should i leave my gambling addcited husband? | Yahoo Answers

I run a private campground. It’s been in my family for generations. For those of you with a rich family history, I’m sure you know how stories tend to accumulate. They get passed along haphazardly from one generation to the next, distorting as they do, and the truth grows muddy along the way. Land is like that too, except instead of gathering stories about Aunt Jodi’s scandalous first husband, it gathers monsters.
If you’re new here, you should really start at the beginning and if you’re totally lost, this might help.
There’s a lot to do to maintain a campground and I’ve been having to do a lot of the work myself around here. I don’t want my winter staff going into the deep woods without a good reason right now. Normally I’d send Bryan, as he has the dogs to protect him, but those are on loan. Also, I haven’t seen a lot of Bryan. He shows up, he gets the work done that he needs to, and then he just… vanishes for a while. I don’t know if he’s visiting his dogs or the fairy or both. And now that I think about it, Bryan tends to make himself scarce throughout the year. I guess I haven’t paid that close of attention before. He still gets the job done just fine so does it really matter if he’s off visiting his fairy bff in his downtime?
Unfortunately, even with the spiders’ help, I’m still battling the thorns in my chest. It’s taking a lot of my strength away and I’m getting winded easier. It’s made getting rid of these accursed things a priority. I know the fairy said they’d go away when they killed the fomorian, but as many of you have pointed out, they’re taking their sweet time going about that.
I do have a theory about the current stalemate, though. The fomorian probably wants the thorns to cover more of the campground. The fairy probably wants the sun to return, being of the company of Lugh and all. And both of them probably want less treacherous footing for their steeds.
I see the dapple gray stallion’s hoofprints in the snow sometimes. It makes it easy to avoid. I just turn around and immediately go in the opposite direction.
With this surefire way of avoiding my nemesis, I figured it was time to try a gamble. The fairy initially told me that I could try finding a way to banish the thorns by seeking out another entity of disease. I’ve taken that to mean the gummy bears. Their presence has brought sickness and rot before. The only problem was I really wasn’t sure how to find anything out from them. Did I use their bodies in an elixir? Did they have the answers themselves? There was a human shaped gummy bear, at least until one of Byran’s dogs splattered it. Perhaps there’s more intelligence among them than I thought.
I decided to try out one of Mattias’s strategies. He learned a lot about these creatures simply by being close to them. Following their paths through the woods.
I figured the worst that would happen is I’d wander around the forest for a bit and maybe feel a little stupid.
...okay, that’s really not the worst that could happen, considering the upheaval my land is experiencing, but barring any other catastrophe it wasn’t that dangerous of a plan.
Or at least, the first part wasn’t.
I got some dead mice from the pet store to bait the traps with. They weren’t very big, so I didn’t expect to attract any of the larger gummy bears. This was perfectly fine with me. I was in no hurry for another encounter like the last one, especially with the dogs on loan to the fairy. I baited the traps and left them scattered throughout the deep woods.
Within a couple days the traps yielded results. I found the jellied remains of a rabbit inside one of the traps, staring at me with glistening eyes, its translucent ears quivering. I crouched beside the cage.
“I’m going to let you out,” I said. “Don’t try to bite me or I’ll drop-kick you into the afterlife.”
Just to be safe, I released the gummy bear with the cage door pointing away from me. The rabbit bolted and I sprinted after it, only to lose it within seconds. So the worst case scenario came true, I felt real dumb there, standing in the woods and belatedly realizing that I couldn’t actually keep up with a rabbit.
The second gummy bear I caught was a raccoon. That’s still not something I was convinced I could keep up with, so I took the liberty of breaking both of its hind legs before I released it. The bones snapped like dry branches. The gummy bear hissed wetly and bared its yellowed teeth at me, but otherwise didn’t seem to be in pain. I’m not sure if this qualifies as animal cruelty and frankly, I’m trying not to think about it too hard.
This time, I had no problem keeping up with the gummy bear once it was released. It dragged itself along by its forelegs, seemingly oblivious to the dangling appendages that trailed behind it. Our progress was slow and I impatiently began to wonder if perhaps I should have only broken one. There was nothing I could do about it now. The gummy bear would turn and hiss at me if I got too close, so I kept a healthy distance between us.
And I followed it. I honestly had no idea where it would lead me, but Mattias’s journal implies that he learned everything he did by being close to these inhuman things. The world is less stable when they’re nearby, he claimed. Things slip through.
It took a long time. I was tempted to quit and go home repeatedly and each time I had to remind myself to have patience. Mattias surely had, as he didn’t have the siren call of the internet luring him away. The raccoon made a circle of the deep woods, its pace consistent, dragging its broken legs behind it. It moved with purpose. It stayed off the road, but I caught glimpses of gravel now and again through the barren trees. After a little while I realized that it was slowly but surely turning, heading back towards the hill that led up and out of the forest.
I was beginning to think this had all been a waste of time and I should just finish the thing off. Watching it drag itself all through the woods for the past couple of hours had stirred an acute sense of guilt about this entire affair. Killing something was one thing. That’s a matter of life and death, generally. But crippling something like this… perhaps there’s more of my father in me than I thought. He’s in the quiet spaces of my soul and most of the time I can’t hear him over the roar of my anger.
I heard him now.
I steeled my resolve and hefted the crowbar I’d brought along for just this purpose. Blunt weapons are the best tool for destroying gummy bears. Sharp edges can cut pieces off them, but that won’t necessarily slow them down. Even if you cut it in half you could get unlucky and the pieces might reconnect and join back together and then you got a gummy bear with its ass literally stuck to its shoulder flailing around and trying to bite you.
Blunt trauma, however, separated the parts beyond repair. Like dropping a cherry pie on the floor. You aren’t getting that back together in a cohesive form. And like an exploding cherry pie, the gummy bear burst into a gooey red smear that coated the nearby ground and splattered on the trees when I brought the crowbar down into the center of its body.
Something like smoke hovered over the ground. It was only there for a second. I might have missed it, had I not been watching. Ever since my encounter with the human sized gummy bear I’ve been thinking about what I saw and experienced and wondering if I’d imagined it. But there it was. A miasma. An ill wind carrying sickness to anyone that inhaled it. It rolled away from me, traveling uphill, and then it passed between two trees and was gone.
I almost walked away. But something stirred in the back of my mind, sluggishly connecting the pieces. Dropping each thing that had happened into place until the pattern was evident.
I’d followed it around the old woods. We’d made a circle and were now at where we’d begun. Except sometimes… when walking in a circle with intent… you don’t actually wind up back where you started.
There are other worlds inside my campground. Many more than what I have encountered already, according to my ancestor.
I walked after the smoke and passed between the two trees and they creaked as I went by them, bending their heads to twine their branches so that I passed under an arch and then…
I was elsewhere.
The hall. I’d found the hall of the gummy bears.
I need to stop using such stupid names for the things on my campground.
The structure was of primitive construction. The ceiling was thatched and birds flew between the rafters. There were no windows and the only light came from candles burning in sconces on the wall. The air was thick with the stink of rancid fat and smoke. I tried to take shallow breaths and walked slowly forwards across the rushes strewn over the dirt floor. Small things rolled and broke under my feet. I did not look closer to see what they were. They felt like bone fragments.
The hall continued on for a long time. The darkness swallowed me up and I could only see a handful of yards in any direction. The columns supporting the roof blurred together, each one the same as the last. Round posts with the bark roughly hewn off, painted in ochre tones of yellow and red. Primitive colors made from the earth. This place was very old, a remnant from the earliest edges of human civilization.
I reached the end of the hall. At first I took the back wall for a mosaic, dark wood interspersed with ivory points of varying sizes. Then, as I drew closer, the shapes resolved themselves. Skulls. The back wall was covered with skulls. Animal skulls of all sizes. I recognized groundhogs, squirrels, deer, and a couple coyotes.
A platform of rough hewn stone was built against the back wall. On it sat a chair, backless, with a rounded seat of hide stretched between two ornate arms. The carvings that covered the legs and arms were the only intricate decoration I’d seen in this entire place.
I crept closer to the chair, trying to get a better look. It was then that I noticed there was something strange about the mortar holding the stones together.
It glistened in the faint candlelight, like a fatty cut of meat.
I drew up short with a sudden sense of unease. Nervously, I hefted the crowbar, taking confidence in its weight. I held still and listened to my surroundings, intently searching for any noise, any sign that something was urgently amiss.
A rattling in the corner. Like the scuttling of tiny claws. I pivoted to face it, just in time to see one of the skulls fall off the wall.
It did not strike the ground. It stopped just short, as if falling into thick snow, and then it tilted gently to one side and went motionless. Smoke condensed beneath it, barely discernible in the dim light of the candles.
It felt like it was staring at me.
Then it was gone, swiftly flowing out of sight the instant I blinked. Heart pounding, I watched the shadows, trying to discern where it had gone. But behind me I heard another noise, like the scrape of claws, and I turned to face it just as another skull fell from the wall. This, too, was caught by the smoke.
I felt like my heart was ready to burst from my chest. The rushing of my own blood echoed in my ears. I licked my dry lips and waited, my eyes darting back and forth in a vain attempt to watch all angles. The room was silent. I couldn’t depend on my hearing. How would smoke make noise?
The first came from my right. It swept in low, the smoke billowing like the incoming tide. I turned on my heel and brought the crowbar down in an overhead swing. It connected just as the creature surged upwards, the empty eye sockets leering. The mid part of the crowbar crushed through the skull and into the brain cavity and the smoke dispersed as if flattened, floating back down to the ground.
Blunt teeth raked against my shoulder. I hissed and spun, swiping sideways with the crowbar as I did. It passed through the column of smoke and the creature faltered, as if losing its balance, and a follow-up swing sent the skull tumbling away in three separate pieces.
More skulls were rattling on the wall. Three fell. Then two more. They were quickly swallowed up in the darkness, only to emerge seconds later, lunging at me from the shadows. I would dispatch one with a well-aimed blow and then turn to counter another. Or feel the bite of their teeth. I could only be thankful there was no jawbone with which to crush whatever limb they latched onto when they had an opening. Still, the teeth broke skin. I barely felt the pain underneath the adrenaline.
They were aiming for my throat. For my abdomen. And for every one I dispatched, another couple skulls would fall.
Then there was another sound, overwhelming the rattling of the skulls or my own frantic breathing. Laughter. A gurgling, wet laugh, emanating from the direction of the throne. I risked taking my eyes off the shadows and saw that the mortar holding the stones together was not… actually… mortar.
It was flesh. Jellied, translucent flesh. And it was seeping upwards, congealing on top of the dais, working its way up the legs of the throne.
And it was laughing.
“Send them all!” I screamed at the dais. “I’ll smash every skull on that damn wall if I have to!”
There were so many now. They crowded between the columns, lines of ivory skulls bobbing on a thick carpet of smoke. I exhaled slowly, trying to steady my nerves. I could do this, I told myself. I was stronger than them. Their teeth could not pierce very far and so I only had to outlast them and protect my vitals. And hadn’t Beau taught me how to outlast?
“Go on,” I growled. “My name is Kate. I’ve killed inhuman things before and I’ll destroy all of you as well if I have to.”
The chuckling finally stopped with a final, satisfied note echoing down the long hall. Panting, I pivoted, watching as the creatures receded into the shadows between the columns. Finally, only once the silence returned and nothing else came out of the darkness at me, did I turn and give my full attention to the mass at the fore of the room.
It covered the throne as a shapeless mound of flesh the color of an onion. A quivering lump fully the height of a human and just as wide, the chair hazy behind the translucent jelly. As I watched, small shapes detached from the dais. Stones, two the size of my fist and the rest the size of walnuts. These slowly made their way up through the entity’s body until they floated in the middle of the space between the arms of the chair. The larger stones positioned themselves as eyes and the rest became teeth. The teeth split apart and it began to speak.
“Have you brought me tribute?” it gurgled.
“No,” I replied.
“Then you are an intruder.”
All around me, the skulls shifted, moving forwards a pace. I resisted the urge to raise my weapon once more.
“That is not my intent either.”
“Ahhhhh.” The teeth spread into a smile. “Then you are a supplicant.”
“Are you a king of the Partholanians?” I asked.
Those ancient people of Ireland who died of disease.
“It has been a long time since I’ve heard their name,” it replied thoughtfully. “We are of them. They had a name for our hall. It has since been forgotten.”
I briefly considered telling it what we call them, but quickly squashed the idea. I didn’t want to cause myself more problems by naming it and I certainly didn’t want to name it “the hall of the gummy bears” I mean that’s a terrible name.
DO NOT CALL IT THAT IN THE COMMENTS.
“There’s thorns on my land,” I said. “They’re rotting the trees.”
“So you seek us?”
“They say the Partholanians died of disease.”
“You are a supplicant, here to beg a boon,” it hissed.
My heart sank. Another bargain. It named what it wanted with no small measure of malicious joy and I knew before it finished that I would not be able to grant what it wanted.
It asked for bodies. Human bodies. Not these weak animals that they steal here and there, filling their wretched, dead corpses with the spirits of its people until the flesh dissolved to pieces around them and they came fluttering back here, to this last refuge of its kind. It wanted living flesh. Strong flesh, that they could inhabit and walk among the living once more.
I said that wasn’t possible. I offered it dead human bodies. It was something, at least, and I could obtain those. The funeral home might be willing to help. I only needed to fulfill the bargain long enough to get a remedy for the thorns, I thought desperately.
The creature refused. They were tired of inhabiting dead things, bodies that had already given up on life and could not be restored. It wanted a heart that remembered how to beat and lungs that knew how to breathe.
“And what of the person that inhabits that flesh?” I asked.
“Perhaps the soul will stay. Perhaps it will depart. I do not care.”
If I did this, it said, it would give me what I needed to stop the rot. I took a deep breath. And I agreed to its bargain. It shook with pleased laughter.
“One last question,” I said. “Why can’t you get a body of your own making, like how the other creatures on my campground have?”
Beau says he remembers being on my land, walking down the road looking for someone to share his drink with. He came from somewhere, as did the hammock monster and the lady with extra eyes and all the others.
“The watcher will not let us pass,” it hissed. “We are too weak. We cannot take form. We can only steal, scavenging the scraps. It is a shameful survival. Do you pity us?”
“No,” I said quickly.
“Nor do we pity you. We see your death sometimes, lurking in the woods.”
“My death?” I asked desperately. “The beast? Or something else?”
It chuckled, a sickening gurgling sound, like boiling mud.
“Bring me bodies,” it said, “and perhaps I will tell you more.”
I recognized the dismissal. I turned and walked away, the skin on the back of my neck crawling under the weight of all those empty eyes watching me go. The doors to the hall hung open for me and when I passed through, the trees unwound themselves and the arch and the hall were gone. There were only the snow-laden branches of the campground.
I’m a campground manager. I have no intention of honoring this bargain. I admit that it is tempting to give some of my more problematic campers to them. Heck, for some of them, being a flesh vessel for the decaying soul of an unborn monster of ancient times would probably be a personality improvement. However, as I’ve discussed before, the town does not look kindly on bargains with evil things. They turn a blind eye to the campground for the most part since we contain the evil things, but I feel this might cross a line. There’s no direct benefit for the townsfolk, after all. I’m not keeping something away from them. The gummy bears are stuck here already. If anything, I’m throwing innocent people into their maw just to make them stronger.
I don’t think they’d accept it being worth the sacrifice to get rid of the thorns, either. They tend to be rather short-sighted. It would take the thorns consuming the campground and overflowing into their land for them to accept the necessity of such a bargain. I don’t have enough time to wait for that.
And I don’t know… it’s kind of nice to be the heroine sometimes. Maybe this is my father’s legacy coming out. He always wanted to save people.
So I’m going to cheat. That’s one of the strengths of humanity. We can freely use deceit. I just need a willing accomplice.
And I know exactly who to ask. [x]
Read the full list of rules.
Visit the campground's website.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975

ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.

March 3, 1976

ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.

First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.

I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983

Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."

Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982

'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."

Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982

Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.

This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:

Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.

The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003

"Couples on Surviving Trauma and Loss: Five partners whose love has endured seismic changes, from refugees forced apart by war to a couple left with horrific injuries"
The first two stories in the article are legit: a couple in a terrible car accident and a couple separated by the Sudanese civil war. Then things start going to hell and get worse and worse. All of the things that FDS warns against are here: codependency, gaslighting, lying, cheating, excuse-making, blame shifting, martyrdom. Women continue to be conditioned to accept sub-par treatment by these kinds of narratives. The ladies of FDS refuse to help relationships "survive trauma" that is LITERALLY CREATED BY THE MAN IN THE RELATIONSHIP AND HIS SELFISH AND OVERALL TERRIBLE DECISIONS.

‘I was in prison for 2,192 days; she wrote to me almost daily’

Laure, 58, and Jerry, 62, survived his jail sentence for causing death by dangerous driving. They live in Alabama, and now run a support network for the families of prisoners.
Laure Jerry and I met in 1995 and married four months later. I tell him all the time I would marry him again, but faster. We’d both been married twice before and dating was the last thing I was looking for. But he ticked all the boxes.
I had two daughters and he had one. We moved our family from Tennessee to Alabama, to raise them in the country. We were living the dream. But on 17 March 2003, it was shattered when Jerry caused a head-on car collision which killed a young mother. He had been driving drunk.
I felt rage, betrayal. When we met, we were both recovering alcoholics, so I had only known him sober. Now a life had been lost. I didn’t want him dead, but I wanted him to hurt real bad. We lived in a small town, and I grieved for that family. I felt embarrassment. I had to get to the forgiveness part quickly so I could get through each day.
Jerry spent 10 days in the ICU. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to six years in prison and 19 on probation. I was scared – emotionally, practically, financially, spiritually. I wanted to stay married but didn’t know how. I didn’t know what you do when someone you love is in prison.

His first year home, we argued all the time. I’d put my hand on his shoulder and he’d push it away

I wrote to him almost every night. I could afford one dollar-a-minute phone call a week and petrol for the 100-mile drive to visit every two weeks. I felt a lot of anger in those first years. I remember burying the cat, crying, saying, “This is a dad job.” I tried to experience the girls’ graduations for both of us.
His first year home, we argued all the time. I’d put my hand on his shoulder and he’d push it away; he was still in survival mode.
We’re grandparents now and enjoy our family immensely. We run a support network for prisoner families, called Extended Family. I started it six months into his sentence.
Jerry will still say, “You stayed with me all those years,” but I don’t think of it that way. I’m not going to make him do the dishes for the rest of our lives. We spent six years without each other; we don’t want to spend another minute apart.
Jerry On our first date, I took Laure and her daughters to see Cinderella at the theatre. When I got home, I wrote “She’s the one” on the back of the programme.
We had a good life. I had a small engineering business, work grew busy, and we moved cities. But I was in a mess. I got into narcotics but hid it from my family. The night of the accident, I had stopped at a liquor store. I was in a blackout. Moments later, a young woman was dead and I was airlifted to hospital. I was shocked, remorseful, disheartened.
My wife has a big and kind heart. I tried to protect her from the police investigation and the likelihood of prison. I didn’t want our girls walking around with the stigma of a dad who had killed someone.
In Alabama, incarceration is uncontested grounds for divorce, but there was never a question of Laure leaving me. On an early prison visit, I told her I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to leave. She looked at me and said, “I’d be more miserable than I am now.” I’ll never forget it.
I was in prison for 2,192 days and she wrote to me almost daily. There were guys that got nothing. I felt blessed and honoured. She would arrive every two weeks and I would put on a smile. But I pitied myself; I felt useless, unable to provide for my family.
When I came home, I was harsher than before. Meanwhile, this woman I loved had blossomed. I had to adjust. There’s a not a day that I don’t pay for my disastrous decision in some way, shape or form. We worked through the mess I made together, and we’re closer because of it.

