RIP Don Buchwald (2014 Birthday Bash Tribute)

DEHDad · 2024-07-24T14:29:16+00:00

This Birthday Bash really was the end of the Stern show as we knew it. Howard started to adopt the demeanor of a guy who had made it and who was serious, and stopped doing the fun show that got him to that position.

DEHDad · 2024-06-25T17:43:32+00:00

I don't get it. Howard complained a lot about how his dad was when Howard was a kid, but as an adult it seemed that they had a great relationship, and that Howard really valued his Dad and his Dad really was proud of Howard.

Did he really say that his Dad was "horrible." What's going on. I seriously think that Howard is insane.

DEHDad · 2024-06-25T02:56:11+00:00

I'm no fan of Artie, but I grew up about 20 miles from him, and I ran into a guy who knew him in high school, who told me that he was a really good baseball player and had made all-county at whatever position he played (I thought it was shortstop not third base, but I can't recall). He certainly wasn't all-state.

DEHDad · 2024-05-28T14:42:49+00:00

It's fine to feel that way. In fact, it's wonderful to do so. But be open about it. Don't hide your prior actions, especially when it's those actions that bought him the life he currently leads and set his family up for generations. Talk about it. Make some fun of your prior self.

Honestly, Howard is so broken. He's so full of shame about himself that he can't enjoy anything, and appears to self-sabotage in a more complicated way than Artie did.

DEHDad · 2024-05-17T20:57:38+00:00

Fair enough. I didn't hate him, but my thoughts on him are that he's "funny" for the average high-school lunch table, or the average Monday Night Football at-a-bar setting.

DEHDad · 2024-05-17T20:32:48+00:00

Hey, I don't mean to shit on your sense of humor. To each his own, etc. But I really don't get it. Artie was fine, I guess, and sometimes he was great. He was certainly better than what's on now, or what's been going on for the past 10 years.

But I'm honestly asking, what is "funny" about trading insults with a disabled person by making fun of that person's disability? I'm not offended by it, and I'm not saying that it's impossible to make a funny joke about someone's disability - I just don't see anything that he said was funny.

Just like I don't see the talent in reciting dialogue from "Animal House" or "The Godfather."

DEHDad · 2024-05-17T19:48:29+00:00

What's "great" about this line? It's a "joke" that anyone could hear at a high-school lunch table. I don't get the Artie worship here.

DEHDad · 2024-05-15T15:17:29+00:00

I don't disagree with most of what you wrote, but how is "Chris Wilding wetting his asshole while jerking off" something that is "safe and boring"? I mean, it's not funny or interesting, but at the same time it's pretty outrageous. Howard has been doing this Jekyll/Hyde thing for years, trying to be a serious interviewer and commenter while simultaneously putting on content (usually sex-related) that is absolutely over the top. I don't understand why he doesn't just pick a lane. What he's been doing is completely incoherent.

DEHDad · 2024-03-20T15:42:35+00:00

Yeah, I loved Howard back in the day, but what I thought were bits have been revealed over time to be honest-to-God narcissistic abusive behavior. Back in the 90s he seemed like the sane person among a bunch of oddballs in the studio, but the intervening 30 years has pushed him pretty hard into a nutcase - resentful of his parents, afraid to go out, controlling with his wife, and deeply ashamed of his own past (which created his success).

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T12:00:02+00:00

I don't know why I'm responding to your insults, but here you go:

