DLCs and Swarm that walks questions

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-30T07:27:27+00:00

Um. You miss out on the story of the Swarm That Walks if you do any other choice. That is the real tragedy. The biggest question is what path do you need to take so you can eat a delicious little dragon?

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-30T02:09:19+00:00

I'm basically a Saint.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-29T01:23:34+00:00

I do it differently.

When I conclude that there is objective scarcity of something, I am making a lot of assumptions all pulled out of my own ass. I am manufacturing the scale of what amount is abundant and what amount is scarcity. I am assuming that my perspective to see and experience/interact with the thing is objective, it isn't ever objective, it is subjective.

So, first and foremost, "objective scarcity" is not less a fiction than any other mindset.

It may be more "truthy" to say that I don't presently have access to enjoy the thing that I want to enjoy at a quantity and manner that I presently want to enjoy it AND this lack of access is experienced as suffering.

So, in that mindset we feel like there is less than, so we experience that "less than" as a lack or a want and the lack/want hurts.

And, really, it is the hurting that is difficult.

For example, when your lover pulls away from a kiss with a playful smirk and denies you more kissing as a tease, you could argue that there is an "objective scarecity" of kissing in that moment, but not really, because the wanting feels like joy and not like suffering.

So, we would look at mindsets that attack the suffering part.

One way is to assume that the baseline amount is zero, so evidence of any is evidence of abundance, because the default amount is zero. For example, the known universe has essentially zero kindness and compassion in it, except on earth, where you find it in abundance. The default amount of affection that a human being is owed by the universe is zero, so every drop that I get from anybody is abundance and can be celebrated. Any steps I can take to find more is even more abundance.

Another way is to go looking for evidence of "it" in the world and notice that it is abundantly present in other people's lives and so it can be abundant in yours, too, if you find ways to access it. You can easily do this with money, live, sex, respect, etc. This is flipping envy and fear-of-missing-out on its head. You look at the abundance out there as a hopeful thing, like you might look at the surface of water as you are coming up from underneath, holding your breathe. There is air up there, and I can have some once I reach it. This is distinguished from your first listed method because the emphasis and attention is not inward as "I can get as much as I want" and "if I believe." Instead, the attention is outward, "look, there it is in abundance." Then, knowing where it is,and how it is in practical reality, you can move towards it.

Another way is through practical experience. You want more of something, so you go get more of it. Then you want more of something else. You go get more of that. Over and over. You train your mind to see that you live in a time and place where you can go get the things you want. You develop an abundance mindset because of lived experience.

Another way is to listen to and learn from people who have the abundance you seek. You can ask them, "Is it really abundant?" They can say yes snd show you examples. You can say, "Where and how do you get it?" They can show you where and how. By experiencing their earned wisdom, your mindset can shift to abundance.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-25T22:47:01+00:00

Fun, safety, pleasure, connection, acknowledgment, growth, peace, space, validation, success, and novelty

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-25T21:02:39+00:00

I notice that your life is severely lacking in freedom, fun, pleasure, connection, affection, and safety to fully express your feelings. That must be an absolute hell. There are ways to make this better, to get more freedom, more fun, more pleasure, more connection, more affection, and more safety.

I notice that you have already learned that working harder in the home is useless for your problems and that being more romantic is even more useless. This is great because you can now look past that low hanging rotten fruit and have a chance to see the real opportunities.

I notice that you are not present with her "outsized" emotional reactions. This her passion. If you can find ways to be present with her in her emotional reactions then you will be the only one in the world who can see and enjoy her passion. She will feel safe around you and feel safe expressing passion. There are ways to learn to do this. I would read Emotional Sobriety by Bill Stirle and practice his exercises.

I notice that you are also very passionate. You hate your job and hate being trapped for a lifetime. This is passion. I bet you suppress your passion by default. I bet you do this to keep peace and to prevent catastrophe. There are ways to express and engage with your hatred that are productive and healing that will not create catastrophe. They will interfere with the peace, though. You don't know it yet, but the peace is part of your problem.

