The issue
My partner has recently developed a very close connection with a female friend and this has brought me a lot of anxiety. He has demonstrated in the past the ability to maintain platonic relationships with women, so I don’t have reasons to not trust him. She is in fact a lovely person t...
Not yet. I don't know what I'm going to tell them. "We were supposed to sign on May 12th, I've read we won't be un-quarantined by now, I have to leave my current house by June 2nd, I know you don't have more info than I do. What do I do"
I think the signing has to be in person and this is forbidden as of until the quarantine is lifted, but yeah, maybe they'll tell me they have another way ... if we end up homeless we can go to my mother's place but the issue is with our furniture ... can't rent a truck and it's 200km away
I'd ask first, maybe they're an 'essential' job because otherwise people end up homeless... I know the notary where I went to sign is still open (though our rules around quarantine seem a bit less strict).
Their site says that you are alllowed to only bring the people that need to sign (so no moms for moral support :P) and they also offer something like 'signing by power of attorney'? So I think the best thing to do, if they haven't given you any info yet, is to ask how they're handling this...
One step at a time. It's not very useful to spend energy thinking/worrying about how you're getting stuff to your mother's place if that might not even be necessary :)
Usually in a small talk, I try to ask the person to talk about itself, but as long as the conversation go, keep talking about personal matters seems rude or arrogant.
How to drive the conversation outside of this?
@avazula That last bit ('he's beautiful') reminds me of a sketch by a Dutch comedian... "All babies look alike. And I find they all look rather ugly. So when everyone is saying 'what a beautiful baby, he looks just like his mom' I just say 'what a sweet, sweeeeeet child'" :P
Fingers crossed everyone remains in good health! :)
This is a joke that's traveled borders apparently ;) I'm not prone to finding things beautiful (especially newborns) but I think this one is, I won't share a pic for obvious privacy reasons but maybe I'm just biased by all the love I have for the three of them ;)
@avazula That's something new I learned today! I know I have godparents somewhere too, but over here that means it's just 'in case we die before you're an adult, these are the people that are going to parent you'. Godparents aren't tied to religion, as far as I'm aware..
@avazula Same. Though not as much terrified as repulsed, perhaps... I know I don't want to give birth to a baby and drop it in daycare, but seeing how many people are discovering right now that kids need raising... O.o It just seems like such a waste of time.
@avazula I was baptised in church, but that was totally unrelated to my godparents. The godparent thing is something that my parents arranged with a notary.
Oh. For me it's because having a child as a perceived woman ruins your career. And also for other relationship-related reasons. Like ... Seems like I've been wanting to get married and have children but my partner doesn't share my enthusiasm. I already feel like I pushed the house thing onto them. They now think it was a great idea to buy now, and I've heard men (in general) get ready once they're in front of the accomplished thing ... I don't want that. I want them to desire it as much as I do.
@Tinkeringbell Oh. In here you get baptised in church (most of the time) and the godparents are there. They're supposed to take care of the (religious, mostly) education of the child. There's no official status of caretaker. If the parents die, it's for the grandparents to take care of the kids I think?
I'm kinda glad to realize I wouldn't have been automatically transferred to my grandparents... Given that I still sometimes struggle with the religious upbringing I already had so far, and theirs would've been even stricter.
I know my mother's sister and her husband are my godparents, and when I was young and my mom explained this to me, I was still young enough to ask if that meant I could go live with them right now too, without mom having to die XD
@avazula Woah. Now my reason for not wanting any seems pretty superficial... They are all great points though!
@Tinkeringbell I mean, I have other reasons ... Like climate change, and the fear for my children to be autistic too ... Don't get me wrong I wouldn't change that about me but we can't deny it's hard to be autistic and accepted in my country. I'm lucky I can mask ... Would they be able too?
I'm... not too worried about climate change in itself, but more about.. the whole world? It's financial crisis after financial crisis and people seem more and more intent on telling other people what they can and can't do, in real life and online. There's more and more chance a kid born into this world will at some point be shunned and dragged through the mud by others in their adult life for something they did as a kid because everything is recorded and photographed and posted online now...
