Tag: relationships

lenyberry:

noelleian:

slumberinggirl:

mahoganydesk:

rainbowloliofjustice:

samael-d-h:

amarretto-cowboy:

I’ll never forget the last in person conversation I had with with a woman I was on and off with for years because whenever there was an issue, she would just stop talking to me for months at a clip.

At one point she straight up blocked me and bragged to mutual friends about it. Friends went to me and told me to move on and that it’s her loss. Her and I didn’t talk for 2 years. In that time, I moved on to the point of getting married. Soon after I got married, she popped in to see if I was single still and lost her shit when she found out I had gotten hitched.

She tried to convince me to get a divorce and called me and idiot for getting married in the first place.

The best part… When she asked why I didn’t wait for her to “come around”. I told her she gave me no choice but to move on when she blocked me.

This was her answer: well a block is only temporary. You should have just waited for it to end then hit me up!

Yeah…. I’m so glad I didn’t.

fuck those people who play these games

People who play these games should be kneecapped

My dad nearly fell into this trap. He was engaged to a woman who would go silent for a while after an argument. Dad finally told her, “Either you’re by my side or you’re not. I’m not playing these high school games anymore. If you love me, talk to me. Otherwise, we’re done.”

He ended up marrying another woman who never played games with him and helped his better side come out.

This advise can go for anyone out there: if your SO is doing this shit, tell them to cut it out or you’re leaving. And follow through on that threat.

Get you a significant other who has good communication skills and will resolve problems together like a fucking adult

I’m a woman and I used to date a guy who did that kind of petty shit. Yeah, he turned out to be extremely abusive. Don’t date/marry any woman, or man who pulls that kind of shit. It’s not worth it.

It’s one thing if someone needs a cool-off period. But they should communicate that much – “I need to be alone / have some space for a little while, we can talk about this later but I’m too upset to have this discussion civilly right now” is not the same thing as refusing to talk to you for extended periods whenever they get mad. Everyone needs a time-out sometimes, knowing your limits and calling a break before you snap is part of the Adult Communication Skills set.

But yeah, don’t stay with someone who plays petty games.  

Source: catchymemes

prideprejudce:

prideprejudce:

here’s a hard pill to swallow: abuse does not just exclusively occur in romantic or family relationships. friends can be just as toxic to your physical and mental wellbeing as a partner or a family member. also, the aftermath of being in an abusive friendship can be just as traumatizing as any other abusive relationship. don’t boo me i’m right 

for some reason people don’t know this but toxic friends can mirror all the same behaviors as seen in an abusive romantic partner. i will use my own story of my ex-high school best friend who abused me for several years. signs of abuse include but are not limited to:

  1. Humiliating or embarrassing you – my ex-best friend LOVED to try and make me squirm in any way possible to see my reaction. once she went up to a guy and told him i had a crush on him to watch me struggle to explain myself
  2. Unreasonable jealousy – if i so much as went to hang out with any of my other friends i would have to let my ex-best friend know beforehand. i pretty much had to get her permission to see other people or she would be convinced that i was ‘ditching her forever’
  3. Refusing to communicate – if she was ever angry with me or upset she would never tell me that so we could talk about it. instead, she would ignore me or respond to all my texts with ‘k’ or ‘ya’ and i would have to struggle for hours to get her to tell me what was wrong
  4. Ignoring or excluding you – she would ignore me for weeks at a time as a ‘punishment’ knowing that it would eat me up inside wondering what i did wrong. i still remember spending nights wide awake crying in bed because i didn’t know what to do 
  5. Mean jokes or constantly making fun of you – she would constantly poke fun at my appearance and personality to where my self-confidence plummeted. god help me if i ever said anything about her though
  6. Saying things like “If you don’t _____, I will_____.” – she would constantly threaten to kill herself if i didn’t do what she wanted
  7. Guilt trips – she never apologized once to me in our seven-plus years of being friends. not once. every time we argued i would be the one who apologized in the end. once when i stood up to her and called her out on treating me like crap she would make up a story of how her life was miserable and that i was making things worse 
  8. Isolating you from friends and family – been mentioned before but she was extremely jealous of all my other relationships and would override my plans with other people on purpose and would guilt trip me if i still went to see them
  9.  Domination and control – also mentioned before but i needed her permission on everything. if i joined any group or extracurricular activity without her knowing she would be furious   
  10. Extreme moodiness – after ignoring me for weeks she would contact me out of the blue and act as if nothing happened. she would also refuse to talk about why she ignored me for so long and did not care if my mental health suffered from it

anyway, abusive friendships need to be acknowledged more because they are not only extremely common but also very damaging to someone’s mental health. i personally had to go through years of therapy to unlearn the guilt and self-hatred that my ex-friend helped instill in me. stay safe yall

Thinking about some family stuff earlier, I was reminded again of the frequent comments about appearance that just seemed normal at the time. Including, of course, about weight–but hardly limited to that.

