u/yrmjy

Just wondering, since being marriagefree can encompass a range of different relationship styles. For you, does it mean cohabiting with a long-term partner, living apart together (LAT), being in a relationship without plans to live together, dating casually, or not dating at all?

What is your current situation, and what would your ideal look like?

Listening to Robyn's Call Your Girlfriend recently, I found myself focusing less on the love triangle and more on the breakup script the narrator is giving.

One thing that struck me is that it's almost entirely about managing the girlfriend's emotions and making sure the breakup is handled in the most emotionally intelligent way possible. There's a lot of emphasis on reassuring her, making sure she doesn't blame herself, telling her she'll heal, and avoiding saying anything that would make her compare herself to the new partner.

On the one hand, that's obviously more compassionate than rubbing the new relationship in her face. I definitely don't think the song is celebrating cheating or encouraging cruelty.

But on the other hand, it also feels a bit like it's trying to minimise the moral weight of what's happened. The focus is less on accepting that you've hurt someone and more on saying exactly the right things so everyone can still feel like decent people afterwards.

If I were the girlfriend in that situation, I'm not sure I'd want to hear lots of reassurance about how I'll love again or how we're still friends. I think I'd almost rather hear: "I'm sorry. I've met someone else. I know this is going to hurt, and I don't expect you to feel okay about it."

I suppose my question is whether the song is genuinely compassionate, or whether it's really about making the people starting the new relationship feel better about themselves.

Curious whether anyone else has had this reaction, or whether you hear it completely differently.

When you tell a story to people, it often feels like you need a really unexpected point to it, but the trouble I have is what's unexpected varies between people. Like if you tell people you met someone and she has been skydiving abroad, to some people that might sound really impressive, but to others it might seem like something loads of people have done so it might not set her apart much. How do you decide what makes something noteworthy?

I’ve been thinking that when people tell stories, they aren’t just recounting events. They’re often relying on the audience sharing their view that something was unusual, funny, awkward, surprising or worth mentioning.

For example, someone might say, “I went to a friend’s birthday party and their parents stayed for the entire evening.” The story only really lands if the listener shares the expectation that the parents would normally leave or keep out of the way. Someone from a family or culture where parents commonly join in might just think, “Okay, what’s unusual about that?”

It made me wonder whether this is part of why storytelling can sometimes feel difficult for autistic people. You have to work out which details matter, what the audience considers normal, why they would find the event interesting, and how much of the framing can be left implicit.

I sometimes feel like I need to explain all the context and qualify my interpretation because I’m not confident that the other person will see the event the same way. But that can turn a fairly simple anecdote into a long explanation.

Does anyone else experience this? Do you ever struggle to know what the “point” of a story is supposed to be, include too much context, or worry that the listener won’t share your sense of why something was noteworthy?

I'm rewatching the scene where Joan helps Peggy rewrite her roommate ad.

Instead of Peggy's practical version, Joan suggests something like:

> Fun loving girl, responsible sometimes, likes to laugh, lives to love, seeks size 6 for city living and general gallivanting, no dull moments or dull men tolerated.

It struck me that, to modern ears, this almost sounds like the ancestor of "Live, Laugh, Love" or a dating profile that's trying very hard to project a fun, carefree image.

On the other hand, Joan is obviously good at branding people, and her advice is much more memorable than Peggy's original ad.

If you saw that ad today, would it make you think, "She sounds like a fun roommate," or would it come across as a bit try-hard? Or am I just judging 1962 language by 2026 standards?

Mine did.

Looking back, every online service seemed to have to pass a parental review.

"Google Groups? Is that a chatroom?"

"IRC? Is that a chatroom?"

"Forums? Are they chatrooms?"

Anything involving communication with another human being was treated with deep suspicion.

One of the funniest consequences was that I genuinely worried about getting caught joining Linux IRC channels because they technically counted as chatrooms.

Parents: "Don't talk to strangers online."

Me: trying to discuss open-source software with a bunch of middle-aged programmers.

I weirdly think Clean Bandit would be a really funny but genuinely good collab for Sabrina Carpenter.

Imagine her performing something like Juno while they very earnestly do dramatic orchestral strings behind her.

It would either sound ridiculous or become the biggest song of the summer. Probably both.

I always misheard “And you'd only stay until I tell as much” in Hillside Boys as “you'll only stay until our tanlines match” and I think it weirdly fits the song’s whole summer fling vibe 😭

Curious what other Kim lyrics people have misheard