I’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself.
Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like a death sentence. AIDS panic was everywhere. Gay men in movies were comedy sidekicks or dying wrecks (“Philadelphia”). There was a real threat of violence from other kids. If you could pass as straight, why wouldn’t you give it your best shot? The alternative was to be a laughing stock and die alone in a hospital where nurses don’t dare touch you. (This is literally how I imagined gay life at age 13.)
I still feel like I’m barely getting started on the therapy journey to recover from those decades. Seems like the man in the story never had the chance for professional help (or didn’t seek it). The compartmentalization can be extremely taxing. He disappointed many people, but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person.
I wasn't in any way judging the father harshly when I read it. I also read between the lines that there was additionally "traditional Asian culture" as another factor.
I only questioned why he would have brought kids into the "union", but I can easily imagine that it was his wife's desire.
A very sad story in general. I lost my mom a few years ago and I suspect I'll go to my grave still very sad about the could-have-beens.
Having kids is half the reason (or more) for such marriages, nothing completes the nuclear family picture quite like it. And not like it's easy for gay couples in accepting environments to have kids either, surrogacy is banned in most countries ("liberal" ones too, US is kind of an exception here) and adoption is nigh impossible. Some countries like Italy go as far as selectively making both illegal, but only for gay couples.
I would say many asian parents care very little about the partner, as long as they get their grandkids. A mix of that and "what would society think".
Have you read John Cheever’s diaries? It’s the same story.
I can’t really get into his fiction, but the diaries are astounding.
He gave them to his son to read and publish posthumously.
pavlov: Thank you for sharing!
I have heard this play out too many times.
Most recently here, a college junior's wife revealed four months after marriage that she is actually a lesbian (she didn't share it – he caught her in their bedroom with a colleague of hers when he returned home early from the office), and he would be free to do what he wants; she should be too. Hit him hard, but he said they should go for an annulment— out of question; a divorce— out of question. Her point was if she had to do all this, why would she have agreed to a marriage in the first place! It was to get society off her back and her parents.
Well, he filed for divorce, and it resulted in false dowry cases (yes, it's that part of the world), cruelty.. a long list. He was in lock-up for almost a month and a half, his almost 80 father and 70 mother was in a case of beating her up - (they met her exactly once – two days after marriage for a day when they went to his native village and after that they barely even talked to her on phone when they came back to they city they worked in), he lost almost everything he had, and finally, he just broke down in court and, against his lawyer's advice, just told the judge to give her whatever the judge wanted and just grant him a divorce. This was after almost three or four years of struggle. This guy is damaged now. We were in two sports team together in the college. One of the gentlest people I know. He had a minor stroke recently. He has sleeping issues. He is still fighting to just stay alive. It's difficult for him to get jobs because there's police record against him. He worked for a major MNC bank and he was fired summarily.
No, this is not an isolated cruel example of extreme and from the hinterland of the world - this is an example of people fucking others over, mercilessly. No, this is not fighting to stay afloat in the water. It's like kicking someone off the boat because they were closer to the life jacket on the boat by few feet of another available lifeboat that the person could have taken instead. No, it's actually worse!
I am sorry for how the world treated you and him, but no, fuck no! Life fucked him – or could have fucked him, so he gets to fuck others, right? Awesome!
> but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person.
No, he is a bad person! Ffs.
I think I am totally naive on this subject,
why was the divorce so hard for him? In that society, they just don't let you get divorced unless both parties agree to it? And with the evidence he had of her being a lesbian, does that mean nothing? What is even the point of divorce in that society?
I'm guessing India, and it's dowry part of it that complicates things a lot. And once either party goes into legal proceedings, it becomes a shit slinging mess of he-said she-said. Hence why most people try to "settle" things out of the court even if they were the victim. You wouldn't wish the Indian legal system on your worst enemy.
Because it's the great nation of India, where harassment and dowry cases and custody laws swing hard in favor of the wife. Which has resulted in the worst of both worlds - poor women who won't even see a the light of day in front of a courthouse, never mind inside it, continue to be oppressed by their husbands, while wealthy women tired of their marriages hire ever-more-eager lawyers and slap false dowry cases on their ex-husbands.
A guy, Atul Subhash, recently (about a year ago) committed suicide because his ex-wife and her family slapped false dowry cases against him and his extremely aged parents. Another case, a woman named Jasleen Kaur falsely accused a guy of sexual harassment, because they had a minor argument on the street. That case took 4 years, and in the meantime, Jasleen went to Canada to study, received the then Chief Minister's support and never appeared in court even once. Meanwhile the guy, Savjit, was arrested, had to post bail, was called "National Predator" and "Delhi's Pervert" on mainstream media, and received zilch for all the harassment he received. After he was acquitted, he pressed criminal charges against Jasleen and her family for false accusations, but the courts threw that case away because apparently "loss of reputation" isn't enough to press charges.
All of this in a backdrop where poor women are raped, sometimes even murdered, every single minute, while actual rapists walk free and often even freely contest and win elections on the current ruling party's ticket. Yeah, India is super fucked.
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Your comment definitely made it sound like the victim/husband's suffering came from the culture they lived in, not the wife's actions directly.
So I vote for bad system, not bad people.
> No, he is a bad person! Ffs
That is quite the judgement of a person you've never known, based solely on the view of one person's brief writing processing a deeply emotional experience.
Your judgement reflects poorly on you.
There's too much apologizing for people's horrible actions these days. Nearly everyone is a sympathetic character when you get to know them, but that doesn't excuse them. There were other people, in his situation, who took different approaches that didn't result in locking a woman away in a loveless marriage for her entire life. I'm sure a lot of us come from easier situations, but the people who come from hard situations will probably tell you, yeah, it was hard, it was horrible, but he didn't have to do that.
I'm not apologizing for anyone's actions. This is not to say he is a good person. It is to say that there isn't enough evidence to judge one as a bad person.
A lot of good people have made bad choices, and these writings reflect a mere sliver of a man's life choices from the very thin perspective of one person's grief laid bare.
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Oof… obligatory HN downvotes because one dares to scratch the narrative, that it’s always women who are victims of men and never the other way around… who saw this coming?
My father had an affair, with a woman. It came to light but remained contained within the family. My parents are still married. The whole situation taught me that life is complicated and sometimes situations that seem morally obvious on the surface can actually be very difficult and have lots of nuance.
When I was a teenager I dated a married man. On paper it's easier to explain "gay dude in a homophobic society" but in reality, he was an asshole and a coward. No empathy for him.
This is the sober take.
People will try to explain away all kinds of behaviors that violate trust a la "they'll never find out..."
From reading both posts, there's a few things that come to my mind:
- It seems this is how the author is processing her father's passing, and it's not really up to us to make moral calls on the content of the posts. They are thoughts with gaps of missing context against a real life of highs and lows which is not readily condensed into a blog post.
- I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a violation. Even though they have passed, the people around them are very much alive.
- We can't makes guesses at what a person truly values, neither positively nor negatively. What can be seen as promiscuity can also be seen as seeking validation, human motives and emotions exist in the grey area.
- This is a person who was deprived of the sort of genuine sexual and emotional attention that we take for granted from puberty age. They lived as a type of outsider in school, work, and their daily norms. The integrity of their actions shouldn't be evaluated against our own values which were likely built from a different life experience.
- It's ok not knowing or judging. One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance" when reviewing these sorts of life matters.
> One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance" when reviewing these sorts of life matters.
Thanks for writing this. The author is working back to define some context from which those discovered artifacts came out, and that is fraught with danger. And what she discovered might be a randomly selected sample of what he really was.
The article almost seems like it was written to seek attention. It's a troubling transgression.
She has a right to seek attention? And you are right. The truth untold and the moments that never were cannot be recounted. They can be grieved and part of grief is anger.
I re-learned by my tears when reading this that the only thing that counts in life is love and connection. Connections not made are missed opportunities.
I lost a parent in my early twenties. Alas, anger was a very large part of my emotional arsenal then. Writer could have had a role model in her father. If only the truth would have been there between father and daughter. Layers upon layers of difficult interactions. Thinking about your parents death and the period of time they made you, cared for you, formed you, hindered you, burdened you with emotional baggage, is different with each passing of a few springs.
I agree with all of what you say, and while I thought the author was very good, I think calling him a coward was an unnecessary stroke of vanity and bitterness. For the same reason that no one can ever know what's inside another person's mind, much less a child understand their parents.
It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity.
For those reasons, I won't even look for such letters when my parents die. I will take a photo or two. There are of course reasons to dig in the past, but that should be done cautiously, not for sensation, and even then under the condition that we only know a little and may not understand. The past is past. Nothing you learn can change it, but it can seriously fuck up your future.
>- This is a person who was deprived of the sort of genuine sexual and emotional attention that we take for granted from puberty age.
