NeoEclectic

Finally, the first bit of common sense in this thread. Good post.

I guess that makes two of you then. He likes porn, but doesn't feel comfortable talking about it. How does him watching porn affect you? And why is it any of your business? You're not engaged or married. Do you want to say it's a trust issue? Have you divulged all of the skeletons in your closet to him? If you think he's lying then just confront him. If you don't like his response you can decide to just let it go or move on.

He more than likely ate something when he got home. And please don't even compare missing a meal for a few hours as going hungry in the devastating mortal sense. It's irrational and insensitive to people who truly starve so don't go there. This is just irresponsible. Your premise is to allow the child to dictate the terms at the same time teaching him that eating fast food all of the time is perfectly fine. Later he turns into an obese slob rife with diabetes and we're all going to be sitting here groaning that we pay too much taxes to take care of other people. Children are the most impressionable and it's during that time that they tend to learn good or bad habits.

This is absurd. So now parents should be ruled by children? Just because someone wants something doesn't mean they should get it especially if someone else has to spend their resources to provide it. The father's role is to make sure that the child is fed. Fine. That doesn't mean he has no choice but to feed him McDonald's. And it's definitely not negotiation considering the kid was dead set on going to McDonald's. Where is the father's negotiating leverage? No kid goes to McDonald's to order a salad. That is plainly absurd. There are far better options from where to get a salad than McDonald's so I think its very clear the kid had no intention of ordering a salad. Okay, so it's an issue about forcing a child to go hungry? The only force I see is child ordering a parent on what to do. The child was offered three options and he opted to not eat.

The only thing I don't like about these things is that they go after and prosecute people that haven't actually harmed another person in this act. There's not an actual 10-year-old girl on the other end but a grown adult posing as a child. I find that to be ironic because there are laws in the US that prohibits impersonation on many different levels for many different reasons. Yet we consider it to be morally acceptable in the instance that it serves our interest. What's happening is role play and people are being convicted for it whether they realize it's role play or not. Which is a scary thought on its own considering I'm sure there are many adults that role play in this fashion. But what if one day one of the partners becomes angry about something and decides to turn their role play sessions over to the police for prosecution. It's like setting someone up to rob a fake bank, does so, then gets prosecuted for robbing a bank that wasn't real and no one was harmed. We're reaching the point of Catholic style justice where if you only think about doing something wrong you're automatically guilty as if you actually did it.

This is a slippery slope as far as development goes. There is a difference between forcing a child to do something and trying to teach a child habits that will serve them well in life later. The thing about the bath I think does absolutely no harm to him at all. It's not like taking a bath to him is like wading through a pool of acid where his skin melts off. It reinforces the importance of maintaining personal hygiene which can have severe negative effects in adulthood if it's not practiced. There are other health implications as well that directly impacts the individual as a result of not bathing regularly. I can only imagine that in adulthood that your son refuses to take baths because there were no toy cars or because he can't figure out you can change the temperature of the water. For example, one of my friends is in his 30's has about only 3 real teeth in his mouth literally. His excuse for this is that because his parents never made him brush his teeth so as an adult he never brushed his teeth. He effectively have false teeth and spent an exorbitant sum of money having fake teeth put in. Him never brushing his teeth cost him his oral health and finances in adulthood all because his parents never followed up teaching him to brush his teeth. Just something to consider.

Agreed. Just like that mother that tried to sue McDonald's a few years back for making her daughter's mobidly obese. Nobody forced them to eat there breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and late night snack. And to claim ignorance of the lack of nutritious value in Big Macs is the same as a smoker saying I didn't know I could get cancer from doing that.

Yeah, I was ad libbing because those details were left off and understandably because your post was long and I know you wanted to keep it short. All of this commentary is moot if you don't desire to improve your relationship with your father. I certainly cannot blame you there because I'm in a similar position regarding my parents. In my case I just wrote them out of my life completely. It just seemed like that you're not prepared for that drastic of a step because you're maintaining some kind of a relationship with your father. Stefan brought up something in one of his podcasts. In summary communication is a two way street and to keep persisting with trying to open that line of communication with your parent if that's your desire. Keep going back time, after time, after time until you reached the point of being exhausted and feel as though there is no other recourse.

