>>71964 I think I'll never truly leave waifuism, because I believe a lot of people project their desires onto waifus or waifus have traits that men want in their ideal girl. Of course, since real women who are good people are insanely fucking rare to non-existent, a proper man with principals will refuse to settle for less out of fear of loneliness. Your waifu will always be a part of you as a result and even if you get lucky and find a proper good woman, your waifu will still be a part of you since a proper good woman will have some of your idealized traits that you found in your waifu.

Oh definitely, if you peruse the Intro thread you'll find several 8+ year waifuists. Although I'm very new to formal "Waifuism", I can claim the much simpler status of "continuously in love with the same fictional character" for about 18 years now. >relationship with my waifu ended around four years ago What did this process mean to you exactly? Like did you fall out of Love? Realize that you were never In Love in the first place? Still retain a kernel of Love for your former waifu but abandon the premise of waifuism (ie "she's not real/inaccessible what's the point")? Meet someone IRL who you loved more? And If so, how do you feel about your waifu now? Do you still have all her merch/stuff that I assume you collected? You must look back on your waifuism with a certain degree of fondness to have returned here ;)

>>71967 I mostly just fell out of love with her. I found another waifu later on but that only lasted about a year or so but by that point I mostly lost interest in waifuism as a whole. Any merch I did have I still own, but a lot of it's packed away probably collecting dust, if not old as hell. Even my nendoroid was sitting in a box for so long that the plastic started to turn yellow. I still like her as a character, and I do ultimately remember my time with her as "the good times", but I also have been feeling a lot better about my life ever since I left waifuism, so I can't exactly say I want to go back. Mostly been a vtuberfag nowadays but I can't deny there's been the occasional moment where I've considered going back to waifuism. Though I also haven't had any actual feelings for anyone so it's unlikely. Some of the other waifuists I've met over the years were pretty cool, though, so I'll say that.

>>71973 NTA but >but I also have been feeling a lot better about my life ever since I left waifuism what do you mean by this? and also if you dont have a waifu anymore, did any of the things you found to like in your waifu remain in your taste of women or vtubers?

>>71979 Well I was depressed, jobless, very antisocial, and afraid that my IRL friends would harshly judge me based on my relationship. After leaving waifuism, I'm a lot less depressed, had a job at some point, considerably less antisocial (but not exactly... not antisocial either), and I've realized that my friends probably wouldn't have given a shit. A lot more spending time outdoors too. Obviously correlation =/= causation, and I can't say this was all done because I left waifuism, truthfully even if I still had a waifu I probably would have had a remarkably different outlook on life than I did before... it just so happened that I left waifusm right around this point in my life. To answer your second question, yes. The kind of elegant, formal, polite, well-dressed women tend to win me over rather easily. Tomboys started to become my weakness later but that was after my relationship with Sakuya. Otherwise it's hard to for me to say that my time with her didn't influence my taste in women.

i’ve been active and posting about waifu for over a decade at this point, so many of us are still around if not just hard to find. waifu relationships, like real ones, shift and twist over the years in some ways so drastically that it’s hardly even discernible as the same thing as when you started. but I like to think that a love as pure and true as a man with his waifu is something that engraves itself into you on such a primordial level that you can’t ever be rid of her influence on you, even if you tried.

I cannot stop being a waifufag, because the non-anime world is not making any real effort to persuade me that daily life is a lot more rewarding than my beautiful fantasies. That being said, OP, it's important that you are honest with yourself about your feelings. Whether you still love Sakuya or not is something that only you can know. Don't let others shame you into thinking one thing or another. Similarly to how I don't buy the idea that you are not allowed to feel jealous if someone has the same waifu as you. It's a natural instinct to feel jealous in such circumstances

>>72014 It's more important to ask whether something is useful or not compared to whether something is natural or not. Pretty much all human emotions are natural. They are a result of brain chemistry and neuroplasticity that has always existed within us. But if we presumed all thoughts and emotions we feel are good because they are natural, it would be impossible to change our minds in any way.

>>72016 So your argument is that "natural" means nothing because everything is natural? Okay, how about I reply that everything is useful because everything constitutes either something pleasant or a painful but useful lesson?

