Eat pray love drives women on here

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gilbert is a shallow, self-indulgent, and arrogant woman. This person is not going on a journey of self-discovery, whatever the f@ck that is. This person is abandoning her life. Instead of confronting her problems, instead of working through them, or processing whatever it is that makes her so inexplicably unhappy, she abandons them. And she abandons a husband who — at least as he’s characterized in the movie — is loving, charming, and more than adequate because she needs some more goddamn “me time.”

Just to be clear -- the book was published 14 years ago, about events that happened about 20 years ago. For context, not even half the households in the US had internet access until the year was more than halfway through. That was 5 years BEFORE Myspace became big.

The movie was 10 years ago.

You are rehashing old conversations and influences. It's not reflective of current conversations, nor does it drive them.

I was going to say... are we in 2008? Why is this even a post in 2020?

[Anonymous]

I couldn't get past the first section of that book and never saw the movie, the whole thing was unsufferable.

But you are you, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I couldn't get past the first section of that book and never saw the movie, the whole thing was unsufferable.

But so are you, OP.

Oops mean INsufferable

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see the E.P.L. behavior WAY more among men. I meet men all the time who left their families , but often it's for a "dream job", so it's more socially acceptable. Or for another (younger) woman, and the ex-wife is blamed for driving him to leave.

For some reason a woman leaving gets a lot more criticism. She didn't even have kids, right? So who cares?

Yep, no kids. Leaving people you don’t want to be with is a kindness.

Jeez, if no kids then who cares? More people should get divorced if they aren't happy and there are no kids. Why stay?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gilbert is a shallow, self-indulgent, and arrogant woman. This person is not going on a journey of self-discovery, whatever the f@ck that is. This person is abandoning her life. Instead of confronting her problems, instead of working through them, or processing whatever it is that makes her so inexplicably unhappy, she abandons them. And she abandons a husband who — at least as he’s characterized in the movie — is loving, charming, and more than adequate because she needs some more goddamn “me time.”

Just to be clear -- the book was published 14 years ago, about events that happened about 20 years ago. For context, not even half the households in the US had internet access until the year was more than halfway through. That was 5 years BEFORE Myspace became big.

The movie was 10 years ago.

You are rehashing old conversations and influences. It's not reflective of current conversations, nor does it drive them.

I was going to say... are we in 2008? Why is this even a post in 2020?

OP must be catching up during Covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see the E.P.L. behavior WAY more among men. I meet men all the time who left their families , but often it's for a "dream job", so it's more socially acceptable. Or for another (younger) woman, and the ex-wife is blamed for driving him to leave.

For some reason a woman leaving gets a lot more criticism. She didn't even have kids, right? So who cares?

Yep, no kids. Leaving people you don’t want to be with is a kindness.

Jeez, if no kids then who cares? More people should get divorced if they aren't happy and there are no kids. Why stay?

Yes, she had no kids.

If this were a movie, I'd hazard the plot is that some guy out there had an ex-wife who left him after reading EPL (waaayy after its heyday, but it resonated with her), and now Every Woman Is Like Oprah. Is Oprah still even making television shows? Is her magazine still in production?

Regardless, if a person is going to leave a marriage, it's never because of one book, or one movie, or one conversation. These things can help give language to frame what is already happening, but they don't cause it. And if someone reads Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and finds a language for "the problem with no name" (maybe she is a young woman in fundamentalist Utah?) , it wouldn't be that Friedan caused her divorce. It would be the marriage that did that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The thing about the book is it’s a fake happy ending. Turns out she didn’t find true love or her true self. So now she’s trying out lesbianism. Discarding people all along the way. It’s not a path to fulfillment.

Long term Relationships are hard work. But usually worth it. Going on solo journeys and having casual encounters is a cop out.

How do you know she’s not happy? Tons of people are happy solo. I definitely prefer solo journeys over long term relationships.

Plus, if you’re an unhappy person, a LTR isn’t going to suddenly make you happy.