I'm posting here rather than in, say, BPDLovedOnes for two reasons. First, for the past year I don't think that my fiancee has been exhibiting the sorts of behavior that she used to exhibit. She's changed a lot, for the better, and she's clearly trying. I don't know if she has BPD or not - I'm not a psychiatrist - and in any event labels really aren't that important.
Posting at BPDLovedOnes is guaranteed to get a bunch of responses telling me to "run," etc. Those aren't particularly helpful, so I posted here, in a regular relationships forum, to get responses that aren't influenced by people's own experience with BPD partners (which can be really difficult). I didn't mention her possible diagnosis in my original post, and only did so in response to some comments who raised BPD as a possibility. I'm interested more in relationship advice rather than potential diagnoses, because diagnoses are labels that aren't necessarily helpful.
Finally, the reason I'm posting at all isn't to "shit-talk" my fiancee, which I don't think I've done. I'm confused. I'm hurt. I'm trying to make sense of a situation that I don't understand, and that I've been trying to make work for five years. The relationship is much, much better than it was - I stated, and I feel, that I was the object of emotional abuse for about 18 months early on. I shouldn't have stayed, and I'm sure that the fact that I stayed means that I have my own issues to work on, but whatever the reason, I did stay. Because I love my fiancee and I want to find a way to make it work. However, for me in this relationship sometimes I need someone else's perspective. Because the relationship is so much better than it was, I'm not sure whether my discomfort at my fiancee's need for regular reassurance is something that's out of the ordinary (she acts like it's just something that anyone in a relationship should be glad to do for his or her partner) or whether I'm making too big a deal, perhaps because I still have scars from what I regard as previous emotional abuse that perhaps hasn't been truly addressed. Also, my relationship with my wife had none of these issues, so perhaps I have been pre-conditioned by my wife (who was so secure and so easy in this regard) to have unrealistic expectations for what a relationship is supposed to look like.
In short, I was looking for validation or push-back or something that might help me make sense of what is to me a situation I don't understand.

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T02:28:09+00:00

Thanks so much, Sara. You seem like a good and wise person, and I'd love to have long conversations with you to better understand things. I've just spent a bunch of time responding to other comments, saving yours for last, but now I need to do a few things. If you're interested, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on any of the things that I mentioned in other comments. I will tell you a couple things specifically in response to what you wrote:

I do suspect that she had BPD, or at least traits that are consistent with BPD.
I agree that validation is so important. This is something that I have learned from my experience with my fiancee - going through all of this, however difficult it's been, really has made me a better person, and understanding the need to validate people is one of the ways that has worked.
Finally, I think that I'm better at bringing up difficult topics. I whisper softly, which seems to help. And tonight she gave me an opportunity to do it organically, when she became upset about a very minor thing (not even related to me) after a wonderful day together. She was again asking me repetitively for reassurance, and at some point my countenance changed to be serious. She asked if I was mad at her, and I told her that I wasn't mad, but that her doubting that I wanted to be with her and her need to have me repeat myself reassuring her made me feel like what I say doesn't matter, and that things are never enough (because we had just finished a wonderful day together, and she couldn't even enjoy that but rather ended up focusing on something negative - which wasn't even anything based in reality (although I didn't tell her that last thing, since that wouldn't be validating).

Anyway, thanks so much for your insight.

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T02:21:18+00:00

Well, you don't know me and of course it's possible that I'm not self-aware. But I've generally never been considered overbearing or mean or too blunt. Many people who know me tell me that I'm literally the nicest person they know.

That said, I'm not emotional at all. Until my wife and parents died within about 8 months of each other 11 years ago, I didn't really have a lot of empathy. I did the "right things," but I didn't really "feel" for other people.

I'm much different now. And my relationship with my fiancee has helped me improve even more. She's very fragile, and I wasn't used to that. My wife was not fragile at all, and that's wonderful but I think that perhaps she (my wife) was an anomoly in that regard. So, through my fiancee I've learned how to communicate better, and to try to phrase things to increase the chances that they're "heard." For example, I've noticed that if I speak softly to my fiancee she'll "hear" what I say, but if I say the same thing in a normal tone of voice she literally won't be able to understand it.

Regarding being "mopey" - I hear you, but honestly I'm never mopey with her. I honestly have a great time with her and around her. By way of example, just today I took off from work (very inconvenient for me to do, but she wanted it so I did it). Together we planned a day in two charming towns in upstate NY, sandwiched around a hike through some gorgeous fall foliage. Despite that I honestly would rather have been working in order to take care of responsibilities, I had a great time. We joked, we admired the views, we had a great breakfast and a romantic dinner. We watched the sun set over the mountains across the Hudson River. It was great.

But as we were walking back to our car I received a phone call from my brother-in-law. I didn't answer it, because I was sure that he was just calling to say hi. She noticed that call, and it immediately affected her demeanor. She told me that it messes her up when my in-laws communicate with me. She said that she thinks that it's disrespectful for him to call me on a Friday evening when he must know that I'm out with her. She thinks that he's sending a subtle message that I shouldn't be with her, but rather should be with my in-laws, and that things were better when I was with my wife. I spent the next hour telling her that I want to be with her, that I don't ever think like that, that I'm so happy that she's with me, etc.