>>72022 Not everything has a use, at least comparatively. Once I know that I shouldn't touch a hot stove, pressing my hand firmly against it won't make me learn any more about that lesson. Perhaps you could you you're doing it to learn about burns, which can be done easier. Or you're doing it to simply experience pain, in which case you're just indulging in masochism and the whole line of reasoning about whether something is good or not is kind of moot because you're enjoying it BECAUSE it's not good. Jealousy isn't a useful emotion for a waifu relationship because your waifu can't be stolen from you. You are simply getting upset over scenarios you made up.

>>72023 >Jealousy isn't a useful emotion for a waifu relationship because your waifu can't be stolen from you Similarly to how there's no binding and exclusive procedure to claim her. Say, have you ever met someone who had the same waifu as you? If yes, didn't you feel even mildly uncomfortable about it?

>>72014 >I don't buy the idea that you are not allowed to feel jealous if someone has the same waifu as you. It's a natural instinct to feel jealous in such circumstances Based answer, people only push this retarded idea because they either have never had nor will ever have a dupe (for a lack of an older word for it), they truly believe that each waifu is a copy of it (I don't buy this fully) or they're simply weird and don't care, something that is rare and most just put on a mask about how they don't care at all. The reality is that jealousy is completely normal and far more common than people realize (we are able to feel it before we even reach 1 year of existence), simply society decided to vilify it and shames whoever feels shame trough words like "toxic" or "insecurities" etc, which can certainly be the case sometimes but far more often its simply because of a percieved or real threat to the relationship, while we can control what we do about our jealousy (I certainly wouldn't say that you should dox your dupe) we can't really control the feeling in it of itself, emotions and feelings (which are different) aren't something we have a complete control over, we should be telling people to deal properly with their emotions rather than peer pressuring them into hiding them or trying not to feel them (something thats dangerous in the long term). >>72023 Emotions aren't measured by usefuleness they simply are and most would definitely prefer if they didn't feel "bad emotions" such as jealousy, but thats not how it works, what we can control and should be trying to reach ourselves and helping others if possible is how we react and act towards or due to this emotions, just saying "stop feeling jealous it's not useful in waifuism" is one of the most moronic answer to the problem of dupes and jealousy when it comes to waifuism since it wont fix the fundamental issue at hand, its comformist and seeks a simple fit all answer to what is an extremely complex emotion. I will stop now but if you truly want to talk seriously and actually discuss this properly then you're open to use this thread or create a new one. >>72024 Most haven't and therefore have no idea about how it is, just people with no experience whatsoever talking their ass off.

>>72025 NTA but is jealousy really the right word here? I'd interpret that as implying that they have something you don't (i.e being jealous of someone's expensive car or something), which isn't necessarily true considering they'd be in the same situation regarding a relationship with a character. I'm not sure what other word it would be, though.

>>72024 I have, and I enjoyed it. I wish more people liked her. >>72025 I would like to engage more, but with how you've gone from saying I'm talking out of my ass to claiming I'm advocating for conformity when I'd say most people, including yourself, would disagree with me, I don't think that's what you want.

>>72026 No idea, I've long wondered about that and reached a point where I don't think jealousy is exactly the appropriate word, but at the same time it's definitely a complex emotion that can manifest due to and in many different ways, so who knows, from what I read about jealousy in the past it's not uncommon for it to be felt closer to "disgust", and that's how I choose to explain it when it comes to dupes (and at least some people whom I talked to in the past agree), regardless I guess your example could be considered like jealous envy ? Some sort of combination of those two emotions. >>72027 I was simply expressing my experiences with this specific conversation, most people I've seen talking about it just throw the "its toxic" or "due to insecurities" and call it a day and those tend to never have had a dupe in the past, while most who did have one at least felt slightly "icky" (some had no problem at all, it depends after all) which is why I said that. I'm not going to hold my tongue and not express my personal experience about this topic just because whoever I'm talking to might feel slighted, you just said you did have a dupe (and enjoyed it) therefore you're not on the group who those "talking their ass off" comments referred to. I did mean the conformity part fully though, since as I mentioned a few lines ago most often than not when this conversation has come up people throw a simple short answer for (the ones mentioned before) jealousy and that’s it, but that’s only my experience, it seems your has been a different one, which is why I wouldn't mind talking more about it. Regardless while I'm always here (at least daily), if you do feel that I don't actually want to talk then so be it, not like I can force you after all kek, have a nice day.

