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So. Here's my question to you before I get back to my deadline:
Why do you think so many otherwise intelligent people on this forum make such lousy decisions in their romantic relationships, their extended families, their colleagues, and their friends? I have a few thoughts.
1) People let ideals get in the way of everyday reality.
2) People spend waaaaaay too much time reading pop psychology.
3) People put themselves before the needs of others.
4) People don't have an intervening gear between their brain and mouth, allowing the very first thought they have coming spilling out in conversation.
5) People weren't raised very well by their parents.
Any more you can add? Why else would otherwise normal, intelligent people have such disastrous personal lives? Can somebody please shed light on this?
Good example. Like, "My husband hasn't touched me in three years, but I keep finding charges on the credit card to florists and Victoria Secrets. What should I do?"
Good example. Like, "My husband hasn't touched me in three years, but I keep finding charges on the credit card to florists and Victoria Secrets. What should I do?"
YOU LIE!!!
Man he is bold!! You are suppose to use cash when....OOPS!
The same reason they have disastrous financial lives. They obviously aren't as intelligent as you assume. And just because it isn't "your" decision doesn't make it wrong. It's not your job to live the lives of others. Especially if you are dealing with people that have their own thoughts and make their own decisions rather than "following" whatever is expected.
I hired a receptionist for my company almost nine years ago. Ella was a bright, cheerful, hard-working person. Yet she had this massive blind spot when it came to her personal life.
For example, one of my key requirements for the job was for her to be at her desk at 8 a.m., even though office hours were 8:30-5:30. That way, somebody could cover the phones. Ella lived a scant three blocks from my office, so she could get there in the morning without breaking a sweat.
So, three weeks into her job, she meets a guy who lives 30 miles from the office. Two weeks after meeting him, she moves in with him. So now, she has a 30 mile commute to the office, living with a guy she's known all of two weeks. She's just barely making it to work on time.
Then because she's doing all this driving, she decides she needs a new car. So she buys a nice new car.
Then, after moving 30 miles away and buying a new car, she starts complaining that I don't pay her enough. Now this is a woman that I hired just two months earlier. And she keeps saying, "But I have to pay for this new car and the household expenses." Sigh.
I turn her down for a raise. A week later, she goes out and buys two new dogs. And they're always going to the vet. Meanwhile the boyfriend isn't working out.
Now, her mother has Alzheimers, but is a partial owner of a huge family tract of land adjacent to the new Honda plant. She asks my advice, because her extended family want to sell it and she's acting as power of attorney for her mother. The family is evidently putting all kinds of pressure on her to sign over rights, etc. etc., and all kinds of squirrelly stuff. So I give her the name of an attorney I know who is the acknowledged go-to guy for large commercial property matters. The guy offers to give Ella free advice and even write some letters as a favor to me. All Ella has to do is call him. I ask Ella several times if she's called my friend the attorney, and she says, "Yeah, yeah, I need to do that, but I've just been too busy." Doing what?
So one morning I come in, and she's sobbing at the front desk. I ask what's wrong. As it turns out, over the weekend at family event, she was bamboozled into signing over her mother's property rights for a pittance. Never called the attorney. Never investigated matters. Just signed on the dotted lines, costing her probably a couple of million dollars.
Yet, if you talk to Ella, she thinks that her life situation is the fault of everybody else. To this day, she doesn't understand how her stupid decisions have ruined her life. She prefers to rationalize. I eventually fired her because her idiotic personal life kept intruding into the office.
Relationships are ruled by emotion. Emotion is a poor foundation in which to build anything logical, rationale or something that is "good for us". It s*cks, but that is the way it is.
Oh, I'm not naming names. But the people who have the most convoluted messes in their personal lives, then get ticked off when you point out where they've gone wrong.
The same reason they have disastrous financial lives. They obviously aren't as intelligent as you assume. And just because it isn't "your" decision doesn't make it wrong. It's not your job to live the lives of others. Especially if you are dealing with people that have their own thoughts and make their own decisions rather than "following" whatever is expected.
See, I think intelligence and wisdom are two completely different properties. I've seen really brainy people who could screw up the simplest things, and I've seen knuckle-dragging lackwits who live rather sensibly.
And, while most decisions are neither right nor wrong, there are decisions that are plainly wrong and guarantee misery later on. My OP really has to do with the people who seem blind to the possible consequences of their decisions.
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