This is somewhat close to the incel line of thinking "I deserve a girl to have sex with. The fact that every girl refuses to do so means I'm a victim."
Why link closeted gay men with Incels? There was no shade of “deserve” or “victim” in the parent comment. Fact is gay men historically have had a very bad time finding love, Incels is a weird subgroup of hateful men with negative viewpoints, unless I’m out of touch with their zeitgeist.
I just think the comparison comes off as unkind to gay men.
I hope this comment finally seals my departure from HN. Lots of very thoughtful people here but the small toxic fraction is still too high.
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I don't feel like this entry is harsh on authors father. I think it is nuanced and forgiving. It seems most commenters disagree with me on that.
Regardless, it is a well written article with an emotionally strong impact. Thank you for sharing.
I'm a dad too, and I'm in a somewhat similar situation. My son is under five, and it feels like I'm still at the very beginning of his story. I've known I was gay since high school, probably even earlier, but I kept choosing whatever seemed like the easiest path. It felt easier to stay closeted. Easier to date a woman. Easier to move in together, propose, get married, and even have a child than to face my truth.
I love my wife and my son, and I feel loved by them in return, but I'm also painfully aware that the version of me they love is someone I constructed. I lie constantly: about why I don't want sex, about my affairs, about my feelings, about my motivations. No one really knows me, and I don't get to be myself, not even in the relationships where I should feel safest.
I've read The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and other similar books, and I'm trying to build the courage to finally do something about all of this. It's incredibly difficult. But I refuse to use my son as an excuse to keep postponing coming out. This blog has pushed me even further in that direction.
They'll be angry (well at least my wife). Their lives will be upended. But at least they'll have the chance to ask questions, to understand. They'll see me taking responsibility for the consequences of my choices, and maybe just maybe, in some way, that clarity will be a relief for all of us.
Do what’s best for your son. There’s nothing that will overcome that guilt. Not saying what’s best for your son is for you to reveal the truth now or later. That’s entirely situational and only you know.
I completely agree. Life as a parent is only about oneself insofar as looking after yourself is good for your family.
I'm pretty certain that children are quite perceptive, and will sense an unease that something is not quite right at home. It would be a service to them to put something concrete to that unease.
Try to do it peacefully, and keep good relations. That may require a lot of preparation, time, and emotional dealing, but you're weighing your struggle with your history against two lives. It may also be in your interest, because a fighting divorce may end with you not seeing your son. That's a price I consider too high.
I'm straight and love my wife of 44 years. But I long ago made the thought experiment of what would happen if she were in the same kind of situation you were in: what if she decided I was a mistake, or that being in a relation with a man was a mistake, and that she needed to do something else. I decided that would require I support her in that. How can you love someone and not want what is best for them, even if that has a cost?
I don't know your wife, and I don't know if she would feel the same way. Maybe she would?
I can relate to this probably the most out of everything I've seen on HN so far. My fiancee is pansexual and overall seems to prefer women, so I surely am quite a bit of a surprise in her life (to the point where her family laughed at the fact that I 'fixed her' the first time I met them...) as a straight man. I know she loves me, I love her with all my heart but I am aware that at some point she may want to change me for someone of the opposite sex. I have therefore decided that as long as this does not happen behind my back I will support her, even if that means I have to endure a lot of pain.
For you and anyone else reading this I recommend the book "the designer relationship" - its actually about polyamory but I think it does a great job solidifying the concept that really, a relationship between two people can be basically whatever they want it to be, not defined by social norms. What comes first is open and honest communication and negotating through hard conversations to find a way of mutually meeting everyones needs
FWIW my wife is bi and dates women, not that really ever bothered me but in no way has it ever been more damaging to our marriage beyond basic scheduling conflicts. I will admit I would have had a much harder time opening up to her being with other men though. Im lucky that she has never fallen in love and wanted to run away with one of em I guess, but partly thats because our marriage is otherwise great and shes already free to explore her gay side so why would she want to leave?
I don't really see why you should support that. In your case your wife is not closeted and living a lie, everything is out in the open. So deciding to change you for someone else, regardless of sex, is no different than if I decided to change my wife for another woman. We give stuff up to make a commitment to someone else. It doesn't always work out and I'm not saying people should stay together when they don't want to, but I am questioning your pre-acceptance of your partner wanting to shag someone else even though that would clearly make you very unhappy.
There’s a big difference between changing and lying. I wouldn’t be happy if my spouse lied to me.
I wouldn't be happy either, but I'd be understanding. Everyone is human. Everyone lies, even to themselves.
Not all lies are equal. Marriage is a contract built on trust and commitment. When you have been lying about that specifically, you have defrauded someone.
You’ve stolen time and emotional energy from these people. They can never get those years back.
Your children have been deprived of seeing parents role modeling romantic love. They have built their entire world views based on your behavior towards your spouse, which incorporated subtle lies and deception.
The victims of your fraud now have to deal with second guessing which things you said might be true and which might be lies - you shatter everything they ever believed throughout the marriage. It is a horrendous thing to put people through.
So can I understand why they did it? Sure. But I will definitely judge them for their actions and not support them.
Since you took this path, I'd suggest you not have affairs while married. Either divorce now or consider waiting 10 years while your son really needs you.
Yeah if you wanna be closeted, fine - live like it then. Otherwise it proves getting your dick wet is actually more important to you than the wife and child you claim to love.
I hate to borrow this term but, this train of posts reeks of what is colloquially known as "daddy issues". A more generous way to frame it is "this is how the author is coming to terms with the death of xir dad, i.e. being forced to accept that he won't be there anymore".
Not anyone's fault, whether xir dad was with xir or not was outside xir control, same for the dad, many things makes us involuntarily estranged from loved ones. I wouldn't say it's sad either, as I'm sure the author has had (or could have) a fulfilling life nonetheless.
Respectfully, this is fascinating to watch.
Gross.
I barely comment but this is time it is worthwhile - please read the article first, it is worth it and the comments might spoil it.
Read the follow-up too, there are some unexpected twists.
Thank you both, I'm glad I ended up reading these first.
Wow, driven to a lifetime of harmful decisions by an extremely regressive society. Would he have settled down and been faithful if he could have started off right in his teens, open and truthful and honest? Lies become a habit and I’ve known others who couldn’t break themselves of the cheating/lying habit and lost whole friend groups for it.
> “He wasted his entire life, my mom said to me, the evening we found the love letters. His entire life, and mine as well.”
What a burden of expectations to lay on both yourself & your own family.
I’m glad the author was able to put those aside & live her own life more authentically than her father did.
The author may be unduly harsh on her father. He got to be publicly married and have a private gay life. He didn't have to live with his wife much. He liked the idea of having a daughter.
Given the hand he was dealt it's a pretty good outcome for himself. Grossly selfish, but not a waste for himself.
Some don’t fully understand that the universe does not owe you any camaraderie in your affairs. Not even a small mouse to talk to. Many live the same paths we live entirely alone. While life took from her a real romance, it did not take from her partnership. Friends along your travels is not guaranteed, neither are best friends, or the bestest of best friends. Make do, seriously.
Who's to say the mother didn't have an affair or two along the way?
People usually do know what they're marrying into.
Yup, though often will deny it if it comes out. The ‘subconscious’ part is not often fully unknown forever, even if it may be uncouth to acknowledge such awareness.
Is the capitalization of the quote your own doing or was it displayed like it for you?
There isn't a single uppercase letter when I open the article, it's impossible to me to read it because it feel like a single sentence and I can't breathe
The author obviously has this as an acquired habit or affectation, possibly for stylistic reasons. It's interesting that some people can read this just as well as normal prose, but to others it feels as if someone is pouring sand all over their well-oiled gears. I gave up after a paragraph as well.
I fully support people writing in whatever way pleases them, but for broadly accessible article length text capitalisation is a must in English. Not because it is 'correct', but because many readers rely on capitalisation.
Many readers rely on articles being written in a specific language, does that mean every writer is obligated to publish every piece in every language?
Has it occurred to anyone who sees capitalization as a must-have for legibility, that an opportunity is being presented to train oneself to read text without traditional capitalization?
Maybe it's because I studied poetry, or because I was a voracious reader of experimental writing when I was younger, but I've probably worked my way through thousands of pages of uncapitalized or unconventionally capitalized writing; I can empathize if it's more difficult for you to read (personally I would consider an absence of paragraph breaks a nearly-unforgivable travesty), and I wouldn't even deny you the opportunity to complain about it.
But I think calling it "a must" for accessibility is perhaps overstating it a bit.
There is no obligation at all (my comment did not include any must either). Merely the observation that if you want to write accessible text in any chosen language, following conventions means that you expand your reach.