>>72029 To give a summary, I had a friend who was a dupe. In the end he ended the friendship, in large part because he admitted he couldn't maintain positive feelings toward me due to this jealousy. I just found this silly because he was throwing away a friendship because of his own negative feelings which were capable of being managed, which is clearly possible since I do not have those feelings myself. Like I said, when I see people enjoy her, it makes me happy to see that others appreciate and understand her. I have no reason to be jealous because I have nothing to gain by doing so, but I do have something to lose, whether it be relationships with other people or my own happiness.

>>72032 Honestly I’m unsure on how to even start dissecting what you just told, I’ll try to answer each part one by one or bundled if I feel it’s required. >In the end he ended the friendship Your friendship probably wasn’t close to the level of importance to his relationship with his waifu, so if your presence caused mostly negative emotions then there was no particular reason to keep it up, even more if it could damage in any way his relationship with his waifu. >which were capable of being managed Alright, how do you know he could? I’ll be honest you’re just assuming this because you “Do not have those feelings”, this is extremely reductive and kinda throws human individuality into the trash bin, this is a fundamental part of the human experience (individuality I mean), we all feel and think on different ways, they can be similar and we sure can share experiences/feelings, but we are at the end of the day different individuals (both mentally and biologically, we all have DNA but it’s a combination of your parents DNA, we are fundamentally alike yet different), so just dismissing the complex feelings of someone just because you cant relate is just absurd. >When I see people enjoy her, it makes me happy to see that others appreciate and understand her. I have no reason to be jealous because I have nothing to gain by doing so, but I do have something to lose, whether it be relationships with other people or my own happiness. Im glad you can stop feeling certain emotions just because “I gain nothing by doing so, but I do have something to lose”, but the simple reality is that most people can’t just stop feeling strong, complex and hard baked emotions because they’re not useful, we can control how we act due to our emotions but we can’t really just erase them because “they’re not useful”, if anything repressing emotions is a bad coping mechanism in general since it just tries to hide the emotion and can lead to emotional numbing, depression, low self esteem etc. I have to really know something anon; you simply have never felt jealousy, or did you ever feel it and decide to develop some sort of control over it? Because that changes the conversation a lot, I hope it’s the second because then just as you became able to control the emotion (or erase it since you “don’t have those feelings”) you could perhaps enlighten others on how to do it, but if you just fundamentally have never had such feelings then let me be dead honest, you’re the odd one out and are expecting atypical behavior from typical, average human beings.

>>72033 >Your friendship probably wasn’t close to the level of importance to his relationship with his waifu, so if your presence caused mostly negative emotions then there was no particular reason to keep it up, even more if it could damage in any way his relationship with his waifu. I would argue that only you can damage your relationship with another person, because you are the one that decides how you feel. >Alright, how do you know he could? Perhaps, but this is just an assumption you're making based on your view that most people cannot change this. >I have to really know something anon; you simply have never felt jealousy, or did you ever feel it and decide to develop some sort of control over it? In my life, I have really liked several girls. If they ever did not like me back because they liked someone else, I don't recall ever feeling negatively toward the person they liked because of it. If anything, it was my opinion of the girl that decreased with time. If it's something where my waifu is being shipped with someone else, I recognize that if I don't look at it, it simply doesn't exist. She is a fictional character and any perception of a relationship with me or anyone else exists entirely within my imagination. To take it even further, I've often enjoyed pictures of her hanging out with other characters which are labeled shipping by the artist, when in reality they are doing nothing romantic, because again I decide what they mean. I have also taken opportunities to edit pictures that were what I would consider shipping into ones that I don't consider shipping, not out of any kind of bitterness or jealousy, but just so that I can enjoy them. I feel that any discomfort I had with the concept of shipping has decreased over time just from exposure. I think the way to view it is to always look at the positive. I view the art of my waifu I get as a gift. Of course, we don't like every gift we get. But not liking it doesn't mean we have to hate the gift or the gift-giver. If I don't like a gift, I set it aside and focus on the gifts I do like. Someone that appreciates the same character in the way I do is a gift because to me, I just enjoy seeing her appreciated in general. I really do feel bad for people that can't do this. I think it would be awful to live this way. But I'm glad because I think most people should be able to change the way they think by focusing more on what they like and distancing themselves from what they don't while not letting it deepen into greater resentment.

