Backroads

I'm only 2 years away from starting the first one as a way of coping with the second. 

I discovered one I admittedly haven't finished yet, but my husband did and says it's awesome, despite being cancelled after the first season. Night Sky. Sissy Spacek and J. K. Simmons happen to have a tunnel in their shed that leads to another planet. And there's weird cultish secret societies and the tragic realities of aging. 

Apparently they have to turn on some sort of machine and technically it leads to some building on said planet.

It's convenient that the other planet's air pressure just happens to match that in their location, so that you don't get constant wind blowing out or something.

I watched Raya and the Last Dragon for the 2nd time.  Still excellent.  All I really remembered from the first time, was best animation I'd seen in a decade, and I won a facebook argument about it's worth.  I still find wholesome and correct principles throughout the thing.  I had forgotten what a huge emotion dump it is, although some of that is unique to me because I've lost both parents and the movie is filled with broken orphans.

And, to top it off, Big Brother starts in the summer and I’m glued to that show. Been a fan since 2001! 

Ooh, look who's fancy and snobbish with media.

Ooh, look who's fancy and snobbish with media.

Ooh, look who's fancy and snobbish with media.

I can't recall when I got bored. There was a lot of loyalty/habit going on with that show.

A bit like hearing someone sing Hallelujah in Sacrament Meeting.  I heard it happened.

They fear to commit because there is a part of them that always wants to be able to run away from discomfort. Very sad.

Oh, I very much agree with this. It's getting pretty common to pretty much ignore the homemaking/child-rearing side of things because what if the marriage implodes? Got to be ready!
And sure, it's good to be prepared, but the paranoia is unreal.

It’s also worth noting that a man who did that would pretty much have to haul up stakes and leave town; because socially/ professionally/ religiously, he’d be absolutely finished among those who knew what he had done.
But the risk of a “tradwife” relationship isn’t all one-sided.  The breadwinner takes a risk that his wife isn’t going to render him both breadwinner and homemaker by deciding that household drudgery is beneath her or by developing a chronic physical or mental illness.  And of course, if *she* leaves *him*, the alimony can be catastrophic.
Fundamentally, any marriage (regardless of the anticipated economic arrangement) is a tremendous leap of faith.  And I realize I’m judgmental, but part of me thinks “if you’re going to farm the kids out to daycare and insist on working/insist she works because you think there’s a good chance your marriage, specifically, will end in divorce; then why are you getting married at all?”
 

Yay - preggo privilege!  My wife has stories too.  

Eating my lunch and scrolling, and I came across an example of what I’m talking about:
https://youtube.com/shorts/GMq9NalMTp8?si=JGF6ByKYshz-JJ2I
 
it is nice to see younger folks arrive at a little bit of wisdom on their own. Completely secular viewpoint being given here.
 

May every jar lid be just slightly too tight.

I'm at the point of my life where I don't like much of the social scene. I like the comfort of a purchased home with my name on the paperwork and a legal marriage and kids and the friends I have. I think I look pretty darn good (though I'm currently pregnant enough to have the construction workers on the street outside of my house bending to my every whim: they will literally move entire trucks for me in fear I will pass out on the sidewalk from walking) but the friends with benefits is something that can potentially only work so long before I believe most people want a lot more.

I'm at the point of my life where I don't like much of the social scene. I like the comfort of a purchased home with my name on the paperwork and a legal marriage and kids and the friends I have. I think I look pretty darn good (though I'm currently pregnant enough to have the construction workers on the street outside of my house bending to my every whim: they will literally move entire trucks for me in fear I will pass out on the sidewalk from walking) but the friends with benefits is something that can potentially only work so long before I believe most people want a lot more.

The other day I saw this hilarious comic strip of two people very pessimistic about their relationship,  bemoaning the frailty of relationships and how commitments never work out. Each panel moved from meeting to dating to marriage to some illness, all the while bemoaning how people never stay together and their relationship will fail, with the last panel showing them still together as gloomy old people.
Just... commit. Try it out. You might be surprised.
On a philosophical level, I suppose I can get behind the idea of a lifelong commitment without the legal paperwork of marriage, but it's still that, a commitment. 
And I strongly believe you should not be bringing kids into this world if you don't think of yourself as committed for the long haul.

I think most men would be okay with a FWB arrangement but to me the woman is basically a prostitute charging how much her rent is for her services. Not the qualities most look for in friendship 

Ah, yes. The trad wife, hearkening back to those halcyon days of yore when women just stayed home all day watching TV, doing Pilates, and going shopping, while the man took care of annoying things like paying the bills and keeping the cars running. You know, like our grandparents and great-grandparents used to live.

I have a friend who does work part-time outside of the home, but I don't think she has a full set of outside the house skills. 
What they do have, and it isn't the worst option (particularly in their case where she is very much also the homemaker and homeschooling the kids as well) is a rather complex financial plan with a lot of stuff just in her name so that if he dies or runs off she has enough to pay for everything including a training/school plan for a number of years to get herself into the workforce. Hopefully it won't happen as her husband is in good health, knock on wood, and is the quintissential devoted husband and family man, but it's there.
I really don't get not having a plan. 

I’ve been married to the same woman for 20+ years, so this doesn’t apply to me. But I have friends who are single, don’t want drama but want sex, and would almost certainly be okay with paying for an apartment in exchange for a friends with benefits thing.
 
It’s gross and sinful to me, but I can see it happening.  

To be fair, most of the single women I know (uh, three of them. I don’t have many single women friends) wouldn’t put up with being friends with benefits, and certainly would not be a mistress to a married man. So I don’t think it’s common, especially out of your college years.