I down vote stuff for many reasons. In your case it was disagreeing with your view. This next reply I upvoted because I liked your nice response.

I can see only having gay dating pool could screw that statistics by a lot. I admit I do not know a lot about gay community. While I know the (not sure how real) stereotype about way more common one night relationships. I still think this still varies a lot depending on whre you are searching.

Homosexuals I know (in my environment) are all in a very long relationships. My gay neighbors have been married for 10+ years. My gay schoolmate has been in a relationship for a few years and I have no doubt they will eventually marry and live a very happy life.

While I can imagine those percentage being lower in gay community I still believe they are quite significant. Maybe you just have to search in a different environment.

On average, only 14% of those in a couple say they are not very or not at all satisfied with their relationship with their spouse or partner, while 84% say they are somewhat or very satisfied.

And this

The failure rate for first marriage is roughly 48%, 60% for second and 70% for third marriages [source], but at the same time, in 2019 for every 1000 marriages, only 7.6 resulted in divorce, which is the lowest divorce rate in the past 50 years.

So I would not say it is that rare to live happy married life. But it is not like everyone is getting this life. With a hard work I think it is totally possible and is not that rare at all… Although none of those studies give a direct answer on how many happy lifelong relationships there are. One can conclude somewhere between 30-40% of relationships are happy lifelong relationship. And even if this number is lower like 10-20% this is still a very significant number.

When I talk about relationships with my sister she has similar view as you. She can almost never see a truly happy relationship. While I can see it everywhere

It turned out our environments are drastically different. For example she met all of her partners at parties. This is not a general population. While I met my wife in school.

I made most of my friends in school or at work or from being a neighbor (ie owning a house). Most of them are educated and with higher income. If I remember correctly those also have better statistics for relationship success. While my sisters friends are none of that.

I believe it would be wise for you to check if your environment screwed your view too.

I think I can enable or disable my empathy. I could say cold hearted to a person to stop crying and do the right thing. I could even hit a child as a punishment if that were any useful. and give them a better life because of that (it does not work, so I won’t). I am not sure if that even is the real definition of empathy.

But this feeling cannot be empathy since it is does not have to involve relating to another being. It could be some deep and meaningful idea or point or moral of a story. Those usually get me the most.

I do. 25M. For movies, lyrics, stories… Can be most casual things for most people. But I detected some special meaning and I have tears in my eyes. I for some reason got more and more emotional since I was 18. Not sure why though. I hope anyone has some kind of ideas.

I find this strange since I do not consider myself very empatic. And I also consider word empathy cringe since it is often misused to demonize political opponents.

I find your the second very very important. Especially since I have got a child.

I already repaired my 3d printer and I recently learned to use Blender for more creative 3d designs. I created a model and painted it. I like how miniature painting affects my internal calmness. Oh and I will write another short story. I am also finaly making some progress on learning guitar.

Not that I am any good in any of those things I do them because they are fun to do.

I also have quite flexible job. I believe the most important thing one can do for their happiness is really working hard on your relationships.

Marriage, kid, deep relationship with my wife. And my hobbies I am very passionate about.

Yep. By definition.

That is called manipulation not making bread.

I am! I cooked two awesome meals and helped my wife finally migrate to linux.

I have the biggest problem with two government parties calling for boycott of this referendum. Which I find undemocratic.

We are voting if we accept a more regulation on special pensions for best artists. Previous law allows minister to give pensions to anyone they want. Also previous law from Yugoslavia allowed inheritance of those pensions. New law forbids that. Old law was also criticized by many independent institutions to be too broad.

Opposition wants to present this referendum as “should we give those pension at all”. Their position is we should not. And some parties want to give different kinds of awards for best artists.

But this is not the question we will be asked at all. The choice is between new regulative law and old law.

However this referendum really is stupid. But one should still vote and vote for accepting new law which is still better than the old one (even if just marginally and you want to remove those rewards in the long run).