My brother dated a crystal-waving, skull-lump-feeling, mystic-dressed-as-an-almost-doctor for nearly 20 years. It bothered me immensely. I’m glad they broke up. She made a shitload of dough doing her scam.
Half out of idle curiosity, Dio, how do you see this as different from being married to a Christian?
See, for me it’s the opposite. If I could get past the fact they genuinely bought into it and genuinely believed in their own abilities, I think I’d be fine with them making money off it, because it would be an honest living (to them) and they would not be a charlatan.
But I couldn’t get past the fact they believed in it in the first place.
Per the OP, hot enough to make you, upon first seeing her, stop walking, put down everything you’re carrying, and stare until she either walks out of sight, slaps you for ogling, or asks your name.
All else being equal, it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me.
I’m not Dio, but I see no difference. Magic is magic and superstition is superstition and I could no sooner get past someone insisting that an all-knowing god is personally involved in their lives than if they insisted they can talk to someones’ dead relatives.
My aunt is some traveling spiritual healer. I can’t stand her. Most of my mom’s family thinks that they are psychic and I have to bite my tongue and leave the room whenever they get into their crap.
If someone privately believed and I didn’t have to hear about the fairies stealing their car keys (happens more then you’d believe, not sure what they do with them though) I could handle knowing they were a little nuts. But if it was open to the point of making a profit I would have trouble keeping quite.
On the other hand I could easily be with someone who didn’t believe and was conning people with their psychic routine, I would probably help them out.
I think it depends on the exact beliefs of the Christian, but my wife does not claim to have any superpowers and does not make any obviously false or falsifiable claims about reality. She believes in some things like baptism and communion (though when pressed, she says she doesn’t believe in a literal transubstantiation of the host, but sees it as a symbolic device for spiritual connection), but she doesn’t believe anything I can prove is false, doesn’t try to convert anybody and is liberal to the point of virtual heresy on social issues.
If she was a YEC or a Rapturist or something, it would be a different story.
For me, there is no difference at all. One reason why I didn’t get married before I turned 40.
Ok, but what if they were attractive normal people with a nice personality and were everthing you were looking for in a person, except that they had an uncanny ability to fortell things were going to happen, say they told you things like if we go here I don’t think anything good is going to happen and then when you get there everything goes to hell in a handbasket, or they say something bad is going to happen to so and so and sure enough it does, and they do this consistantly, then what? Minus all the new age or hokey pokey stuff.
It depends how they interpret it. Some people are remarkably intuitive – I’d be cool with that if they conceded that it likely had to do with observational skills and instinct, and if they at least acknowledged selection bias. If they swear it’s their guardian angel giving them signs, and they’re not at least half-joking, well…
And then came out as gay.
See? It just don’t work!
As to the OP:
Marry, no. Fuck? You betcha.
Is there nothing we cannot learn from blaxploitation spoofery?
That’s like saying what if they had wings, or what if they could spin straw into gold. It’s not an actual physical possibility, so there’s no point in hypothesizing it.
How does that first date go down?
“What do you do?”
“I work for an engineering firm. What about you?”
“I’m a psychic.”
“:dubious:”
That’s the thing. I think the most likely scenario consistent with the OP is that the person a) believes they have psychic powers b) achieves results consistent with psychic powers often enough to make a living at it and c) is actually applying psychological principles, like reading verbal and nonverbal cues, without being aware of them.
The thing about it is, if you successfully made them aware of what they were doing, it would probably ruin their livelihood or turn them into a charlatan.
I think I’d pass–recipe for drama. Next!
No, I could not date or marry a man who was involved in psychic readings.
As I see it, there are only 3 possible scenarios:
- He really believes he is a psychic because he is too stupid to think of how “psychic” phenomenon can be explained rationally.
- He really believes he is a psychic because he is mentally ill and delusional. (Mental illness should also cover those who are pretending to have psychic powers to get attention or feel “important”)
- He doesn’t actually believe he is a psychic but is a con artist who takes advantage of weak-minded people who believe in his “powers” for the sake of making money.
All of those scenarios are dealbreakers to me. For similar reasons, I would not date someone who was into kookery like “vaccines cause autism”, UFO abductions, astrology, healing crystals, etc.
Far-out religious views would also make me hesitant to get involved with someone - though I think I could be more understanding about religious quirks because they are socially sanctioned to such an extent. You can end up believing weird religious stuff just by going with the flow in society. You have to go out of your way to believe in non-socially sanctioned lunacy like thinking you have psychic powers.
This thread makes me feel very thankful that my boyfriend is an intelligent and logical person!
Yeah, it’s funny that the real life “medium” is married to a guy with a scientific background. My guess is that his thoughts on the first date were more along the lines of “hey, nice boobs” or something like that and didn’t give a crap about the fact that she is delusional and/or stupid.
I’ve never really understood it, but a significant number of people out there are okay with dating someone much stupider or crazier than they are themselves. Some even seem to seek out the crazy!
Only if she could prove to my satisfaction that she really were psychic. Otherwise, hell no. Nor would I marry someone whose primary income was Nigerian scam letters, or making title loans, or multilevel marketing. I did marry a Christian, but we’ve achieved stasis on that.
Rational reply: No. I’d probably drive her crazy by constantly questioning her beliefs, so I don’t think I’d even come close to that stage.
In reality? Who knows. My experience is that when I’m in love I lose all rational control. My only hope would be that I’d have a moment of clarity before I got myself in deep trouble.
Hells no.
The show in question has an interesting dynamic in this area because the husband, Joe, is a scientist and a skeptic by nature. He only believes that Allison is really psychic because she’s proven it so many times. He questions her visions a LOT and is often skeptical about what she claims will happen, which is a primary source of conflict in their relationship. He seems to be somewhat incredulous himself that he could be married to a psychic and actually believe what she says.
And it’s not like she was always a professional psychic. At the beginning of the show, she was in law school, and it’s been alluded to in the past that she had something of a wild period where she drank a lot to drown out her visions. So it’s fair to assume that she didn’t reveal this to him until after they’d known each other for awhile.