There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
But it's probably like any addiction. He's addicted to the progress he's making and doesn't feel the same about anything else in his life. He needs a reason to stop digging the tunnel.
> There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it.
It doesn't sound so bad. I mean, it's gotta be healthier than so called idle games, and about as useful. Or similar to lifting weights or jogging or something. It makes him feel good, that's all the justification any non-harmful activity should need.
> In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it.
That makes it more concerning, not less. A quirky hobby stops being quirky when it starts filling a psychological need. Fast forward three months and dude might not want to ever leave his tunnel. Why would he? He feels calm and safe there.
If it's concerning to you to fill a need with a hobby, then you're probably going to be concerned about most people. What would you say are healthy reasons to engage in a hobby, if there are any?
I’d say any of the top three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. A hobby that helps you achieve feelings of self-actualization, esteem, and belonging is great.
Things get hairy at that second level. If you feel psychologically unsafe in your day-to-day life, there’s something wrong - either with your environment or the way you perceive it - that a tunnel can’t fix.
Tunneling isn't the problem. This isn't a tunneling story. It would be similar if the tunnel were a ski mountain, an office or a drug den.
This is a story of escalating isolation. He's isolating from society, from people who care about him and whom, we presume, he cares about. (Or maybe not. Maybe he gets along fine at work and at church, and is simply uninterested in his SO.)
I'd say this is about his girlfriend not liking that he's isolating from society. (Which, of course, is a perfectly valid preference of hers.) There's lots wrong with society; the choice to mostly disconnect from it is a reasonable one for many people.
He shouldn't stop digging his tunnel but it sounds like he should spend less time on it if he wants to keep a healthy relationship with his girlfriend. That would be true no matter what his hobby was.
Why are you jumping to judge her? Is totally reasonable for someone in a relationship to want to spend time with their partner, and be upset if they literally never get to. What's even the point of a relationship if there's no companionship?
Agreed, but once he unleashes the Balrog it will be a bit too late. Then the area will be a Superfund site for generations until some grey guy shows up with a stick & an attitude.
At summer camp we had joke activities like "sand a log to nothing" and "dig a hole to China". Kids would sign up for these activities and actually sand down the log and dig the pointless hole for hours. Just as popular as playing soccer, swimming, etc. I agree this tunnel boyfriend may be on to something
Two main characters were meeting after-school to dig a tunnel, although their motivation was a little bit deeper (sorry, I couldn't help myself) than just digging itself.
There's a direct payoff for working 8 hours a day. We really don't know enough about this person's motivations to judge the health of his actions one way or another, but speculating a mental health angle isn't unreasonable. And yes, I'd say the same thing if someone cutoff all social contact and most time with their partner over a more mainstream hobby as well. MH issues aren't a given, but they're certainly on the table unless we learn more about this.
The “direct” payoff is an abstraction. Follow the code. It’s so you get money to pay for food, shelter and piece of mind, possibly status. Somewhere further up Mazlow’s hierarchy is enjoyment.
Regardless, I consider anyone operating in humanity to be mentally ill in general. It’s just, how much of your mental illness impacts the rest of us, and how much of it is abstracted away so we can quickly label it harmless (mostly to the rest of us).
Digging a tunnel the closest shit to “ain’t bothering me” as it’s going to get.
Now, if your nonsense pushes you to monopolize industries and abuse labor for profit, yeah, now your mental illness is on blast.
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Few would consider that the GF is mentally ill, so obsessed with how it would look to others, so obsessed with how it’s non conforming.
"Ain't bothering me" as an attitude applies if you don't have an attachment to the person. In this case, the partner is actually bothered by it. They don't have a right to force a halt but concerns about major behavioral changes are reasonable for a loved one to have in this situation. "Ain't bothering me" also only applies if you disregard the potential damage to local underground infrastructure, other people's property, hitting a gas line and cause a major issue, etc.
If they're in a rural area where those aren't potential issues and the boyfriend doesn't want to change, then the partner simply has to decide if they can live with the new situation. I think we'd agree on that.
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I'm confused on your comments about reading into the partner's mental health. I see no indication in their post saying they're concerned about how it looks to others. As for non-conforming, they seem to be somewhat accepting, stating that they haven't made it a big issue before because the boyfriend seems relatively happy. They specifically say, "My biggest concern is his safety". That seems reasonable. Major behavioral changes on the other hand would be a bigger warning sign. (while acknowledging that a red flag doesn't mean there's an actual issue)
EDIT: From an update [1] here's why the boyfriend says he does it: "It’s just pleasant. When I’m down there, I feel safe and calm, and I’m always happier when I leave than when I went in"
I suppose there are worse coping mechanisms than that.
> There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
True enough[1], but "aggravating a clear conflict with ones partner" clearly qualifies. Obviously we have only one side of the story here, but it's not so much "digging the tunnel" that is at issue here. It's "digging the tunnel and failing to sufficiently explain the hobby to your increasingly concerned girlfriend" that carries this into the realm of nutjobbery. It's one thing to be "I know it's weird, but <my obscure hobby> makes me happy and I promise it won't impact our relationship" and quite another to front with "I'm digging the tunnel. Leave me alone."
The implicit questions being asked by the poster here are ones our amateur miner should have answered long ago, basically.
[1] And for the record: I have a hard time believing that an amateur tunnel through sediment in an otherwise typical geological area is all that dangerous, the guy isn't chasing veins through bedrock or tapping sinkholes here.
It’s likely more dangerous thank bedrock tunneling frankly. Loosely consolidated sedimentary soil can easily shift and slide with relatively little outside input. A truck driving by, a rain, sprinklers, even someone walking over it.
And it only takes a small amount of dirt covering someone to crush them or suffocate them to death. Literally less than a foot depending on distribution.
Construction crews have to shore up anything higher than waist high for this reason.
A guy on our street died digging out for sewer, only ~2m deep - a side he had stacked dirt on caved in/slided and covered him. He left a wife and 2 kids. No tunnel, just unsafely stacked dirt mound.
Thank you. My partner is an architect, and while they aren’t a structural engineer, they had enough structures training in grad school to know that hobby tunnel digging is extremely dangerous. There are clearly alternative physical activities that would have all the same benefits with none of the downsides.
There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.
But it's probably like any addiction. He's addicted to the progress he's making and doesn't feel the same about anything else in his life. He needs a reason to stop digging the tunnel.