Experimental language has its place. I can quite enjoy that too depending on the context. But combining the wish to convey a story or message with avant-garde text layout turns it into something more akin to art. I'm not always in the mood for that, in part because it is more taxing to engage with. In this case I figure the goal of the author is for readers to hear their story, not grapple with their specific manner of self-expression. Of course if their life goal is to make lowercase text common and acceptable, then this may be completely on point. My point about the accessibility of the text still stands though.
> Has it occurred to anyone who sees capitalization as a must-have for legibility, that an opportunity is being presented to train oneself to read text without traditional capitalization?
I can train myself to read text upside-down as well, or in Klingon, or with no spaces at all. I have no wish to do so, since most authors seem to regard such text as unnecessarily harsh on their readers. Besides, being able to read well because you have a solid grasp on the conventions, lexicon, and idioms used is a net benefit to me. Our brains are pattern matching machines after all — pattern recognition is what we humans excel in. If have no desire to diminish that skill either.
> since most authors seem to regard such text as unnecessarily harsh on their readers.
To push back on this, following convention is often the easy thing to do (so not something regarded versus defaulted to).
There's a literary history of form influencing story; there was even a story about a famous example of this on HN recently that discussed this year's Nobel laureate—who notably publishes long novels that play with punctuation conventions: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/against-high-brodernism/
It doesn't improve readability for sure but for me it comes across way worse as "I don't have time for this, deal with it" because all of the people I know doing that are self-important executives.
English is a second language for me and I feel really bad when I impose a grammar mistake or a badly put together sentence to my readers!
So for me pushing that on purpose is borderline insulting to the reader ie. suffer so I don't have to press the shift key, this extra effort is below me.
The lower case "I" stands out very much in reading it as a self-annihilating affectation.
However, the sentences are well formed. If you really want to lose your breath, try "The Autumn of the Patriarch" by Marquez. You really won't be able to put it down.
Or Finnegan's Wake, for that matter.
to me it has much better readability
I love all the unexpected twists in this. And it’s very beautifully written and sobering.
> the most important thing was to find xin fu in life, not to live your life in accordance to the expectations of anyone else
That is why I write all of my code in uncommented C. Your expectation of a maintainable program that doesn’t segfault all the time is just your expectation.
> he wasted his entire life, my mom said
In some ways, she did too by listening to her mother and not just getting divorced as she had wanted to. But I recognize that going against your family’s core beliefs is easier said than done.
There is no path without some things missed, or regretted. Some people will always see the regrets, some will always see the positives.
That it is any other way is just something we tell ourselves to try to provide more foresight or potential meaning than is really available.
This is a sad story but I don’t like that the onus is entirely on the father to have ended things and lived his best life. He also was under pressure. He also had a family and was trying to juggle things the best way he knew how. It is tragic to live this way but I cannot consider him a villain of any sort.
There's a follow up linked a few times in the thread, and unfortunately he looks to be pretty villanous
People are rarely anything less than complicated.
The person who ends up making decisions which underpin what actually happens, almost always does.
It’s easy to throw them under the bus, but the followers generally always know what’s going on - when they aren’t actively avoiding it anyway.
It's mind-boggling to me how many commenters are here to defend the honor of a serial adulterer who broke the hearts of the people most related to and dependent upon him. Truly can't understand where this sympathy comes from...
There are a number of comments here that read like "yes, but you have to understand those things benefitted the father". It's like people think if you're doing something that hurts other people, it's OK if that's for selfish reasons? I guess I'll try not to think of how this reflects on our industry as a whole.
>Truly can't understand where this sympathy comes from...
It's because they have no experience with have such a bad person in a supposed "caregiver" role in their life so their minds literally can't imagine it. They think he just MUST be misunderstood instead of just callous and uncaring.
Or they are a parent and can't imagine not carit about their own child, so they assume it must be a universal thing, and the father MUST have loved her, even if he didn't show it. Truth is, a fuck ton of people don't love, like, or give two shits about their own children. These people do exist.
That isn’t true at all so don’t speak to my experience. I grew up in an abusive household with an alcoholic who wasn’t an adulterer. It was total shit. If he had instead been closeted and cheating without ever disclosing it, as seems to be the case here, it would have been vastly preferable to have a distant father than what I actually lived with.
So respectfully stfu because you have no idea what you’re talking about.
One of the few posts where I was happy to not see any comments yet, lest I would just read all the comments and not the story
"He wasted his life", sounds so dramatic, but what does it really mean. It's just an emotion like regret triggered by made up standards. If things were different and in the end they would have said "he lived his best life", what difference would it make except a few different words, differently arranged.
Not sure what my point is, but perhaps being too much into Buddhism and similar things made me lose touch with more normal human emotions.. or I live in regret myself and push it aside, ha.
The waste is that he, and I too, could have lived a happier life had we had the courage and opportunity to come out earlier.
The thing is, that This is speculation (with all respect).
I, on the other hand, do not lack courage to do hard things. But I have learned that it is a strawman - it does not make you happier to quite you job, leave your spouse, go for your passion in a startup, etc.
Luckily I fucked up everything in that fever dream early enough that it did not have substantiel impact on my life.
tell us your story
So many people are telling this story. Ryan Holiday, Mark Manson, Michael Easter, Marcus Aurelius.
It’s always surprising to me how so many people believe in ideals. Finding love. Living happily thereafter. These are ideals and you’d be truly lucky to have it in your life. One in a billion. Life is ephemeral. We are innately fickle beings shifting from one equilibrium to another. Yet we long for a mirage of permanence.
That made me cry.
I don't suppose I shall ever read it again but I have saved it in my cache of personal web pages.
I'm so glad I finally came out to my family and friends.
Did it ever occur to her that he wanted a child with his wife? That he loved his wife - even though not romantically? And still had a happy life as a father of her? The author seems to have many misconceptions about gay people..
The author mentions in the follow-up that she is gay herself.
She also mentioned it in TFA too.
It does not sound as such if you read the content of the post. It's hardly a misconception to suggest that gay men do not generally fall in love with women.
Very well written. Many here in the comments seeking to find sense in this matter or pass judgment; a wise person would simply nod in acknowledgement, understanding that things simply are the way they are.
Even though many of us might not relate exactly to the circumstances, we can relate to the feelings. She’s an excellent writer. Some of her other essays are good.
Many years ago, I read The Bridges of Madison County. This reminds me a bit of that.
Although I feel that many countries have transitioned to a time of liberty, when people can live as they truly wish, some people are afraid to embrace this freedom.
Of course, families can be a powerful force.
But, as my father once told me: family are those who are near you [not necessarily those you share genes with].
Sometimes, people make the decisions they do because others they saw before them made the opposite decision too - or they made the decision they did because they felt the consequences of making it any other way would be worse.
So, what should you do if you know someone trapped in this kind of situation?
I currently know someone like this. He's not homosexual, so it's not quite the same issue.
But he's gotten himself trapped in a relationship, and worst of all, cannot admit it to his friends. The only reason I know is that the one friend he did tell, has told the rest of his friends. We've known each other since childhood, yet he doesn't ask me for help. Which is up to him, of course, but he also doesn't know that I know that he is keeping a remarkably straight face about his situation. In a way it would be easier if I hadn't been told.
So now, I have to pretend like I think he's just a single man about town. He just shows up to everything when I'm around, and chats to me like he always has throughout the years. We'll meet another old friend, yet his life update is that he's just like any other bachelor-for-life, just enjoying his video games and freedom, while the rest of us are having kids and worrying about school bills.
It's very odd. What would HN do?
Man… the battle between cultural expectations and our true selves is humanity’s oldest conflict. A few people get lucky. Most of us survive in the cracks.
No capitalization was as surprising as the narration itself… not sure how to feel about it! Counter culture?
honestly ive had it with the shift key myself. just a nuisance. besides, the text looks much nicer and 'even' when every letter is broadly the same height, but that is ofcourse subjective.
it would be good to track down the 'etymology' of capital letters.
Capital letters at the start of sentences makes reading easier for those who are used to reading languages where that is customary. The absence is a noticeable reduction in ease of reading.
> it would be good to track down the 'etymology' of capital letters.
Easy: Latin script.
The more interesting question is the source of lower case letters which appeared much later.
Capital letters came first.
SIC·EST
Grace and Frankie (tv show) deals with some of this, don't think I'm the target audience but I enjoyed it as 20-30 year old.
when my mom died i found a bunch of letters she wrote to people but never sent. Theres so much to peoples lives that you can never fully know and some of the things really shocked me. Appreciate you sharing your story, many parallels that I can appreciate through reading.
Heartbreaking. I feel this could plausibly be an US Movie in the same vein as "Brokeback Mountain", i would surely watch it.
I'm saddened by the followup, when she asserts that the fantasy of seeing her dad happy, settled, and domestic was a "stupidly heteronormative fantasy".
Such a good article!
A very adept writer.
Agreed. I just hope they repair their Shift keys soon.