‘It was a form of gaslighting. He led a double life’

Keith, 59, and Claire, 57, survived his gambling addiction. They live in Sussex.
Keith Claire and I had known each other in the 80s, and reconnected online 20 years later. Claire was living abroad, and I was on my way to broke. She’d make short trips to the UK, and we’d laugh through days out and long lunches. She was intelligent, full of life; a better person than I was.
I first entered a casino at 16. By 18, I’d borrowed, conned and stolen from everyone I knew. I was an addict. Through adulthood, I’d made and lost small fortunes and entire businesses. I’d play Monopoly for real money, or sit in a room of the club I owned, drinking brandy, snorting as much cocaine as I could.
I wasn’t a constant drug user or gambler. When Claire visited, I’d try to keep it together; but then I’d get desperate and make excuses to go to London for “work”. When she moved to the UK with her three kids in 2009, I’d disappear into a room of the home we shared for days, in a heady state of gambling, drugs and porn, too embarrassed to re-emerge. I had intermittent spells in Gambling Anonymous, but I found it hard to ask for help.
Claire paid for the house and put food on the table. I never stole from her, but I’m still surprised she didn’t walk out. By 2014, I’d had a heart attack and was nursing my mother, who had cancer. I would drive her to the hospital every day, off my tits, bring her home, make her food, then shut myself in another room and gamble online.
I couldn’t see myself in the mirror any more. I wanted to die. On 28 June 2014, I logged on to a website for people seeking affairs and used it for porn. That decision would almost end us: when Claire discovered the website in her search history, she sent me a Dear John letter. The next day, she drove me to residential rehab. The only rule I broke there was asking her to spend one night. I had to save the relationship.
I’ve been clean for six years now; Claire is part of the reason why. People talk about languages of love. For me those are quality time, acts of service. Boy, were there acts of kindness and service from Claire. Without her, I could well be dead.
Claire I was 18, and a poor student, when I first met Keith. He seemed glamorous, exciting, funny, intelligent. He was also a known gambler, but when we reconnected years later, that appeared to be in his past. Yet, with hindsight, nothing about the start of our relationship makes sense.
When I visited, he’d urgently have work or disappear into a room for days at a time. I’d spend hours on edge, struggling to trust him, but he would rationalise his behaviour, omitting huge details, claiming he’d simply drunk too much. It was a form of gaslighting. He led a double life.

When Keith decided on residential rehab, I knew that if I didn’t support him, there was no future

The first time I confronted him, I’d found an empty drugs packet, but he lied his way out of it. I became scared to ask, although we both knew he needed help. When his mother was unwell, he had the perfect alibi. He was an addict but he was responsible – and he took exquisite care of her. I was fearful but I had to get on with life.
Advertisement
When Keith decided on residential rehab, I knew that if I didn’t support him, there was no future. I didn’t want significant time apart, but when an addict is serious about making changes, you have to put your own needs aside.
The most soul-destroying moment came when I found the affairs website. I had been betrayed by gambling and drugs, but my belief in the purity of our love had kept me going. I wrote to him saying it was over. From rehab, Keith proved to me it was only curiosity (there was no activity on his account), and I was open enough to reconciliation to visit him.
Emotionally, we’re more independent now, although we share bank accounts and he supports us financially. I’ve grown, too. I used to tell friends that Keith felt like an addiction to me. I’d waited years for a stable home life together: eventually, he walked the most difficult path in order to truly change.

‘Friends saw us as the perfect couple, but it was a lie’

Maryam, 31, and Amir, 33, survived his affair. They live in California.
Maryam When Amir had an affair, I had a thousand reasons to leave but looked for the one to stay. Our relationship had started as an affair, too. We had been couple-friends in our previous marriages and used to hang out as a group of four. Then, in February 2017, Amir and his wife broke up and he came on a trip with my husband and me. One night, we were up late, talking, while my husband slept. Amir opened up about his marriage and I began to sense he had feelings for me. I had relationship problems, too, and we started an affair. I ended my marriage.
Over the next 18 months, friends came to see us as the perfect couple. They would comment on how loving our relationship was. But I couldn’t forgive myself for how we’d started, and his divorce was a mess. He spent nights with his ex. I broke up with him several times. Things looked great on the surface but we both carried unresolved pain.
By the end of 2019, I became suspicious of his relationship with a co-worker. She was too intimate at the Christmas party and he was jumpy when she called. Then I found a credit card charge to a cafe, clearly for two people.

I loved him deep down but anger overwhelmed me. He asked over and over for a chance to prove he could change

It took me 10 days to get the full details from him. It had been going on for months and they’d slept together six times. I couldn’t breathe; I felt stupid. Everything that had gone before felt like a lie. I left him.
Amir telephoned non-stop and showed up at my parents’. I loved him deep down but anger overwhelmed me. He asked over and over for a chance to prove he could change. Eventually, I agreed to give him three months. We started individual and couples’ therapy and talked through every detail of our relationship. I couldn’t bear to sleep in the same room as him, but I could look at his face again. I agreed to more time.
I see the consistency and changes Amir has made, his commitment. When I discovered his affair, I was ready to give up on our relationship, but we have both grown. No one knows what the future holds and I have my fears. But, right now, I love the way he loves me.
Amir Maryam was the first time in my life I felt real love. But we were both married and I told myself it couldn’t happen.
As time passed, my ex-wife had an affair and my marriage died. Maryam had problems, too, and I made my feelings known. I admired her looks, the way she thinks. This wasn’t a game that I’d started; it was coming from the bottom of my heart.
I was born in the Middle East, in a war zone. As a child, I experienced sexual and physical abuse at the hands of my teacher, but told no one. The human psyche finds soothing mechanisms to alleviate pain. For me, that was sex.
I was in the most loving relationship with Maryam. The sex was amazing. We bought a house, enjoyed travelling. But the foundations were shaky and I unconsciously sought more.
When I got close to a co-worker, it turned into an affair, starting in May 2019 and lasting several months. It was pure sexual desire. This wasn’t someone I wanted to change the course of my life. We were opportunistic and, in those moments, I became blind to the consequences.
When Maryam found out, I tried to lie. I was naive about how much I was going to hurt her. She wanted nothing to do with me. She blocked my calls and texts, and told our family and friends all the details. Everyone who loved me looked at me as a monster. For the first time in my life, I started to wake up.
I made fixing myself and our relationship my only priority. I promised Maryam she would see a change, and started intense therapy, twice a week. I addressed my childhood trauma and sought support for sex addiction. I realised how much I was willing to do for Maryam.
At the beginning, it was simply about keeping Maryam; but it transformed into strengthening our bond. She has made sacrifices for me, been my guide and love. Every day, I’m more appreciative.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jan/30/couples-on-surviving-trauma-and-loss

From the very beginning, feminism has focused on shattering the so-called glass ceiling. That invisible barrier that keeps women from becoming CEOs, doctors, lawyers, President, and all those other exciting, rewarding, glamorous careers. Feminists looked at that content housewife from the 50s, taking care of her husband and children, and told her that she was oppressed. That if she was unshackled from her oppression, she could become President one day. Believing them, women joined the feminist movement in swarms. And after 50 years of amazing gains, they're unhappier than ever, and certainly unhappier than their housewife mothers.
What happened? Simple. Feminism's exhortations to be "independent" was a lie on two fronts: one, that being a housewife was oppression, and two, that if she wasn't she could become President. Let's examine both in detail.

