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>This can't be good for his mental health There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would
by usrn 5y ago
>This can't be good for his mental health
There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
But it's probably like any addiction. He's addicted to the progress he's making and doesn't feel the same about anything else in his life. He needs a reason to stop digging the tunnel.
- tantalor 5y agoI accept your offer to join your tunnel digging club. When/where are the meetings? Do I need to bring my own shovel?
- arez 5y agoI'm in too, doesn't even matter if we live in different cities, we can just dig a tunnel and meet in the middle
- boringg 5y agoCan I use SSH?
- throwaway413 5y agoSure, but you have to go physically put your shovel in the hole first and then come back. …just be careful. There’s a man in the middle of the tunnel who will try to take your stuff.
- Dave_TRS 5y agoAt summer camp we had joke activities like "sand a log to nothing" and "dig a hole to China". Kids would sign up for these activities and actually sand down the log and dig the pointless hole for hours. Just as popular as playing soccer, swimming, etc. I agree this tunnel boyfriend may be on to something
- Siecje 5y agoWhat did you sand with? How many files did you go through? Did you have an activity to turn a log into a paddle?
- Dave_TRS 5y agoJust regular sandpaper. I like the paddle idea, that'd have been a more interesting goal and given something to show for the effort.
- missedthecue 5y agoSounds like boot camp.
- Toreno96 5y agoThat reminds me this one book I've read in my teenage years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_(novel) Two main characters were meeting after-school to dig a tunnel, although their motivation was a little bit deeper (sorry, I couldn't help myself) than just digging itself.
- freeopinion 5y agoFind a club near you at https://www.justserve.org https://www.justserve.org
- andix 5y agoMaybe he’s digging the tunnel, because he already has mental health issues. For example a voice inside his head, that tells him to keep digging. If he’s healthy, I also agree that this hobby is probably not bad for mental health.
- sam0x17 5y agoMaybe that's why we contribute to open source! It must be the voice in our head! Or it's a hobby...
- sangnoir 5y agoThe line can blur; I would like to (re)intoduce you to the wonderful TempleOS[1][2] edit: I had no idea Terry Davies passed away in 2018; he'd occasionally drop in on HN comment threads about his OS. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS 2. https://templeos.org/ https://templeos.org/
- crate_barre 5y agoDude, you have to understand you work 8 hours a day. It’s just as absurd. Dig the fucking tunnel.
- ineedasername 5y agoThere's a direct payoff for working 8 hours a day. We really don't know enough about this person's motivations to judge the health of his actions one way or another, but speculating a mental health angle isn't unreasonable. And yes, I'd say the same thing if someone cutoff all social contact and most time with their partner over a more mainstream hobby as well. MH issues aren't a given, but they're certainly on the table unless we learn more about this.
- crate_barre 5y agoThe “direct” payoff is an abstraction. Follow the code. It’s so you get money to pay for food, shelter and piece of mind, possibly status. Somewhere further up Mazlow’s hierarchy is enjoyment. Regardless, I consider anyone operating in humanity to be mentally ill in general. It’s just, how much of your mental illness impacts the rest of us, and how much of it is abstracted away so we can quickly label it harmless (mostly to the rest of us). Digging a tunnel the closest shit to “ain’t bothering me” as it’s going to get. Now, if your nonsense pushes you to monopolize industries and abuse labor for profit, yeah, now your mental illness is on blast. ——— Few would consider that the GF is mentally ill, so obsessed with how it would look to others, so obsessed with how it’s non conforming.
- ineedasername 5y ago>He needs a reason to stop digging the tunnel. Agreed, but once he unleashes the Balrog it will be a bit too late. Then the area will be a Superfund site for generations until some grey guy shows up with a stick & an attitude.
- CaptainJustin 5y agoI wouldn't worry. The Balrog shall not pass.
- manholio 5y agoThe Balrog are decent people.
- raldi 5y agoTunneling is the new Fight Club
- lazlee 5y agoDude, the first rule of tunnel club ...
- brodouevencode 5y agoYou should read Choke, also by Palahniuk. In it the side-kick, Denny, compulsively built a castle as a deterrent to his sex addiction.
- cm2012 5y agoHe shouldn't stop digging his tunnel but it sounds like he should spend less time on it if he wants to keep a healthy relationship with his girlfriend. That would be true no matter what his hobby was.