I don't know the age of the author, but interestingly, Gen-Z doesn't seem to use that key
This is not really anything new, back in AIM and SMS messaging days, people would type "wuu2" or "whats up" to a friend, but to express the same idea in an email, you would probably be sending some variant of "What are you up to?"
There is massively different subtext between the two. Autocapitalization and autocorrect represents a limit on the subtextual bandwidth you can communicate along with a message. Restrictions on subtextual bandwith are not ideal when your generation relies on text-based communication for evermore intimate interactions - that "whats up" message might be the start of you asking someone out on a date, I don't want it formatted the same way as a message I would send my boss.
I've always wondered what the point of capital letters even is? It doesn't seem to add anything worthwhile to the language. You need to learn 26 extra shapes, and then some arbitrary rules for when to use the majuscule. But if you never heard of capital letters, nobody will be confused by what you wrote.
They make scanning and reading text easier since they make jumping to the end/start of sentences easier. When you read your eyes are constantly jumping ahead and even backwards. The capital letters help you land quickly back at significant positions in the text since they are associated with boundaries in logical clauses.
If that were the point, why does English capitalize proper nouns? That would seem to complicate finding the start of a sentence. Besides, you have periods, exclamation points, and question marks at the ends of sentences anyway.
In German even ordinary nouns are capitalized, making it even less easy to find the capital at the start of a sentence.
Baby boomers have used up all the capital letters on Yelp reviews and Facebook rants, unfortunately, and have left none for future generations.
It’s ironic because you have to go to additional effort to turn autocorrect off, which contradicts the “i dont even care” effect they’re going for
It's a lot less effort than changing every nth word because of an aggressive autocorrect.
I think it's become a bit of a cliche/clique'y thing amongst a certain population. I don't know its origins (tumblr emo crowd??) but I first encountered it in Silicon Valley. The Collison brothers used to love doing it, as did Altman. I feel it projects a kind of stream-of-thought with an aloofness, like "i dont care enough for correct form. language bends to my unique thoughts. read this if you like, i dont care lol".
All-lowercase comes accross as the text equivalent of a hoodie and jeans: comfortable, a bit defensive against being seen as trying too hard, and now so common it barely reads as rebellion.
As I understand it the root was people using the iPhone with autocorrect turned off. That’s how someone from the tumblr emo crowd (where it was definitely prevalent!) explained it to me, and the reason was because there was a lot of culture specific terminology used (including deliberate misspellings of words) that was difficult if autocorrect was switched on.
By extension you can see how that could also apply to tech.
Yes, one of the best pieces I've ever read posted here.
It’s amazing to me all of the way homophobia also victimizes straight men and women and we don’t even realize the collateral damage we take from it.
who doesn't love dota :)
If we mean the game - then me. I never got over the lack of automatically moving camera, I prefer league simply because of that.
> he wasted his entire life, my mom said to me, the evening we found the love letters. his entire life, and mine as well.
People need to seriously plan and manage a marriage if they decide to go through with it.
Some people don't really get to "decide" for themselves.
FTA:
> my parents were not a love match. at 27 and 26, they were embarrassingly old by the standards of their small chinese port town. all four of my grandparents exerted enormous pressure to force them together.
Thats so sad, and good reminder that we shouldn’t force others onto lifestyles that we want.
Yet ever increasing housing prices in the west force many into lifestyles they don't want. :(
emotional
Interesting anecdote, but for the life of me I can't understand what relevance this blogpost could have here on HackerNews
Quoting the “what to submit” guidelines: If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Don't be a phony. Be true to yourself. Don't let your life be governed by the mores of others.
This article isn't about sexuality. It's about honesty and the impact that artifice can have, not only on your own life, but also on the lives of others.
Quite applicable to the HN crowd.
not everything in life is databases and ai
Jesus Christ capitalize the start of sentences. Tech bros, stop butchering language to feel cool.
At least he hid a part of his nature because of social pressure. Nowadays people live in disguise at will.
Homophobia sucks massive dick. It doesn't take being gay to despise people who's collective "wisdom" subjects millions to lifelong suffering like that.
I like the storytelling, but the sentences without caps are pretty hard for me to parse. The constant search for the beginning of the next sentence destroys the emotional experience for me; I just can't dive into the text and feel "submerged".
Yep, I find that stylistic writing choice to be rather selfish. It might be because I'm a gamedev at heart but a huge part of writing is UX: sure you have something to say but the way you say it for the reader to actually go through all of it is almost as important.
That's why I think shortish chapters are good UX, instead of a single unbroken one. Using a good font, making use of paragraphs to divide sections and using caps whenever required.
I personally think if a writer doesn't care to even add a bunch capitalisation to make my life easier then I assume that piece of writing is mainly for themselves and I immediately stop reading, since it's not meant for me but for them.
Here's another piece of writing, from a very different author, with lots of capitals. Maybe you like it more?
Poetry works in a different way, though. The lines are short and your eyes won't struggle much with continuity. e.e.cummings eschewed capitalizations as well and his poetry is still easily readable (to me at least).
A larger block of text is harder to parse without capitalizations. This is actually why they developed in the first place. Original Roman writing was very "blocky" and thus much harder to read, see for example this:
It is a short text, but parsing it into individual words is quite a challenge.
Hmm I see your point, though to be fair, that Roman writing is also missing spacing and punctuation.
My guess is the author knows what they are doing and is intentionally reinforcing the disoriented and unsettled feeling. Or, at least, is intentionally making no effort to mitigate it.
(In many other posts, capitalisation rules are followed.)
Agreed. I normally find the complaints about formatting to be petty, but for a long form writing piece like this, all lowercase is just a bad choice with no discernable upside.
I’ve come to love this style of writing. While not quite the same, Tim Winton’s Cloud Street felt similar.
Just raw thoughts, no rules.
Capitalization would not change the content at all, but would make it easier to read. People reading English have expectations are capitalization. Breaking those expectations makes the text more difficult to read and feel less effortless.
They still respect writing rules, in fact - except for the capitalizations.
If they wrote, say, phonetically instead, the text would become utterly unreadable, even though the raw thoughts in one's head aren't expressed in written English.
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What was ungrammatical about the piece? The lack of capital letters is a stylistic preference and perhaps a reference to Chinese which does not have such a distinction.
The article is in English.
war on the four olds:
- capitalisation
- signatures (already dead, but go check any vintage mailing list archive!)
- private messages (good riddance bulletin boards and forums)
- emojis (sadly resurrected in unicode after being defeated on forums)
If you hold so rigid to the current rules of grammar, you’ll miss out on some truly beautiful works. Many poems, and almost all of Cormac McCarthy.
thats quite the strong response to what is, in essence, a matter of preference
Communication conventions aren't "just" a preference in the sense that they actually lower the friction inherent in any communication. It may be pretty hard to understand other people even if you use the same conventions to write down your thoughts. It becomes harder when the conventions aren't kept: the extra processing necessary has non-zero cost.
Imagine Debian maintainers releasing a slightly incompatible TLS library because of their preferences.
Right, but if this piece was clearly optimising for something other than efficiency of transmitted information, and that's why it was good.
I feel that this piece was trying to convey some quite profound emotions, and quite successfully so, but the insistence on non-capitalization was just getting in the way of this main effort.
I don't know, personally I enjoyed the general aesthetic the choice created.
I'm now feeling slightly odd that I read all three posts without even noticing the capitalisation.
I envy you. For me, it felt like dragging something a bit heavy across an uneven floor. Doable, but unpleasant.
No you didn't.
Aw man, really? I thought I did, that sucks.
Your head might be more efficient than mine in processing text. For me, it felt like a somewhat complicated chore.
Debian maintainers do a lot of things because of their preferences that have caused many people to criticize them.
Do you also criticize Shostakovich because he doesn't write in the style of Beethoven?
One could argue that a stylistic choice that slows down the reader is good because it forces the reader to pay closer attention. That is the extra processing has not only a cost but, plausibly, also a benefit.
"Do you also criticize Shostakovich because he doesn't write in the style of Beethoven?"
This is a bit more akin to Shostakovich insisting on using some notes that aren't playable on standard-tuned instruments.
"it forces the reader to pay closer attention"
It definitely forced me to pay closer attention, but not to the actual content of the text, but to the underlying grammatical structure. If the author wanted to bifurcate the reader's attention like this, they succeeded.
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Why is this comment here? Downvote the post and move on, don’t come in to gripe about it amongst people actually making conversation.
Ouch. This hits incredibly hard.
I’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself.
Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like a death sentence. AIDS panic was everywhere. Gay men in movies were comedy sidekicks or dying wrecks (“Philadelphia”). There was a real threat of violence from other kids. If you could pass as straight, why wouldn’t you give it your best shot? The alternative was to be a laughing stock and die alone in a hospital where nurses don’t dare touch you. (This is literally how I imagined gay life at age 13.)