Parents should be held responsible for their children while they are children with diminished capacity of authority as they progress through adulthood. Such as if I witness a 6-year-old being a complete, uncontrollable brat in public I hold the parent responsible. At such a young age children really do not understand completely the concept of right or wrong. If I see the same kid at age 20 I now hold that person responsible for their decision making and not their parents. If by the time you become 30, have kids of your own, and claim the reason why you beat your kids is because you were abused as a child is irresponsible. These are extreme examples but it can be applied to a lot of other examples. I have a friend that is 45 years old and lives in his father's house. He hasn't had a job in 5 years and has no amibition to be gainfully employed ever. He spends what little money he comes across for beer and weed, but never has any money when it comes to paying his debts. The terrible thing is he knows the difference between right and wrong; he has his entire life. I've seen him borrow money from someone then later tell me he has no intention of paying it back. The way he puts it is "I know I should pay it back, but f*** it he made me wait for it so screw him. It's his fault". He has done this countless number of times and have burned many bridges as a result. He just doesn't care. His defense is that his mother savagely beat him as a child thus it vindicates his current behavior. It worked at first and he gained a lot of sympathy but that ran out as he continued to burn bridges and his friends found it impossible to believe that he could continue to assign blame for his poor behavior because of something his mother had done many years ago. Not to mention that it just didn't add up in other situations where he would screw people over, for other things, and then cry that he did it because of his poor upbringing. A more subtle example is another friend of mine that is 34 years old and has almost none of his original teeth. His reason for having had poor oral hygiene is because his parents never made him brush his teeth when he was younger. Does the need to maintain proper, oral, hygiene become any less relevant just because your parents didn't force you to brush and floss? Surely, he realized that his dragon breath required attention. Or that after his 5th root canal that maybe it's time to pickup a toothbrush? I don't know of any research or studies to prove or disprove that sentiment. My academic pedigree resides in IT and not mental health or social programs so I don't claim to be a credible expert with such analysis. Though there is a saying that goes "It doesn't take a rocket scientist...". I don't mean to offend by over simplifying something that can be a real problem for some people. I can understand an 18-year-old having trouble reconciling disturbing experiences. I don't excuse a 45-year-old that knows the difference between right and wrong. Even in the court of law a poor upbringing isn't a valid excuse for committing a crime. People are held accountable for their actions regardless of prior social experience. Of course, excluding obvious self defense cases and the like. If you decide to drive while drunk and kill a family of four in a horrific car crash you go to jail. The court doesn't care that your mother savagely beat you as a child and that you drink to forget. If you rob a convenience store and get caught you go to jail. The law doesn't care that you grew up in the poorest community in the country. It's just not a defense; it's an excuse. Let's entertain the idea that someone does self medicate by drinking to forget the past. That's still not a reason to get behind the wheel when drunk, or to beat your kids, or to beat your wife, or to lie. They know those things are wrong yet they persist because they have a license to do those things because of a bad experience. Society doesn't blame their parents we blame the individual because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that each individual is ultimately responsible for his/her actions. Speaking from the perspective that these are adults. If it's a child then society rightly questions the kid's home life. The point being that we create a distinction, perhaps artificially, and the individuals in question should be able to discern this distinction as well.