- lazide 5y agoSometimes these kinds of hobbies/pastimes pop up because of unresolved relationship issues or personal issues brought up by the relationship. It wouldn’t surprise me if he does the tunnel so he doesn’t spend so much time with her, but can’t say it or manage whatever is going on with him. Random armchair psychologist from afar of course.
- jacquesm 5y agoThat may be cause and effect switched. People can do pretty weird things.
- etiam 5y agoConsidering her attitude towards it, maybe it's a secondary gain to be putting some natural limitations on time spent with girlfriend.
- diputsmonro 5y agoWhy are you jumping to judge her? Is totally reasonable for someone in a relationship to want to spend time with their partner, and be upset if they literally never get to. What's even the point of a relationship if there's no companionship?
- swah 5y agoDid she ever offer to help with the digging?
- ransom1538 5y agoMaybe he should pickup vaping like everyone else.
- ajross 5y ago> There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project. True enough[1], but "aggravating a clear conflict with ones partner" clearly qualifies. Obviously we have only one side of the story here, but it's not so much "digging the tunnel" that is at issue here. It's "digging the tunnel and failing to sufficiently explain the hobby to your increasingly concerned girlfriend" that carries this into the realm of nutjobbery. It's one thing to be "I know it's weird, but <my obscure hobby> makes me happy and I promise it won't impact our relationship" and quite another to front with "I'm digging the tunnel. Leave me alone." The implicit questions being asked by the poster here are ones our amateur miner should have answered long ago, basically. [1] And for the record: I have a hard time believing that an amateur tunnel through sediment in an otherwise typical geological area is all that dangerous, the guy isn't chasing veins through bedrock or tapping sinkholes here.
- lazide 5y agoIt’s likely more dangerous thank bedrock tunneling frankly. Loosely consolidated sedimentary soil can easily shift and slide with relatively little outside input. A truck driving by, a rain, sprinklers, even someone walking over it. And it only takes a small amount of dirt covering someone to crush them or suffocate them to death. Literally less than a foot depending on distribution. Construction crews have to shore up anything higher than waist high for this reason.
- fifticon 5y agoA guy on our street died digging out for sewer, only ~2m deep - a side he had stacked dirt on caved in/slided and covered him. He left a wife and 2 kids. No tunnel, just unsafely stacked dirt mound.
- rotexo 5y agoThank you. My partner is an architect, and while they aren’t a structural engineer, they had enough structures training in grad school to know that hobby tunnel digging is extremely dangerous. There are clearly alternative physical activities that would have all the same benefits with none of the downsides.
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoTunneling isn't the problem. This isn't a tunneling story. It would be similar if the tunnel were a ski mountain, an office or a drug den. This is a story of escalating isolation. He's isolating from society, from people who care about him and whom, we presume, he cares about. (Or maybe not. Maybe he gets along fine at work and at church, and is simply uninterested in his SO.)
- sn0wtrooper 5y agoAnother brick in the wall? Or another meter deep into the tunnel?
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- jessriedel 5y agoI'd say this is about his girlfriend not liking that he's isolating from society. (Which, of course, is a perfectly valid preference of hers.) There's lots wrong with society; the choice to mostly disconnect from it is a reasonable one for many people.
- lucumo 5y ago> There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project. In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it. It doesn't sound so bad. I mean, it's gotta be healthier than so called idle games, and about as useful. Or similar to lifting weights or jogging or something. It makes him feel good, that's all the justification any non-harmful activity should need. [1] Mods removed it on Reddit. Archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20220417170609/https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/u5rbjo/update_how_can_i27f_get_my_boyfriend31m_of_two/ http://web.archive.org/web/20220417170609/https://old.reddit...
- Adraghast 5y ago> In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it. That makes it more concerning, not less. A quirky hobby stops being quirky when it starts filling a psychological need. Fast forward three months and dude might not want to ever leave his tunnel. Why would he? He feels calm and safe there.
- recursive 5y agoIf it's concerning to you to fill a need with a hobby, then you're probably going to be concerned about most people. What would you say are healthy reasons to engage in a hobby, if there are any?
- Adraghast 5y agoI’d say any of the top three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. A hobby that helps you achieve feelings of self-actualization, esteem, and belonging is great. Things get hairy at that second level. If you feel psychologically unsafe in your day-to-day life, there’s something wrong - either with your environment or the way you perceive it - that a tunnel can’t fix.
- chmod775 5y agoI feel calm and safe reading books. Would you recommend me to stop?
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