I still feel like I’m barely getting started on the therapy journey to recover from those decades. Seems like the man in the story never had the chance for professional help (or didn’t seek it). The compartmentalization can be extremely taxing. He disappointed many people, but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person.
I wasn't in any way judging the father harshly when I read it. I also read between the lines that there was additionally "traditional Asian culture" as another factor.
I only questioned why he would have brought kids into the "union", but I can easily imagine that it was his wife's desire.
A very sad story in general. I lost my mom a few years ago and I suspect I'll go to my grave still very sad about the could-have-beens.
Having kids is half the reason (or more) for such marriages, nothing completes the nuclear family picture quite like it. And not like it's easy for gay couples in accepting environments to have kids either, surrogacy is banned in most countries ("liberal" ones too, US is kind of an exception here) and adoption is nigh impossible. Some countries like Italy go as far as selectively making both illegal, but only for gay couples.
I would say many asian parents care very little about the partner, as long as they get their grandkids. A mix of that and "what would society think".
Have you read John Cheever’s diaries? It’s the same story.
I can’t really get into his fiction, but the diaries are astounding.
He gave them to his son to read and publish posthumously.
pavlov: Thank you for sharing!
I have heard this play out too many times.
Most recently here, a college junior's wife revealed four months after marriage that she is actually a lesbian (she didn't share it – he caught her in their bedroom with a colleague of hers when he returned home early from the office), and he would be free to do what he wants; she should be too. Hit him hard, but he said they should go for an annulment— out of question; a divorce— out of question. Her point was if she had to do all this, why would she have agreed to a marriage in the first place! It was to get society off her back and her parents.
Well, he filed for divorce, and it resulted in false dowry cases (yes, it's that part of the world), cruelty.. a long list. He was in lock-up for almost a month and a half, his almost 80 father and 70 mother was in a case of beating her up - (they met her exactly once – two days after marriage for a day when they went to his native village and after that they barely even talked to her on phone when they came back to they city they worked in), he lost almost everything he had, and finally, he just broke down in court and, against his lawyer's advice, just told the judge to give her whatever the judge wanted and just grant him a divorce. This was after almost three or four years of struggle. This guy is damaged now. We were in two sports team together in the college. One of the gentlest people I know. He had a minor stroke recently. He has sleeping issues. He is still fighting to just stay alive. It's difficult for him to get jobs because there's police record against him. He worked for a major MNC bank and he was fired summarily.
No, this is not an isolated cruel example of extreme and from the hinterland of the world - this is an example of people fucking others over, mercilessly. No, this is not fighting to stay afloat in the water. It's like kicking someone off the boat because they were closer to the life jacket on the boat by few feet of another available lifeboat that the person could have taken instead. No, it's actually worse!
I am sorry for how the world treated you and him, but no, fuck no! Life fucked him – or could have fucked him, so he gets to fuck others, right? Awesome!
> but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person.
No, he is a bad person! Ffs.
I think I am totally naive on this subject,
why was the divorce so hard for him? In that society, they just don't let you get divorced unless both parties agree to it? And with the evidence he had of her being a lesbian, does that mean nothing? What is even the point of divorce in that society?
I'm guessing India, and it's dowry part of it that complicates things a lot. And once either party goes into legal proceedings, it becomes a shit slinging mess of he-said she-said. Hence why most people try to "settle" things out of the court even if they were the victim. You wouldn't wish the Indian legal system on your worst enemy.
Because it's the great nation of India, where harassment and dowry cases and custody laws swing hard in favor of the wife. Which has resulted in the worst of both worlds - poor women who won't even see a the light of day in front of a courthouse, never mind inside it, continue to be oppressed by their husbands, while wealthy women tired of their marriages hire ever-more-eager lawyers and slap false dowry cases on their ex-husbands.
A guy, Atul Subhash, recently (about a year ago) committed suicide because his ex-wife and her family slapped false dowry cases against him and his extremely aged parents. Another case, a woman named Jasleen Kaur falsely accused a guy of sexual harassment, because they had a minor argument on the street. That case took 4 years, and in the meantime, Jasleen went to Canada to study, received the then Chief Minister's support and never appeared in court even once. Meanwhile the guy, Savjit, was arrested, had to post bail, was called "National Predator" and "Delhi's Pervert" on mainstream media, and received zilch for all the harassment he received. After he was acquitted, he pressed criminal charges against Jasleen and her family for false accusations, but the courts threw that case away because apparently "loss of reputation" isn't enough to press charges.
All of this in a backdrop where poor women are raped, sometimes even murdered, every single minute, while actual rapists walk free and often even freely contest and win elections on the current ruling party's ticket. Yeah, India is super fucked.
Your comment definitely made it sound like the victim/husband's suffering came from the culture they lived in, not the wife's actions directly.
So I vote for bad system, not bad people.
> No, he is a bad person! Ffs
That is quite the judgement of a person you've never known, based solely on the view of one person's brief writing processing a deeply emotional experience.
Your judgement reflects poorly on you.
There's too much apologizing for people's horrible actions these days. Nearly everyone is a sympathetic character when you get to know them, but that doesn't excuse them. There were other people, in his situation, who took different approaches that didn't result in locking a woman away in a loveless marriage for her entire life. I'm sure a lot of us come from easier situations, but the people who come from hard situations will probably tell you, yeah, it was hard, it was horrible, but he didn't have to do that.
I'm not apologizing for anyone's actions. This is not to say he is a good person. It is to say that there isn't enough evidence to judge one as a bad person.
A lot of good people have made bad choices, and these writings reflect a mere sliver of a man's life choices from the very thin perspective of one person's grief laid bare.
Oof… obligatory HN downvotes because one dares to scratch the narrative, that it’s always women who are victims of men and never the other way around… who saw this coming?
My father had an affair, with a woman. It came to light but remained contained within the family. My parents are still married. The whole situation taught me that life is complicated and sometimes situations that seem morally obvious on the surface can actually be very difficult and have lots of nuance.
When I was a teenager I dated a married man. On paper it's easier to explain "gay dude in a homophobic society" but in reality, he was an asshole and a coward. No empathy for him.
This is the sober take.
People will try to explain away all kinds of behaviors that violate trust a la "they'll never find out..."
From reading both posts, there's a few things that come to my mind:
- It seems this is how the author is processing her father's passing, and it's not really up to us to make moral calls on the content of the posts. They are thoughts with gaps of missing context against a real life of highs and lows which is not readily condensed into a blog post.
- I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a violation. Even though they have passed, the people around them are very much alive.
- We can't makes guesses at what a person truly values, neither positively nor negatively. What can be seen as promiscuity can also be seen as seeking validation, human motives and emotions exist in the grey area.
- This is a person who was deprived of the sort of genuine sexual and emotional attention that we take for granted from puberty age. They lived as a type of outsider in school, work, and their daily norms. The integrity of their actions shouldn't be evaluated against our own values which were likely built from a different life experience.
- It's ok not knowing or judging. One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance" when reviewing these sorts of life matters.
> One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance" when reviewing these sorts of life matters.
Thanks for writing this. The author is working back to define some context from which those discovered artifacts came out, and that is fraught with danger. And what she discovered might be a randomly selected sample of what he really was.
The article almost seems like it was written to seek attention. It's a troubling transgression.
She has a right to seek attention? And you are right. The truth untold and the moments that never were cannot be recounted. They can be grieved and part of grief is anger.
I re-learned by my tears when reading this that the only thing that counts in life is love and connection. Connections not made are missed opportunities.
I lost a parent in my early twenties. Alas, anger was a very large part of my emotional arsenal then. Writer could have had a role model in her father. If only the truth would have been there between father and daughter. Layers upon layers of difficult interactions. Thinking about your parents death and the period of time they made you, cared for you, formed you, hindered you, burdened you with emotional baggage, is different with each passing of a few springs.
I agree with all of what you say, and while I thought the author was very good, I think calling him a coward was an unnecessary stroke of vanity and bitterness. For the same reason that no one can ever know what's inside another person's mind, much less a child understand their parents.
It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity.
For those reasons, I won't even look for such letters when my parents die. I will take a photo or two. There are of course reasons to dig in the past, but that should be done cautiously, not for sensation, and even then under the condition that we only know a little and may not understand. The past is past. Nothing you learn can change it, but it can seriously fuck up your future.
>- This is a person who was deprived of the sort of genuine sexual and emotional attention that we take for granted from puberty age.
This is somewhat close to the incel line of thinking "I deserve a girl to have sex with. The fact that every girl refuses to do so means I'm a victim."
Why link closeted gay men with Incels? There was no shade of “deserve” or “victim” in the parent comment. Fact is gay men historically have had a very bad time finding love, Incels is a weird subgroup of hateful men with negative viewpoints, unless I’m out of touch with their zeitgeist.
I just think the comparison comes off as unkind to gay men.
