But be careful not to wreck your supportive human relationships because you didn’t therapy good enough.
Also so many people have decided that emotional connections outside of a relationship are cheating.
To that i say GFY.
Humans are emotional beings that have evolved with the help of community. isolating yourself for a partner is self harm. it is normal, acceptable, and expected to have extra-relationship emotional connections with people of all genders.
probably refers to the elimination of ‘third places’ a place besides home and work where people gather to socialize. About the only place left we can go without the expectation of spending money is a public library, and libraries are amazing but they’re not always the best socializing spot. A major tenet of our capitalist system is separating us from things that are free and natural. If we isolate everyone in their own homes, or pods or what have you, then people can be charged for the services they use to connect to one another. Of course one may rebut that these services are usually free, to which I’d respond with the old adage “If it’s free, you’re the product and not the customer.”
Third spaces are one part, but honestly the biggest part is literally not having time to spend with people outside of work.
edit: biggest part for me. my friends are mostly able to host at our own houses, and there are low cost (or free) third spaces we have found/created.
if you want a third space, you can actually make your own! kind of. reach out to libraries, local left-leaning businesses, and they might let you set up a weekly salon/hangout kind of thing. community activism!
I take a ferry pretty much every day. 30 minute ride. Before cellphones, it was common to see people having great conversations with strangers. I’d have a good chat at least once a week. These days it’s quiet all the time. Unless people come on together, they ignore everyone else, even if they aren’t using a phone themselves. People have been trained to spend their time looking at the screens. Any place is a third space if you talk to people.
I guess it might depend a bit on where you live. In the city I live there’s free social events in many different places, sometimes in stores, other times in religious buildings or clubs (organizations). Since you mentioned libraries, I rememberfree DND sessions are hosted at a local library. Like others have mentioned sometimes people just need to contact such places and ask if they can organize events there. Using existing connections can help but is probably not a requirement.
I worry some that therapy has gotten into an industry where more people are interested in making profit than providing quality of care which has made a market where therapy can serve as a kind of yes man market as well. I definitely don’t mean to belittle the benefit of therapy, but I know plenty of people who have shopped around therapists until they got one who said what they had already decided they wanted to hear as opposed to looking for a partner to work through specific issues with.
“I’d like to give you genuine and forceful advice, but I also don’t want to get sued for poor decisions so I’ll just ask a bunch of vague philosophical questions about your life. Get ready to say ‘I dunno, I guess.’ and fill a check for $300.”
The difference between a therapist and a stripper as far as giving you their emotional support, is that if a therapist fucks up and you harm yourself, the therapist can lose their job. If the stripper fucks up and you harm yourself, the stripper can still strip.
Strippers don’t have the accountability factors that therapists do.
I also noticed how people on the internet (mostly women) used to say men should open up and be vulnerable.
Now they tell not to trauma dump. Funny.