The first thing that popped into my mind is that you're selfish. Granted that your post is about you but all I kept hearing was "me, me, me, I, I, me, me, fuck you if you don't agree with my point of view". It sounds like you've had a pretty rocky relationship with your father growing up. But if you guys are still in contact and he's offering to help you buy a car leads me to believe that there is some positive facets to your relationship. If I were your father I'd probably be wondering why is it that everyone else knew except me? If you didn't feel compelled to contact your father immediately after the accident that tells me that you're not as close to your father as your father wants you to be. You said you "obviously" told your mother of what happened but why wasn't it equally obvious to tell your father? To an older person, saying you didn't have the chance to pick up a phone (any phone) to call them sounds like an excuse and quite honestly is nothing more than an excuse. It doesn't take much effort to find another phone or use a family member's phone. I mean you were at your mother's house the same night. It could also be an indicator of being ambitionless considering your comments about being unemployed and disinterest in being employed. If someone is offering to help with buying a car it would only be respectful to keep them in the loop if you're going to accept that help... at least I think so. Older people have this tendency of wanting to mentor younger people which is natural. The way they see it is because they've already made the mistake that we're currently making. Too bad in the US we don't respect our elders very much. It's a phenomenon that seems to be uniquely prevalent in the US. Him getting angry with you could be indicative of a lot of things: he feels hurt because now he knows he doesn't have a tight relationship with you because he was the last to know; he feels guilty about how he conducted himself in younger years and wants desperately for you not to repeat his mistakes; you basically told him to F off which probably hurt his feelings even more. Not to mention he's probably just genuinely concerned. Yeah, parents have a responsibility to their children when they are young. But grown ups have feelings too.

When people can't find the words to convey a point they always resort to hostility. You don't like what someone says so you attack them where I always thought philosophy was about the exchange of ideas. I come from an extremely abusive childhood where I experienced traumatic physical and mental abuse. I have been beaten to the point of requiring medical attention, I have been starved, tortured, cut, stabbed, burned, and basically mistreated in almost every conceivable way except for sexually. Everyday after school I would come home to receive my daily beating. Some days I would do everything I could to avoid going home for fear of what was waiting for me. I endured this torture up until about the age of 13. Around that point my parent learned that I was big enough to retaliate. Once it was clear that the physical abuse couldn't continue without reciprocity the mental abuse went into overdrive. I ran away from home on three occassions and when I was 17 I left for good and didn't look back. I served in the military because it was the fastest way to get me away from all of that. I've always known that what I was going through wasn't right and it's not something I would wish upon anyone else. I never blamed myself and those experiences helped me to become the person I am today. I don't look back and say I never got to go to college because of what happened. I never said that I'm f'd up in the head because of what happened, or I sell drugs because of what happened, or I prostitute myself, can't have a stable relationship, or whatever. Instead I learned from that experience and it made me smarter and stronger. I did go to college and graduate; I have been involved in a few stable, long term, relationships; I'm not sitting in prison; I was homeless for 2 years literally living on the street but now I live in a relatively nice condo in an upscale neighborhood. I never had time or the desire to sit around and pity myself because of life experiences. I always possessed rational and logical reasoning. When I did get in trouble I never said "It's because my childhood was f'd up man". I knew I made a bad choice and learned from it. The decisions I make for myself has nothing to do with what happened other than the conscious decision to never allow myself to become that. It's impossible to move forward into the future if we constantly dwell on the negativities of the past. The point is I never used my childhood as a reason for acting out. I owned up to everything I have done because I know that there is no excuse for simply being a bad person. Edit: Getting back to the original point. I don't believe it's always the best option to dwell on past trangressions and blame others for how we are today. Humans have he inate ability of knowing what is right or wrong, but we allow ourselves to give into selfish desires and later try to free ourselves from reprecussions by coming up with excuses. I will agree that perhaps for some people it's all too much and maybe you can point a finger and bad parenting, but if you have the presence of mind to know what you're doing is wrong then how can you blame anyone or anything else for your poor choices. Sometimes it can be due to bad parenting, but once you reach a certain point all of that shouldn't matter anymore. It's about maturing and taking ownership over your life.