>>72025 I agree with you, all in all >>72026 >NTA but is jealousy really the right word here? I'd interpret that as implying that they have something you don't (i.e being jealous of someone's expensive car or something), which isn't necessarily true considering they'd be in the same situation regarding a relationship with a character. I'm not sure what other word it would be, though. Yes, it is the right word. When you want something someone else has, we call that envy. When you want the attention of someone, which seems to be currently aimed at a third person, we call that jealousy. Waifuism is a 21st century concept, so of course pre-existing words won't be a perfect fit, but yes, it's jealousy >>72027 >I have, and I enjoyed it. I wish more people liked her. What do you mean by "like"? As in acknowledging she's cool or outright expressing romantic attachment? If you had a regular girlfriend, would you wish as many people as possible were willing to date her? Would you want to have potential rivals that make the existence of your relationship more precarious than it would otherwise be?

>>72025 >each waifu is a copy of it This is really what it comes down to... the waifuist's personal cosmology. Whether: (A) each waifuist creates his own unique incarnation of his waifu by perceiving her. (Inherent in this belief: the waifu does NOT exist outside of these unique idiosyncratic personal imaginations, paper drawings, and pixels) or whether (B) the waifuist is mutually in love with a particular sentient "astral" soul that the waifuist did not himself create but simply connects to on a spiritual level. He is in a relationship with a singular entity either created by her original 3D author or perhaps views his waifu as a preexisting independent being who was merely channeled and drawn by her 3D author. (this is how I view my Mink, personally) For Team A dupes are totally fine, for Team B dupes are unthinkable. "A" generally considers most waifuists valid, "B" will look at 2 dupes unrelated to their own waifu and privately think, at least one or maybe both are not True Love as there presumably can only be One True 3D Waifuist per Astral Waifu (barring some fringe poly arrangement) and all others are lost deluded simps claiming love when it is instead unreciprocated lust/infatuation/a crush etc. Just as the 3D Waifuist loves ONE, the 2D Waifu loves ONE back. And if so, any dupe is a would-be usurper and pretender to the throne. Harmless maybe, if the Team B Waifuist has a healthy sense of security about his relationship, but nevertheless certainly NOT a friend and inherently a rival, albeit one with good taste. A Team B waifuist would prefer to hear his dupe holds Team A cosmology, because it means the dupe, deep down, does not truly think "his" waifu exists! Except maybe in his own mind. Team B hear this and feels his claim to his waifu reinforced because of his perceived greater faith and stronger connection to her soul. Team B is really only threatened by another Team B, while the zen-master Team A has transcended all threats at the cost of exclusivity. A healthy Team B waifuist reacts to a dupe not with anger but with sympathy for the plight of his hollow pantomime of love, and hopes he finally wakes up and finds the right one for him, one day... I sure found the right one for me :)