It was pretty much impossible to get through a day around my mother without hearing unsolicited (and often frankly extremely inappropriate) çomments on your appearance and other people’s too. Besides insecurities about her own looks. My grandmother was even worse and more judgmental about it, especially around body stuff.

Besides just reflecting piss-poor boundaries, as came up in a slightly different context a while back:

At any rate, no damned wonder I was the fourth generation that I know of on that side of the family to end up with the Family OCD partly coming out through a pretty serious ED.

Less unusual type of experience than it should be, unfortunately.

Anyway, I was freshly impressed again at the contrast to living with my partner, and how glad I am not to have to listen to that all the freaking time.

Mr. C’s approach is better summed up in Jingo:

She was familiar with the syndrome. They said they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows. Except for Carrot. That was almost… almost one of the annoying things about him. She suspected he wouldn’t mind if she shaved her head or grew a beard. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t notice, he just wouldn’t mind, and for some reason that was very aggravating.

Pretty much the only comments Mr. C has ever made touching on my appearance at all in the 15 years since we got together have had more to do with my looking exhausted, overloaded, cold, and/or in a lot of pain. Very different thing, yeah.

(And he’s helped me use clippers on my head more than once. Judging by my biodad, I probably couldn’t grow a decent beard if my system did have a different hormone balance, but I doubt it would seriously bother Mr. C if I tried. My body, and if that’s what I want to do with it…)

At first, I did find it very disconcerting. Especially being so used to the constant unsolicited commentary from people close to me. (They wouldn’t even say it if they didn’t care, right? 😑)

Along with so much other healthier-boundary behavior and the lack of snarking to go along with it, I got concerned that it might be an “if you can’t say anything nice” type of thing. And how long could that last? 😓 The jerkbrain sent me into at least one ED relapse over it. But yeah, the other shoe never has dropped with that either.

I could still do with more validation sometimes, but that’s just the way he is. Looks really don’t seem nearly as important to him, and he seems to take the default approach of “of course you look fine, why wouldn’t you?”.

Not always the best combo with some carefully instilled insecurity problems which are hard to totally get past. But, that’s still so much easier to live with than constant judginess.

funereal-disease:

funereal-disease:

The other thing about age gaps is that most arguments against them rely on, and thus reify, existing prejudices.

“There must be something wrong with him if he can’t get women his own age.” Okay, let’s unpack what might be “wrong” with such a person. Maybe he doesn’t want to be a father and most women his age either want children or have them already. Maybe he prefers casual relationships and thus seeks women who aren’t ready to settle down. Maybe he has less money than other men his age, so his lifestyle meshes better with someone who’s living on a student budget. Maybe he’s involved in a hobby or subculture that skews younger. Maybe he’s developmentally disabled!

None of these things is wrong. All of them are mocked for not conforming to the “normal” trajectory of adult life. And yeah, maybe the thing that’s “wrong with him” is that he’s a tool and all the women his age are sick of his shit and know better. That does happen. But the way actual jackass behavior is so often conflated with things like “has a low-earning job” and “has stereotypically youthful hobbies” is rather telling. It’s not at all easy to divorce actual fears of predation from prejudice against adults who don’t adult “properly”. I wish we’d stop acting like bigotry never informs these things.

Also, “there’s something wrong with a person who can’t get a date” is an abhorrent appeal to the just world fallacy, and if I never hear it again it’ll be too soon.

lettyslair:

carnotaurus-sassytrei:

officialleoneabbacchio:

sorta related but i dont like that tumblr has made “unhealthy relationship” mean “one person is an abuser and the other is a victim”

unhealthy relationship means just that. a relationship that is unhealthy. whether because a party is uninterested, both parties bring out the worst in eachother, theres just no more spark, etc

just stop using “unhealthy relationship” as if its perfectly synonymous with “abusive relationship”

abusive relationships are DEFINITELY unhealthy relationships but not all unhealthy relationships are abusive, ya dig?

Important post.