I hope this comment finally seals my departure from HN. Lots of very thoughtful people here but the small toxic fraction is still too high.
I don't feel like this entry is harsh on authors father. I think it is nuanced and forgiving. It seems most commenters disagree with me on that.
Regardless, it is a well written article with an emotionally strong impact. Thank you for sharing.
I'm a dad too, and I'm in a somewhat similar situation. My son is under five, and it feels like I'm still at the very beginning of his story. I've known I was gay since high school, probably even earlier, but I kept choosing whatever seemed like the easiest path. It felt easier to stay closeted. Easier to date a woman. Easier to move in together, propose, get married, and even have a child than to face my truth.
I love my wife and my son, and I feel loved by them in return, but I'm also painfully aware that the version of me they love is someone I constructed. I lie constantly: about why I don't want sex, about my affairs, about my feelings, about my motivations. No one really knows me, and I don't get to be myself, not even in the relationships where I should feel safest.
I've read The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and other similar books, and I'm trying to build the courage to finally do something about all of this. It's incredibly difficult. But I refuse to use my son as an excuse to keep postponing coming out. This blog has pushed me even further in that direction.
They'll be angry (well at least my wife). Their lives will be upended. But at least they'll have the chance to ask questions, to understand. They'll see me taking responsibility for the consequences of my choices, and maybe just maybe, in some way, that clarity will be a relief for all of us.
Do what’s best for your son. There’s nothing that will overcome that guilt. Not saying what’s best for your son is for you to reveal the truth now or later. That’s entirely situational and only you know.
I completely agree. Life as a parent is only about oneself insofar as looking after yourself is good for your family.
I'm pretty certain that children are quite perceptive, and will sense an unease that something is not quite right at home. It would be a service to them to put something concrete to that unease.
Try to do it peacefully, and keep good relations. That may require a lot of preparation, time, and emotional dealing, but you're weighing your struggle with your history against two lives. It may also be in your interest, because a fighting divorce may end with you not seeing your son. That's a price I consider too high.
I'm straight and love my wife of 44 years. But I long ago made the thought experiment of what would happen if she were in the same kind of situation you were in: what if she decided I was a mistake, or that being in a relation with a man was a mistake, and that she needed to do something else. I decided that would require I support her in that. How can you love someone and not want what is best for them, even if that has a cost?
I don't know your wife, and I don't know if she would feel the same way. Maybe she would?
I can relate to this probably the most out of everything I've seen on HN so far. My fiancee is pansexual and overall seems to prefer women, so I surely am quite a bit of a surprise in her life (to the point where her family laughed at the fact that I 'fixed her' the first time I met them...) as a straight man. I know she loves me, I love her with all my heart but I am aware that at some point she may want to change me for someone of the opposite sex. I have therefore decided that as long as this does not happen behind my back I will support her, even if that means I have to endure a lot of pain.
For you and anyone else reading this I recommend the book "the designer relationship" - its actually about polyamory but I think it does a great job solidifying the concept that really, a relationship between two people can be basically whatever they want it to be, not defined by social norms. What comes first is open and honest communication and negotating through hard conversations to find a way of mutually meeting everyones needs
FWIW my wife is bi and dates women, not that really ever bothered me but in no way has it ever been more damaging to our marriage beyond basic scheduling conflicts. I will admit I would have had a much harder time opening up to her being with other men though. Im lucky that she has never fallen in love and wanted to run away with one of em I guess, but partly thats because our marriage is otherwise great and shes already free to explore her gay side so why would she want to leave?
https://www.amazon.com/Designer-Relationships-Monogamy-Polya...
I don't really see why you should support that. In your case your wife is not closeted and living a lie, everything is out in the open. So deciding to change you for someone else, regardless of sex, is no different than if I decided to change my wife for another woman. We give stuff up to make a commitment to someone else. It doesn't always work out and I'm not saying people should stay together when they don't want to, but I am questioning your pre-acceptance of your partner wanting to shag someone else even though that would clearly make you very unhappy.
There’s a big difference between changing and lying. I wouldn’t be happy if my spouse lied to me.
I wouldn't be happy either, but I'd be understanding. Everyone is human. Everyone lies, even to themselves.
Not all lies are equal. Marriage is a contract built on trust and commitment. When you have been lying about that specifically, you have defrauded someone.
You’ve stolen time and emotional energy from these people. They can never get those years back.
Your children have been deprived of seeing parents role modeling romantic love. They have built their entire world views based on your behavior towards your spouse, which incorporated subtle lies and deception.
The victims of your fraud now have to deal with second guessing which things you said might be true and which might be lies - you shatter everything they ever believed throughout the marriage. It is a horrendous thing to put people through.
So can I understand why they did it? Sure. But I will definitely judge them for their actions and not support them.
Since you took this path, I'd suggest you not have affairs while married. Either divorce now or consider waiting 10 years while your son really needs you.
Yeah if you wanna be closeted, fine - live like it then. Otherwise it proves getting your dick wet is actually more important to you than the wife and child you claim to love.
There's a follow-up posted already too.
https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/
Yeah kind of wish I hadn’t read that one. But the whole truth is always best to know. Somehow makes his story so much more sad.
Edit: Oh my goodness didn’t realize this was the same Dad from: https://jenn.site/my-dad-could-still-be-alive-but-hes-not/
>didn’t realize this was the same Dad from
Yeah!
I hate to borrow this term but, this train of posts reeks of what is colloquially known as "daddy issues". A more generous way to frame it is "this is how the author is coming to terms with the death of xir dad, i.e. being forced to accept that he won't be there anymore".
Not anyone's fault, whether xir dad was with xir or not was outside xir control, same for the dad, many things makes us involuntarily estranged from loved ones. I wouldn't say it's sad either, as I'm sure the author has had (or could have) a fulfilling life nonetheless.
Respectfully, this is fascinating to watch.
Gross.
I barely comment but this is time it is worthwhile - please read the article first, it is worth it and the comments might spoil it.
Read the follow-up too, there are some unexpected twists.
https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/
Thank you both, I'm glad I ended up reading these first.
Wow, driven to a lifetime of harmful decisions by an extremely regressive society. Would he have settled down and been faithful if he could have started off right in his teens, open and truthful and honest? Lies become a habit and I’ve known others who couldn’t break themselves of the cheating/lying habit and lost whole friend groups for it.
> “He wasted his entire life, my mom said to me, the evening we found the love letters. His entire life, and mine as well.”
What a burden of expectations to lay on both yourself & your own family.
I’m glad the author was able to put those aside & live her own life more authentically than her father did.
The author may be unduly harsh on her father. He got to be publicly married and have a private gay life. He didn't have to live with his wife much. He liked the idea of having a daughter.
Given the hand he was dealt it's a pretty good outcome for himself. Grossly selfish, but not a waste for himself.
Some don’t fully understand that the universe does not owe you any camaraderie in your affairs. Not even a small mouse to talk to. Many live the same paths we live entirely alone. While life took from her a real romance, it did not take from her partnership. Friends along your travels is not guaranteed, neither are best friends, or the bestest of best friends. Make do, seriously.
Who's to say the mother didn't have an affair or two along the way?
People usually do know what they're marrying into.
Yup, though often will deny it if it comes out. The ‘subconscious’ part is not often fully unknown forever, even if it may be uncouth to acknowledge such awareness.
Is the capitalization of the quote your own doing or was it displayed like it for you?
There isn't a single uppercase letter when I open the article, it's impossible to me to read it because it feel like a single sentence and I can't breathe
The author obviously has this as an acquired habit or affectation, possibly for stylistic reasons. It's interesting that some people can read this just as well as normal prose, but to others it feels as if someone is pouring sand all over their well-oiled gears. I gave up after a paragraph as well.
I fully support people writing in whatever way pleases them, but for broadly accessible article length text capitalisation is a must in English. Not because it is 'correct', but because many readers rely on capitalisation.
Many readers rely on articles being written in a specific language, does that mean every writer is obligated to publish every piece in every language?
Has it occurred to anyone who sees capitalization as a must-have for legibility, that an opportunity is being presented to train oneself to read text without traditional capitalization?
Maybe it's because I studied poetry, or because I was a voracious reader of experimental writing when I was younger, but I've probably worked my way through thousands of pages of uncapitalized or unconventionally capitalized writing; I can empathize if it's more difficult for you to read (personally I would consider an absence of paragraph breaks a nearly-unforgivable travesty), and I wouldn't even deny you the opportunity to complain about it.
But I think calling it "a must" for accessibility is perhaps overstating it a bit.
There is no obligation at all (my comment did not include any must either). Merely the observation that if you want to write accessible text in any chosen language, following conventions means that you expand your reach.