>>72043 we are getting into schizophrenic territory i see

>>72036 >I would argue that only you can damage your relationship with another person, because you are the one that decides how you feel. A fine argument and I can say we get to act about how we feel, but wouldn’t agree that we have a full control about how we feel, if the average person actually possessed that ability lots of problems and things would be avoided, since people constantly act fully on feelings and then regret it, an extreme but simple example would be someone cheating because they had a huge fight with their girlfriend/wife just to regret it after the anger dissipates. >Perhaps, but this is just an assumption you're making based on your view that most people cannot change this. Let’s not go down this rabbit hole anon, this is a two way street and what im saying its an “educated guess” (which you could maybe agree on since you literally stated that most people would agree with my line of thinking "but with how you've gone from saying I'm talking out of my ass to claiming I'm advocating for conformity when I'd say most people, including yourself, would disagree with me") not a complete assumption, you yourself argue that “Because I don’t feel jealous anyone can do the same”, isn’t that a massive assumption, actually my “Alright, how do you know he could?” was a response to your assumption that he could, which again was based only in that you can, so who is really assuming here ? I would say both of us. >In my life, I have really liked several girls. If they ever did not like me back because they liked someone else, I don't recall ever feeling negatively toward the person they liked because of it. If anything, it was my opinion of the girl that decreased with time. So, you never felt jealousy, honestly I don’t think you can talk much about jealousy then, this is like someone talking about depression while never getting even close to suffering depression, you quite literally are talking not from your experience (or at least that seems to be the case) but what you know about the feeling probably due to osmosis. >If it's something where my waifu is being shipped with someone else, I recognize that if I don't look at it, it simply doesn't exist. She is a fictional character and any perception of a relationship with me or anyone else exists entirely within my imagination. So, your relationship exists in a vacuum, completely disconnected from everything else? Can’t really understand that being honest anon, to me my relationship with my waifu is not in my “imagination”, it’s a fact, so I can’t really say much about something I fundamentally don’t get. >The rest of the post. You’re really an oddity huh, pretty much everything exists in a vacuum to you it seems, not interacting with any other thing and you don’t even seem to have much “emotions” in general (or at least the way you talk about it doesn’t show em), you can and completely decide based on what you think more than what your emotions and feelings, which again its completely fine and valid but it’s not the case for most, and assuming that anyone can reach what you are based only in what you think is delusional, we need to look objectively at our experience of this world and what it brings before talking about someone else, especially when it comes to emotions which vary wildly between individuals, but well, that’s just my opinion I guess. >>72039 >If you had a regular girlfriend, would you wish as many people as possible were willing to date her? Would you want to have potential rivals that make the existence of your relationship more precarious than it would otherwise be? This I wonder about from time to time, to me my relationship even if one sided in a sense (objective barrier between the fiction and reality), its real and just a fact so to some degree I treat her like I would someone real (again, to some degree) so watching someone else talk about her is weird, because she’s my wife so why is some weird schmuck on the internet talking about a relationship with her ? But im guessing for people who can enjoy the existence of dupes this doesn’t really happen? Gotta wonder, at that point aren’t they just fans? But well, maybe im just being a waifu elitist or something like that I at least hope they wouldn’t enjoy the existence of dupes if she was real, that would be grim. >>72043 Leaving the weird schizo pseudo spiritual bs aside. While Team A or B work finely overall to describe the two overarching waifuistic “roads” a good chunk of waifuists probably fall into an amalgamation of elements from both teams, regardless it’s a useful categorization. And I don’t know about sympathy, while I fall on Team B mostly (obviously removing the schizo babble), what I feel towards dupes is disgust, why would I feel sympathy for some weirdo who most often than not is simply lusting over my wife? They can bite the curb for all I care, they’re lame larpers tbh, simple as that.

>>72045 >watching someone else talk about her is weird, because she’s my wife so why is some weird schmuck on the internet talking about a relationship with her ? But im guessing for people who can enjoy the existence of dupes this doesn’t really happen? Gotta wonder, at that point aren’t they just fans? I have had the same impression. I see nothing wrong with me being jealous, what rubs me the wrong way is that my competitors do not seem to be jealous. Are they even being serious about being in love with a fictional character? Maybe not fully, and they just see them as a placeholder until they get into a regular relationship. As proof of this theory of mine, I have been in anime Discords where the same people would profess really being into this specific anime girl, and also post hentai unrelated to that character, OnlyFans stuff and cosplayer photos >I can say we get to act about how we feel, but wouldn’t agree that we have a full control about how we feel I agree here as well. I don't buy the Buddhist/Stoic idea that we have complete control over our emotions. Why just our emotions then? Why not physical reality as well? Why can't I levitate just by willing it? Keeping our negative emotions at bay while dealing with others is NOT the same thing as outright deciding our inner emotional make-up I also agree that people who have never felt particularly negative emotions (being it jealousy, hopelessness, constant anger and what not) should not lecture those who claim to be undergoing emotional distress >>72043 >(Inherent in this belief: the waifu does NOT exist outside of these unique idiosyncratic personal imaginations, paper drawings, and pixels) For this NOT to be correct, you would have to prove that your astral ghost waifu can show herself in some way to the eyes of others

