Comment by lunar-whitey
Comment by lunar-whitey 3 days ago
You need people who care about you even more than money. I wish I had understood this when I was still young enough to seriously entertain having children.
Comment by lunar-whitey 3 days ago
You need people who care about you even more than money. I wish I had understood this when I was still young enough to seriously entertain having children.
I also believed I needed money and status to make friends. I hated myself, and behaved in ways others found difficult to appreciate or understand. As a result, I often failed and now have far less of these things than people who seem to believe in their own intrinsic value.
It has taken me nearly 20 years to understand why I feel this way. It is painful and unnecessary.
I think money is very important.
My experience is; if you get lucky, you might meet someone who will stay with you even without money, but you basically have to live through trauma together, to create that kind of bond. I feel like only extreme traumatic hardship can keep people together when they don't have money.
Some rich people feel jealous of poor people "This guy is dirt poor and yet his wife stayed with him." but they're missing the fact that these two people probably share so much trauma that it's very difficult to relate to anyone else after that. They stay together because they literally lack alternatives; nobody else can possibly understand their pain. Which is the core of their identity. It's not pleasant at all. Also, it's almost impossible to make new friends when you're poor for the same reason. You can't relate to anyone. People get rich for a small number of reasons (it's a unifying experience) but people get poor for a million different reasons which feels like falling through hundreds of different invisible cracks (it's a divisive experience).
Being poor, every time I do something unnecessary like small talk or making a joke, I feel unnatural and fake. At a profound level, I don't understand how it's possible to have friends 'just for fun'. Everything I do must have a path towards money. I feel guilty otherwise. I could have spent this time practicing my coding or writing skills or earning money.