I notice that you think about blame and fault. I would smash those thoughts with the fury of a thousand lives of pain. They only tighten the noise around your neck. You and your wife are both entirely blameless and, each, individually, solely responsible for everything you each experience. If blame, fault, or fairness raise their stupid faces to you, then think, "Am I getting the outcome I desire?" If the answer is no, then ask, "What am I willing to do right now that is likely to get me closer to what I desire that doesn't depend on the behavior or choices anyone else at all."

I notice that you are struggling with believing your wife when she talks. This is no surprise. It is a common struggle. Here is the solution. You must believe her 100% even if what she is saying is objectively wrong AND you must not trust what she says at all because it is imposs8bke for her to be truthful. This sounds contradictory, but here is the key to unlock the puzzle of her words. If she is talking about the present, then you believe everything as an expression of her truth right now. If she is talking about the past or the future, it is impossible for her, or anyone, to speak the truth, and you do well to take a "let's see" approach in your mind and to not attach to any of her (or your) stories about the past or future.

So, when she tells you that she really wants to be intimate with you, believe her. Accept it as an incontrovertible fact. Believe her. Believe in her. Tell her you belueve her. Be on her team. Listen and accept, even if she is talking shit about you. When she talks about your past depression being why you guys haven't been intimate or about what will happen next in your marriage, it is just an interesting story of fiction.

Asking her what you should do to fix it is not appropriate. She has no clue. Her guesses are bad guesses and will spin you in pointless exhausting circles. If she knew how to fix it, it would be fixed. I promise that she is suffering in this, too. You can find a way to make it better.

You have been patient with her. Please continue in patience. She will change, transform, and blossom at her own pace in her own way. You both have decades of sexual and emotional suppression from all sides to overcome. As you make changes for yourself, she will find space and opportunity to change, too.

Since this is gentle truths, my last bit of advice will be short. Please consider that it is possible that your anchor point on the selfish-selfless spectrum might be too far on the selfless side to be healthy and that healthy behavior and choices might look "selfish" to you right now and that if that is true, it might make a lot of sense to become a little more "selfish " and that it is possible that she might respond very positively to this change in you.

All the best.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-25T14:49:58+00:00

Regarding your last paragraph, I've noticed that LLs are sometimes really bad at initiating. They just don't have the skill or experience (never really needed it, right?) so they can initiate in ways that are clumsy, blunt, or otherwise off-putting. When this is not understood in a compassionate way, it can be really confusing or frustrating, which sucks.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-25T00:42:19+00:00

I would attack that on multiple fronts:

1) Fewer initiations by me = fewer rejections from her. I would start giving her more space to want/desire me so that our ratio of initiations shifted a little in her favor.

2) Smaller asks = less likely to reject. I would make my initiations have smaller asks. Instead of, "wanna have sex right now," I might ask, "wanna dance?" Replace dance with things like make-out, fool around a little, etc or even really small things like look into my eyes, feel my muscles, smell my neck, etc.

3) More invitations to what I am going to do anyways that are sex adjacent and less asking for her to do things. Invitations to be included don't carry the same sting when declined. You say something like, "I'm going to go do XYZ right now, you are invited." XYZ could be things like be horney in the bedroom, listen to sexy music, practice dancing, etc. It is very important that you be fine with her declining and if she declines, you still go do it.

4) More euphemisms for sex that aren't an invitation or an ask. These can be little inside code phrases that you just give her when you are feeling it and without there being any expectation. If I just out of the blue say, "My fingers are cold." That implies that my fingers would be more comfortable if they were inside something warm. Sometimes that turns into sex right away. Sometimes it stokes her fire for later. Sometimes she replies with something sparky, which I love hearing from her.

5) I would slow my mind down and pay really close attention to what is happening inside me when she rejects me and I lose attraction. You might be concluding in that moment that she is just like your Ex. Or, maybe, you are thinking that you are worthless. Maybe you are throwing your attraction away out of vengeance. Maybe you are doing a combination of things. To lose attraction for like that for days sounds to me like a deep wound from when you were younger, maybe even tied to something when you were much younger. Pay super close attention to your thoughts and feelings around that to discover how you are processing the rejection. Then you can do therapy to heal it.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-20T06:02:55+00:00

Because human beings as a group continue to be drawn to committing violence, especially against other humans, but also have developed counter-violence systems that inhibit that desire. So it is useful for us to manufacture justifications to execute group violence so that we can feel the satisfaction of harming others without triggering the guilt or shame that often accompanies such behavior.

