My sister cheated on her boyfriend

Yes of course, a failed relationship due to the both of the parties involved having rather severe psychological issues proves that your opinion is absolutely correct.

edited 22nd Mar '11 9:22:32 AM by Alichains

No need for sarcasm. All that needs to be said is:

The plural of anecdote is not data.

However. whether romance is worthwhile or not depends on the individual. Some may gain nothing from it, some may gain the world. On average, a successful love life correlates very strongly with high levels of happiness. This is proven.

Having calmed down I must apologise. I can never quite help posting that kind of thing when I come across a "romance/love" thread. Don't know why.

Don't apologise, you weren't being rude, just mistaken: our anecdotes are not proof that romance doesn't work for us, let alone for you. You have to go out and experience it for yourself, nuke it from orbit's the only way to be sure.

@Ettina: I don't know about personnality disorders, but she's apparently the sanest person I know: she always appears to do exactly what she wants, and to be c ompletely in agreement with herself. Even when she cheated on her boyfriend, she angsted about it for a little while only, and then got over it. I've never ever seen her act guilty or ashamed or conflicted. Ever. She always acts as if she's right, and when she's proven wrong, she just carries on like it didn't matter.

Confidence aside, that's going to be a problem if she doesn't get her act together.

How come? Usually Cognitive Dissoance makes people just follow her along. I'm the only one who dares call her out on her bullshit, and even then I don't do it very often.

Selection bias. People are more likely to vent about things going wrong than things going right, so regardless of actual frequency you're going to see the former more often.

It's built into the concept: things going "right" is things going "as they should". We sort of take things going Just as Planned for granted, when they are anything but.

An engineer, if he succeeds building his thing, will get a salary. If he does it fast, he'll get a bonus. If he makes a mistake and there's property damage or, God forbid, people die, he'll get thrown in jail.

Your sis sounds like a potential candidate for narcisistic personality disorder: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001930/

There's more to mental health than just confidence or even peace of mind, though. I don't know much about psychology, but I don't think you can rule out some sort of disorder because she's content with herself. Other people certainly aren't, right?

[[youtube:a4lJ9vsZjMU&feature=related]]

... Yup, confidence isn't everything.

edited 22nd Mar '11 5:23:51 PM by Ardiente