Sometimes I find certain aspects about Stefan's position a difficult pill to swallow. There's so much emphasis on past transgressions and pin pointing it to bad parenting subsequently excusing choices that people make as adults. I think at some point the person needs to stop blaming everything and begin taking ownership. He also talks about making individual choices as adults, but his line between when to blame your parents and when to blame yourself is severely blurred. Maybe it's simply a matter of not understanding his points or him not being clear on his position.

I'd like to chime in on this even though it seems resolved. Practically my entire dating life, up until I turned 29, I've always dated older women. When I was 19 I was seeing a woman that was 34 and another that was 32. When I met my now ex-girlfriend the tables were reversed because she was 18 and I was 29 when we started dating. We had actually met years before that when she was 16 and our relationship was strictly platonic. There were no improprieties, no feelings, and nothing indecent happening. It just happened that when she was 17 that things started going down a different path. We started developing emotional feelings for one another and spent quite a bit of time together. Just before her 18th birthday it became clear that things were becoming serious. Still up until that point there was nothing physical going on but we were feeling emotional affection for one another. We decided that we wanted to be in a dating relationship. I suggested that we get her family involved immediately before we actually pursue the possibility of a relationship. Inevitably, there were going to be questions from her friends and family so I thought it would be best to just get that out of the way. Also, I wanted to show them that my intentions were sincere and honest and that I haven’t been preying on their daughter. We arranged to have dinner with her parents and she did inform them ahead of time about what to expect. She revealed to them the nature of our relationship and why I wanted to sit down with them and have a discussion. The four of us had a very open and candid discussion about the events that led up to deciding that we wanted to be together and her parents were surprisingly receptive. This took place two weeks before her 18th birthday. I offered to submit myself to a background and criminal check and offered to be completely honest and forthcoming about myself and my history. Her father ended up saying that he believed my sincerity and was convinced that I wasn’t being coercive, or controlling. He thanked me for offering to submit to the background check but respectfully declined. With their approval we moved ahead. We had been together for almost 7 years while cohabitating for 6 of those. At first it was like any other relationship where it started off hot and heavy then it tapered off a bit as time progressed. But we were very much in love up until the last 2 years. We had talked about marriage and I felt that I was practically ready for it but I always had this reservation because of the age gap (among other things). It’s weird how things work out but during the last 2 years of our relationship I started noticing changes in her behavior and habits that disturbed me. Basically, what happened was that when the relationship first started she looked up to me and relied on me a lot citing my age as representing wisdom and strength. The way she conducted herself, earlier on, was the result of wanting to please me almost in a way that a child seeks to please an adult for approval. I didn’t catch on to this because I was oblivious and smitten. It didn’t hit me until much later that was the case. When it seemed apparent that marriage was on the horizon her attitude started to change, she became a lot more comfortable with being in her skin, basically she was maturing. She ended up being a completely different person. We no longer shared similar views on life and family, and there was a clear generation gap regarding simple things like music and difficult issues such as current events. When she was just a teenager she had yet to develop and mature into the person she ultimately became; she was still developing and maturing. I didn’t realize this was happening. I always believed that she was rather mature for her age and felt that she was the person that she was going to be. The last year of our relationship I refused to have sexual relations with her. I revealed to her that I no longer desired her physically because I felt as if our relationship had transformed into a father/daughter situation and that it was a complete turn off. She tried to swing me back over the fence but I was inconsolable. The point is that people that young still have a lot of living to do. We were both at different stages in life where she was still coming into her own while I was pretty much settled in my ways and beliefs. She became a different person and we both realized that we were not the same as before and that it was irreconcilable. I’m happy we were able to reach that realization before being locked away in an unhappy marriage. In a way, it broke my heart that it came to an end but at the same time I was relieved. I used to live by the saying that “You don’t choose love, love chooses you” believing that was the situation in our case. I even thought about my past relationships where the shoe was on the other foot regarding age and figured why not. It worked out okay for me when I was 19 so why should it be any different just because I’m the older one now? I’m not saying that it’s impossible for relationships, where there is a significant age gap, to be successful. It happens all the time. I think the important thing to bear in mind is what age demographic are we talking about and at what stage of mental maturity are they? I wouldn’t be opposed to dating a 30 year old when I’m 41. At 30 I have to imagine that most people would have developed into the person that they more or less are going to be for the rest of their lives. But that wasn’t the situation for me and my ex. She was 18; a point in a young person’s life where they’re still figuring out who they are and what they want out of life. I think for most people in that age range they're probably in a similar frame of mind, and stages of development, as someone closer to their own age. Not to say it's impossible for a 28 year old to be with an 18 year old successfully. I just think the odds are stacked against them and in some ways it may be a foolish prospect. Just something to consider.

