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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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."

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'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.

Do you plan to find a new relationship after you break up with your wife? Is the desire to come out because of that or because you just want to stop lying to them and be honest about who you are? I will just say that if you have a good relationship with your wife and child, perhaps it’s worth it keeping things to yourself until your son is out of the house. If you leave them, you might find yourself in terrible relationships for a long time, or you may strike luck. But as someone who never managed to have a good relationship and family I wish I had a wife who actually wants sex and children and if I had that I would never leave even if I had to sacrifice a lot. But I do want that, maybe you never really did!?

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?

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.

I would take this to your grave. You made the choice and you need to stick with it. You shouldn’t have done that in the first place and because you did it the responsible thing to do is to live with the consequence.

By marrying your wife and having a child you did a crime that I would say deserves jail time. You fucked up her entire life, lied and manipulated her, and then you had a son and you lied and manipulated his entire reality for his entire life. This is unforgivable. Others have sympathy for you and I feel for you too. But when I look at the ultimate reality of your actions what you did is reprehensible.

I feel the same way for the man in the article but I’m more forgiving of him because of the environment he was in. For you the environment is different and much more permitting. Either way what both of you did is disgusting. And coming out now is a relief that you and your family doesn’t deserve. You staying closeted forever is an appropriate, even mild punishment for the crime you committed.

People may think I’m being too harsh here. I’m not. You’re not understanding the amount of lives he upended with this cowardly choice.

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/

Read the follow-up too, there are some unexpected twists.

https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/

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.

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

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.

There's a follow up linked a few times in the thread, and unfortunately he looks to be pretty villanous

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...

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 author mentions in the follow-up that she is gay herself.

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.

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.

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.

https://x.com/handbarfs/status/1741365674008559962

If we mean the game - then me. I never got over the lack of automatically moving camera, I prefer league simply because of that.

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.

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

Yet ever increasing housing prices in the west force many into lifestyles they don't want. :(

Agreed. I just hope they repair their Shift keys soon.

Yes, one of the best pieces I've ever read posted here.

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.

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.

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...