celibacy is a bit ridiculous. Also, having a husband that is too focused on providing for his family financially is certainly not neglect.

As you say, there is more to love and marriage than sex - but both are built on trust. If she was unhappy she needed to voice her unhappiness, not destroy the trust on which the rest of their life was built. That's why she deservers the entirety of the blame. Cheating on a long term partner is one of the worst betrayals of trust there is.

Trust goes two ways. Piling "all the blame" on one of them is silly; clearly both were to blame. That's self-evident.

And I'm not sure who betrayed whom. Both neglected the relationship; both found other mistresses to occupy them, both for selfish reasons.

I would argue that being focused on money at the expense of seeing your family is absolutely neglect. You can spin it as "being responsible" all you want, but it's far more important for a kid to have a father that's present and engaged than for the kid to be financially well-off.

I work hard while I'm at work, but I only work 8-hour days, max. Most of the time, more like 6-7 hour days. I've got a side project that might turn into a business, but I'm taking it slow and letting it develop organically. And if it stops being fun, I'll stop doing it.

Next year, I'm going to take 5 months off of work to hike the Appalachian Trail. This is whether my side project takes off or not; if it's doing well, I'll totally leave the management of it to my co-founder while I'm gone.

I'm taking improv and sketch comedy writing classes. I don't have nearly as much free time as I used to, but I feel like I'm actually alive now.

Some people think that working 10-12 hours a day is living. They're hoping for a big payoff in the future based on slaving away now. I think living in the moment and exploring all the awesomeness this world has to offer is the best thing I can possibly do for myself.

My boss once asked me, "what's more important to you: doing your job or having fun?" I laughed and said that's the dumbest question I've ever heard. Obviously, having fun. I work in order to facilitate having fun. Work is not the end, just the means to the end.

As a guy in his mid-20s working in a high-pressure, high-paying 9-8 job...

Its all a tradeoff. Yeah I'm working very hard during the week - I don't really have time for anything besides work+gym during weekdays, and some weekends I need to work as well. BUT I'm able to provide for my single mother, live in a very nice area in my city, travel wherever I want to go on vacation, eat at nice restaurants, buy expensive toys, etc etc. Coming from a family where the the nicest place we ever went out to eat was hometown buffet, this financial freedom is pretty damn great.

Plus I would argue that I actually have more freedom to do what I want to do during my free time, despite having less of it. I went to NYC for a weekend last week, was in vegas 2 weeks before, and I'm traveling to Japan over Christmas and NYE to snowboard in Hokkaido. You just cant do stuff like that if you don't have any money, especially when you need to help support your family.

Anyway just my 2 cents. Every job has a varying degree of intensity, and mine, despite the long hours needed, is still pretty flexible in terms of when I can take time off and such.

Enjoy the rat race guys, your wife and her boyfriend will love you for it.

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