1. ​

We all know the stereotype of the 50s woman: staying home, taking care of the kids, not having her own career, having dinner ready for her husband when he got home, and spending her free time watching soap operas and having tupperware parties with other housewives in the neighborhood. Feminism came up with the supposedly radical idea that women could work just as much as men. But here's the thing: that's not a radical idea. Indeed, throughout most of history, women (along with children), worked like dogs, just like the men. What was radical was the idea that a woman could stay at home and *not* work, without having the family starve as a result.
Before the industrial age, pretty much *everyone* worked from sunup to sundown, plowing the fields, tending cattle, or anything else, in order to grow enough food to feed their family, with very little left over for any sort of "luxuries" like shoes or meat. This included old people who would work until they keeled over (retirement wasn't really a thing), and kids as young as 2 or 3. Outside of a very small class of aristocrats, everyone else had to work fulltime just for the very basics of living.
With the industrial age, men and women still had to work, this time in dangerous factories, to keep their families solvent. The only people who got a pass were kids who now could wait until 7 or 8 before joining the factory, and old people, who were kicked off the assembly lines when they were too weak.
Indeed, for the vast, vast majority of human history, men and women worked their butts off (albeit often in different jobs) to keep their families afloat. As productivity improved, fewer people needed to work, but women were the last to be freed of this responsibility. First, child labor laws meant children could go to school and avoid working until 16-18. Next, social security and pensions allowed old people to spend at least a few of their final years in a reasonable retirement.
Finally, women were able to stay at home. And it was only for a few decades that productivity rose so high that something previously inconceivable could be possible: in an average family, a single wage could now support 6 people: 2 parents, a husband and wife, and 2 kids. Contrary to feminist thought, the novel idea was not that women could work, but that they could be afforded the privilege of staying home and caring for the family. And even that was not universal. Plenty of women (about 1/3rd) worked in the 50s/60s. Most of them were in lower and working class groups, where a single wage was still not enough to live on.
What's more, even the housework that was remaining had become so much easier: in the old days, cooking meant threshing the wheat, gathering the water from some distant stream, churning butter, and sitting over an open fire breathing smoke for hours in order to make some tasteless gruel. Similarly, washing clothes meant taking them to a river and pounding them on a rock for an hour. By the 50s, advances in cooking, laundry machines, etc. meant that actually tending house took so few hours of the day that they had to invent a new form of entertainment to occupy the rest of the hours. Thus soap operas and tupperware parties. Any woman who thought being a housewife in the 50s was tantamount to slavery while watching soap operas every afternoon has no idea what their own mothers and grandmothers had to go through just a few generations ago.
So this was the first lie that women were fed: rather than celebrate their newfound freedom, they were told that being "forced" to stay home was a sign of longstanding patriarchal oppression, and that progress was to throw that away and join men in the workforce. No one bothered telling them that that was exactly opposite: progress was allowing women to stay home (just like children and elderly were allowed out of the workforce in previous years), and joining the workforce was the actual historical oppression that most people tried to avoid if at all possible.
2.
The second lie was that if women would just leave their comfortable home lives, they would all have the type of glamorous careers that they dreamt about. Feminists never told them the truth about work, something that men have known forever (and women knew, until they stopped working and forgot): the vast majority of work is largely soul-sucking drudgery, not some empowering, glamorous work; being beholden to a boss or (worse) some faceless bureaucrat in a distant corporate HQ for your monthly paycheck, career development, and daily marching orders is hardly a picture of independence; and the only reason to submit to such torture is to put food on the table for your family, not to "actualize your innate awesomeness" or some other BS propaganda that bosses talk about.
Sure, maybe it's more fulfilling to be a doctor and save countless lives than it is to raise 2 well adjusted kids and have a happy home life. But how about being a secretary, answering angry phone calls all day? How about being a janitor, sweeping floors every night? Are they really more fulfilling than raising a family? I don't mean to disrespect secretaries and janitors. Their jobs are absolutely needed. But none of them are under any delusions about how "empowering" it is to deal with Karens asking to speak to the manager, or scrub the toilets after the cafeteria has its weekly Taco lunch. Most of them do it because they need the money, and then try to get meaning in their lives from everything else they do, whether it's raise a family, be a good friend, win the local bowling league's championship, etc. And there are far, far more secretaries and janitors than there are doctors (also, if you talk to most doctors, they'll tell you how disillusioned they are by the profession, which turns out to be just as soul-sucking and frustrating as most others; they have one of the highest suicide rates of any career and many of them long to leave the field as soon as they save up enough money).
Feminism tells a woman that the only thing keeping her from being a CEO, or doctor, or lawyer, or multi-million dollar jetsetting humanitarian crusader / fashion icon (or whatever BS dream job women think exists) is the Patriarchy. But that's not true. If it was, then every man should be one of those. It's not like the garbageman never had dreams of becoming an astronaut. But the truth is, even for the vast majority of men, such careers are out of reach and were probably never within their reach due to a combination of their innate intelligence, social support structures, economic factors, and sheer dumb luck. The same applies to women.
The only reason guys still sign up for those thankless jobs is because there is no alternative for us. There's no rich woman waiting to marry a poor unemployed guy to raise a family with and share a life together. But no guy is foolish enough to think that it's "liberating" to spend your days filling out TPS reports while being beholden to some pointy-haired boss who can fire you whenever the company's profits take a dip.
3.
There's a common belief among the Left that racism is what the Right uses to keep poor white people and poor black people from uniting under a common economic cause. By keeping them divided and thinking each other is the enemy, they can avoid action against their corporate and Wall St. donor class. If that's the case, then the Left has used feminism to do the same: keep poor (i.e the 99%) men and poor women from uniting under a common economic cause to take action against the Left's corporate and Wall St. donor class (largely the same as the Right's donor class). Feminism taught women to view men as the problem rather than The Man. And it achieves the same purpose as racism for the Right.
And they do it the same way: the racial strategy is to convince a white man the reason he's poor is because a black man took his job, and not the fact that thanks to lax labor laws and favorable trade agreements, the job actually went to an illiterate 12 year old in China, with the CEO keeping the profit. Similarly, feminism says what's keeping a woman from having financial security / happiness / fulfilment in her life is her husband "forcing" her to stay at home, and she should instead depend on the vagaries of Corporate America to provide her those benefits. Just like a racist says "I may be poor, but at least I'm not black" (meanwhile he has to play dancing monkey for his corporate masters to keep his paycheck), a feminist says "I may be unhappy but least I'm not dependent on a man" (meanwhile, being utterly dependent on her corporate masters for that "independence").
It's not a coincidence that wages in America began to stagnate in the 70s, just as women began to enter the labor force in larger numbers. Under the guise of feminism (and civil rights, see my note below), there was a huge new influx of available workers. Of course that will lower wages.
4.
Now, all of this would be fine, *if* it increased women's happiness. That is, if women were truly unhappy or oppressed at home, and found greater happiness or got closer to their life's goals, by working, then feminism would be fine. After all, no man is entitled to his job, and if a woman can outcompete him for it, then so be it. But women's happiness has gone down, because it was a lie: only a tiny, tiny majority of jobs actually deliver enough intrinsic worth, challenge, respect, etc. that they beat the fulfillment and satisfaction that comes from raising a family. That's true for both men and women, but only men knew this. Their hope was that, if they put their noses to the grinder and worked hard, they could provide for that family, and if they married the right woman, she would raise that family well, and that joint life's work would be something both could cherish for the rest of their lives. As long as that possibility was there, men would be willing to break their backs (literally, as they disproportionately take the most dangerous jobs) to get it.
The bargain offered to men in the 50s/60s was this: "yes, most likely your job will be boring / dangerous / etc, but in exchange, you will earn enough money to marry a good woman and raise a family with her. And in the end, that will bring you fulfillment, not the job." The bargain wasn't easy, but at least it was an honest offer. Feminism offered this bargain: "yes, your mother was happy staying at home and raising a family, but you can do better. Sign up with us, and your career will give you even more happiness and fulfillment than your mother had raising a family." Or, at the very least, they promised that you could have both an amazing career *and* the same family life that their mothers had.
Unfortunately, most women didn't read the fine print on that bargain, which read: "a) <1% of you will get those jobs, because they're exceedingly rare and hard to get into; b) by signing this deal, you sign away your chance at the happiness your mother had, because you will be so busy building and then sustaining your career you won't have time to build a family life". IOW, by signing up for this deal, women agreed that they were either going to be part of that 1% with great, satisfying careers, or be left without the safety net of at least having what their mothers had: financial stability (through a husband), a family, and a life partner who, for all his faults, was still better than being alone.
How many of us play the lottery with our life's savings? That's what feminism fooled women into doing, and they bought it. And now, the ones who gambled away their safety net chasing that tiny fraction of careers are looking around wondering why they're even worse off than their "oppressed" mothers.
But it gets worse: feminism altered men's bargain too. Because now, men simply can't find a good woman to raise a family with, and even if they do, rising divorce rates and biased family courts mean they might lose their children and spouse regardless. So all of a sudden, the bargain they signed up for doesn't hold either. As a result, lots of men are asking "why am I working so hard and risking my physical safety if I can't find a good wife and raise a family anyway?" And deciding to go for an easier job which provides just enough for them to live a single life and make peace with that.
In the end, neither men nor women are happy with the choices they're now offered. Even the married ones now have to work 2 jobs to provide the same standard of living that 1 job used to provide before. Interestingly however, Corporate America is tickled pink about having doubled labor availability (while paying for the same standard of living as before), neither one now having a safety net, making them even more reliant on their bosses.
NB:
FWIW, I believe the civil rights movement to end racial discrimination for jobs was different, because access to those jobs *did* make lives better for black people. If a black man couldn't get a job, neither could his black wife, which meant the whole family was condemned to poverty. So allowing him (or her) to get a job was a net increase in their happiness and financial stability. But white women already had financial stability and happiness: through their husbands. Feminism was just asking them to transfer that dependence from their husband to their boss (ironically, usually also a man), while telling them they were becoming "independent". While Corporate America no doubt benefited from the influx of labor when minorities were allowed to compete for jobs, at least it did provide a net increase in happiness for those minorities (of course, the real solution would be to grow the economy and provide more jobs for everyone). There is no reddit full of black people wishing they could go back to being sharecroppers. Like I said before, if feminism did the same thing for women, increase their net happiness, then I would accept it as well, but it didn't.
5.
tl;dr summary:
1) The glass ceiling, ie the barriers to having a glamorous, fulfilling career, exist for everyone -- men and women-- and have always existed, and *will* always exist, even if The Patriarchy is demolished, for the simple reason that those jobs have always been rare and ultra-competitive to get into. If you demolish one barrier, another one will come up, because there just aren't enough of those jobs to go around for everyone who wants one. For every company that employs 100,000 people, there is only one CEO. For our country of 300 million people, there is only one President. Break all the barriers you want, it won't make the constitution allow for 2 Presidents.
2) In contrast, the glass floor for women has been gradually raised higher, to where women in the 50s/60s could avoid work, have financial stability, raise a family, have a life partner, and still have time to watch soap operas (or pursue other avenues of personal fulfillment like volunteering, reading books, developing hobbies and interests, etc.).
3) Feminism offered women the chance to break the glass ceiling, in exchange for removing the glass floor that acted as their safety net.
4) Women, having been out of the workforce for a generation, forgot how crappy most jobs were, and how few and far between the glamorous careers actually were, and took that deal. They were aided by feminists telling them that the only thing standing in the way of them becoming President was the men in her life (her father, her husband) keeping her down, conveniently forgetting that 150 million men also will never become President, because the bigger obstacles are things like class and money: every President for the past 30 years has come from an Ivy League school; here's the list from 1988 until this year (counting re-elections): Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale, Harvard, Harvard, UPenn. Also, here are the law schools of all of the current 9 Supreme Court Justices (men and women): Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale, Notre Dame. Gee, looks like Patriarchy is the real problem, right?
5) After taking the bargain, women then dedicated their best years to "building a careeer" as feminism told them that handing over your 20s/30s to a faceless company or (worse) paying an immensely wealthy University to take those years from her, was more "empowering" than dedicating those years to a man who loved her and would in turn dedicate his life to her. Because, you know, that career would be far more fulfilling than anything that oppressive, patriarchal man would give her.
6) After a few decades, many (most) women realize that they could not, and will not, crack the glass ceiling (turns out it's made of bulletproof acrylic, designed by the ones above it to protect themselves from the ones below, both men and women), and that the jobs they managed to find provided less economic security, fulfillment, or happiness, than the glass floor they gave up.
7) Meanwhile, men have been damaged too, since, with fewer women interested in focusing on building a family and being a good life partner, they're wondering why they need to work so hard at those same jobs. So now, fewer men are available who are willing to provide what their fathers did for their wives.
8) Thusly, having crashed through the glass floor, forced to work a soul sucking job to put food on their table, beholden to a boss less interested in their welfare than the most uncaring husband ever was, the vast majority of women have actually regressed: less happy, less secure, less fulfilled, less independent. Yet rather than recognize the failed ideology that brought them to that unhappy place, they double down on their assumption that men are the source of their problems while simultaneously crying out for us to rescue them.
Funnily enough though, for a winning socialist movement, corporate profits are up...