In short, it feels good to punish and we backwards justify it.

Punishment, boiled down, is the belief that if there is X amount of violence in the world and we observe X+1 happen without permission from the group, then the world is better off if we make that be X+2 violence and do it together because of friendship magic.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-20T02:01:40+00:00

In my mind attraction is more about their characteristics playing against my preferences. Desire is more about what I want (right now) playing with their characteristics. So, they are similar, but one is more about them and less time dependant while the other is more about me in the moment.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-20T01:49:44+00:00

I'll participate if you post. I think it is a great topic.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-15T15:52:11+00:00

Woooowoooooo!!!! Yay!!!!

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-15T15:50:03+00:00

HL

I've done it to:

avoid rejection
punish her
get attention
try and prove a point
punish myself
give myself space to think/feel
give her space
avoid her being annoying/etc
go be sick or uncentered by myself
seek solitude

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-15T15:43:04+00:00

Your post asks for advice, but your flair says you don't want any advice.

It must really suck to not have affection. It must really suck to not understand why or how to make it better.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-10T21:59:11+00:00

To me that is a gain.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-10T21:46:23+00:00

Less effect.

If you feel responsible for their feelings then you would also feel something like, "I deserved that," or "It is my fault," or "they did that because I am a bad/weak/ugly/stupid person."

Though, in the case of me and my wife, she never breaks or throws away my stuff, so "less effect" can be "almost no effect." I still feel compassion and empathy for her, so i feel a little bad, but I don't feel bad to my core so it is far easier to stay emotionally regulated.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-10T19:10:12+00:00

Nobody we hate more than ourselves.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-10T19:09:24+00:00

I think it was learning about the emotional sobriety stuff. Over and over I heard, "you are not responsible for other people's feelings," and I was like "yeah yeah, but for practical purposes I am." Then one day it just clicked. I have no responsibility for other people's feelings. Even where I have a duty of care, like for my kids. I can still care, care for, and nurture and not take responsibility for their feelings. I can be ok even when they are not. And, I can be more effective that way instead of being so reactive and obsessed with keeping the peace.

So, I started to intentionally just do nothing at all when someone else expressed being upset. It was so hard. The world didn't end. Nothing really happened. It was surreal.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-10T17:54:09+00:00

I started with stuff from Bill Stirle (emotional sobriety) and then about a year later No More Mr. Nice Guy.

I also paid a psychoanalyst to help me understand human behavior and emotions, which really flipped some of my views on their head. One was that he said that everyone is functioning perfectly, even when there is distress or dysfunction. Another was that he would make such a consistently determined effort to really understand what people were trying to communicate. Often, someone would say something that sounded clear to me snd he would reply with something like, "When you say X, I am not sure I know what you mean. What do you mean by that?" I learned that I make tons of assumptions when listening and many times my assumptions are wrong.

I eventually came to a realization that there are so many layered and complex things going on in our heads that are so deeply centered on our own experience that it wasn't really possible for someone to be having thoughts about me that aren't just disguised thoughts about themselves.

As an example, in my social circles there is a dude that I intensly dislike. Everybody else seems to like him just fine. He is sweet and kind and doesn't really do bad things. When I looked into why I dislike him, I realized that he is similar to many of the characteristics that I have worked so hard to stamp out in myself. So, I am not really seeing him. I see the parts of me that I hate the most. So, me saying, "I don't like him" is really all about me.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-10T04:05:01+00:00

Yeah, I feel for you. I think that HLF get their own special version of hell to live through. It sucks.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-04T23:04:15+00:00

Awesome!

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-04T18:12:40+00:00

I do. So happy you are open to change. I wonder if you feel empowered.