>>72039 >What do you mean by "like"? As in acknowledging she's cool or outright expressing romantic attachment? >If you had a regular girlfriend, would you wish as many people as possible were willing to date her? >Would you want to have potential rivals that make the existence of your relationship more precarious than it would otherwise be? It all depends. Let's say you were dating a celebrity. I'm sure that if you did, you would probably be okay with the idea of dating someone who gets a lot of attention, and might even like that about them. But of course, I doubt most people would say they like their partner getting attention 24/7, as in getting spied on at all times. Everything within reason. >>72045 I'm not sure I would say that I've never felt jealousy. If I like a girl, and she doesn't like me, why would I dislike the guy that she likes? He's not the one that's hurting me, she is. I think I have felt jealousy, but I acknowledge that it's out of a dislike for the behavior of someone that I would otherwise like. Also, I'm really confused as to how you can be in a relationship with your waifu. She doesn't exist. If she does exist, she isn't your waifu. You can't be in a relationship with something that isn't real. We can certainly pretend we are sometimes, and that's fine if you want, I like to do that myself, but it doesn't make it true. >>72046 >As proof of this theory of mine, I have been in anime Discords where the same people would profess really being into this specific anime girl, and also post hentai unrelated to that character, OnlyFans stuff and cosplayer photos I don't know why you think that someone loving someone means they can't feel attraction for others. Why do you want this to be true? >Why just our emotions then? Why not physical reality as well? Why can't I levitate just by willing it? How do you know that we can't? I think the core difference here is that you are combining "can't" with "don't know how." For example, if I were to tell you that you can calm yourself at any time if you wish, and you were in a room with a morphine syringe, would I be wrong? Would your lack of knowledge on how to administer morphine or unwillingness to give yourself an injection make it impossible? After all, if someone else could, why couldn't you? Ultimately we don't know what is possible. Rather than assume that anything we can't imagine can't be done, I think it's better to always keep an open mind.

>>72070 >I don't know why you think that someone loving someone means they can't feel attraction for others. Why do you want this to be true? I don't know you, but I do not like the idea of being cheated on one bit. >Rather than assume that anything we can't imagine can't be done, I think it's better to always keep an open mind. Can you make a million dollars if you're poor? Can you finish a marathon if you dislike running? Can you become a famous artist if you are not good at drawing? Can you get a degree in a subject you weren't good at in high school? The answer to all such questions is "yeah, it's technically possible". But life is too short to worry about the infinite amount of technical possibilities. Best to worry about what is likely to occur and what your intuition tells you. And my intuition tells me that completely dissociating yourself from your negative emotions is repression, AKA spiritual bypassing

>>72077 I would say it's more like letting go. Ceasing to feel an emotion doesn't mean you're just repressing it. Sometimes people just don't feel the same as they did previously.

>>72078 Letting go when you don't want to let go, because someone is telling you that's the "right" thing to do, is emotional repression. You let go consciously, but unconsciously refuse to do so

>>72079 Nobody told me to do anything though.

>>72082 He didn’t mean you anon, its more about what you want people to do, after all everyone should suppress or "cease to feel" jealousy according to you, simply because you supposedly can.

>>72084 Still, I'm not suggesting anyone just repress emotions. I'm saying that I believe I have fully felt and released negative emotions, and that others might benefit from doing it too.

>>72086 Do you think feeling negative emotions and somehow getting rid of them are one and the same process? Because in my view, they are not. Feeling unhappy today does not mean you will be free from unhappiness tomorrow

>>72086 Sure they would benefit but again we fall into the same thing we talked about countless times in the thread, thats not the experience for most, most people will live with these kind of feelings forever because they're just as normal as happiness, sadness, distress, pity, fear etc. As said prior this advice can even be potentially dangerous since on their efforts to "release" this emotions they could mistakenly end up supressing them or bottling it up, which has multiple negative side effects, I think you mean well anon, but this isn't the unique way to about jealousy.

>>72087 Will fully feeling emotions from one experience prevent you from ever feeling that emotion again? No. But it will help you to emotionally move past that experience. A lot of emotional pain people feel is extended way past its necessary length because people repress the emotion, feeling a low level of it unconsciously for a long time and then in the end feeling even worse when they finally do accept it later. People also internalize negative experiences as a way to make themselves feel better momentarily, again leading to bad outcomes later. (Someone telling themselves there is something wrong with them for being rejected because it's an easier way to make the pain go away than acknowledging that you are still a good person and some people will not like you regardless, as an example. It's adopting a flawed view of the situation to lessen emotional pain.) >>72088 I mean at that point we're just saying that any information exchange at all is bad because it can potentially be misinterpreted and lead to difficulties. Like I said above, pain is a part of life, but suppressed or internalized pain is unnecessary and perhaps helpful in the short term but overall worse in the long term.