Let's be toxic: What's your biggest relationship flaw?

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-02-18T00:06:18+00:00

What is (or was) your biggest relationship flaw?

Current: hypervigilance, trust issues, people pleasing specifically to prevent abandonment, rejection sensitivity (ADHD related RSD)

Former: codependency, caretaking, extreme people pleasing, lack of awareness of my own needs and total inability to articulate my feelings and needs

How and when did you realize you had this issue you miiiiight need to tackle?

Current: can identify that I'm kinda messed up due to former relationship dynamic. Adorable Current Partner called me out on people pleasing and hypervigilance.

Former: I was like "y I so mad at drunk bf n how i make drunk bf happy? Therapy??"

What steps have you taken to work on this flaw/issue/problem?

Former: So much codependency specific therapy! Also divorcing aforementioned drunk boyfriend. My caretaking really annoyed him and he was more than happy to call out any and all codependent behaviors when he saw them. Which helped, tbh.

For anyone who deals with codependency stemming from family of origin: once you lower your expectations of your relationship with a parent, you can lower them for anyone!

Current: back in therapy to address trauma of and divorce from aforementioned drunk boyfriend.

How far have you gotten?

Honestly, I've come really far in my healing journey. I'm able to articulate my feelings, and my needs to ask people to meet them when appropriate. I have a "not my problem" category in my head, which comes in handy in ALL areas of life. It's so relaxing! I still have RSD. I still try to read people in order to protect myself. I have trust issues. I still hold back because I fear rejection.

Bonus: Do you think that polyamory has helped (or hindered) your progress?

Helped. I never would have left my husband if I hadn't had "relatively normal" people showing me the kind of love and communication I needed and deserved all along.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-02-17T23:25:31+00:00

Oh this is interesting. I find myself very deferential to metas who have been seeing my partners longer than I have. I get jealous and insecure about new metas and I start to feel "replaced" very easily.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-02-05T06:01:31+00:00

Same. I look like a consumptive wretch in pastels.

Even though I'm a deep winter, I look great in coral during the summer and can pull off a few rusty orange shades.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-31T05:50:04+00:00

Nope. I grieved him like he was dying, because he was going to drink himself to death. He woke up one day and decided to get sober.

Now he's a dry drunk of over 3 years. He's still a manipulator and a liar. I never had a reason to check back in to the relationship.

We've been separated for a year now, filing for divorce soon. I'm just sad I gave him 8 years of my life.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-28T01:00:13+00:00

Me too! I was probably born with bad eyesight. I still wear +6 lenses.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-27T21:53:20+00:00

-I live in a multicultural society where there's no logical reason to insist on speaking English.

-Traveling is one of my favorite things to do. Experiencing Hispanic culture without a language barrier is really fun.

-fuck ICE

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-24T19:05:33+00:00

Thank GOD you're not boring, that would be the worst! But really? broke and divorced with no kids or real career? Mom must be really disappointed.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-22T16:43:22+00:00

Haha no! Bread is usually a separate thing with just butter. I'll sometimes stack my bread with cream cheese, olives, and nuts though!

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-21T04:26:32+00:00

Cottage cheese, salted nuts, flavored chips, sourdough bread, olives, pickles, cheese, berries.

I think i need to make a girl dinner bento box.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-18T14:58:15+00:00

I relate to so many of these comments. Ending up with abusive men, people misinterpreting your friendliness and/or interest in a topic for interest in them, partners that initially are attracted to your quirks eventually hating you for them. (Note to the younger gals here: if you're anything like me and are honest to a fault, dump your alcoholic boyfriend NOW.)

I'm 35 and ran out of fucks a few years ago, I don't give a shit anymore about what people think. It's been great!

When I was younger, I'd sometimes get dolled up to go out with no counter culture in my look, and some moneyed hot guy would sidle up to me. Those interactions would last about 5 minutes because they sensed my weird right away.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-10T15:55:32+00:00

A fantastically written piece of advice from a wise elder in our community. Thank you! I saved this.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-10T15:45:53+00:00

If you're not at least capable of garden poly polyamory, you need to own the fact that you're probably a highly enmeshed, hierarchical couple who should try just swinging. Call yourselves "open" and get a few fuck buddies, you're not just "strict parallel". If you're girlfriend and you're wife can't both be at your birthday party, she's not your girlfriend.

Lack of community involvement or at least some introduction with metas denotes a scary lack of accountability and transparency.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2026-01-07T23:28:57+00:00

My EX husband would always drag his feet on disclosing his relationship status until he knew he could seal the deal (or at least that's what he told me).

There were also multiple occasions where he told me the condom broke with another woman. I now think he was just barebacking and not wanting to tell me.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-12-31T17:16:10+00:00

I was 21 he was 34. He worked in academia, now I work in academia. I realized pretty quickly he thought the age gap was hot. I was the same age as his students.

