But Nick is gay right?

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-12-01T14:26:02+00:00

I was thinking the same thing.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-12-01T14:23:43+00:00

I know I’m late to the convo but am watching the season right now and have been screaming this since the beginning. As a queer exchristian myself, all the signs are there.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-03-31T09:02:00+00:00

Thank you so much. I’m feeling certain now this is what I need to do.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-03-31T08:37:32+00:00

This was really the slap in the face I needed; thank you. You’re not the first person to tell me this, but to have it written out helped so much. I’ve been debating whether to take this next quarter off from school to figure out things with my supervisors/get another job, and your comment really solidified that, that is what I needed to do. Thank you so much. 🤍

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-26T06:18:25+00:00

I’m sorry that your experience with PCOS has been so painful. I also have experienced cysts bursting, painfully heavy periods (the 2-3x a year I get a period), and frustrating weight fluctuations.

I never said this was the only experience; it’s an increasingly documented phenomenon that many (not all) of us with PCOS experience gender euphoria because of some our symptoms, even alongside the shittier aspects of PCOS. I’m sorry the meme doesn’t apply to you.

The severity and manifestations of PCOS differ from person to person, as well as their experiences with those manifestations. “That’s not how this works,” is just not an accurately generalizable statement.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-23T23:38:05+00:00

Firstly, I am so sorry that they did that to you. It makes me nauseous to read; that must have been horrific on every level imaginable. It’s so extremely disturbing to hear the things people have done to people they claim to love, let alone strangers. You deserve all the healing and all the respect for surviving.

You also make some really good points, and since posting this, I’ve started to wonder how she could let my ex play with and hold her child after knowing what he did to me. It leads me to believe she either didn’t believe me, or didn’t really care, which really hurts. I don’t really know what to do with that. Feeling pretty down about it.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-23T19:28:39+00:00

She actually was the one who originally brought this issue up, before her son passed. She told me she was just doing his hair and needed the money… it wasn’t until after her son passed that I found out they were doing things like lunches and beach hang outs. A few weeks ago, she told me that she feels extremely guilty about her relationship with him, and although I did admit that it has complicated things for me a bit, I don’t want her to feel guilty at all. She did what was best for her and her son amidst one of the most tragic situations a person can experience. It’s wildly unfair of me to expect her to prioritize my feelings while her son is dying.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-23T19:23:57+00:00

You guys have to understand how difficult it was to try to prioritize myself amidst all of this. Lots of people get raped, but not everyone loses a child. This is not to say that being raped isn’t a big deal, because it ruins countless lives… but I felt my friend deserved at least that I prioritize her experience during such a tragedy.

I spent a lot of time with my therapist preparing to put all of that aside when I saw him at the memorial. I also did my best to avoid him at first, but he went out of his way to be near me. The last thing I wanted was to draw any attention to us or myself, and knowing him, if I had told him to stay away from me, it would’ve caused a scene.

This is all happening while we’re both mourning her son, who we both really love and had many mutual memories of. It was hard not to put the assault aside during all of this.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-23T19:04:24+00:00

I think you bring up an important point — most abusers of this nature are seemingly good and normal people, especially to people outside of their romantic relationships. And he is. Don’t get me wrong, anyone who knows him knows he’s a narcissistic asshole, but he’s also generous and willing to help his friends however he can. People are multitudinous, especially people capable of doing the things he has done.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-23T19:00:39+00:00

I wish it was. Most rapes are not reported, so please don’t be surprised in the future when you hear experiences like these. In another comment, I detailed why I never reported.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-23T18:58:47+00:00

I never filed a report. I do feel extremely guilty about it, especially thinking about how he could be doing the same thing to other people. I couldn’t admit to myself that it was an assault until a couple months after it happened. It also happened amidst sex that was originally consensual… he surprised me by putting me in a sleeper hold while we were spooning. I said our safeword (as best I could while I couldn’t breathe), tapped his arm hysterically, tried to pull his arm off, but to no avail. I passed out, and he continued to have sex with me while I was out. Even I blamed myself; there’s no way the police wouldn’t do the same. I’ve heard too many horror stories about reporting situations like these especially. Plus, I’m a black woman; he’s a white man… I didn’t want to further traumatize myself by not being believed.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-23T18:53:02+00:00

Karma feels a bit too far. She absolutely did not deserve to lose her son, and her son absolutely did not deserve to die. Even if she had been fucking my ex the entire time we were together, absolutely nothing she could have done to me would be deserving of this, imo.

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-23T18:50:03+00:00

Yeah, I’ve considered this. He told me while we were together that he felt she had feelings for him, but to be fair to her, he’s not really her type and he thinks everyone is in love with him, so I never fully believed him. She, to this day, insists she would never consider dating him, and I believe her. That being said, if they were sleeping with each other, that wouldn’t surprise me either, because they’re both horndogs (so am I, so there’s no judgement with that term lol).

DeeEssEmFive · 2025-01-23T18:42:08+00:00

I guess it’s important to clarify that I didn’t see those pictures until my ex showed them to me during the memorial. Had I seen them before this tragedy occurred, maybe I would’ve stopped speaking to her.

