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IME whenever I live with someone else my health gets worse. But I'm in the US, where the majority of people don't have healthy habits, and I've worked pretty h

IME whenever I live with someone else my health gets worse. But I'm in the US, where the majority of people don't have healthy habits, and I've worked pretty hard to make my personal habits healthier, which is exceptionally healthy against the US average. And of the few friends I've known well long enough to see them both single and married, it's become quite apparent that they have a tendency to enable one another to do unhealthy things. For example, one half will decide they want to drink less, but the other half keeps bringing home six packs of beer and drinking in front of them. It's pretty rare IME for both parties to be coordinated in these wagon rides, so there's more temptation in the home to keep falling off the wagon, because the other half isn't on board. There's also the obvious cycle of single people working hard to make themselves lose weight and get that beach bod going. Once they're hooked up and living with someone, IME it's practically without fail that they get lazy and fatten up. For me, it's a whole lot easier to stay fit and maintain that physique and not have shitty foods in my home without someone else interfering with my plans. I'm quite confident my long-term health is probably better off without another American sharing my living space. It would be an exceptional American for it not to be true, and I'm just not that skilled in attracting such a catch. It would be a huge failure to let in one of the averages.

solardev 3y ago
What about your mental and emotional well-being? Does that get any better or worse with partner(s), live-in or not?
- pengaru 3y ago
  Just having access to friends, community, cafes, a social life of sorts, is enough for me to be emotionally good - and keeps all the vice/bad influences at a safe distance. I'd also like to note that there is the possibility of LTR/marriage without cohabitating. It's just costly, but from where I'm sitting that looks like the far better approach if one can afford it. It's not that uncommon to hear about such arrangements among celebrities who obviously have the necessary dough. Before the pandemic started I was pretty isolated for a couple years solo developing an off-grid desert property, which turned into another ~2 years of absolute solitude from the COVID lock-downs. Without access to the public in the form of cafes/bars or even the public library, it became noticeably mentally and emotionally problematic. While it's nice to know what that extreme looks like and how it negatively affects me, I have no interest in repeating the experience. For me, just having the ability to hack from a cafe at least several times a month and have some conversations with even random strangers provides the majority of the human interaction I require. Beyond that it's diminishing returns land.
cableshaft 3y ago
> IME whenever I live with someone else my health gets worse. Yep, same here. > And of the few friends I've known well long enough to see them both single and married, it's become quite apparent that they have a tendency to enable one another to do unhealthy things. I've said exactly this before, even in my current marriage (that we enable bad habits in each other). I might try to eat healthier, but she's having a bad day and wants to eat garbage, or I'm stressed at work and not caring as much and make bad decisions. She often wants things that I wouldn't bother getting on my own as well, like a daily Starbucks or late night ice cream, and while it's easy for me to not have that stuff if I don't go to those places, it's much harder for me to choose something healthy when I do go (like going to Oberweis and getting something for her and not me can be hard to do. I still don't about half the time, but the other half I'm like screw it and get something). And I try to eat healthier meals, like just make a salad for dinner or something, but when I do that I often still have to cook something since she only tolerates salads with a 'proper cooked meal', and then it's hard for me to spend an hour or more cooking something or picking up takeout for her and then not eat it also. It's a tradeoff that we've been on the wrong side of more often than I'd like, and I'm trying to get things back on track, but then something happens that throws it off course again inevitably. When I was by myself I don't remember it being anywhere near this difficult. Just buy some salad fixings and don't go out, just make that for lunch or whatever. Having to also work with someone else with different tastes (at least when it comes to healthy options) makes it much more difficult. It was also difficult when I was living with my parents also and trying to diet while they did their own thing, so it's not something that's exclusive to my wife or anything.
- pengaru 3y ago
  Yikes man, just reading your comment gives me the urge to move out and I'm not even in it.
YeBanKo 3y ago
Man, you hate Americans, why do you live here? Honest question.
- joe-collins 3y ago
  Not parent, but simply because I don't have the income needed to pack up and get out. No savings, no remote job. Clawing your way up from a start at $8.40/hr takes a long damn time just to reach self-sufficiency, let alone moving across the globe.
  - YeBanKo 3y ago
    Is moving to a different state with higher wages an option for you?
- pengaru 3y ago
  > Man, you hate Americans, why do you live here? Honest question. I didn't realize my comment amounted to hatred just because I don't want the average (or worse) domestic to share a home with me. Where is it better? Do they speak English there and have open borders to an unmarried American male in his 40s? Honest questions. Japan is on my radar, but they're notoriously difficult in the immigration department, and I don't speak the language. Not that I'm looking for a partner or whatever there, I just find their traditional practices of doing more on the floor appealing. In the US I'm an extreme weirdo for not using furniture.
  - YeBanKo 3y ago
    > Where is it better? Imo, better is in Scandinavia, Finland, Netherlands, though I have not been to Finland. Every country in Scandinavia seem very comfortable for living. When we were traveling around Scandinavia, on couple of occasions we stayed next to business centers on weekdays, once in Stockholm and once in Reykjavik. In the morning when I realized that there was a bunch of IT companies, while my wife was trying to arrange us some tourist stuff I was walking around and thinking if I should just go door to door and see if anyone has a job opening. Typically countries and other states don't impress me that much when I travel as a tourist and I don't fall for "the food is so nice and people are so friendly" argument, but Iceland and Sweden, specifically Stockholm, really made an impression on me. So yeah, Scandinavia, Northern Europe and maybe Canada? I have met a lot of Easter Europeans, Asians and some Americans there in seemingly all professions, not only specialized skills, so there must be some immigration pathways.