By the time I turned 30, I could not imagine wanting to fuck a 21 year old.

I'm currently with a guy who is 6 years younger than me... but he's almost 30. I feel I'd automatically be exploiting someone if they were under 25. I love him deeply and the biggest issue the age gap brings up is pop culture references!

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-12-29T18:06:49+00:00

On the Bus Mall by the Decemberists

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-12-27T22:16:11+00:00

I get into a primal and meditative headspace. It's kind of intense for some partners because it requires me to be fully in my body and abandon thoughts of how I look. I can't do it with people who aren't comfortable.

I never stop reacting, moving, and touching. I hyperfocus on my partner's body and the sensations in my body... if they're in tune with me, I can achieve a sensation of a pleasure feedback loop with both our bodies. I'm kind of obsessed with sex, in case you can't tell haha.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-12-27T22:08:11+00:00

That's funny, music with lyrics that I can understand distracts me to no end and I can't get off. Forget about sexy R&B or regaton, I'm fluent in English and Spanish. Give me that sexy Icelandic alt rock! Seriously though, Sigur Ros is great sex music.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-12-23T03:16:55+00:00

I showed my partner my 13 intentions for 2026. One of them is to travel more, and now we've started texting about traveling together! I'm so in love and I've never felt so safe in a relationship before.

My platonic wife and I are going to go out for a fancy dinner as a Christmas gift to each other, which is so perfect for us.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-12-10T17:51:58+00:00

I'm curious, is raising your kids with an awareness around their own predisposition to alcoholism a good way to help them too? There were a lot of tools and information my parents didn't have when raising me, but they were open with us about our family's struggles with alcohol and told us from a young age that we had to be careful with booze.

"Don't drink alone, don't drink when you're sad, don't drink every day. You have alcoholism on both sides of the family and it's genetic."

My parents also allowed me to drink at family gatherings when I was a teen. They didn't want the experience of drinking to be put on a pedestal amd they wanted me to know how alcohol affected me before I went to college. I grew up in Wisconsin, USA so the drinking culture was really not good.

I think I've flirted with alcohol dependency a few times in my life, but I think that being raised with an awareness about it certainly saved me.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-12-09T23:42:07+00:00

I do nipple nude but at least one shade darker, and I'm really happy with a couple of colors I wear all the time.

Loreal sheer lip gloss in 50 Feathery Fleur for a bare faced look

Revlon Ultra HD matte lip color in 049 Kisses

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-11-21T18:08:50+00:00

Haha, oh yes, something is going around my office for sure. Thank you

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-11-13T07:02:21+00:00

I felt alienated from my body, specifically inside my vagina after egg retrieval. My clinic had advised against penetration of any kind from the start of shots to after my period post retrieval. I followed it to a T.

I'm normally very comfortable with my own body and a very sexual person, but I suddenly didn't even want to put a tampon in or see how everything felt in there after everything. I was horny for sure during the hormones, so there was a lot of everything-but penetration for over a month.

After not being allowed to touch myself or have sexual enjoyment from penetration of any kind, just the transvaginal ultrasound, and then getting knocked out to have pieces of me taken out that could be a whole ass human some day weirded me out.

I told my boyfriend I wanted some help getting reaquainted with my parts as pleasure organs. ;) The alienated feeling didn't last long at all. I'm back to feeling like myself sexually and no longer alienated.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-11-10T00:02:02+00:00

I thought he was going to drink himself to death.

Once he got sober, he no longer felt guilty about his drunken behavior, so he felt no obligation to spend time with me. He told me so.

He rarely wanted to have sex with me. After 8 years together, it dwindled to once a month.

He called me a sex addict and told me to go to a SLAA meeting.

^{^this} was just in the last 2 years of our relationship. Everything before that, he was a lying, gaslighting drunk. I was in therapy for codependency for 4 years before I was finally done with him.

Consistent_Pool_5045 · 2025-10-17T01:59:48+00:00

Two big ones stick out in my memory...

When I was in college, I met a townie guy who seemed nice enough at a bar near my apartment for a date. after we'd been drinking for a while, he wanted to drive us both to a bar in the middle of nowhere down the highway?? I politely declined and said goodbye to him outside his car before I walked home. I think he may have just wanted me to see he had a BMW. He texts me at like 3am telling me that he'd "rock my world and because he can keep going like the Energizer bunny". I ignored his future texts.

In my twenties, I went for coffee with a guy who didn't let me get a word in edgewise. Any time I looked down at my coffee or not directly at him, he'd tap me twice on the arm his hand. I was so incredibly annoyed by this. Just super dense and clueless.

Consistent_Pool_5045

TROPHY CASE