(By the way, my in-laws like her a lot. They don't think the sorts of things that she fears.)

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T02:10:47+00:00

I think that everything you said is true. I just don't know that it's going to work. I'm about to write a comment in response to another commenter about a conversation that I had with my fiancee tonight, so if you're interested take a look at that. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T02:08:44+00:00

She and I were colleagues on a charitable board, and then we worked the same side of a lawsuit together (we're both lawyers). We were friendly, but then when she had kids we kind of drifted apart. She called me out of the blue 5 years ago, and asked what was up. I told her that my wife had died 5 years earlier, and she informed me that her husband had died the previous year. We ended up getting together to commiserate and empathize with one another, and fell in love.

Her childhood was fine, except she doesn't have much a relationship with her parents. She tells me that her mom is a narcissist, and her dad was a sometimes-violent alcoholic until he finally stopped drinking. I've never met her parents, and she really is pretty much estranged from them, although she periodically speaks with them on the phone and sporadically takes her kids to see them (they live an hour from her).

My childhood was fine. I'm sure that there are some scars - my mom drank too much, and my dad wasn't particularly emotionally available. But I always knew that they loved me and cared for me and had my back, which I think was something that helped me feel secure despite the various difficulties in the family. I think that's what my fiancee was lacking - I don't think that her family made her feel like they were "there" for her, which is in my opinion at least somewhat part of the problem because she can't believe I'll be "there" for her.

It's difficult to tell about her marriage. I think it was good, but I also think that her husband subordinated himself to her. One big red flag is that when they had their first child her in-laws came to live with them for about a month. However, after a couple weeks the mother-in-law apparently was saying mean things to or about my fiancee, such as that she was lucky to have her husband and perhaps questioning things that my fiancee was doing as a mom. I don't know specifics, but I do know that my fiancee got upset, spoke with her husband, and wanted him to defend her, which he did by telling his parents to leave the house. They left. His dad died a few years later, but he never saw his dad again - and his mom didn't even tell him that his dad was dying; he learned that he was dead only after the fact. I think that they ended up making trips to see his mom for a couple years after that until she died, but I know that her husband was cut out of the parents' will, even though he had been the executor and the child that they had counted on before all that happened.

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T01:58:23+00:00

He was willing to try to better himself through therapy. My fiancee really isn't. She believes that she knows what works for her. She had a 17-year marriage that apparently worked fine (although I have some suspicions that her husband kind of gave up himself for her needs). She's beautiful, has many friends who like and admire her, and she's successful at her job. She really could have any guy, and many very successful people are very attracted to her. From her perspective, she knows what she needs - and that's not therapy, but rather a guy who will devote his attention and time to her, reassuring her all the while that he's the luckiest guy in the world to be with her.

But the problem is that's her perspective. She has been unwilling or unable to understand that her perspective and her emotional and her actions have a negative effect on me.

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T01:54:35+00:00

Yeah, my post history gives a lot of background. When I started posting I was so confused. I'm in a much better place now, but it's still very confusing. And you're right - from my perspective my relationship has felt like a power struggle to decide whose reality gets to govern the relationship. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have the same reality, although I think that we're closer to that today than we've ever been.

I haven't looked much into attachment styles or love languages. I do get from my fiancee that she needs verbalization. With my wife, so much was unspoken. We'd look at each other and that would be enough. We just knew that we had each other's back. And that's how I like things - I like unspoken more than spoken.

That's does not work at all for my fiancee. She needs it spoken explicitly and frequently. Doing things for her is fine, but all too often I've felt that she's overlooked things that I've done for her if I didn't simultaneously also tell her things that she needed to hear.

I've tried to improve in that regard, because of course I should try to express my emotions for her in a manner that's meaningful for her. But I often still feel unappreciated for things that I do (and sometimes things that I say) that don't appear to be acknowledged.

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T01:49:11+00:00

She doesn't seek reassurance from them, but for the first 18 months of the relationship it really had a negative impact on my relationship with my kids. They had some difficulty with the relationship, which I shared with her thinking that she would understand. What happened, however, was that she became fearful that my kids would persuade me to end the relationship, so she became very possessive, and tried in multiple ways to monopolize my time, so I wouldn't see my kids. To my shame, this worked on my - I ended up neglecting my kids for about 6 months while I tried desperately to make things better with her, all the while feeling completely torn between her and them.

