Focus on your happiness mate and rest will fall together.
Suddenly you will become desirable once you do that and get rid of bad habits like needy behavior.
I would suggest focus on health as well and do some lifting and read the book "No more Mr Nice Guy" by Robert Glover and look for references on the web.
I was in a similar situation to the GP. Desirability and bad habits are not the issues. You're blaming the victim.
You can't compete against someone else's selfishness. You will lose every time. The only thing to do is to walk away, but in the context of a marriage, it's not easy to do.
My ex is still indescribably selfish five years later. She still wants to appear to be a good mother at the expense of actually being a good mother. She still tries to sacrifice my career and passions so that she can suit her whims. She tries to push our daughter on me during her custody period all the time (after fighting for more custody and costing us both $$$). And she still blames me, through a series of seriously twisted thoughts, for the dissolution of our marriage.
During the marriage, surviving her selfishness was the only thing possible. It wasn't that I wasn't focusing on my health and happiness. It was that those things were being taken from me more quickly than I could generate them. And I had to protect my child's psyche from her as well.
I don't think anyone would describe me as a "nice guy". I have a very low tolerance for bullshit and have no problems saying exactly how I feel or saying no. But I expect a partner in a relationship, not someone who I have to grab by the scruff of the neck in order to get them to not be a shitty person.
I don't mean this in a derogatory manner, mostly curious, as I've heard similar stories from extended family and have become rather concerned. Looking back, do you see any warning signs of a future marriage like the one you described? How long did you date before you got married/had your daughter? It seems strange that traits like you described could remain hidden until bursting out once you're "trapped" by marriage, but the tale you tell is not an incredibly uncommon one.
In the case of my ex-wife, it was fairly stealthy. My ex-wife was (and probably is) desperate for approval. So anyone she doesn't "have" in her circle of people who accept her, she will bend over backwards to please. Before I was her husband, I was one of those people. She wanted to make me happy so that I would make her my wife. However, once she has that approval, it ends. The closer you are to her, the less effort she will make. That seems backward to me.
I also dated another severely selfish woman. In that relationship it was much like the sibling poster mentions. There were high expectations of me, but even minor expectations of her resulted in her playing the victim or making lame nonsensical excuses. There was no reciprocity, zero respect, and no concern for the relationship as its own entity.
What both these women had in common was a desperation for approval and attention from others. This need was so large that I could not possibly fill it and I was ultimately made to feel that I was only a giver of attention and a tool to aid in the acquisition of more attention from strangers.
This type of thing is very obvious to me now, but when I met my ex-wife I was much younger and pretty clueless about women in general.
Though I'm not who you responded to, I'd like to say that I certainly did see warning signs. Sometimes we fought over it, sometimes it made me seem petty (she'd tell me all about her day, but when she asked it seemed more of a token, and she'd get that 10,000 yard stare and eventually tell me she didn't need that kind of detail - and I'm not a long talker). In one instance she left me abandoned at school (frozen door at school), she wouldn't risk the 2 mile or so drive and told me to walk instead (situations being reversed she would have probably left me and I'd have been ostracized for abandoning her). There were many others, but the signs were all there, I think I just ignored them hoping things would get better, etc.
>> I'm uncomfortable with the meme of corruption in public welfare programs
Its a story about a developing country.. it would be a brave editor who approves a piece without the story sticking to the dominant narrative about the country.
Not sure if there are any Journo's who can comment on my insinuation but that is how i see many media pieces. not sure if it is forced by editor or comes from a journo's own biases.
I guess its his test, his rules.. pity rational people mischarecterise it as Scientific.
In the words of Chris Carter, author of Parapsychology and the Skeptics:
If Randi were genuinely interested in testing unusual claims, then he would also not insist upon odds of at least one million to one against chance for the results. Anyone familiar with scientific studies will be aware that experimental results against chance of say, 800,000 to one would be considered extraordinary; but results this high would be, according to Randi, a “failure.”
Different disciplines accept different probabilities of Type I error. 8000000 to one against would not be considered worth reporting in particle physics. Any confirmed supernatural phenomenon would be a change in our understanding of the universe more dramatic than any particle physical discovery, so really it should be held to even stricter standards. Randi is being generous.
To be fair most people who claims to have psychic power also claim that, even if not perfect, have a statically significant success rate.
I mean if you really had a psychic power that worked 1 in 800,000 trials, a single life wouldn't be long enough to discover it. By comparison, we only live about 30,000 days.
I would not hire a water diviner finding water with such low success rate.
Anyway, the only way a tester can prove their point is by running the tests at their own expense and they need a fair number of them.. but Randi restricts them to just a few and set the rules on who, how its done and who witnesses it..
Which means even on successful tests, he and his skeptic friends will assume that they were tricked and then use fraud to mess with the results.. They are judge and jury, no witnesses. Randi is self-confessed fraudster and has been caught red handed as well.
This was an extract from a Randi Volunteer who saw the light :)
I realize that there is almost no interest in holding Randi and the MDC to the standards that they claim for themselves. I’ve always been in a ridiculed minority when I make these suggestions. It is clear that the Challenge is not about allowing people to demonstrate their claims, but rather about providing examples for our ridicule – partly for education, partly for group-bonding (my guesses). I am in the process of moving on from the idea of trying to persuade anyone to care to that of trying to get the JREF and Randi to be more upfront about this instead, in order to thwart criticism. I fully realize that this will be a futile effort as well. I also continue to tell people to quit smoking. (…)
Company A has 4 founders, each with 25% share and are doing well and valued at say 4m
Scenario 1
An investor wants to enter the game and buys out one founder for 1m
No change in company's value of 4m and they go on to the sunset
Scenario 2
An investor wants to enter the game and joins the other 4 founders with 1m cash
New equity split is now 20% each
and company has 1m cash in the bank, valuing them at 5m with each having a 20% stake
Any exit from this position should allow the assets to be paid out equally to the 5 shareholders
if it is ok for one stakeholder to negotiate to be paid out first a preagreed sum, then it should also be okay for other stakeholders to negitiate to take money off the table during funding.
I don't understand this return money to investors bit. Shouldn't it be share the money equally among all stakeholders.
Here is where the mistake in your thinking is. In scenario 2 the investor will only agree to put in 1M for a 20% stake if he gets preferred shares. If he only gets common shares he might only put in, say, 500k for 20%.
Assuming that you think the company is going to increase in value, the fact that he has preferred shares won't matter in an exit so you're much better off taking 1M instead of 500k (assuming you can put the extra money to good use). And if you don't think that the company is going to increase in value then why did you start it in the first place?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gibson
She was paraded as a brave and celebrated App developer who overcame serious health issues by the Australian press.
and then it came crashing down.