29 Comments

It is nice to see when someone has clearly moved on...

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This question might be helpful in normal married life: "Would you rather be right . . . or be married?"

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If being married requires questioning your own sanity, then I would take being right and keeping my sanity.

The technical term for what he was experiencing is gaslighting.

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You just improved my marriage. Asshole.

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The trick is to only date people with whom you have insane chemistry but hate already; that way, you're not tempted to marry them.

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It sounds like you're in a good place, emotionally... lol

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Jeff,you are so excellent...this is a god tier piece.

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Why get married? Just find a woman who hates you and buy her a house. 😭

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Chef’s kiss here.

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Hey Jeff, is there a way I can see ahead of time which posts will have an audio version? I'd prefer to listen to all of them since I enjoy your commentary, but I'll read what doesn't show up on the feed. I just don't want to read an article and then have the whole thing spoiled for when it gets posted as audio.

Would you consider posting the article and the audio at the same time? Or even better- record all of them? 💖

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author

I’ve had several people ask about this, and I’m going to see if I can do it. The tricky thing is that it kind of depends on how the news shakes out — I usually decide on the weekend if I’m going to read the pieces or cover something else that feels more relevant. Though, a good rule of thumb is that the non-paywalled ones will end up on the Sunday podcast. So, this week, that would be this one and the one about the Iowa caucus (“Welp: That Was the Worst-Case Scenario“). Barring some news event, those will be in the podcast on Sunday.

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Hey! Did you move the audio version? I left it on the shoe thing by the door!

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founding

I 100% agree with this. I prefer listening to the podcast versions because I enjoy the intros and outros. A heads up at the beginning of an article letting me know that it has a podcast version would be super helpful. Still happy to click on it if getting the click-throughs helps boost metrics. 😃

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This is funny and yet there is some serious depth here and incisive knowledge about human interaction and relations:

'I know now that “almost compatible” is a synonym for “incompatible”'

'love is often expressed through modest tasks'

'Plato’s Allegory of the Cave comes to mind, with its lessons about the limits of knowledge within constrained experience.'

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Saving this from my never married cave like a telescope designed by an arrogant galaxy-brained neanderthal who fancies himself a Leonardo Da Vinci ahead of his time.

For once, I'm hoping your readership is in an oversensitive mood, because the divergence of replies might prove very interesting here...

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Jeff.

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Wow. I just subscribed, after months of reading 2 1/2 paragraphs each week, thinking, I should subscribe. And this, this is NOT funny. The first "column" of yours that I do NOT like. Be better. Describing your side of a divorce is not amusing.

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Perhaps you simply didn't get it, or you see yourself in the ex-wife too much...

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/s?

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Nope. How a guy who can make the Whigs humorous, writes some trite shit about a first marriage - not my cup of tea. Agree to disagree.

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I can imagine Jeff taking pride in writing "trite shit". 🙂

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Take a deep breath, Jeff.

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This articulates well every married man's sense that "organizing" his things is a mild form of infidelity. Should be required reading in order to be issued a marriage license.

Side Note: I like that you included the prompt for the Dall-E generated image.

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This was very good. Ignore the haters.

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For me, the post-divorce decade showed me I was right that her stonewalling (including every broken promise to reconvene later for calm discussion) was not just corrosive to our relationship but deeply psychologically and emotionally abusive to me. I wasn’t asking too much—she was.

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