solardev 3y ago

What about your mental and emotional well-being? Does that get any better or worse with partner(s), live-in or not?

pengaru 3y ago
Just having access to friends, community, cafes, a social life of sorts, is enough for me to be emotionally good - and keeps all the vice/bad influences at a safe distance. I'd also like to note that there is the possibility of LTR/marriage without cohabitating. It's just costly, but from where I'm sitting that looks like the far better approach if one can afford it. It's not that uncommon to hear about such arrangements among celebrities who obviously have the necessary dough. Before the pandemic started I was pretty isolated for a couple years solo developing an off-grid desert property, which turned into another ~2 years of absolute solitude from the COVID lock-downs. Without access to the public in the form of cafes/bars or even the public library, it became noticeably mentally and emotionally problematic. While it's nice to know what that extreme looks like and how it negatively affects me, I have no interest in repeating the experience. For me, just having the ability to hack from a cafe at least several times a month and have some conversations with even random strangers provides the majority of the human interaction I require. Beyond that it's diminishing returns land.

cableshaft 3y ago

> IME whenever I live with someone else my health gets worse. Yep, same here. > And of the few friends I've known well long enough to see them both single and married, it's become quite apparent that they have a tendency to enable one another to do unhealthy things. I've said exactly this before, even in my current marriage (that we enable bad habits in each other). I might try to eat healthier, but she's having a bad day and wants to eat garbage, or I'm stressed at work and not caring as much and make bad decisions. She often wants things that I wouldn't bother getting on my own as well, like a daily Starbucks or late night ice cream, and while it's easy for me to not have that stuff if I don't go to those places, it's much harder for me to choose something healthy when I do go (like going to Oberweis and getting something for her and not me can be hard to do. I still don't about half the time, but the other half I'm like screw it and get something). And I try to eat healthier meals, like just make a salad for dinner or something, but when I do that I often still have to cook something since she only tolerates salads with a 'proper cooked meal', and then it's hard for me to spend an hour or more cooking something or picking up takeout for her and then not eat it also. It's a tradeoff that we've been on the wrong side of more often than I'd like, and I'm trying to get things back on track, but then something happens that throws it off course again inevitably. When I was by myself I don't remember it being anywhere near this difficult. Just buy some salad fixings and don't go out, just make that for lunch or whatever. Having to also work with someone else with different tastes (at least when it comes to healthy options) makes it much more difficult. It was also difficult when I was living with my parents also and trying to diet while they did their own thing, so it's not something that's exclusive to my wife or anything.

pengaru 3y ago
Yikes man, just reading your comment gives me the urge to move out and I'm not even in it.

YeBanKo 3y ago

Man, you hate Americans, why do you live here? Honest question.

joe-collins 3y ago
Not parent, but simply because I don't have the income needed to pack up and get out. No savings, no remote job. Clawing your way up from a start at $8.40/hr takes a long damn time just to reach self-sufficiency, let alone moving across the globe.
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  Is moving to a different state with higher wages an option for you?
pengaru 3y ago
> Man, you hate Americans, why do you live here? Honest question. I didn't realize my comment amounted to hatred just because I don't want the average (or worse) domestic to share a home with me. Where is it better? Do they speak English there and have open borders to an unmarried American male in his 40s? Honest questions. Japan is on my radar, but they're notoriously difficult in the immigration department, and I don't speak the language. Not that I'm looking for a partner or whatever there, I just find their traditional practices of doing more on the floor appealing. In the US I'm an extreme weirdo for not using furniture.
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  > Where is it better? Imo, better is in Scandinavia, Finland, Netherlands, though I have not been to Finland. Every country in Scandinavia seem very comfortable for living. When we were traveling around Scandinavia, on couple of occasions we stayed next to business centers on weekdays, once in Stockholm and once in Reykjavik. In the morning when I realized that there was a bunch of IT companies, while my wife was trying to arrange us some tourist stuff I was walking around and thinking if I should just go door to door and see if anyone has a job opening. Typically countries and other states don't impress me that much when I travel as a tourist and I don't fall for "the food is so nice and people are so friendly" argument, but Iceland and Sweden, specifically Stockholm, really made an impression on me. So yeah, Scandinavia, Northern Europe and maybe Canada? I have met a lot of Easter Europeans, Asians and some Americans there in seemingly all professions, not only specialized skills, so there must be some immigration pathways.