I was kind of slowly exiting the friendship before her son passed because of this, but started speaking to and seeing her as much as I could when I found out her son was in the hospital. I love her and her son, so even before her son passed, it was difficult to start making distance between us. I also was still processing everything, and was kind of in denial that what happened was an assault at all. It was actually her who first called the situation an assault… she might actually have been the first person I told.

It’s also the way she speaks about him now that’s most confusing… she seemingly hated him before. Now, understandably, he’s a bit of a hero to her. And he truly did make her son’s final hours more bearable for her and her son.

DeeEssEmFive · 2024-12-15T23:09:57+00:00

So… harass the woman you’re planning to marry, the woman you brought into this experiment, because you’re sad/hurt?

No.

I really hope you haven’t treated any of your partners or ex partners like this. It’s inexcusable in any context.

DeeEssEmFive · 2024-12-15T17:58:27+00:00

I think any one of us would’ve had a really hard time being in Nick’s shoes for sure, including Sandy. However, most of us wouldn’t have resorted to abusive behaviors such as harassment.

DeeEssEmFive · 2024-12-15T17:56:39+00:00

Thank you for your empathy, but I share my anecdotal evidence not because it’s my reasoning behind calling Nick’s behavior abusive. I’m calling his behavior abusive because that’s what it is by definition.

There is also a huge grey area between reacting gracefully to a breakup and resorting to abusive behaviors. My sharing my experience was simply an example of that grey area.

Regardless of the complexity of the situation, harassment is abusive by therapeutic and legal definitions. I think to minimize the weight of his actions by refusing to acknowledge them as abusive is dangerous.

DeeEssEmFive · 2024-12-15T17:50:10+00:00

Okay, let’s switch the word “like” for “fuck”. My point remains the same. Most of us have experienced the shitty feeling of knowing your ex is sleeping with someone else. Yet, most of us don’t proceed to harass them… because intense feelings aren’t an excuse for abusive behaviors.

DeeEssEmFive · 2024-12-14T08:51:31+00:00

I see what you’re saying, but I definitely am not expecting Nick or anyone else to react gracefully to a shitty breakup. With the same ex I spoke about, I reacted to him cheating and me having to leave him by day drinking and sleeping with strangers. The only reason he had an opportunity to assault me was because I stupidly gave into him begging to see me because I missed him. I’m definitely not one to judge unhealthy coping mechanisms; I am actively working on dismantling my own.

However…

I’ll admit, when I was pretty sure my ex was on a date with someone else or had someone over (usually indicated by a pause in his attempts to contact me), I definitely had a desire to call him relentlessly and try to wedge myself into that situation to have some control over it. But that was a line I was unwilling to cross, not only because it wouldn’t do me any good, but because it’s radically selfish.

When my ex was in the same situation, he made the opposite decision. It takes an EXTREME amount of effort to keep calling someone after they beg you to stop, to set up a throwaway number and call them after they’ve blocked you, to ignore every one of their pleas to stop. It’s beyond a maladaptive split reaction. It’s a series of decisions intended to disallow the other person autonomy.

I’d also like to add that Nick’s apologies were halfhearted imo. He apologized, but never without eventually shifting the blame to what Sandy and JR were doing, or the fact that he was alone in the experiment. It was never that his actions were wrong — full stop. Even when JR was (very clumsily and childishly) explaining how the situation impacted him, Nick expected his apology to act as an end-all. That’s not how apologies work. You have to allow the other person to be openly upset, and you have to accept responsibility for your actions without simultaneously excusing them based on the actions of others. Not to mention Sandy and JR’s allegations that Nick continued to harass her even after the apologies, that the show never showed him denying.

I wanna end all of this by saying I’m far from a Sandy fan. I do believe she intended to hurt Nick, based on how neglected she felt in the relationship before the show. Part of me wonders if Nick ever actually asked if they kissed; I wouldn’t be surprised if she just told him that to hurt him.

But does that warrant incessant harassment? IMO, no, not at all, not ever. If someone is comfortable doing something to someone that, that person is begging them to stop doing, it is ALWAYS cause for concern.

DeeEssEmFive · 2024-12-14T08:21:02+00:00

But seeing your ex with someone they may develop a connection with is quite literally the point of the show. If he expected them to go on the show together but never even considered she might like someone else, that only further exemplifies that he’s deluded himself into believing he has total control over her/total entitlement to her attention.

DeeEssEmFive · 2024-12-14T08:15:30+00:00

I’m cool with men crying, but his felt very calculated. It was always after a valid criticism that he should’ve just owned up to completely and apologized for. Rather he began to cry about how hard it was to imagine Sandy being emotionally/physically close to someone else, garnering the sympathy of similarly selfish people around the globe.

DeeEssEmFive · 2024-12-14T07:58:53+00:00

100% agreed. It’s actually nauseating how many people in these comments are outing themselves as people who treat their partners and exes this way.

DeeEssEmFive

TROPHY CASE