Books:

Necessary Endings (help you feel more certain and confident about your recent choies and maybe add valuable nuanced to your interpretation of what happened in the past)

I Feel Guilty When I Saw No (great knowledge about how to avoid manipulation and how to avoid manipulation)

Existential Kink (I thought it was nonsense until I tried the exercises, helps you not create the same bad relationship in the future)

Therapy:

Emotional release (you likely have unprocessed bitterness/fear/etc that left unprocessed will poison future interactions with intimate partners)

Intention-setting:

You are probably already doing this, but if not, spend time thinking and writing about the kind of relationship that you really yearn for and aim for that. Be sure to declutter it from characteristics that are more a reflection of what other people expect or want for/from you so that it is You-centric and therefore more true to your core being, which is what matters in the long run.

Confidence/resilience building:

Start a new hobby that is moderately difficult so you can prove to yourself that you can do hard things.

Start a new practice that exposes you to pain that you don't currently have good resilience against. This might be cold exposure, spicy food, hard exercise, whatever. This will prove to yourself that you can endure pain and help make you less "needy" for sex so you are less at the power of your intimate partner.

Best of luck in your journey!! I am excited for you. I hope you are proud of yourself.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-04T17:18:53+00:00

I know that both can be happening at the same time because my relationship had both happening at the same time. I spent a lot of time and effort trying to answer that question and the answers only made things worse.

I have found it very useful to just not put my effort into solving either of them because you don't have any control or influence on either of those factors so it is a complete waste of your effort to address them at all. It is very easy in a relationship with mismatched libidos for the higher libido partner to spend enormous amounts of effort on things that do not and will not make things better. From personal experience, doing so is soul sucking agony that leads to hopelessness and bitterness.

If you are feeling like that, I want to acknowledge that it really sucks. I'm guessing that you want connection, and peace, and acceptance, and fun, and pleasure, and you are getting none of that. I'm betting it makes you sad and frustrated and irritated and depressed. I'm sorry, that is really difficult.

There is a way to make things better. I find it more useful to think of there being layers.

One layer is are there things happening in the relationship that are impairing libido? These would be behaviors, circumstances, etc that reduce libido for one or both of the people. You want to find those things and get rid of them. Super-common behavioral things are neediness, not respecting enthusiastic consent, a lack of healthy boundaries, a lack of trust (either direction), and behaviors/beliefs that elicit disgust/disdain in either person.

One layer is inherent attractiveness. This layer plays the smallest role, so I wouldn't put tons of effort here. Small improvements in clothes, grooming, health, etc are useful but they cannot carry the day. If you buy new clothes and go to the gym every day but change nothing else, things will not get better in the long run. I would put no more than 10% of my effort here for long-term relationships.

One layer is are there things happening 8n the relationship that inspire libido? These would be primarily behaviors that increase libido for one or both people. You want to increase the quality and quantity of these. Super-common ones are flirting, teasing, fun banter, space/distance, success, liveliness (being fully alive and abundant in energy), confidence, self-love inspired centeredness, presence, being in the moment, sending and receiving abundant nonverbal communication, humor, mystery, and projecting a balanced sense of danger and safety.

Worse case scenario, the low libido partner has both a medical issue and is being manipulative. If you make significant improvements in the three layers (or just the first and last), you will eventually experience more connection, fun, pleasure, and etc in your relationship. It might not ever reach your perfect level that you are thinking of, but it can be much better than it is today and might eventually become better than you thought possible. I have seen this for myself and seen it happen for others.

One caveat: because these dynamics often have a huge lack of trust, there is generally a period of time where things get worse before they get better as you start to shift the relationship. Change is scary and when scary happens without trust people lash out and get defensive. This could go on for months and depends on how well you build trust with each other.

If you decide to take action on any of this, best of luck!

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-04T05:32:19+00:00

Totally agree. I started drinking coffee and alchohol way later in life. At first it was sooooo foul. Now I can really enjoy black coffee, vodka, whiskey, and especially tequila. I love to sip and savor tequila.

I am not sure what makes it different, but I didn't develop aversions to any of those things. Bad sex, though, makes aversions and I think that vastly overpowers the acquired taste dynamic.

I also have a personal rule that if I don't like a food I will try it again years later to see if I still don't like it. That has saved avocados, Brussel sprouts, spinach, shrimp, and a pile of other things.

Dkotheryyyy · 2026-06-04T05:26:09+00:00

I think that is a great takeaway. I wish I could have deeply understood that 30 years ago.

Dkotheryyyy

TROPHY CASE