To Hell with worrying about the feelings of the kids or parents. If this woman is going to be forced to have to pay for these individuals at a future date then she should be allowed to express her opinion on the matter. I think that's a major problem with people these days is that they refuse to accept criticism (the truth). I'm tired of this world where 'words hurt'. Grow thicker skin.

I don't understand this topic. If you're talking about two consenting adults that choose to have sex then they also choose to take the chance that a pregancy can occur. No contraception exists that is 100% effective and everyone knows this (or should). If a pregnacy does occur then the responsibility of the pregnancy is theirs. If you're talking about the Affordable Care Act and how young males are being forced to pay for maternity insurance, which is mind boggling considering a male will never give birth to a baby, I consider that to be an outrageous abuse of power. Currently, the ACA mandates that all policies also include maternity insurance. This is an absurd thing for a male to have to pay for but we know what's really going on here. The state is forcing me and other males to pay for someone elses choices. If I'm being forced to care for a woman's reproductive system, that I do not know and haven't had sex with, then I demand that I should be allowed to have sex with her out of fairness. Women use more healthcare services than man thus they're more expensive to insure. The State is forcing us to pay for their utilization of healthcare services. It only makes sense that if you use a lot of electricity that you should have to pay a higher bill at the end of each month. What the State is doing is taking your neighbor's electricty bill and telling you to pay it though you used none of that electricity.

I disagree with the recommendation of attending one of her Bible study sessions. It may send a false impression of his intentions, and to show up saying I have no interest in your ways is the same as saying I came here to pick a fight. That will drive a bigger wedge between he and his co-worker that very well may have negative impacts on their professional arrangement. Also, that's the same as befriending your ex girlfriend's friends at an attempt to get back at her. It's not anyone's duty or job to convince others that their religious beliefs are wrong and that they need to convert. She showed him that respect by not trying to convert him, or force her ideology onto him. She simply just ended the potential relationship because she probably had a similar thought. If things develop naturally through the course of friendship that's one thing. But going out of your way to convert is dangerous and irresponsible. I think it's just best to walk away from the idea of trying to develop a relationship beyond the professional and friendly. Go and do your own thing that doesn't necessarily involve her and develop your own social circles.

One day my mother asked me if I believed in God. I said "no" and that was basically the end of the discussion. The last thing she said was that it was okay and I can believe what I choose to believe as long as I'm a good person on the inside (and that's all that matters). It was easier for her to accept because she always knew but just wanted to hear me say it. Also, my father is an atheist so she was already used to the different point of view.

It sounds like to me that you're just lonely and clinging on to the idea of fostering a relationship with this woman. I don't think it has much to do with religious beliefs as much as it is about being lonely. I lived in Texas for a huge portion of my life and my experience has been that-as a whole-it's a very religious state. That didn't stop me from having girlfriends though. You're just smitten with this particular female and finding it difficult to let go. Somehow you're equating rejection to meaning a difference in religious opinion. It seems to me that you need to be more social and meet more people. That one woman is not an aboslute representative of the Texas belief system. There are plenty of women there that won't hold your religious beliefs against you and use it as a basis of determining the potential status of a relationship. You just happened to run into a very devout and irrational one. Edit: I want to point out that my mother is a devout Christian and my father is an ardent atheist. Yeah, it does work. You just have to meet the right one.