It is possible to make a relationship work in which each party has a role in the general neighborhood of “the rational one” or “the emotional one”, as long as the relative places and merits of these roles are acknowledged by both parties. Since you say she’s prepared to admit to her mood swings, this may be doable. My proposed checklist:
If she suffers from an extended period of depression, is she prepared to address that (therapy, antidepressants, ice cream & sad movies, whatever she finds works for her), or would she let it greatly interfere with her life and your lives together?
How averse to your atheism is she? How averse to her (presumable) theism are you? Do you have enough else to talk about and enough ability to skirt the topic that it can avoid being a major point of contention between you? If you want kids eventually, can you come to an agreement about how to raise them re: religion?
Does her magical thinking lead her to do anything profoundly instrumentally stupid, or does it mostly just make her sound a little silly occasionally?
Can you respect her, as well as love her, in spite of her failures of rationality? Or would you be hoping in the back of your mind forever and always that she’d eventually wise up and be a more rational version of herself that you could respect?
Are you compatible on other long-term axes? (Financially, politically, life goals, desire to live in a particular location, opinions on family and homemaking, etc.)
If you can give the “right” answer to all of those questions (I think it should be obvious in each case which answer would be best) then go for it and the best of luck to you. If you can’t, you either need to address the situation and fix it, or move on.
Alicorn, Thanks for responding—see my “Added” to the original comment.
She seems to take a fairly reasonable approach to dealing with / working around her emotional issues and tries hard not to let me suffer because of them.
The atheism / theism divide could be much worse. I’m not sure her beliefs even have net-negative consequences. At present, the main issue is that we each have important beliefs that we don’t think we can share. RE: children, we could probably both accept me having the right to be honest about my beliefs but not pushing them, or going into detail unless they really want to hear it or reached 18.
She doesn’t generally do things that are obviously and profoundly instrumentally stupid, but its probably fair to worry about whether she might in the future. She’d need some money to spend on her friends more lavishly than I would, and to give to inefficient charities, but it seems unlikely she’d want to spend more than I could indulge.
At present, the main issue is that we each have important beliefs that we don’t think we can share.
Being able to share differing beliefs has more to do with whether you can both remain civil about important things than whether you agree. I regularly and enthusiastically pick apart minute disagreements between myself and my friends, and would feel as though something were lacking if I couldn’t—but we can switch topics from politics to polenta when someone gets fed up and there are no hard feelings. If you can’t do that with your girlfriend, that indicates a deeper-running incompatibility than merely disagreeing on rationality. Even if you agreed on all the big issues, it would be miraculous for you to make it through life without ever arguing, and being able to argue without it having it destroy your relationship is an essential skill.
A big part of the issue is that I’m not sure whether in depth discussions of my views will a) convince her, or b) help her live a good and happy life, or c) the relationship between a) and b).
Regardless, I’ll need to push a little more conversation of LWish topics before doing anything crazy like getting married. She realizes this as well.
Let me explain that sentence a bit more. As you know, preference utilitarianism comes with quite a bit of bullet-swallowing and while I may be less hard core than some, I swallow bullets she seems very hesitant to. Perhaps equally or more importantly, like most people, she doesn’t seem to like to taste the bullets, i.e. ponder uncomfortable thoughts, accept uncertainty, etc. I, on the other hand, seem to take some perverse pleasure in thinking and talking about such topics. From her perspective, I sometimes “analyze things e.g. a poem, a play, the proper emotional response to situation X, to death to the point of being distracted from their inherent value.”
Using the word “overanalysis” isn’t always a red flag for unwillingness to analyze where appropriate. Sometimes it just means recognizing that it is not worth six hours of nutrition research and blind taste tests to decide what cereal is the optimal breakfast. In a pinch, you can just grab the generic crisped rice or a prettily-packaged granola and call it good.
Of course. To clarify a bit, it’s obviously possible to give things more thought than they deserve. But someone who habitually makes accusations of overthinking, to my mind, is indicating a contempt for thought itself, which is about the most horrible quality I can think of. (I believe I first came to this conclusion when I read this webcomic, though on looking back at it I’m not sure.)
Some people just aren’t very good at getting right answers through deliberate reasoning, but can get by using implicit reasoning. Combine that with the typical mind fallacy and you get someone who sees “overthinking” everywhere they look. But I think the problem here isn’t so much about these implicit reasoners, but rather about contemptuous people in general, with contemptuous implicit reasoners as a special case.