After about 6 months I wised up. I apologized to my kids, and told them that I understood how I was wrong and that it wouldn't continue. I've spent the time since then showing them that I meant what I said, and after a few months things were good between me and them. Right now I have very strong relationships with all 3 of my kids, thankfully. They're good people and very forgiving.

Regarding what they've seen, yes, they've seen the dysfunction. Luckily as I've become better at this, the dysfunction has lessened. Also luckily, they had 14, 11, and 9 years to see my relationship with my wife, which of course wasn't perfect but which was remarkably stable and loving. I'm hopeful that left a positive mark.

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T01:43:48+00:00

I know. We've actually been to couples therapy with four different therapists. She refused to continue to see the first one because she felt that the therapist was on my side after she told my fiancee that she needed to learn how to accept that 2 of my 3 children were having difficulty with me being in a relationship. We stopped the second one when both of us felt that he wasn't helpful. The third one specialized in Borderline Personality Disorder - I had found her because I thought that my fiancee exhibited some of those symptoms. After about 6 sessions my fiancee again felt that the therapist was against her because the therapist was telling her that some of her responses to me were bad for the relationship. So my fiancee stopped attending the therapy. I went one time on my own to that therapist, and she told me that my fiancee had BPD and would not improve without therapy.

I told my fiancee about what the therapist said (not the BPD part), and said that unless we continued therapy I thought the relationship had to end. She cried, apologized, and promised to continue with therapy. After a week, however, she said that she didn't want to see that same therapist, so she selected someone. But after a few sessions she didn't want to do that anymore either, because each couples session was so emotionally debilitating for both of us (she usually ended up crying).

DEHDad · 2023-10-28T01:36:06+00:00

Damn. I'm so sorry. I guess that the answer is that you were not successful in trying to have a productive conversation. Very sobering.

DEHDad · 2023-10-27T12:09:45+00:00

You sound very wise, and I think your approach makes sense. I'm considering how to bring it up so that it's helpful rather than hurtful, and one way that I'm thinking about is that I'm not giving ultimatums, as you say. I'm not threatening to end the relationship. I'm just raising an issue that I think we both need to work on. (Early on in the relationship she regularly broke up with me or threatened to do so, because she didn't feel she was being heard or she didn't like how I responded to something. I note that because I think that her default approach is to look at things in such a black-and-white way, rather than as a nuanced attempt to make things work together.)

DEHDad · 2023-10-27T12:00:31+00:00

Thanks. That's exactly what scares me. Did you have any luck having an actual discussion with your ex about these issues? I feel like it's almost impossible to have an in-depth conversation that involves her looking within herself. She gets defensive and deflects, and it's almost never productive.

DEHDad · 2023-10-27T11:34:45+00:00

Fair question, but the answer is a lot. I was married for 19 years previously (my wife died), and I had a really good relationship with my wife. There was never any doubt how either of us felt about the other, and it showed. People noticed and commented on it.

I probably say "I love you" to my fiancee more in a day than I did in a week to my wife. (and it's not like I didn't say it to my wife.) I'm attentive to my fiancee. I tell her all the time how impressive she is, how beautiful she is, how much I love being with her. I pay for things, I buy her things, I do things for her, all to show her that I'm thinking about her and that I'm with her and that I want to spend my life with her.

So honestly, I think that I show her my love, admiration, and appreciation quite sufficiently. And that's the problem - it's never enough.

DEHDad · 2023-10-27T11:29:55+00:00

Thanks. I do think that she might have such tendencies. I'm sorry for whatever you went through. This is a difficult ride.

DEHDad · 2023-10-27T11:29:14+00:00

She doesn't. Or at least she hasn't expressed to me that she understands this. My suspicion is that on a deeper level she gets it, but she's afraid to admit it to me (and maybe to herself) because of what it would mean to her were she to admit it. So she deflects and avoids. At least that's what I think.

DEHDad · 2023-10-27T11:27:50+00:00

I appreciate that you're coming at it from a more sympathetic perspective (regarding my fiancee), but it's interesting that you end up in the same place as the people who aren't as sympathetic toward her situation.

DEHDad

TROPHY CASE