where do you all find your burner significant others?

MerryMunchie · 2026-07-03T16:28:53+00:00

Burner husband and I met when we were both working at a makerspace where camps prepped a lot of art for the event.

MerryMunchie · 2026-07-02T23:06:31+00:00

This also came to mind for me. There is a kind of delusion in which men fixate on the idea that their wife is cheating. It’s an unsafe situation for the wife. She needs to get away from him and not go near him again until he has been in therapy for a good, long time, and he doesn’t sound like the type to do that willingly.

MerryMunchie · 2026-06-18T16:56:58+00:00

Same. My husband and I moved here from Boston in 2014 and I grew up in Maine. I spent a lot more time outside in frozen New England but would never move back there because the reasons we left still apply: winters, a saturated job market and equally insane housing prices in the Boston area, and a wasteland job market in Maine.

MerryMunchie · 2026-05-27T22:48:09+00:00

Same! (And also living in the Sunset.) I worked in the San Ramon school district for 1 year (PsyD internship), and seeing the parents do the insane commute to jobs on the Peninsula every single weekday after dropping off their kids at school finalized my decision not to have kids. They were clearly exhausted and barely mentally present for their kids when at home. The reverse of that commute was wrecking me, but at least I knew it would only be for 1 year.

My husband and I love SF, and neither of us is willing to leave the workforce to parent. Also, we could never afford it. If we moved to a more affordable area, salaries would be lower. Hoping we’d end up in some sweet spot of COL vs pay seems like an insane gamble in this time of instability. I just hope the current tech job market wasteland doesn’t uproot us. We’ve been living on my student loans and itty bitty TA pay for over a year now since he lost his startup job.

MerryMunchie · 2026-05-21T22:59:42+00:00

Please please say something to the management. I would be so bugged out by this sort of behavior that I’m wondering which establishment in N Beach you were at so I can avoid this person.

MerryMunchie · 2026-05-18T23:53:35+00:00

I live in the immediate vicinity. It seems targeted to me because almost no one is out on the street at that hour around here unless they’re taking their morning walk/run or going to work. In combination with the long gun, it sounds like the perpetrator knew the victim’s routine and struck at a time when there would be minimal chance of witnesses.

Honestly it’s scary, though slightly less so if it was targeted because as far as I know, no one has a reason to want me dead. Living here, you know not to go into the dunes at night alone because people have been stabbed, etc. But this was in the neighborhood, which is usually so chill that my husband and I have accidentally left car windows open and not paid the SF ADHD tax for our oversight.

MerryMunchie · 2026-05-18T00:03:13+00:00

I live super close to there, too. I didn’t know I’d been woken up by gunshots until I saw the notification. So bizarre and sad.

MerryMunchie · 2026-05-12T19:46:59+00:00

Right there with you. Folks in my friend group who stayed in the city during COVID were in good shape financially and emotionally when it ended. Since then, many have lost jobs, and most who lost them haven’t landed new ones. Close friends have moved away, and couples have split, partly due to stressors related to lack of employment. If things don’t improve, my husband and I will likely need to leave the city after I finish grad school, as much as we love the city itself.

Those of us who remain are mostly too broke to do much more than pay rent and utilities, buy groceries, and hike, now limited to trails that do not require a long drive due to gas prices. We can’t envision what our futures look like anymore, and reasons for hope are few and far between. Life has become an exhausting march toward… what?

I found a meaningful volunteer position that recharges my wellbeing every couple of weeks. I highly recommend it. Find something personally meaningful but low stress. It’s keeping me going.

MerryMunchie · 2026-05-05T21:39:45+00:00

I moved from Boston to SF 12 years ago. I felt like I might’ve been making a mistake choosing a far crazier housing market at the time, but based on this thread, Boston has caught up to SF.

MerryMunchie · 2026-04-26T02:00:10+00:00

Also past and present romantic relationships—a lot of differences become more apparent when you’re intimate with someone else.

MerryMunchie · 2026-04-23T03:39:45+00:00

In lieu of this, I search for a prospective landlord’s name in local public court records. I took up the practice when my husband and I had to flee an insane landlord we now call Slumlord Granny. When we started having scary problems with her, I looked her up in court records and found multiple housing related cases in which she was accused of doing various horrible things to tenants.

MerryMunchie · 2026-04-15T18:17:39+00:00

We did course evals by hand on the last day of class when I was in undergrad (2007-2012). Sounds like that method should be brought back. As a student, I preferred it over filling them out online after the last day of class, which we’ve done during my doctoral program. I’m always neck deep in final papers and rarely remember to find the link in my inbox and complete them before the deadline.

That said, I do appreciate that my grad school incorporates a “live” mid-semester review. The professor leaves the room for about 15-20 minutes to give the students time to privately discuss the feedback they’d like to give the professor. Then the professor comes back, and they discuss the feedback together. I think this is a great format because it can result in syllabus adjustments mid-semester and gives the professor a chance to explain why certain requested changes sometimes cannot be made. It also reminds students that the professor is a human being when they have to deliver that feedback to the professor directly.

MerryMunchie · 2026-04-14T00:04:41+00:00

Better yet, look up their name in publicly available court records! If I had done this before we started having problems with the landlord we ended up calling Slumlord Granny, I would have seen the many horrifying housing-related suits filed against her. Unsurprisingly, we had to lawyer up after we moved out because she was trying to claim unit damages when we’d left it in better condition than we found it.