Experimental language has its place. I can quite enjoy that too depending on the context. But combining the wish to convey a story or message with avant-garde text layout turns it into something more akin to art. I'm not always in the mood for that, in part because it is more taxing to engage with. In this case I figure the goal of the author is for readers to hear their story, not grapple with their specific manner of self-expression. Of course if their life goal is to make lowercase text common and acceptable, then this may be completely on point. My point about the accessibility of the text still stands though.
> Has it occurred to anyone who sees capitalization as a must-have for legibility, that an opportunity is being presented to train oneself to read text without traditional capitalization?
I can train myself to read text upside-down as well, or in Klingon, or with no spaces at all. I have no wish to do so, since most authors seem to regard such text as unnecessarily harsh on their readers. Besides, being able to read well because you have a solid grasp on the conventions, lexicon, and idioms used is a net benefit to me. Our brains are pattern matching machines after all — pattern recognition is what we humans excel in. If have no desire to diminish that skill either.
> since most authors seem to regard such text as unnecessarily harsh on their readers.
To push back on this, following convention is often the easy thing to do (so not something regarded versus defaulted to).
There's a literary history of form influencing story; there was even a story about a famous example of this on HN recently that discussed this year's Nobel laureate—who notably publishes long novels that play with punctuation conventions: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/against-high-brodernism/
It doesn't improve readability for sure but for me it comes across way worse as "I don't have time for this, deal with it" because all of the people I know doing that are self-important executives.
English is a second language for me and I feel really bad when I impose a grammar mistake or a badly put together sentence to my readers!
So for me pushing that on purpose is borderline insulting to the reader ie. suffer so I don't have to press the shift key, this extra effort is below me.
The lower case "I" stands out very much in reading it as a self-annihilating affectation.
However, the sentences are well formed. If you really want to lose your breath, try "The Autumn of the Patriarch" by Marquez. You really won't be able to put it down.
Or Finnegan's Wake, for that matter.
to me it has much better readability
I love all the unexpected twists in this. And it’s very beautifully written and sobering.
> the most important thing was to find xin fu in life, not to live your life in accordance to the expectations of anyone else
That is why I write all of my code in uncommented C. Your expectation of a maintainable program that doesn’t segfault all the time is just your expectation.
> he wasted his entire life, my mom said
In some ways, she did too by listening to her mother and not just getting divorced as she had wanted to. But I recognize that going against your family’s core beliefs is easier said than done.
There is no path without some things missed, or regretted. Some people will always see the regrets, some will always see the positives.
That it is any other way is just something we tell ourselves to try to provide more foresight or potential meaning than is really available.
This is a sad story but I don’t like that the onus is entirely on the father to have ended things and lived his best life. He also was under pressure. He also had a family and was trying to juggle things the best way he knew how. It is tragic to live this way but I cannot consider him a villain of any sort.
There's a follow up linked a few times in the thread, and unfortunately he looks to be pretty villanous
People are rarely anything less than complicated.
The person who ends up making decisions which underpin what actually happens, almost always does.
It’s easy to throw them under the bus, but the followers generally always know what’s going on - when they aren’t actively avoiding it anyway.
It's mind-boggling to me how many commenters are here to defend the honor of a serial adulterer who broke the hearts of the people most related to and dependent upon him. Truly can't understand where this sympathy comes from...
There are a number of comments here that read like "yes, but you have to understand those things benefitted the father". It's like people think if you're doing something that hurts other people, it's OK if that's for selfish reasons? I guess I'll try not to think of how this reflects on our industry as a whole.
>Truly can't understand where this sympathy comes from...
It's because they have no experience with have such a bad person in a supposed "caregiver" role in their life so their minds literally can't imagine it. They think he just MUST be misunderstood instead of just callous and uncaring.
Or they are a parent and can't imagine not carit about their own child, so they assume it must be a universal thing, and the father MUST have loved her, even if he didn't show it. Truth is, a fuck ton of people don't love, like, or give two shits about their own children. These people do exist.
That isn’t true at all so don’t speak to my experience. I grew up in an abusive household with an alcoholic who wasn’t an adulterer. It was total shit. If he had instead been closeted and cheating without ever disclosing it, as seems to be the case here, it would have been vastly preferable to have a distant father than what I actually lived with.
So respectfully stfu because you have no idea what you’re talking about.
One of the few posts where I was happy to not see any comments yet, lest I would just read all the comments and not the story
"He wasted his life", sounds so dramatic, but what does it really mean. It's just an emotion like regret triggered by made up standards. If things were different and in the end they would have said "he lived his best life", what difference would it make except a few different words, differently arranged.
Not sure what my point is, but perhaps being too much into Buddhism and similar things made me lose touch with more normal human emotions.. or I live in regret myself and push it aside, ha.
The waste is that he, and I too, could have lived a happier life had we had the courage and opportunity to come out earlier.
The thing is, that This is speculation (with all respect).
I, on the other hand, do not lack courage to do hard things. But I have learned that it is a strawman - it does not make you happier to quite you job, leave your spouse, go for your passion in a startup, etc.
Luckily I fucked up everything in that fever dream early enough that it did not have substantiel impact on my life.
tell us your story
So many people are telling this story. Ryan Holiday, Mark Manson, Michael Easter, Marcus Aurelius.
It’s always surprising to me how so many people believe in ideals. Finding love. Living happily thereafter. These are ideals and you’d be truly lucky to have it in your life. One in a billion. Life is ephemeral. We are innately fickle beings shifting from one equilibrium to another. Yet we long for a mirage of permanence.
That made me cry.
I don't suppose I shall ever read it again but I have saved it in my cache of personal web pages.
I'm so glad I finally came out to my family and friends.
Did it ever occur to her that he wanted a child with his wife? That he loved his wife - even though not romantically? And still had a happy life as a father of her? The author seems to have many misconceptions about gay people..
The author mentions in the follow-up that she is gay herself.
She also mentioned it in TFA too.
It does not sound as such if you read the content of the post. It's hardly a misconception to suggest that gay men do not generally fall in love with women.
Interesting follow up post, published the same day: https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/
Very well written. Many here in the comments seeking to find sense in this matter or pass judgment; a wise person would simply nod in acknowledgement, understanding that things simply are the way they are.
Even though many of us might not relate exactly to the circumstances, we can relate to the feelings. She’s an excellent writer. Some of her other essays are good.
Many years ago, I read The Bridges of Madison County. This reminds me a bit of that.
Although I feel that many countries have transitioned to a time of liberty, when people can live as they truly wish, some people are afraid to embrace this freedom.
Of course, families can be a powerful force.
But, as my father once told me: family are those who are near you [not necessarily those you share genes with].
Sometimes, people make the decisions they do because others they saw before them made the opposite decision too - or they made the decision they did because they felt the consequences of making it any other way would be worse.
So, what should you do if you know someone trapped in this kind of situation?
I currently know someone like this. He's not homosexual, so it's not quite the same issue.
But he's gotten himself trapped in a relationship, and worst of all, cannot admit it to his friends. The only reason I know is that the one friend he did tell, has told the rest of his friends. We've known each other since childhood, yet he doesn't ask me for help. Which is up to him, of course, but he also doesn't know that I know that he is keeping a remarkably straight face about his situation. In a way it would be easier if I hadn't been told.
So now, I have to pretend like I think he's just a single man about town. He just shows up to everything when I'm around, and chats to me like he always has throughout the years. We'll meet another old friend, yet his life update is that he's just like any other bachelor-for-life, just enjoying his video games and freedom, while the rest of us are having kids and worrying about school bills.
It's very odd. What would HN do?
Man… the battle between cultural expectations and our true selves is humanity’s oldest conflict. A few people get lucky. Most of us survive in the cracks.
No capitalization was as surprising as the narration itself… not sure how to feel about it! Counter culture?
honestly ive had it with the shift key myself. just a nuisance. besides, the text looks much nicer and 'even' when every letter is broadly the same height, but that is ofcourse subjective.
it would be good to track down the 'etymology' of capital letters.
Capital letters at the start of sentences makes reading easier for those who are used to reading languages where that is customary. The absence is a noticeable reduction in ease of reading.
> it would be good to track down the 'etymology' of capital letters.
Easy: Latin script.
The more interesting question is the source of lower case letters which appeared much later.
Capital letters came first.
SIC·EST
Grace and Frankie (tv show) deals with some of this, don't think I'm the target audience but I enjoyed it as 20-30 year old.
when my mom died i found a bunch of letters she wrote to people but never sent. Theres so much to peoples lives that you can never fully know and some of the things really shocked me. Appreciate you sharing your story, many parallels that I can appreciate through reading.
Heartbreaking. I feel this could plausibly be an US Movie in the same vein as "Brokeback Mountain", i would surely watch it.
It mentions “boskovitch's installation”. I looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Fan_(Feel_It_Motherfu...
https://x.com/handbarfs/status/1741365674008559962
I'm saddened by the followup, when she asserts that the fantasy of seeing her dad happy, settled, and domestic was a "stupidly heteronormative fantasy".
