People Online Are Naming Things Folks Should Stop Glamorizing, And Here Are 36 Spot-On Answers

Parenthood. It’s not all baseball games and bedtime stories. If you put the effort in to practice patience and bond with your children rather than lord over them, the rewards can be limitlessly gratifying.

Bragging about having a harder childhood than your children and constantly shoving it in their face. Ironically these types of parents usually take out their trauma on their children and continuing the cycle anyway.

Small town / rural / country living and lifestyles. So many shows and movies love to portray these less populated communities as havens and perfect places to live and will almost never even acknowledge the very serious problems faced in alot of these communities. This leads to a significant portion of people (mostly middle age white dudes) to almost fetishize this ideal of a rugged yet charming small community unchanged for 150 years full of vibrant personalities where everyone knows each other; and while this is accurate to some extent these places also suffer from huge drug problems, brain drain, racism and homophobia, underfunded social services and are all too often dying in one way or another.

Getting married young and spending a lot of money on your wedding, and proselytizing your subjective view of love to the world through social media. Lots of couples I know need to go to counseling and make a lot of choices to grow their intimacy and bond in private…

Smoking and drinking so much alcohol that you're having a hangover. Both are so bad for your health, yet there's a lot of people who think smoking is sexy and forgetting what you've done the last night because of alcohol is cool. It's not cool, you might have done something really dangerous to you or/and other people.

Pregnancy.

Edited to add: I don't know what the ratio is, but I know that while there are people who had great pregnancies, others had a hell of a time.

Just in my circle of friends, I don't know anyone who didn't have a tough time at some point. We've all commented that pregnancy is so romanticised and you don't find out what it can be like until you're in the thick of it.

It's like hearing about this great club and seeing all their romantic baby bump photos, then joining the club and someone pulls you to one side like "Right, here's a bag of symptoms. Stick your hand in and grab a few. Ooh, bad luck, you got hyperemesis gravidarum!"

Living in a van or RV. The people that do it comfortably are often quite wealthy. Also - smells like funk and lots of inconveniences.

Codependency. People often get it confused with interdependence. Codependency seeks value through the other person and there's a lack of proper boundaries. Interdependence is 2 autonomous individuals in a relationship together

Conflict. It's always romanticized to "fight for what you believe in" or to "never go down without a fight" or stuff like that, to the point where people forget that opposing something or someone isn't the only solution to a problem. And also that just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they want to fight you or be in conflict with you.

Asking the girl out. It’s not going to be this big movie moment, stop building it up and just ask her

Living in a castle. It was cold, damp, full of rats and other pests. No indoor plumbing, people were filthy. I could go on.

France. Don't get me wrong it is a stupidly beautiful place... In parts. But movies and TV have made people believe it is a magical fairy tale place full of roamntic men waiting to sweep women off their feet and overly sexual women just waiting for a man to come along who can satisfy her appetites.

The reality is none of those things. And from a fairly extensive amount of travel that I have done, I'd argue that there are FAR more beautiful countries in the world (broadly) than France.

Again there is ABSOLUTELY beauty in France. But nothing to the tune of its romanticised nature.

The internet. It's not the freedom everyone hoped fifteen years ago. A s**t ton of advertisement, misinformation and stuff to pay for, makes it a very unfree place.

Internet celebrity. Most people that are famous on the internet probably aren’t making nearly much as people assume and they also are probably working may more hours coming up with things to film, negotiating places to go, and editing to make those short little TikTok or Instagram clips. They are paying the full price for their own benefits and they are paying taxes as an independent contractor. There is a definite shelf life to their earning potential as well and they have to be very careful about where they go and what they do because the internet is a very fickle market to base your livelihood on.

Luxury or status brand product. People also should stop looking at another person as ideal. Be it be spiritual or political leader they support or just a sports star. No person is a superhuman at the ground level and often make mistakes as a regular person. And people should also stop thinking things as just good or bad. In almost every case a things are usually grey and just not black and white.

Ireland, living here all of 20 years, the luscious green landscape comes with being too expensive, most people in their 30s not even owning their own house, and alcoholism being a public health concern. Don’t get me wrong I love my home but I’m getting out as soon as I can