[Anonymous]

OP, you seem to be full of negativity and anger. Why do you care so much what other people are doing? Why does it bother you what other people say or do? If you spent less energy worrying about other people’s lives, then I’m sure you’d be much happier and the hate that fills you would rapidly go away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see the E.P.L. behavior WAY more among men. I meet men all the time who left their families , but often it's for a "dream job", so it's more socially acceptable. Or for another (younger) woman, and the ex-wife is blamed for driving him to leave.

For some reason a woman leaving gets a lot more criticism. She didn't even have kids, right? So who cares?

Yep, no kids. Leaving people you don’t want to be with is a kindness.

Jeez, if no kids then who cares? More people should get divorced if they aren't happy and there are no kids. Why stay?

Yes, she had no kids.

If this were a movie, I'd hazard the plot is that some guy out there had an ex-wife who left him after reading EPL (waaayy after its heyday, but it resonated with her), and now Every Woman Is Like Oprah. Is Oprah still even making television shows? Is her magazine still in production?

Regardless, if a person is going to leave a marriage, it's never because of one book, or one movie, or one conversation. These things can help give language to frame what is already happening, but they don't cause it. And if someone reads Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and finds a language for "the problem with no name" (maybe she is a young woman in fundamentalist Utah?) , it wouldn't be that Friedan caused her divorce. It would be the marriage that did that.

+1 It provided the language, and a direction for some.

That said, many of the readers who were inspired to take the same steps or at least dream were already married and had kids. Gilbert was in her 30s, married but without kids, well off, well educated, and had a magazine toss an amazing writing project into her lap. What better way to get out of a bad situation. Most of her readers could not pull off what she did. They could never afford the rent on their own, for starters. Most feel they have to make the marriage work, especially with the big ugly mortgag over their heads.

[Anonymous]

There are basically no women in here with an EPL mentality. The recent spate of articles about “emotional labor” is where the DCUM set’s imagination now lies.

[Anonymous]

She chose a different path for herself, pitfalls and all. Is this a case of, if I'm miserable everyone should be miserable? Or, everyone should think like I do? It's her life, let her live it, and if she inspires others at the same time, good for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gilbert is a shallow, self-indulgent, and arrogant woman. This person is not going on a journey of self-discovery, whatever the f@ck that is. This person is abandoning her life. Instead of confronting her problems, instead of working through them, or processing whatever it is that makes her so inexplicably unhappy, she abandons them. And she abandons a husband who — at least as he’s characterized in the movie — is loving, charming, and more than adequate because she needs some more goddamn “me time.”

Don’t we all, sister? Get the f@ck over it. And for what? So she can find herself? Or so she can find a better man? It’s hard to tell because this woman is as shallow, self-indulgent and arrogant at the end of her memoir as she is in the beginning.

I don’t like these kind of people. The Oprah types, who have to tell you how great they are in order to convince you. That’s all that Eat, Pray, Love boils down to: A woman trying to convince you of how great she is so that maybe you’ll take a similar journey — literal or metaphorical — in which you try to convince everyone of how great you are. There’s a scene in Eat, Pray, Love that’s typical of this white, bourgeois bullshit, where Elizabeth sends an email to all of her American friends to guilt them into sending a poor family some money to buy a house as a birthday present to her. Noble? Perhaps, if it weren’t so motherf@cking transparent that the gesture is less about helping out this family than it is about celebrating her goddamn selflessness. I know people like this — I suspect most of you know people like this. People who manage to work their good deeds into virtually every conversation, the same way that gym obsessed person will work his morning work-out routine into all of his conversations. Like we’re the goddamn beneficiaries of their good health.

The whole thing is an embarrassment to women.

I know many women like this in real life and they are all over this board. “Woes me. I’m so bored with my husband who works all day to support my lazy @ss. He doesn’t do enough around the house while I don’t even help contribute to the household income. I am so evolved and worldly. I deserve an affair or a year to go find myself.” They live in their own heads with zero sense of reality or personal responsibility.



Are you the ex husband? Otherwise, you need a new hobby. Spending way too much energy on a stranger!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a man in a sexless marriage who has to find APs for sex, I like these types of women. Divorced mid-40s trying to find themselves are the best in bed.

I second that. It's a perfect recipe for an AP.