(I've tried to organize this post as cohesively as possible but I understand that there is a lot of stuff here so sorry if it's kind of disjointed)
My Grandmother - 71f - and I - 22f - used to be quite close when I was a child. I would spend most weekends at her house, we went on regular outings, and she was the one who really encouraged my love of reading and my silly little writings when I was younger.
Now is a much different story.
There is no question about if she's dying just a waiting game of when she will. Her only leg is infected that they are talking about amputating (she refused to go to the doctor until we made her go), out of control diabetes (600 will get a shrug from her and she refuses to take insulin), stage 5 kidney failure, and a yeast infection that she refuses to go to the doctor about.
I suppose that I do resent her for the fact that most of these conditions could've easily been managed/treated if she would've went to the doctodone what the doctor had said but that's not the root of the resentment.
The root of the problem is so much more insidious and a lot harder to talk about. For the past six years me and my mother have been taking care of her. This is after she broke her other foot, let it get infected past the point of no-return, and had to get it amputated up to her knee where the infection had spread to.
The past six years I know that me and my mother haven't been perfect. There has been a lot of tension (especially during quarantine) and we've all had our blow ups at each other.
I will say though that we've taken the very best care of her that we could. I've taken days of school to take care of her when my mom simply couldn't miss work. We've both bandaged wounds, changed diapers, bathed her, etc, etc. I don't resent her for any of that because I love her and she deserved/deserves to live with as best quality as life as can be provided.
I suppose that maybe the resentment began when she missed my graduation (2017) to go the Casino for ten hours. It only intensified when during my LPN schooling she constantly questioned my choice to go into the healthcare profession. When I had to leave LPN school (two months from finishing) to help her I was met with a "Well maybe you can find something that won't require so much brainpower that will suit you better."
I could still forgive her though because I simply decided that her advice/opinion simply wasn't true and maybe I had taken it the wrong way.
I got into a Respiratory Therapy program during the fall of 2019 and was over the moon. My grandmother was obviously less excited then anybody else but had the good grace not to say anything. Well we can all guess what happened in early 2020 that shut down my campus and meant that we couldn't go to our on-site clinicals.
I was upset about not getting to go but understood why. My entire family (minus me) is immunocomprised in one way or the other. My mother has COPD (from ARDS) and footdrop. My father is a diabetic and had rocky-mountain-tick fever. My sister had lymes. We're all anywhere from moderately to morbidly obese. We all took the pandemic seriously and bunkered down in our shelters to outwait the storm.
We've all been bored but been as reasonable as we can.
Everybody but my grandmother. She's always been a gambling addict but it became an obsession during quarantine. Her previous lack of motivation to do any type of chore became an outright refusal to even make her own bed. Her strength (already not great) went completely downhill as she wouldn't do anything but gamble online.
It got to the point that we would fake internet outages just so she wouldn't blow all of her money. My parents - both unemployed - would pay the bills and she would promise to pay them back only to blow her next paycheck again. This was a cycle that we all talked to her about and got screamed at for.
We all basically did our best to get scarce much to her obvious anger. This lead to the time she demanded that I take her to the bakery and I politely said that I wouldn't. When she pressed me I admitted that I was worried about her blood sugar. This lead to a twenty - five minute lecture where she basically told me that I was trying to control her and that I was going to become like every other healthcare worker - an idiot.
Now that got my goat and I refused to speak to her for about a week but convinced myself to get over it.
Then the real kicker happened. When the casinos opened back up she screamed at us until we took her. I said that I flat - out wouldn't take her.
It was as if a nuclear bomb went off. Every single bad thing that she's ever thought about me came flying out of her mouth and struck me straight in the heart. She called me pretty much ever unkind quality in the book. Selfish, spoiled, arrogant, hateful, righteous. You name it. She insulted not only me but my mother (a druggie aka has chronic crippling pain that has only gotten worse since taking care of her), my father (a useless bastard, he has such low-self esteem from her and her shitty husbands that he's scared of messing up when making a pizza), my sister (an Indian bitch, she's half - choctaw and isn't my father's biological child something that's always rubbed my Grandma the wrong way) and several of my friends.
I had my own say back where I pretty much told her that she could fucking shove her cane up her ass and maybe when she pulled it back out her head could come with it.
Our relationship has never been the same since. I've never told my family any of what she said about them and I don't ever intend to. I help her just the same as I always would and she seems to think that I've forgiven/forgotten the whole thing.
Instead it just festers in me all the time. I want to try and let go of the resentment because her days might be numbered in days instead of weeks but I simply don't know if I'll be able too.
I don't know if I came her for advice to how to help me let go, improve our relationship or if i simply just want some kind words while I try to grieve, help, and overcome at the same time.
Thank you for your time.

SECTION 0: BACKGROUND
I am being deliberately vague about my age, location and job, to allow for greater transparency about my finances. I work in a very narrow field, which would make me pretty easy to identify if I more accurately pinpointed these details.
That being said, to provide some context about our decision-making about childcare, my family and I had CoVID in the mid-summer.
We had been doing everything correctly: We weren’t leaving the house, our children were out of daycare, my husband and I were working from home and running ourselves ragged also offering full-time childcare to a 2-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter. We are both essential workers in different fields and we couldn’t lighten our workload. Additionally, I can only work set hours because that’s when my patients are available. So I was keeping a more traditional schedule while my husband was doing the bulk of childcare, and then we would both be with the kids for a few hours until bedtime at 7:30, at which point my husband would burn the candle at both ends and do the majority of his work in the evening and at night. It was completely unsustainable. It was bad for our jobs, bad for our kids and bad for us.
So we hired a nanny. She came from our daycare, because our kids already knew her and she effectively lost her job when we pulled our kids. The daycare has to maintain a specific child-to-teacher ratio and removing our children took them below the enrollment necessary for her. After 4 weeks of my husband and myself providing childcare, we hired her. She was a godsend.
Fast forward, she attended a staff training at the daycare (masked, gloved, the whole 9 yards) and at that time our daycare was struck with CoVID, which meant we all got it. My family, our nanny, several staff and several families. It was a blessing in disguise, because after we all quarantined and recovered, my husband and I made the decision to send our children back to daycare. The vast majority of the families and staff there had CoVID, we knew we had antibodies (thank you, American Red Cross), and we decided the risk was acceptable.
​
SECTION 1: ASSETS AND DEBT (ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST $100)
Investment balance (as of COB on 12/16/20) = $601,000

• Brokerage = $104,700
• My traditional IRA (from previous employers’ retirement accounts) = $41,400
• My Roth IRA = $61,900
• My 401K = $205,200
• My husband’s 401K = $156,000
• My husband’s Roth IRA = $18,000
• My son’s 529 = $9,000
• My daughter’s 529 = $4,800

Equity, if you’re a homeowner = $300,700

• Main residence: Mortgage = $233,300, Zillow value = $455,200
• Rental property: Mortgage = $125,300, Zillow value = $204,100

I used the Zillow value to calculate equity. Our real estate market is HOT right now, and houses are routinely being purchased after bidding wars at prices above asking, so I actually expect these to be underestimates of the values of our properties.
The rental property was a home I owned before my husband and I married. I paid 20% for the down payment with savings, and the house was worth substantially less when I bought it, making it very affordable. We made a 10% down payment on our primary residence from shared savings. Since we bought both houses, the real estate market in our area has blown up and it has stayed that way. We joke that we wouldn’t be able to afford our primary residence if we were house hunting right now, which puts us in a very fortunate position.
Savings account balance = $6,200
We try to keep at least $5,000 in this count as liquid emergency savings. Withdrawing funds from our investment portfolio can take several days, and if needed we want to make sure to have at least some cash buffer. See below for why this is higher right now, due to my Social Security deduction.
Checking account balance = $3,700
We use zero-sum budgeting, which means we use last month’s income to pay for this month’s expenses. All of our income is deposited into this account, we spend it throughout the month, and then start next month with $7,000 to spend that month (anything above this amount in our checking account is sent to our savings account).
Credit card debt = $0
I’ve never held credit card debt, and we paid my husband’s off before we got married.
Student loan debt = $0
I received a huge scholarship to attend a private 4-year college, and an annuity I received following my father’s death when I was in middle school paid for the rest. I worked part-time on campus to have spending money, and this job was part of the scholarship I received. I also received a full scholarship plus a living stipend to attend graduate school for my doctorate. My husband had approximately $10,000 of student loan debt for his 4-year degree that we paid off before we got married.
Car and motorcycle loans = $0
The KBB trade-in value of our cars and motorcycles is $16,500; all are over 10-years-old.
Net worth = $928,100
​
SECTION 2: INCOME
Monthly take home = $7,593 total (plus $416 from FSA reimbursement)
Main job = $103,000/year
I take home $2,000 every two weeks after deductions. This is $220 more than usual, because (as a federal employee and due to President Trump’s executive order) Social Security is no longer being deducted from my salary, through at least January, 2021. I expect in January I’m going to receive a double deduction for the period of this executive order, so we’re setting aside that extra money to pay for his choices.
Job 2 = variable based on several factors, right now it is approximately $12,000/year
I work as an adjunct professor at a local university teaching one class per semester and take home $353 every two weeks.
Rental property = $883.50/month in rental income
Minus the cost of the mortgage and the $66.50/month property manager cut, this equals approximately $97/month in profit. This used to be substantially more, but we took a cash out refinance to pay for a huge remodel in our main residence, which increased the mortgage payment by about $250/month. We previously sent the surplus rental income to our investment account.
Husband’s job = $79,000/year
My husband takes home $1,395 twice a month after deductions. However, he routinely takes home between $200-$400 more per paycheck, depending on various factors. We only budget for his base pay, as those other amounts are not guaranteed. Currently, he’s contributing the maximum allowed to his FSA account ($208/paycheck) for dependent care, which we receive twice monthly as reimbursement and which will switch to my paycheck in the new year.
Deductions: I am only going to include mine here, as my salary deductions include most of the family expenses. These are per paycheck. I am including my deductions as they were prior to the executive order that affected my Social Security contribution, which I anticipate will return to normal shortly.
Taxes (Medicare, state and federal) = $554
Insurance for the family (Life, dental, medical, disability) = $489
Retirement (401K and pension) = $905
I max out my 401K contribution and have since I started this job; my employer offers a 4% match. For full context, my husband also maxes out his 401K contributions, and his employer offers a 3% match.
529 contributions: $115 per child, so $230 total
Income progression
I was in school for a very long time. I went directly from a 4-year college to a Ph.D. program. As stated above, I received a stipend while in graduate school that amounted to $17,000/year, which was not a lot but enough for 22-year-old me. My first job out of graduate school was as a postdoctoral fellow, making $45,000, and then I went into academia and worked as an Assistant Professor making a similar amount. I decided to transition into practice after two years in academia, and I started my current job with the federal government making approximately $90,000. Scheduled salary progressions over the last six years have resulted in my current salary.
​
SECTION 3: EXPENSES
Monthly

• Mortgage/taxes/insurance = $1,179.33 for our main residence, $785.78 for our rental property
• Daycare = $1,520 for both children
• Roth IRA contributions (both) = $1,000
• Donations = $213.87. $100/month to GiveWell (an effective altruism organization), $100/month to Gold Standard (for carbon offsets), $13.87 to ActBlue.
• Gas/electric/water = $169.25
• Cleaning = $100. She comes twice monthly; she prefers to be called our “woman” vs. cleaning lady or housekeeper. She is masked and gloved every time she comes into our home. We paused her services though continued to pay her for the first few months of the pandemic. Once we’d had CoVID, though, she requested to come back. We would have paid her throughout regardless, but after a frank discussion with her about our continued risk with our children in daycare, she still wanted to come back and began to clean for us again.
• Internet = $80
• Pet wellness plan (for our very geriatric dog) = $79.95
• My cell phone (my husband’s is paid for by work) = $47.18
• Home security system = $45
• Son’s gymnastics at daycare = $40
• My husband’s gym = $16.95. He has not gone since 03/2020; he is continuing to pay to support them.
• Satellite GPS/texting system = $12.41. My husband has a lot of hobbies that take him outside of cell phone service. We got this for him to allow us to text in case of an emergency, and to send me notifications of where he is physically camped so I can get emergency services to him, if needed.
• Subscriptions = $35 biweekly for a Misfits Market box, $9.99 for Spotify, $8.99 for Netflix
• Total monthly fixed expenses = $5,378.70

