[notenoughhorses]

I appreciated reading about how both of them reacted to the realities of early retirement. I like to think I could be like the author, and be happy without much, but it did make me think if I might be more like his SO, especially when I see my friends upgrading their lives in our 40s.

My take away from the post is that they fundamentally felt 2 different ways about it. The author did not feel the stuff his SO felt. But she was on board with retiring on “lean fire” so I doubt she predicted this about herself either.

I read this post a few weeks ago, so maybe I’m remembering wrong, but I thought the author was perfectly open to SO returning to work, but she wasn’t sure in the middle of all this if she really wanted to do that? I don’t think it’s the author’s responsibility, and I don’t think he thought it was his responsibility, to decide for his spouse if she worked or not, that was up to her to decide.

[dougmwne]

There was definitely some unreliable narrator there. She said she wanted kids. Apparently he did not, since presumably they were not part of the budget. He claimed to be outside the need for more spending and accused her of being fooled by social media, but admits he felt a lot of shame at falling behind his peers in accomplishment. She said she couldn't see herself being with someone who wouldn't work to improve their lives and support a larger family. He said he wouldn't go back to work, even if she did. In his next relationship, he went back to work, increased his spending and is planning on having kids, several large reversals. Seems to me that they weren't so different after all.

[gonehome]

It sounded like she changed her mind on the kids thing - or at least they didn't discuss it as much as they should have.

The sense I got was that it was status related and he was pretty close to right. She didn't like being with someone who wasn't working, didn't like telling her friends her SO didn't work, didn't like not having things to talk about, etc. He was low status compared to her friends.

Eventually she cheated on him - I think that's wrong, but the motivation behind it is not unpredictable or uncommon: https://samharris.org/podcasts/254-mating-strategies-earthli...

The new relationship is different in part because his SO is a librarian with a small income, there isn't as much of a status divide and he is high status in that match given his high net worth.

There's a lot of evidence that women tend to select people at their level or higher for mates: http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/216-being-a-transhumani...

A lot of this feels like a narrative on top of that core issue without recognizing the underlying problem.

Obviously things are more complex than this at the individual level, but it feels like a lot of talking around the core issue without recognizing it.

I'm not making morality judgements on any of this (except perhaps the cheating), but it's good to recognize the pragmatic reality of the world you're in when making these kinds of decisions. If you decide to retire early, it'll likely affect your relationship opportunities in some ways you may not understand.