Not everyone you don’t get along with is an abuser.

see also unhealthy relationships being clean cut good/bad person things, sometimes BOTH people are just being terrible to one another and they’re both at fault in varying degrees. It’s not always X person is the worst and the abuser and Y person is 100% innocent and the victim.

Sometimes it’s nobody in particular’s fault. The situation doesn’t have to be spectacularly terrible for the relationship to just not be good for one or more of the people involved.

(Also, if you’re unhappy? You don’t have to hang around waiting for some type of shitty treatment you can point at to justify wanting to get out.)

Reminded by clutter blindness (useful term!) coming up in the context of posting notes for yourself not always working.

I know I’ve vented some before about my partner’s pretty extreme version of clutter blindness, and how badly that can interact with my tendencies in the complete opposite direction there: getting easily overwhelmed by clutter. To the point that I can end up way less functional in a number of ways, including ability to try to fix the clutter situation 😦

Anyway, for a while now I had been getting more irritated at Mr. C, because his clutter generation has increased a decent bit and he has seemed to notice/care even less. To the point of leaving a bunch of just plain trash lying around where he sits in the TV room floor, so it’s in the pathway and causing more problems. (And more clutter elsewhere, but it’s been super noticeable and aggravating there.)

The way my health has been getting worse, I just haven’t had the spoons to do much about it. Though it’s been causing me extra problems, on several levels. I figured at least part of the issue was probably because I haven’t been able to do nearly as much around here, prompting him to notice more and try to pick some of the shit up too.

(Not too surprisingly, I’ve also been working through a lot of trained reluctance to even say much. Especially when I “won’t” even do the thing myself. Yeah, that OCD loop programming sucks, but it can be frustratingly hard to work around with very limited mental energy.)

Another place where better communication earlier might have helped, though. After that little talk about a week ago? A number of other things started making more sense. Including the apparently increased executive function problems and clutter blindness.

With it likely coming from depression/burnout of some type? I’m a lot less aggravated at his behavior, and more concerned.

How to try to support/encourage him in dealing with that is another matter, but yeah. Complicated by the fact that he does hesitate to talk about things, to the point that I really didn’t pick up a lot of clues there might even be a problem earlier. I feel kind of bad about that, but here we are now.

I’m still kind of shaky, but glad I went ahead and brought up something that had been bothering me for a while before Mr. C went to sleep.

On most levels, I know communication is good and can actually help avoid a bunch of problems. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy, especially with enough ingrained training to keep your mouth shut to avoid conflict. Difficult subjects really don’t make it easier. Both of us can be pretty bad about that, and for similar reasons AFAICT.

I also have some extra (carefully instilled) scrupulosity issues around the idea of Causing Problems For Other People. Including by mentioning existing ones 😳

Anyway, he didn’t act like a jerk about any of it. He was listening, and obviously did care how I felt. (Not that I really expected otherwise, but yeah. PTSD.) And I’m feeling better about what was bothering me in the first place. Which was also heavily wrapped up in some of the same scrupulosity BS, since that is apparently just the way I roll 🙄

That is indeed kinda how respectful discussions in a relationship are supposed to work. But, even after this many years? I am still pleasantly surprised on some level when they do.

The Secret to Love Is Just Kindness

ebonyheartnet:

oscar-and-endear:

“Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife—a sign of interest or support—hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.

The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either “turning toward” or “turning away” from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that.

People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t—those who turned away—would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, “Stop interrupting me, I’m reading.”

These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a six-year follow up had “turn-toward bids” 33 percent of the time. Only three in ten of their bids for emotional connection were met with intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had “turn-toward bids” 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of ten, they were meeting their partner’s emotional needs.”

…

“Kindness… glues couples together. Research independent from theirs has shown that kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage. Kindness makes each partner feel cared for, understood, and validated—feel loved. “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” says Shakespeare’s Juliet. “My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite.” That’s how kindness works too: there’s a great deal of evidence showing the more someone receives or witnesses kindness, the more they will be kind themselves, which leads to upward spirals of love and generosity in a relationship.

There are two ways to think about kindness. You can think about it as a fixed trait: either you have it or you don’t. Or you could think of kindness as a muscle. In some people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others, but it can grow stronger in everyone with exercise. Masters tend to think about kindness as a muscle. They know that they have to exercise it to keep it in shape. They know, in other words, that a good relationship requires sustained hard work.

“If your partner expresses a need,” explained Julie Gottman, “and you are tired, stressed, or distracted, then the generous spirit comes in when a partner makes a bid, and you still turn toward your partner.”