There's just such a whole bunch of time you'd have to invest into raising a kid with proper morals …
The autism is a hard one, on the one hand you now know and could perhaps help your kids out from a younger age... on the other, it's not just a what if they have it, but also 'what if they don't'? There's some stories out there of how having a parent with autism or a disability can severely impact a 'normal' kid's life... You'd have to mask from the moment they were born until they go live on their own, I think?
@avazula And straight into the heavy topics you drop, Arnaud ;)
@Tinkeringbell Yeah. That. I can't help but think having children is just satisfying a selfish will we are biologically programmed to have. I used to want to be child-free because it just felt wrong to have kids. But I have this desire. Ugh.
@Tinkeringbell Honestly that doesn't worry me at all. But I'm not really willing to explain why. Sorry if that's an issue :)
@avazula I've considered adoption a few times. I like to think that that way, no matter how you mess up, you've at least given someone that would've had it worse something...
But even that seems like an unlikely option to me now, because it's still a kid to raise that you can't drop in daycare.
(can, but won't)
There's charities that do 'financial adaptions', you just send money their way and once a year you get a card saying how the child you're sponsoring is doing... But that sounds too much like the daycare but reversed to me :P
@avazula So far, the signs I see aren't very positive. The co-workers I know that have kids are having a hard time balancing kids and working. Even the ones with 11/12 year olds that can do their school work practically on their own. I haven't seen another with small kids (6 and 2, I think?) in a week, she apparently can't keep up with both work and kids now that there's not daycare to drop them...
Maybe once schools open again, and you can have 5-6 hours a day without kids because they're in school? That still doesn't cover any kids too young to go to school though.
But I have a nice job, a nice income, I'm not giving that up. I've seen things gone south one too many times when a marriage doesn't work out and 1 partner is left without an income... besides it's kinda unfair because the other partner is supposed to pay most of their paycheck in child support and partner support at that point.
Yes and no... There's a thing here where you can drop your toddler off once they're aged 2/2,5, often for 2 mornings a week. That's a good thing, I think. Like you said, it's a great way to work on their education and learn to play with others. It's also totally separate from daycare here.
But the argument of meeting others doesn't really work for 6 week old babies dropped at daycare :/
Yeah, these days a lot of people need to both work fulltime. Some of them need to because otherwise they can't go abroad for holiday twice a year, drive the fancy car and live in the big house, others because they can't even pay the small house without a car and vacations...
Living on a single wage is a lifestyle that's not for everyone, and impossible for some.
Yeah, I personally still find that very young but better than at 6 weeks. I'm probably also biased by having grown up with a stay at home mother... it's just that I find the whole idea of dropping off your kid at 6:30 AM and picking them up at 5/6 PM again so weird, especially when dealing with young kids...
If I have to compare it to something, the image that comes into my mind is that of SciFi, where they put embryos into cannisters and just let them grow there, forever unaware of who or what they are, until they're adults.
@ExtrovertedMainMan it's understandable what OP is going through since the relationship is on a downfall but people can have totally platonic relationships with people from the opposite gender
@CaldeiraG I think it's the un-platonic relationships that are far more rare? I can't imagine people not having at least 2 or more friends of the opposite sex, while relationship statuses are mostly monogamous or single ;)
@Magisch Technically, perhaps. Though over here that means 2 people from your family or neighbours, not random strangers ;) I'm NOT going to date the neighbor.
@Magisch But it's still a mystery what 'minus()' does XD
I have no working knowledge of such things but it seems to me that you're looking for someone to marry and have kids with that tinder is not the right platform for that
@Magisch Those moments are just so nice! I'm working with a co-worker now on getting ours there too, it's slowly starting to show :) Luckily he also has a ton of experience, so he knows you use plus_days instead of minus or plus XD
Usually in a small talk, I try to ask the person to talk about itself, but as long as the conversation go, keep talking about personal matters seems rude or arrogant.
How to drive the conversation outside of this?