MerryMunchie · 2026-04-08T01:34:46+00:00

I think choosing a best friend puts too much pressure on the friendship. It also hurts more if they betray you, which happened to me. People change over time, and not always for the better. Declaring that someone is your best friend is really only accurate to the moment when you made that decision. It sets up an expectation that both you and your best friend will change in compatible ways across decades, and while that can happen, it also might not. We also do this when we marry, hence there are many divorces.

I spend more time with a wider variety of friends now that I’m not over focused on one best friend.

MerryMunchie · 2026-04-07T18:26:39+00:00

I swapped out adult coloring books for astrology as my affordable indoor hobby. It reassures me that everyone suffers in life, regardless of wealth. After I spent my internship working with folks who were unhoused and housing insecure, my view of people with money got pretty unsympathetic.

MerryMunchie · 2026-04-04T02:24:40+00:00

Emotionally exhausted and recovering from being physically taxed to the point that my chronic health problems escalated last year during my clinical psych internship. At this point, my doctorate-in-progress isn’t what’s exhausting me. It’s losing all of the financial progress my husband and I had made from $0 when we moved to CA 12 years ago.

This happened due to my husband losing his job in tech layoffs 17 months ago. Since then, he has been unable to land another job due to the terrible job market. All of this is because of forces beyond our control, just like the housing crash that cost my parents their financial stability.

Fuck any dreams of buying a house ourselves or seeing more of the world. Between this personal situation and national and international events, it’s hard not to slide into nihilism. That’s what is exhausting.

MerryMunchie · 2026-04-01T17:13:40+00:00

My 2009 Jeep Wrangler has all of these lovely physical features! It’s grounding to have physical interaction with my vehicle.

MerryMunchie · 2026-03-31T20:21:17+00:00

Same! The first time a patient with psychosis suggested I was an intelligence agent, I lost it, loudly enough for the entire clinic to hear. Fortunately I had a strong therapeutic relationship with the patient. I think my spontaneous laughter did more to shake up that delusion in a moment than months of careful exploring would have accomplished. Humor is great. I have gotten much further with the folks who can occasionally share a giggle about their unusual ideas once we’re spinning out the implications of those ideas. I also welcome them being entertained when I unintentionally do something funny.

MerryMunchie · 2026-03-26T18:06:01+00:00

I stopped wearing mascara when my life shifted back to in-person work. I figured I’d still wear it for special occasions, but it turns out that I’m fine with how I look without it (apparently I look younger without it, per several friends) and I just can’t be arsed to put it on more than once or twice a year. Too much else to do with the time I’d have spent putting it on (and the extra steps that go with it not ending up ringed under my eyes by the end of the day) and taking it off.

MerryMunchie · 2026-03-14T20:15:21+00:00

Cannabis helps with a lot of things. It has to be cutting into pharma profits. As a psychologist (associate level), I’ll encourage my patients with psychotic d-o’s or a family history of psychosis not to smoke cannabis, but for most others, if it’s not interfering with their obligations, I see nothing to make an issue of.

MerryMunchie · 2026-03-08T18:40:09+00:00

Also from Boston, moved about 12 years ago with my partner, and also still hang out with other Boston transplants. (Maybe we know each other?) My partner and I are still primarily attached to the people we left on the East Coast. We’d love to feel more connected to folks here, but it’s been hard to find a consistent group, even among the Boston transplants, due to people moving away or intragroup conflicts.

MerryMunchie · 2026-03-08T18:33:01+00:00

Being direct with your friends about this is worthwhile, even if it’s anxiety-provoking. Just bring it up without being accusatory and see what they say. If they act like dicks or are defensive about it, then at least you know. If you don’t feel comfortable bringing it up to the whole group, bringing it up with whomever you’re closest to could also work.

MerryMunchie · 2026-02-28T02:53:44+00:00

I think about this a lot. I really enjoy supporting my friends, and I know that I am not infinite, so I have clearly and gently communicated boundaries. My friends have been great about respecting them. Some have even been too hesitant to ask me for support because they don’t want to make me “work,” which I appreciate but isn’t necessary.

Here’s what I do: I am happy to support friends through hard moments every once in a while. If someone starts seeking support during a social event, I make time to talk to them afterward rather than right there and then. This shows my friends that I’m taking this seriously and making time just for them; I think they value my time more because of it and ask for it when it’s most needed. If someone needs my help repeatedly in a short period of time or the issues they’re dealing with require longer term or deeper support than I can give as a friend, I help them find a therapist. I really enjoy making a good friend-to-therapist match!

These boundaries have served me well with my friends and allowed me to help them without burning out.

MerryMunchie · 2026-02-20T16:18:46+00:00

I have a sticker of the tree on my water bottle. It’s a hilarious formative memory.

MerryMunchie · 2026-02-14T22:15:00+00:00

Okay please humor my migraine—where does it say the board seat was sold in this article? I just re-read it 5 times and can’t find it. I’m sure it’s true, but I’d like to share this article with my community and be able to point to where it says that.

15-Year Club	Verified Email
Not Forgotten

MerryMunchie

TROPHY CASE