I am rather offended by this post. That does not happen often on SI.
I did not find it offensive at all. Even though I also don't agree with all the assertions made by the man who said his generation was not quitters, I see some wisdom in what he said, and it was definitely worth discussing. I think our generation is more "spoiled" than past generations, not quite the same as being quitters, though.
I am very glad that I lived in a generation where I did not have to feel guilty about ending a marriage to a serial cheater. My own life was so much better than my mother's life for she felt trapped and dependent on my father and getting out of that marriage was not much of a realistic option for her. My mother was not a quitter, but her options were also severely limited.
But I do feel today's generations seem to have unrealistic expectations. When something like cheating does happen, we rush to counselors to "fix" us and fix our spouse, and we take all sorts of prescription medication so we won't have to feel so depressed and anxious. I expect this will offend some here too, but it is my personal opinion.
Maybe past generations abused alcohol and drugs (whether prescription or not) in order to cope, but I don't think it is a good idea for any generation.
While precription drugs seem to meet approval these days, I think they fall in mostly the same category of unhealthy crutch, as abusing something like alcohol or illegal drugs. (I know many will disagree; I don't mean to offend anyone). IMO, we need to learn to cope by natural means. We actually have better, more comfortable lives than our predicessors and yet we have no coping skills (without counselors and drugs).
Sometimes my husband will go off on how he wishes he lived in the days when people had ethics, when a man was as good as his word, and so on...
And when he says this, I don't know if such a time existed, but even if it did, it was also a generation where you could expect a family to have 6 to 10 kids, and some of them would die of horrible disease like small pox or polio. My own mother's mother died when my mother was 6, of appendicitus, at age 32. This would be extremely unlikely in our country today. Her youngest sister only two at the time, had to go live with an aunt. Her father never remarried and raised the rest of the kids on his own, through the depression. It makes me cry just thinking of my mother's life. God I would not want it! And then she lost two brothers in WWII. Those brothers never got a chance to marry or have kids or anything.
Then she married my father and he treated her like shit for all those years until she died.
Would I trade my life for one like my mother had? I think not.
Am I a quitter? Well, I guess that would depend on how one looks at it. Yes, I divorced my XH. And I have changed jobs a few times. In some cases, people quit jobs because they are "quitters" but I think many of us have very good reasons for quitting one job to take another, better job. Sometimes it might turn out to be a mistake in retrospect, but I sure don't see that as being a quitter in most cases.
As for me, personally, I started working on a Ph.D. in 2005. My step-DD died in 2006 and my H had an A during the same time period. I could have quit, but I didn't. I finished it in 2010. I don't consider myself a quitter. In fact, I would say in most situations, once I set out with a serious goal for myself, I don't quit until the goal is reached.