Oh.

This is beautiful, but it hurts a little.

The Secret to Love Is Just Kindness

Do you think most asexual people understand how awful it is to date a sexual person without disclosing beforehand? It makes me wonder if a lot of asexual people understand how powerful sexuality is for sexual people. Most of us don’t want relationships with people who just put up with sex. We want passionately enthusiastic sex partners. Being allowed to develop feelings for someone only to be told after the fact that sex is off the table is awful, it feels like being tricked.

aspergyneity:

geekandmisandry:

millenniumfae:

are you seriously under the impression that ace ppl dont know that others prioritize sex

why do you think we struggle with trusting our autonomy, why do you think we hesitate to date others and come out to allo partners

and no, you are not being ~tricked~. you developed feelings for an ace person that doesn’t view sex the same way you do, thats part of them as a person, the same person you had feelings for in the first place, and if you actually respected them as a person that’s not a trick. ‘being allowed to develop feelings’ are you kidding me what entitlement is this

yeah yeah passionate sex is what you want. but us ace people will stay concerned about our own safety and sexual rights before we begin to worry about your dating preferences. itd be nice if you people began meeting us in the middle 🙂

“Tricked”.

Holy shit that’s some grade A entitlement. Sure, it’s disappointing to know you’re not compatible with someone, but they didn’t trick you by not telling you something intimidate about themselves.

As an allo partner to an asexual man – the kind of perspective that this anon is claiming to speak for – all I can add is that if your feelings for an asexual person vanish the second they won’t fuck you in the exact way you want them to? If you feel “tricked” or “lied to” because their sexual feelings aren’t up to your standards, or may not be compatible with yours?

You don’t love them. Not only do you not love them, but you never did.

If it’s true love, then you will be able to talk about what to do next. If you honestly care about their sexual autonomy, then you will listen to them and take what they suggest on board and you will meet them in the middle, just like you would for any allosexual partner. You will check up with them regularly to see if things are still comfortable and okay in that area, you will respect their boundaries (and stand up for them if you see other people disrespecting them), and you will not hurt them over who they are. Discuss with them what you would like, yes, but do not force or pressure or manipulate. 

I hate that these are simple, “don’t abuse your fucking partner” statements but it apparently, sadly, bears reminding for some people.

If they don’t want to have sex with you then of course it’s up for you to decide if you still want to continue a relationship with them – you don’t have to remain in a relationship that doesn’t fulfil you or makes you unhappy. I understand the fear that it can cause – am I going over a boundary? Are they being honest about being okay with this? What if I’m hurting them and they’re just not telling me? – and if you’re not used to the idea of someone having love but no desire, then it can certainly fuel some insecurities. If you really just can’t match well with an asexual person, then fair enough…

…But that’s not actually what anon is saying here – what they’re saying is they’re not only sad that an asexual person might not want to have sex with them despite them at least believing that there’s shared romantic feelings involved (which is honestly where this “tricking” shit comes from, because creepers gonna creep apparently), but they’re sad that any sex they might have with that asexual person won’t be enthusiastic enough for their standards.

That’s the sentence here that truly, deeply disgusts me: “Most of us don’t want relationships with people who just put up with sex. We want passionately enthusiastic sex partners.” I mean yeah, I’m disgusted by all of it, but people have noted above why the “tricking” comment smacks of entitlement – I want to really emphasise this sentence here about “enthusiasm” and “putting up with sex” because it’s not just entitlement to a sexual act, it’s entitlement to a specific sexual performance.

This person doesn’t just want sex with an asexual person, they want their ace partner to fake enthusiasm and sexual passion that they might not even have – during an act that they might not even enjoy. What the actual fuck is wrong with you, anon?

As I said, I’m dating an asexual man, and having discussed it – and we’ve discussed it a lot over the years – we’ve reached the compromise in which we do have sex. He is not passionately sexual, he’s described it as being like folding laundry in terms of interest – but he makes me laugh and he makes sure I’m feeling good, and he does it because he loves me. Why in the fuck would I complain about that? If he told me tomorrow that he never wants to touch me again then I will fucking deal with it because fucking him – much less trying to convince myself that he isn’t asexual – means so much less to me than loving him does, and I have done my best to let him know that.

Fuck off back to space, you absolute cock – you do not speak for me, or anyone else; just because you don’t understand or respect asexual people doesn’t mean they have to pretend to be someone else for you.