Yearly and Bi-annual

• Car and motorcycle insurance = $416.60
• Amazon Prime = $119
• Costco = $60
• My license = $200 every two years

​
SECTION 4: ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS
\*These are the questions others have said they wished Refinery 29 asked.*\**
What do money and success mean to you? What are your end goals?
To me, success and money are two very different things. I view money as a means to an end: Money equals security and stability. I chose to work for the federal government, even though I could make approximately double my salary in private practice, because of that need for security. My end goals are FIRE-light. My husband and I would like to save enough money to be able to reduce our work to part-time; we both really enjoy our jobs but would like more freedom to choose what to do with our time.
Are you a spender or a saver?
I identify very strongly as a saver. My mother raised me and my siblings largely alone (more on this below), and she was unmaterialistic. This has changed now that she has grandchildren to spoil! But that lesson was there from an early age: Things do not bring happiness. This has led me to a pretty natural saver orientation.
My husband was not a saver before we got together. He was not a huge spender, either. He just didn’t really pay attention to money. When we got together his retirement account was at approximately $0. He and I sat down and talked about our goals and decided to approach his retirement in the same way I approach mine, so we now max out everything we can.
He continues to be largely ambivalent about our finances, so I manage everything. This leads every once in a while to small conflicts, but we work it out. I try to include him in as many decisions as possible, but he genuinely seems not to care and pretty much goes along with everything I suggest. It helps tremendously that my husband and I share an overall view of our future, because I’m honestly not sure our relationship would work if he was a huge spender.
To combat some of the conflicts about money we might have, we give ourselves each a set amount monthly to spend as we want (me $385, him $415). He receives more because he does all of the family driving, and gas comes out of this allowance. This system works really well for us, because I would have a lot of problems with how he approaches personal spending, and vice versa. Joint or family expenses are paid for out of our joint checking account.
If you could go back in time, what’s the one piece of financial advice you would give your past self?
Invest early! Compound interest is something worth taking advantage of as early as possible.
​
\*These are the questions Refinery 29 asks.*\**
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If yes, how did you pay for it?
There was absolutely an expectation for me and my siblings to attend college. I was a very dedicated student and I wanted to be in my current role for as long as I could remember. I strategically selected the university I attended with the potential for graduate school admission as a strong factor in my choice.
I luckily have never had to pay for my higher education and I recognize how fortunate I was. My college expenses not covered by my scholarship were paid for with an annuity I received after my father passed away when I was in middle school. He had been very sick with cancer my entire life and he knew he was terminal for years. He worked until the month before he passed away and contributed heavily the entire time to life insurance policies to give my siblings and me this gift, as well as to provide enough for my mother to make up for the loss of his income. He passed away while working for the federal government at my current pay level, so I know he was making the equivalent to what I make now. At that point, my mom made less than half of what he did. It goes without saying, I would have rather had student loans with him alive than no student loans without him.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have about money? Did your parent/guardian(s) educate you about finances?
I don’t remember any explicit conversations about money. I have learned much more about my parents’ finances since I’ve become an adult than I ever knew growing up. All of my financial education occurred after graduate school when I had my first “big girl” paychecks. I knew I needed to know more, so I did a deep dive into the FIRE community for a few years, learned a lot, and have tried to follow those principles since.
What was your first job and why did you get it?
I worked at Dairy Queen starting when I was 15 to have spending money. While there, I ate far too much ice cream, gained like 10 pounds in 3 months, and quit because I recognized that was completely unsustainable.
Did you worry about money growing up?
No, I didn’t, and I’m grateful for that. I knew that we never went on vacations, aside from camping, because of my dad’s illness. I had no idea, however, that this was a financially-motivated decision vs. a health-related one. My dad wanted to save that money for us later instead of spend it on us at the time.
Do you worry about money now?
No, and I am very grateful for that, as well. I worry about making big purchases, because I have an inherent tendency to not spend unless necessary, though I acknowledge we can afford our needs and wants.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?
I moved out of my mom’s house at 18 to attend an out-of-state college, and I never returned. However, I would say that I became fully responsible for myself at 22, when I enrolled in graduate school. Up to that point, I lived in dorms, had access to the college cafeteria and health center, etc.
I have a huge financial safety net in my family, which is an enormous privilege. I know that I never need to worry if I lose my income or if we had an emergency. That being said, one of the huge factors in my choosing federal employment was the security of the job. My husband was furloughed early in the pandemic, which was a strain on our finances, but we knew I never would be. It is a longstanding joke, but it is true that it’s almost impossible to lose a federal job within my agency once you’re outside of your probationary period.
Do you or have you ever received passive or inherited income? If yes, please explain?
See above; my family received a great deal of money from life insurance after my father passed away. I honestly have no idea how much, though it was enough that it funded a lot of my college expenses, as well as my siblings’, and allowed my mom never to worry day-to-day about paying for anything on her salary alone. I never received any of the annuity personally; my mom managed it and paid the college directly. Once I graduated, my portion of the annuity was resolved. My mom became extremely savvy with money management over the years, and still has some of her portion of the annuity remaining.
​
ONTO THE DIARY!
Full disclosure, my weekdays are very monotonous, so I’m going to give you a brief look at my schedule here and then try to limit myself to amusing anecdotes and spending only on Days 1-5. Days 6 and 7 will be more interesting.
We get up around 6:30, when my daughter (just turned 2) wakes up; it is unfortunate she’s always been an early riser. At 7:15, if he’s not already up, I wake my son (just turned 3) and get both kids ready while my husband gets himself ready. He takes the children to daycare, and then I get ready. I do a full face of make-up every day; it helps me keep in mind that I’m a working professional, although I haven’t worn a pair of pants with buttons in 9 months.
I see patients throughout the morning, working in 45 minutes of exercise (whatever Chloe Ting scheduled for the day, plus a Yoga with Adriene video to hit 45 minutes) and chores in between patients or if I have a patient no-show or cancel. This is infrequent, so usually these activities happen over lunch, when I almost exclusively eat leftovers. Then I see patients throughout the afternoon, before stopping to cook dinner. I meal plan heavily (entirely from Budget Bytes or Half-Baked Harvest); I love to cook but find trying to think up child-friendly, quick and easy vegetarian meals incredibly boring and frustrating. It helps if I outsource the creativity to others. My husband and I leave to get the kids around 4:50 pm.
Then it’s like getting hit by a clown car. Constant noise, constant activity, constant mess, constant chaos. The children go to bed around 7:30 pm, at which point my husband and I fall into an exhausted heap. I try to “reset” the house (e.g., pick up toys, get the kids’ school bags ready) before I sit down, because once I sit down I’m done. Most days I shower in the evening, and we go to bed around 9:30 or 10 pm. Sometimes we have sex, sometimes we don’t. Wash, rinse, repeat.
For your enjoyment, our meal plan this week includes:

• From Budget Bytes: Spinach tortellini soup; vegetarian French dip sandwiches with oven fries; roasted broccoli pasta with lemon and feta; spinach and orzo salad with balsamic vinaigrette
• From Half-Baked Harvest: Onion, spinach and cheddar flaky pastries; broccoli and cheese wild rice casserole

