Asklemmy

I was raised in a relatively high wealth family. Not personal jet rich, but still rich enough that we were going on vacation to fancy places a lot, dad had pretty cars, a big house, we went on ski trips, and played golf, etc. My wife was raised by a single mother with a more or less absentee father, working where she could to raise her two girls.

I already knew I was lucky and privileged, my parents kept telling my siblings and I, but it never really registered to me just how much. The skill I learned a lot about is empathy, I think.

That I'm allowed to have boundaries and a good partner won't cross them.

Not a girlfriend, but a date (that ultimately didn’t go anywhere). She was a teacher and I mentioned despite being a software engineer and having to take up to Calc 2 in university, I never actually learned long division. So, she taught me.

To press my index fingers and thumbs together to make a tiny aperture so you can see stars clearer at night.

My wife taught me to cook and that I was allowed to have feelings. I taught her a bunch of computer stuff and that she was allowed to have feelings.

My first serious boyfriend taught me how to change the oil, change a tire, and rotate the tires on my car. Also that I don't like anal.

Integration of trigonometric functions.

I recommend dating a chef long enough to learn how to cook, that is a super helpful skill

Does him teaching me how to kiss count?

Suck the roof of your mouth with your tongue to stop a sneeze.

How to put on a bra.

My ex (though really his mom i guess) taught me you can just run a half empty dishwasher. I grew up without a lot of money, so we weren't running the dishwasher until it was full (big family, so pretty often). But when you're one or two people, it never fills up so I was just hand washing dishes, hating my life. They ran the dishwasher every night no matter how full or empty it was. At 9pm, the dishwasher started. It's stupid to say it changed my life, but now I just run it whenever I want. I also run my washing machine all the time and folding half loads is so much better, I no longer hate laundry.

My ex taught me how to crochet, which was pretty cool of her. I've always wanted to do stuff with yarn and having someone there to guide and correct me was so useful. I'm not sure I would have stuck with it if I tried to learn via online tutorials.

How to say so when something isn’t good enough. I’m super prone to just accept shitty delivery/products/service. My wife is amazing at saying “I was super disappointed” but in a way that gets the other person on board and often rectifies the issue. She’s super awesome at expressing limits without aggression and it’s definitely made me a better person to be around; before I would accept my own borders being crossed while the pressure was building and then explode with rage. Much easier to deal with things up front and then be authentic. Still learning but she’s great at this.

Back massage.

I drew Fire from Ifrit once.

Thinking before speaking. I would just sort of stream of consciousness it before. I still do sometimes, because I like the surprising things that come out of my mouth, but it's handy to be able to rein it in when nessa

My GF in college whipped out excel and did some math in the spreadsheet while we were talking about something. So I decided to learn excel and that’s been a super useful thing to know my whole life.

How to listen to a woman’s intent over her words.

Adding salt to your ketchup when eating fries, instead of salting the fries. That way it's always salty enough on every fry. Such an easy hack.