It is possible to make a relationship work in which each party has a role in the general neighborhood of “the rational one” or “the emotional one”, as long as the relative places and merits of these roles are acknowledged by both parties. Since you say she’s prepared to admit to her mood swings, this may be doable. My proposed checklist:
If she suffers from an extended period of depression, is she prepared to address that (therapy, antidepressants, ice cream & sad movies, whatever she finds works for her), or would she let it greatly interfere with her life and your lives together?
How averse to your atheism is she? How averse to her (presumable) theism are you? Do you have enough else to talk about and enough ability to skirt the topic that it can avoid being a major point of contention between you? If you want kids eventually, can you come to an agreement about how to raise them re: religion?
Does her magical thinking lead her to do anything profoundly instrumentally stupid, or does it mostly just make her sound a little silly occasionally?
Can you respect her, as well as love her, in spite of her failures of rationality? Or would you be hoping in the back of your mind forever and always that she’d eventually wise up and be a more rational version of herself that you could respect?
Are you compatible on other long-term axes? (Financially, politically, life goals, desire to live in a particular location, opinions on family and homemaking, etc.)
If you can give the “right” answer to all of those questions (I think it should be obvious in each case which answer would be best) then go for it and the best of luck to you. If you can’t, you either need to address the situation and fix it, or move on.
Alicorn, Thanks for responding—see my “Added” to the original comment.
She seems to take a fairly reasonable approach to dealing with / working around her emotional issues and tries hard not to let me suffer because of them.
The atheism / theism divide could be much worse. I’m not sure her beliefs even have net-negative consequences. At present, the main issue is that we each have important beliefs that we don’t think we can share. RE: children, we could probably both accept me having the right to be honest about my beliefs but not pushing them, or going into detail unless they really want to hear it or reached 18.
She doesn’t generally do things that are obviously and profoundly instrumentally stupid, but its probably fair to worry about whether she might in the future. She’d need some money to spend on her friends more lavishly than I would, and to give to inefficient charities, but it seems unlikely she’d want to spend more than I could indulge.
Being able to share differing beliefs has more to do with whether you can both remain civil about important things than whether you agree. I regularly and enthusiastically pick apart minute disagreements between myself and my friends, and would feel as though something were lacking if I couldn’t—but we can switch topics from politics to polenta when someone gets fed up and there are no hard feelings. If you can’t do that with your girlfriend, that indicates a deeper-running incompatibility than merely disagreeing on rationality. Even if you agreed on all the big issues, it would be miraculous for you to make it through life without ever arguing, and being able to argue without it having it destroy your relationship is an essential skill.
A big part of the issue is that I’m not sure whether in depth discussions of my views will a) convince her, or b) help her live a good and happy life, or c) the relationship between a) and b).
Regardless, I’ll need to push a little more conversation of LWish topics before doing anything crazy like getting married. She realizes this as well.
Let me explain that sentence a bit more. As you know, preference utilitarianism comes with quite a bit of bullet-swallowing and while I may be less hard core than some, I swallow bullets she seems very hesitant to. Perhaps equally or more importantly, like most people, she doesn’t seem to like to taste the bullets, i.e. ponder uncomfortable thoughts, accept uncertainty, etc. I, on the other hand, seem to take some perverse pleasure in thinking and talking about such topics. From her perspective, I sometimes “analyze things e.g. a poem, a play, the proper emotional response to situation X, to death to the point of being distracted from their inherent value.”
For me, any (serious) talk of “overanalyzing” or “overthinking” things would be a huge red flag. But maybe I’m unusual in that.
Using the word “overanalysis” isn’t always a red flag for unwillingness to analyze where appropriate. Sometimes it just means recognizing that it is not worth six hours of nutrition research and blind taste tests to decide what cereal is the optimal breakfast. In a pinch, you can just grab the generic crisped rice or a prettily-packaged granola and call it good.
Of course. To clarify a bit, it’s obviously possible to give things more thought than they deserve. But someone who habitually makes accusations of overthinking, to my mind, is indicating a contempt for thought itself, which is about the most horrible quality I can think of. (I believe I first came to this conclusion when I read this webcomic, though on looking back at it I’m not sure.)
Some people just aren’t very good at getting right answers through deliberate reasoning, but can get by using implicit reasoning. Combine that with the typical mind fallacy and you get someone who sees “overthinking” everywhere they look. But I think the problem here isn’t so much about these implicit reasoners, but rather about contemptuous people in general, with contemptuous implicit reasoners as a special case.