Also for those who are interested, my skin care includes: Water-only cleansing with a microfiber cloth, 100% pure organic argan oil for moisturizer, with Everyday Minerals and Physician’s Formula make-up. I have extremely temperamental skin and this is the gentlest combination of products that work for me.
**I will only tally my personal expenses and our joint expenses below, because I don’t have access to my husband’s personal account. If I know about his purchases, I will mention them for context, though they will not be included in the weekly total.**
DAY 1: MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2020 = $37.63
Morning: My husband goes to physical therapy ($37.63 copay) after dropping off the kids. He’s rehabbing a pretty significant injury from earlier this year and PT is necessary, despite the pandemic. Before PT, he was immobile. While I’m on a break between patients in the kitchen eating a banana, my husband storms in fake indignant because his Spotify most-played song of 2020 is “What Does the Fox Say?” I laugh; this was my son’s favorite song for months. If you haven’t heard it before, it’s worth a look on YouTube, so you can see the video.
Noon: Pull a load of laundry from the dryer. Find two of my son’s action figures amongst the clothes. So that’s where they went. Later receive a picture from daycare of my daughter crying. She apparently lost her gloves in the snow, and when the gloves were found the daycare staff wouldn’t let her put them back on because they were covered in mud and snow. This is clearly tragic in the life of a toddler. The caption on the photo: “Yeah, I’m a little mad.”
Night: My husband and I spend a few minutes lying in bed with each of our children before they go to sleep every night. Tonight, my son is incredibly focused on his discovery that he doesn’t have eyebrows and I do. He does, they’re just wispy and barely there. He spent a good five minutes feeling mine, then feeling where his “aren’t.” It’s adorable how confused he is to find out that not every body is the same, and I try to focus on teaching him that differences are beautiful. I feel this is a good lesson to learn and to learn early.
DAY 2: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2020 = $0
Morning: My kids are up kind of early today, so while I fix them breakfast, I send them to ride their scooters. My mom bought them these scooters that are both low-to-the-ground, so they fly across our hardwood, and narrow, so they fit between our furniture. We decided to keep them indoors for the winter to help the children run off some energy if it’s too cold or, in this case, too early to take them outside.
Noon: For lunch, I quickly assemble Budget Bytes’ Chimichurri Chickpea Salad from leftover ingredients and pantry staples and give my husband a serving. He accuses me of trying to turn him into a chickpea, because it’s my go-to protein. He’s not vegetarian, but he eats that way 95% of the time because I don’t cook meat except on very rare occasions. I tell him if he doesn’t like it, he can fix himself lunch, and fake try to take it away. He embraces the bowl like it’s a baby and fights me off. I see how it is. I also check the Red Cross app and find my CoVID antibody test from my most recent convalescent plasma donation is still positive!
Night: After dinner, we go into my daughter’s bedroom to play before bath time. I contemplate how ironic it is that we own a four-bedroom house, but usually only end up occupying about 16 square feet of space at a time. Then my children decide to sit on top of me. I exist right now as nothing more than an animate chair.
DAY 3: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2020 = $0
Morning: After bundling up my children to send to daycare, I ask my daughter for a kiss. She’s moved beyond leaning in to allow me to kiss her to spreading her arms super wide and pressing her whole face onto my cheek. It’s the little things that make parenting awesome <3.
Noon: It’s the anniversary of our first date, so I pull my husband into the bedroom for some lunch time calisthenics #wfhbenefits. Feel totally betrayed afterward because during my Yoga with Adriene relaxation practice, she has us do two forearm planks. WTF, Adriene? I didn’t sign on for this! Do them, but begrudgingly.
Night: Tonight’s game: family nap. Somehow my husband got the kids to buy into the idea that they need to find a place to camp out in our house. They’re carrying around a pillow and blanket each and trying out various locations, like under our dining table and on our living room floor. I’m loving this game, because I’ve already found my perfect place to lay down: right where I already am.
DAY 4: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2020 = $183.48
Morning: My husband is an absolute expert when it comes to distracting the kids if they’re crying crocodile tears. This isn’t always the answer in response to their emotions, but sometimes it is. Right now, he’s trying to hang my daughter’s coat (with her in it) up in the closet without a hanger and acting over the top confused about why it won’t stay up on the closet rod. She’s dying with laughter. Classic.
Noon: My husband gets back from physical therapy ($37.63 copay) and walks in with a soda from McDonald’s for me as a surprise ($2.12 for his, too). So sweet! I don’t drink soda often, which makes this a welcome treat. Over lunch, I browse ThredUp. I buy exclusively consignment/resale, to reduce consumer-driven fast-fashion and because I can buy way nicer clothing if I don’t pay full retail prices. I buy four shirts and two pairs of pants ($143.73 of my personal spending money), though I’ll probably return half.
Night: Tonight is my book club’s holiday party over Zoom. I love these women and it’s so nice to step outside of my roles as a wife, mother and behavioral health provider to just be a woman. I’m incredibly lucky to have found this group that unequivocally accepts me for who I am.
DAY 5: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2020 = $0
Morning: I took the morning off to grade final exams, and my husband is heading up the mountain to go skiing. I have the house TO MYSELF! This happens so rarely, I almost don’t know what to do with myself when I’m alone anymore.
Noon: Silence, glorious silence. Decide to take a nap. This is freaking amazing. Wake up to a notice from the federal payroll office confirming I’ll be receiving double deductions of Social Security tax from my first 8 paychecks of 2021. Great.
Night: Spend the evening after my kids go to bed wrapping Christmas presents. My family seems to be compensating for the anxiety and sadness 2020 has caused by sending gifts. Watching the children unwrap presents this year is the thing I’m looking forward to most this holiday season.
DAY 6: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2020 = $251.65
Morning:
My husband gets up with the kids, so I get to sleep in an extra hour (he will be properly thanked for this later). We quickly get ready and head out the door, setting our robot vacuum to take a run around the house. The kids and I wait in the car while my husband buys a season ski pass from his own personal spending money ($371, for those who are interested). He got a discount because they credit him the cost of his pass from yesterday. I fully support this, as he intends to teach our kids to ski this year and I am invested in the long-term possibility of evenings and weekend days by myself, since I most definitely do not ski.
Head to a local indoor playground ($15.72, after a $7.60 gift card); our kids tolerate mask-wearing incredibly well, so we’re all masked anytime we go inside anywhere. We have gotten good at what I consider “stealth visits”: We show up the instant the doors open, stay until we cannot keep 30 feet from others, and then leave.
We grab coffees ($6.04), a weekend treat, and head to an outdoor park to run our children ragged until it’s too cold to tolerate anymore.
Noon:
We head home, bake a frozen pizza and have that and leftovers for lunch. New outfits for everyone, because my daughter is too young to handle pizza sauce without getting it everywhere. Then back out the door to make it back to the indoor playground by 1 pm (our passes are good all day). This is when most children are down for their naps, so as usual the place is deserted.
Unfortunately, my daughter is learning to jump and while at the playground she jumps and falls, bumping her head. This leads to the silent scream of doom that is every parent’s worst nightmare.
After we leave, to put our own children down to nap, my son asks for more snacks. I thought I had packed enough, but not so. I swear my son is growing by inches in front of my eyes. He has a hollow leg and often can eat more than I can. My husband and kids wait in the car while I run into an empty-looking gas station and buy string cheese, fruit, popcorn and seltzers ($10.05).
The instant we get home the kids go down for their naps and my husband and I have a moment of peace. I start the dishwasher, throw the food scraps to our chickens, take out the compost and purchase the items in our Amazon cart (a new robot vacuum [ours is on its last legs and we LOVE it], soccer socks for my husband, and two under $5 gifts for the gift exchange at my children’s daycare; $219.84). My husband cleans out our chicken coop; I’m not in favor of gendered divisions of labor, except in cases like this, when it means I don’t have to deal with chicken poop.
Night:
The kids get up from their naps and we immediately put them on the potty. We’re deep in the trenches of potty training, and this often dictates our routine. My daughter is 150% motivated by the M&M she gets when she goes potty; my son just wants to do everything his sister does, so he tolerates this part of his day.
Feed them dinner and then head out to drive through a famous neighborhood in our area to look at Christmas lights. We take air-popped popcorn and milk for the kids, to keep them entertained, and they love it. Back home and bedtime for the kids.
My husband and I pick up the house, watch an episode of Ink Master (feel free to judge, but I love this show), and head to bed early so I can thank him properly for this morning.
DAY 7: SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2020 = $303.33
Morning:
My husband gets up with the kids again this morning, he must be feeling motivated because he’s already fed them breakfast. I jump in so he can get ready to go play indoor soccer. The facility where he plays is extremely cautious: masks, temperature checks, no outside guests, no loitering before or after the game, etc. He helps us get ready and out the door before he leaves so the kids and I can go to get our grocery pick up.
Groceries include the ingredients for our meal plan this coming week ($187.59). We also load up on a few staples like organic 100% grass-fed milk, seltzer, popcorn kernels and toiletries. Our overall fruit situation is looking good, as we participated in a local fundraiser and purchased a huge box of apples, pears, oranges and grapefruits, so I decided yesterday to donate our Misfits Market box this week to a food bank. The person at the grocery store indicates they have a couple of missing items from our order, including coffee (!!!), so the kids and I mask up and we run inside as quickly as we can to buy replacement items, including the absolutely necessary coffee ($19.04).
Then I take the kids on a little drive to look at Christmas decorations, and while we’re out I buy them a snack from a local vegetarian restaurant that has begun to do drive-thru service ($15.53). I buy gas for the first time in six weeks and head home ($13.73).
Noon:
My husband gets back from his game (they won), we feed the kids and then get them ready to go out again. If you haven’t noticed, we spend a lot of time outside of our house. Neither my husband nor I are homebodies, and our kids (surprise, surprise) aren’t either; the more time we spend at home, the more they spiral out. However, because the pandemic has gone on for so long, we have developed an amazing repertoire of knowledge for places that are accessible, kid-friendly and extremely sparsely populated (or deserted). It helps us keep the kids occupied, and honestly it makes parenting two toddlers much easier.
We go to a local warehouse that has converted into an antique/secondhand shop to look for a present for my sister from our children and find something amazing ($43.44 of my personal spending money). Head home, have lunch, and put the kids down for a nap. I spend the time finishing grading final exams, while my husband does the dishes and works a little bit to get ahead so he can go skiing this week.
Night:
My daughter wakes up and makes enough of a ruckus that she gets my son up, too. Immediately take the kids to the potty while my husband finishes what he’s doing. Cue an epic meltdown from my daughter because her brother gets to go potty first. My husband jumps in and starts getting the kids ready to leave again so I can go to the bathroom. My son joins me. Motherhood means never having (getting?) to go to the bathroom alone again.
We head to another local indoor children’s playground, because a snowstorm just started and we’re taking a gamble that it will be empty. It is! Spend a few hours there, then head home ($24).
I heat up Budget Bytes’ Make-Ahead Freezer Burritos for dinner. While they’re cooking, my husband gives the kids a bath and I put away laundry. My husband emerges from the bathroom looking like he’s taken an impromptu trip to Splash Mountain. At dinner, our kids immediately start to misbehave for some unknown reason (they’re toddlers). Parenthood is often a game of chicken: How far can they push it before my husband or I call the match in our favor. We separate the kids; I go to read to my son, my husband to my daughter, and we put them to bed early.
My husband and I watch another episode of Ink Master, read for a bit, talk for a bit, and head to bed.
​
WEEKLY TOTAL = $776.09 ($588.92 JOINT, $187.17 PERSONAL)

• Food + Drink = $240.37
• Fun/Entertainment = $39.72
• Home + Health = $295.10
• Clothes + Beauty = $143.73
• Transport = $13.73
• Other = $43.44

​
Reflection: Honestly, this is an average week for us. I’d say we don’t buy a robot vacuum every week, and I tend to only buy clothes once a month at most, but there’s always something. Generally speaking, we have a few dollars up to a couple hundred to save most months, but there are some months when we go over our budget. At this point, our day-to-day spending is relatively on auto-pilot and falls pretty naturally into a narrow range, so across the whole year, we tend to break even.

1. There's a spot on the dining room's wall that's always moldy in spring. Probably because the apartment faces the sea. Though it's not really too close to it. The molds just keep coming back the next day after being removed. Somehow it just reminds me of a documentary I watched on Netflix weeks ago, Dancing With The Birds. The birds in the documentary all tried, day after day, to find someone. They just don't give up. Just as resilient as the moldy spot on the wall. I wanted to see if you are here.
   
2. I once got an internship at a company in a neighborhood I am not familiar with. I asked a friend of mine, who did an internship there the year before, about where I should avoid and things like that. Then she was like, "My boyfriend took care of everything for me. I think he um...." I asked my next door neighbor the same question because he got an internship in the same neighborhood I did. The first thing he said was, "If you can't figure things out on your own I don't think you should do an internship at all." For some reason the conversations I had with them still strikes me even until this day. People rarely care. People rarely understand. Even rarer to have someone who both cares about and understands you. Most people don't give a shit about the fact that you are in a bad spot. Some people might say, "Oh man I am sorry that you are in such a bad spot." A few people might pause whatever they are doing and offer you some help. Only one person, or maybe two or three, won't go until they get you out of the bad spot. I would like to be that person for my SO.
   