Such a good article!
A very adept writer.
Agreed. I just hope they repair their Shift keys soon.
I don't know the age of the author, but interestingly, Gen-Z doesn't seem to use that key
This is not really anything new, back in AIM and SMS messaging days, people would type "wuu2" or "whats up" to a friend, but to express the same idea in an email, you would probably be sending some variant of "What are you up to?"
There is massively different subtext between the two. Autocapitalization and autocorrect represents a limit on the subtextual bandwidth you can communicate along with a message. Restrictions on subtextual bandwith are not ideal when your generation relies on text-based communication for evermore intimate interactions - that "whats up" message might be the start of you asking someone out on a date, I don't want it formatted the same way as a message I would send my boss.
I've always wondered what the point of capital letters even is? It doesn't seem to add anything worthwhile to the language. You need to learn 26 extra shapes, and then some arbitrary rules for when to use the majuscule. But if you never heard of capital letters, nobody will be confused by what you wrote.
They make scanning and reading text easier since they make jumping to the end/start of sentences easier. When you read your eyes are constantly jumping ahead and even backwards. The capital letters help you land quickly back at significant positions in the text since they are associated with boundaries in logical clauses.
If that were the point, why does English capitalize proper nouns? That would seem to complicate finding the start of a sentence. Besides, you have periods, exclamation points, and question marks at the ends of sentences anyway.
In German even ordinary nouns are capitalized, making it even less easy to find the capital at the start of a sentence.
Baby boomers have used up all the capital letters on Yelp reviews and Facebook rants, unfortunately, and have left none for future generations.
It’s ironic because you have to go to additional effort to turn autocorrect off, which contradicts the “i dont even care” effect they’re going for
It's a lot less effort than changing every nth word because of an aggressive autocorrect.
I think it's become a bit of a cliche/clique'y thing amongst a certain population. I don't know its origins (tumblr emo crowd??) but I first encountered it in Silicon Valley. The Collison brothers used to love doing it, as did Altman. I feel it projects a kind of stream-of-thought with an aloofness, like "i dont care enough for correct form. language bends to my unique thoughts. read this if you like, i dont care lol".
All-lowercase comes accross as the text equivalent of a hoodie and jeans: comfortable, a bit defensive against being seen as trying too hard, and now so common it barely reads as rebellion.
As I understand it the root was people using the iPhone with autocorrect turned off. That’s how someone from the tumblr emo crowd (where it was definitely prevalent!) explained it to me, and the reason was because there was a lot of culture specific terminology used (including deliberate misspellings of words) that was difficult if autocorrect was switched on.
By extension you can see how that could also apply to tech.
> I don't know its origins (tumblr emo crowd??)
You're almost a century off :) https://www.bauhaus-bookshelf.org/bauhaus_writing_in_small_l...
Yes, one of the best pieces I've ever read posted here.
It’s amazing to me all of the way homophobia also victimizes straight men and women and we don’t even realize the collateral damage we take from it.
who doesn't love dota :)
If we mean the game - then me. I never got over the lack of automatically moving camera, I prefer league simply because of that.
> he wasted his entire life, my mom said to me, the evening we found the love letters. his entire life, and mine as well.
People need to seriously plan and manage a marriage if they decide to go through with it.
Some people don't really get to "decide" for themselves.
FTA:
> my parents were not a love match. at 27 and 26, they were embarrassingly old by the standards of their small chinese port town. all four of my grandparents exerted enormous pressure to force them together.
Thats so sad, and good reminder that we shouldn’t force others onto lifestyles that we want.
Yet ever increasing housing prices in the west force many into lifestyles they don't want. :(
emotional
Interesting anecdote, but for the life of me I can't understand what relevance this blogpost could have here on HackerNews
Quoting the “what to submit” guidelines: If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Don't be a phony. Be true to yourself. Don't let your life be governed by the mores of others.
This article isn't about sexuality. It's about honesty and the impact that artifice can have, not only on your own life, but also on the lives of others.
Quite applicable to the HN crowd.
not everything in life is databases and ai
Jesus Christ capitalize the start of sentences. Tech bros, stop butchering language to feel cool.
At least he hid a part of his nature because of social pressure. Nowadays people live in disguise at will.
Homophobia sucks massive dick. It doesn't take being gay to despise people who's collective "wisdom" subjects millions to lifelong suffering like that.
I like the storytelling, but the sentences without caps are pretty hard for me to parse. The constant search for the beginning of the next sentence destroys the emotional experience for me; I just can't dive into the text and feel "submerged".
Yep, I find that stylistic writing choice to be rather selfish. It might be because I'm a gamedev at heart but a huge part of writing is UX: sure you have something to say but the way you say it for the reader to actually go through all of it is almost as important.
That's why I think shortish chapters are good UX, instead of a single unbroken one. Using a good font, making use of paragraphs to divide sections and using caps whenever required.
I personally think if a writer doesn't care to even add a bunch capitalisation to make my life easier then I assume that piece of writing is mainly for themselves and I immediately stop reading, since it's not meant for me but for them.
Here's another piece of writing, from a very different author, with lots of capitals. Maybe you like it more?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thi...
I like Emily Dickinson, actually.
Poetry works in a different way, though. The lines are short and your eyes won't struggle much with continuity. e.e.cummings eschewed capitalizations as well and his poetry is still easily readable (to me at least).
A larger block of text is harder to parse without capitalizations. This is actually why they developed in the first place. Original Roman writing was very "blocky" and thus much harder to read, see for example this:
https://share.google/EyVZfHb9NgIbtXlAl
It is a short text, but parsing it into individual words is quite a challenge.
Hmm I see your point, though to be fair, that Roman writing is also missing spacing and punctuation.
My guess is the author knows what they are doing and is intentionally reinforcing the disoriented and unsettled feeling. Or, at least, is intentionally making no effort to mitigate it.
(In many other posts, capitalisation rules are followed.)
Agreed. I normally find the complaints about formatting to be petty, but for a long form writing piece like this, all lowercase is just a bad choice with no discernable upside.
I’ve come to love this style of writing. While not quite the same, Tim Winton’s Cloud Street felt similar.
Just raw thoughts, no rules.
Capitalization would not change the content at all, but would make it easier to read. People reading English have expectations are capitalization. Breaking those expectations makes the text more difficult to read and feel less effortless.
They still respect writing rules, in fact - except for the capitalizations.
If they wrote, say, phonetically instead, the text would become utterly unreadable, even though the raw thoughts in one's head aren't expressed in written English.
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What was ungrammatical about the piece? The lack of capital letters is a stylistic preference and perhaps a reference to Chinese which does not have such a distinction.
The article is in English.
war on the four olds:
- capitalisation
- signatures (already dead, but go check any vintage mailing list archive!)
- private messages (good riddance bulletin boards and forums)
- emojis (sadly resurrected in unicode after being defeated on forums)
If you hold so rigid to the current rules of grammar, you’ll miss out on some truly beautiful works. Many poems, and almost all of Cormac McCarthy.
thats quite the strong response to what is, in essence, a matter of preference
Communication conventions aren't "just" a preference in the sense that they actually lower the friction inherent in any communication. It may be pretty hard to understand other people even if you use the same conventions to write down your thoughts. It becomes harder when the conventions aren't kept: the extra processing necessary has non-zero cost.
Imagine Debian maintainers releasing a slightly incompatible TLS library because of their preferences.
Right, but if this piece was clearly optimising for something other than efficiency of transmitted information, and that's why it was good.
I feel that this piece was trying to convey some quite profound emotions, and quite successfully so, but the insistence on non-capitalization was just getting in the way of this main effort.
I don't know, personally I enjoyed the general aesthetic the choice created.
I'm now feeling slightly odd that I read all three posts without even noticing the capitalisation.
I envy you. For me, it felt like dragging something a bit heavy across an uneven floor. Doable, but unpleasant.
No you didn't.
Aw man, really? I thought I did, that sucks.
Your head might be more efficient than mine in processing text. For me, it felt like a somewhat complicated chore.
Debian maintainers do a lot of things because of their preferences that have caused many people to criticize them.
Do you also criticize Shostakovich because he doesn't write in the style of Beethoven?
One could argue that a stylistic choice that slows down the reader is good because it forces the reader to pay closer attention. That is the extra processing has not only a cost but, plausibly, also a benefit.
"Do you also criticize Shostakovich because he doesn't write in the style of Beethoven?"
This is a bit more akin to Shostakovich insisting on using some notes that aren't playable on standard-tuned instruments.
"it forces the reader to pay closer attention"
It definitely forced me to pay closer attention, but not to the actual content of the text, but to the underlying grammatical structure. If the author wanted to bifurcate the reader's attention like this, they succeeded.
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Why is this comment here? Downvote the post and move on, don’t come in to gripe about it amongst people actually making conversation.