3. I just started watching Fargo. The second season. I looked up the cast of the show before I started watching it. Kristen Dunst is in it. When I was younger I heard people making fun of Dunst's teeth. I felt really bad for her. In an interview she did in 2019 she told the reporter that she was asked by some producers to have her teeth fixed, but she refused. Though she probably had dental work done at some point because her teeth do not look the same as before. I wondered what would have happened if she never had it done. And why can't we even accept an actress with "imperfect" teeth. David Bowie also had crooked teeth which he later fixed. I have heard many people claiming that his teeth did not bother them. I wondered if they would have said the same if it is just some random person with crooked teeth. I would be sad if their logic went like, the more talented a person is, the more crooked their teeth I could accept. My friend had a car accident in London some years ago and that messed something up. I am sure some men would have chosen to leave but hers did not. Her husband did not tell her to fix anything. A side note, fixing and repairing, in a relationship, are some essential skills. I do not want to be with someone who constantly thinks about jumping ship. Though we all know that some mistakes are simply beyond repair. "Would it be so bad if I slept with this girl, only once, behind my wife's back?" Yes, it would be over. I would like to find someone who not just likes the beginning of things but also the things after that. Someone who I could share both the best and the worst years of my life with. And, you know, someone to watch Fargo with.
   

What I am looking for -
Short version (there is a long version, with explanation, follows) -
A single, monogamous, adult (stop asking me for an age range. If you can get married without your parents’ approval, you are welcomed to message me) man who is looking for a lifelong relationship, has time to be in a committed relationship, will become my best friend, is in shape/ not too out of shape, is reasonably healthy, is mentally healthy and stable/ mentally unhealthy and unstable but has been monitoring the progress, mentally available, is a meat eater, is a non smoke rarely smoke, is a non drinke social drinker, is a non drug addict (weed is fine), is a non gambling addict, is a non porn addict, is a virgin/ non virgin but was always responsible to their exes (always wore condoms and never had STDs), is okay with no cohabitation, is okay with no premarital sex, is not into anything kinky, wants kids (biological kids/ adopted kids), is okay with your spouse not taking birth control pills, is okay with your spouse not wearing an IUD, is debt free/ with justifiable debt, is religious/ non religious, is eligible to apply for a passport (and meet each other)
If you do not agree with everything I said above then we are not compatible. “I agreed with most of the things you said.” What does that even mean? I have had enough messages telling me that they do not entirely agree with what I said but would like to see where things go. The answer is nowhere. I do not have time nor do I want to build a castle on sand. I also have had enough messages telling me to reconsider things. I won't.
What I like -
Sun
Snow
Trees
Woodworking
Agriculture
Plants
Good food
Hot food
Hot soup
Warm words
Laughing
Wool yarn
Wool clothing
Names with stories, say like, street names
Dining wares
Trains
Photography
Old stories - old movies and shows
Good stories - movies, shows and documentaries, books, music with good lyrics
Good arts
Thrift stores
Flea markets
What I am looking for - Long version -
A strictly monogamous relationship that is happy, healthy, supportive, and lasts forever. I am not looking for dick pictures, chat buddies, dirty chat buddies, hookups, love affairs, friends, friends with benefits, sugar daddies, sugar uncles, sugar sons, rebound dating, short-term dating, several years dating, polyamorous, open, or online-only relationships.
Communication - I would make time to talk to my SO every day, and very much prefer so, even just to hear that they are safe and sound. But I would be understanding if they are out in Antarctica and the satellite Internet at the work station does not always work properly, or something like that. I would like to deal with all the hardships in life together as a team. Having arguments in a relationship is somewhat unavoidable. I like straightening things out, right away, in a logical, non violent, and non abusive way. I apologize when I make mistakes. Giving silent treatment is really not my thing. I am not saying that I do not have a temper. I do. I do get angry, but within reason. Keeping promises and being punctual are important to me. I always say “Gotta go” when I need to end a conversation.
Mental health - The amount of toxicity I could take is arguably higher than average, but please alert me if you are struggling mentally. On a side note, I hope you do not like watching porn. It is a poor choice, and is both physically and psychologically damaging. I am not asking everyone of you to agree with me on this, or any other things I say in this post. Whatever floats your boat, strangers; just let me have the freedom to find whatever I am looking for.
Distance - I am not looking for an online marriage. Future faking is a fucked up thing to do to another person. If you need nude pictures, phone sex or Skype sex to make a long distance relationship works, I am not the person you are looking for.
Meeting for the first time - I have given this a lot of thoughts, still I do not really know when and where would be good to meet up. We could meet either before we go into a relationship or after. It would probably be fairer for us to fly to a foreign place to meet, it means we would have to trust each other enough to do that. In that case it would make more sense to meet after the relationship has already been established. Also we would have to deal with this whole “OMG covid is deadly!” thing. I think it is doable to fall for someone just by talking. Though I am aware that people are often not who they claimed they are. Those who say they are loyal could be experienced cheaters. But we will see. When in doubt, I ask questions.
Marriage - I have never been married but I would like to get married. The last thing I want is a divorce. The word marriage has sort of become a dirty word now but I am old fashioned. I like relationship labels, and I hope you are the same. A side note, I'm not into having a big wedding. Or a diamond ring. Or to dress fancy for a pre-wedding shoot. The National Gallery of Art has three self portraits of a Hungarian photographer and his wife. I would like to have a wedding like theirs. Which means I would just like to hang out with my SO somewhere, take some pictures ourselves, and call it a wedding. If you never had a proper family, fear not, we would have one on our own. However, having a toxic childhood should not be an excuse for exhibiting toxic behaviors. I would never set myself on fire to keep you warm. It would not help.
Sex - It would be too intimidating if you have had unsafe sex, a lot of sex, or many sexual partners in the past. And I do not want to be intimidated. Don’t give me that classic “oral sex/ cyber sex is not really sex” BS. Premarital sex is off the table. People make fun of those who have never had sex, which I do not get. I do not have a past, and would strongly prefer someone who also does not. It seems fairer that way, and in that way I would not have to grieve over your past. But, then again, grieving is a part of life. It is alright if you are not a virgin, just do not lie. I do not really have a sex drive. Mentally speaking, I would be okay if you never wanted to have sex, I would also be okay if you wanted to have a lot of sex. Because I do not specifically crave for sex; I crave for love. In other word, I count all types of affection as a whole, and sex does not specifically stand out from all the rest. Physically speaking, I would not be compatible with those who have a high sex drive, as I think overindulgence in sex is destructive. I am not really a robot, and so daily sex sounds off putting as fuck to me. I would not be compatible with those who are into kinky sex/ filming sex tapes, also. There is nothing wrong with those, they are just not my thing. I think having boundaries in bed does not mean I do not love them, or love them less than those who have no boundaries. I would never take birth control pills/ wear an IUD, because they have many side effects that I do not want to deal with. Respect my choices.
Kids - I do not have kids. But I would like to raise kids. Ask yourself, honestly, if you are mature enough, and ready to be a father. "But I am not ready, just yet; there are things I want to achieve before I become a father." Find someone younger, then. I would like to add that I have no reason to doubt my fertility as I take reasonably good care of myself. I have no, and never had any, chronic diseases or illnesses. Am at a healthy weight, somewhat slim even. 5 feet 7 inches tall. In the event that I was infertile, surrogacy would not be an option. It goes against my morals. So, again, think twice. I would like to raise adopted kids, and treat them like they are my biological kids. I would not dump my husband if, he was found to be infertile at any point of the marriage. Technically I would be okay if you do not want to raise kids at all, but providing a home for some orphans is something I could do, and I do not want to pass that on.
Living together - I have always, and still am against the idea of living together before marriage. There is nothing wrong with cohabitation, it is just again not my thing. I would gladly introduce my roommate when I was in school to you if you are worried that I have some weird quirks. I might or might not bribe her before I introduce her to you.
Living with parents - Sure, I would not think less of you. There are reasons why people choose to live with their parents.
Cars - I do not care whether you have a car or not.
Money - I am not rich, and was not born rich, but I have no debts. Never had debts. I am aware that some debts are justifiable, like student loan. I worked in the academia. I just started doing something new, related to my field of study, and that makes me happy. Whether you are a postdoc, or a high school drop out, makes no difference to me. For those who think that throwing me a sentence like “I am a lawyer” would be enough to make me talk, have some self respect. I am fine with my Reddit inbox collects only dust.
Religion - I suppose I have always been mostly an agnostic. My parents sent me to a Christian middle school, then a Christian high school. It would be great if you are a God believer and do not mind me being a non religious person. We could read Bible together. It would also be great if you are a non religious person but follow traditional values.
Smoking, drinking and doing drugs - I do not smoke cigarettes. Or vape. Or whatever. I do not do soft/ hard drugs. Have no past addictions. I do not take over-the-counter drugs even. I do not drink alcohol. If you drink responsibly, then I do not have a problem with that.
Dietary choices - I am an omnivore. Have no food allergies. Please be a meat eater. I do not want to get into an argument with you over a tuna egg sandwich I make for our kids. I would not raise my kids vegan. They should be able to make their own choices when they are old enough. I like cooking quite a bit. Would learn to cook all your favorite dishes.
Pets - I do not have any pets.
Gaming - I do not gamble. I have never played any video or computer games. Game soundtracks though I do often pay attention to.
Tattoos - Sure, why not?
Earrings - Why not? I would buy you earrings.
Long hair - Why not? I would braid your hair when you are asleep, though.
Politics - I am against communism, and totalitarianism. Trump 2020. Please read my reddit history. I pretty much stopped using this account altogether, except posting on Foreveralonedating, because this account has 33 male followers, and that is creepy, and makes me feel very uncomfortable. But my reddit history should give you a hint on what kind of a person I am. (Update: 68 followers now, which shows you how disgusting and creepy some, if not most, men on this site are.)
P.S. This is Reddit, a wonderful yet utterly dangerous place, strangers. Especially for women. So many people prey on the weak. Even scammers would spend an hour writing and tell you that “you are everything I have been looking for since forever”. I laughed out loud at “I would relocate for you but it depends on where exactly you are” messages. “I am 100% (insert a race here), and I couldn’t aim to have kids with a wife who isn’t (insert a race here).” messages are laughable. Don’t bother, kiddos. The only time I accept people bringing up the skin color thing is when it concerns our adopted kids, if you understand what I mean. Canned messages are easy to spot, because I am smarter than you imagined. There were people who messaged me from throwaway accounts, which I noticed later filled with porn posts. Accounts with no post history are fishy. Anyhow at some point let's do a photo verification. Maybe we could take a selfie while holding a piece of paper with something like "Today's February 33 1920" written on it. Thank you all for sending me a selfie right off the bat. But I do not trust you enough to click on it. Also please do not ask me to talk to you over the phone/ do a video chat with you right off the bat. If you absolutely do not know what to write, check out "pinned post II", there's a list of 30 questions. I talk to one person, if even there was one, at a time.
TL;DR - I am a non religious person who holds traditional values and beliefs, which for obvious reasons give me a hard time these days. If you see this post, message me, no matter when.