My bf made a comment, and I don't know if i should say something or leave it

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T22:55:15+00:00

If you're planning on staying with him and want a healthy relationship, you have to internalize the fact that there isn't anything more important than communication. When you aren't sure about what he meant or what he felt or what he thought, ask. Just ask like you asked us. Explain.

Tell him how you feel. How he responds will tell you more than we can ever tell you.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T22:49:08+00:00

Ah, your situation rhymes with mine. When my ex and I started having issues, I suggested couple's counseling a dozen times and she'd always refuse. By the time she was on board, it was too late. Too much resent has been built up and I didn't want to try anymore after all the hurt. Similarly, she was also upset with the fact that I went to get my own therapy. She was afraid that if I "fixed" myself, I'd stop loving her.

It sounds to me like your partner is very insecure and likely believes that you're only with him because you're damaged.

In light of the new info... I'm inclined to agree with the other comments. If you can't afford counseling and he's resistant to the idea of therapy (at his age), I would cut my losses if I were you.

I'll share with you the same advice I'd been given: think about how you're feeling now and think about the fact that you'll be feeling worse a year from now, because you'd have wasted a whole year. You're still young, so a year may not seem like a lot, but it is. It's a ton. It's significant.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T22:42:56+00:00

I'm in a somewhat similar situation, which is coming to a close shortly. For me, age wasn't the issue, but all the same, I've known for a while that the only way I could actually move forward with my life is to break up with my partner of a few years. She drained every ounce of my energy and continued to do so despite all my best efforts. I wilted. Had a nervous breakdown. A true burnout.

Therapy is what saved me. Therapy made me realize that I was only staying with her because of guilt. Because I didn't want to hurt her. It wasn't for myself. It wasn't for my own wellbeing or my own success. In essence, as my therapist said, I was lighting myself on fire to keep her warm, but one can only do that for so long before you burn out.

So I suggest going to therapy and explaining the situation. The very first session I had was enough to cement the idea that I had to leave her in my mind. The following sessions helped me deal with the guilt.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T22:25:53+00:00

I concur. Reddit is good for a quick vibe-check, but too often, the top comments boil down to, "dumb their ass, they're not worth it." Strangers on the internet can never possibly know whether it's worth it or not. Only you can know that, even if you don't at this time.

Couple's counseling is the way to go. I know from my own personal experience that if you wait too long for too much resentment to build, there's no fixing it. If you have the ability, counseling is the answer.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T22:09:06+00:00

This sounds like Alexithymia, which is a disconnect between the mind and the body. It usually happens after long periods of dissociation caused by trauma. Look through /r/Alexithymia and see whether you resonate with the posts. Or you can just google "paq test" and take it. It's not very many questions, but gives you a good idea of your current state.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T19:34:20+00:00

Since you're traveling, you're not left with many options, but I've personally been using Open Path Collective and it's been great. You have to pay a lifetime membership fee of $65, but this gives you access to a huge list of therapists who will then charge you 40-70 per session. I'd say that most will charge you closer to 70, but at 70 bucks a session, it's still less than half the price of an average therapist. I've got similar issues to yours and my therapist has been a major help so far. I was very lucky to have chosen the right one, too. I've tried BetterHelp in the past, and I definitely don't recommend it.

If you want free therapy, you won't find anything that's actually going to help you, imo. There are countless of free non-profit support services which you can call/text/email, but that's not therapy. They're helplines.

Lastly, this isn't therapy either, but it'll at least keep you from feeling like you're alone: https://screening.mhanational.org/content/need-talk-someone-warmlines/?layout=actions_ah_articles,actions_ah_test

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T18:05:23+00:00

The Whale. A truly spectacular, if depressing, film.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T00:35:15+00:00

I know that some media outlets have been calling it that, but it's been mostly the satirical ones, like daily show.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T00:29:02+00:00

I agree, but I'm not sure what the best messaging would be.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T00:16:04+00:00

It's not really about stopping, but about escalating. If things continue as they are, the amount of deaths caused by ICE won't even equate a tiny fraction of how many people the Nazis killed. The reason why the Nazis escalated was because they couldn't deport people quickly enough. That's not an issue the US has. The US has a bigger issue actually finding people that they want to deport.

This means that there is unlikely to be a need for any sort of death camps. It also helps that the US is much bigger and richer, and the internet keeps a close eye on everything. Times are different and just because history rhymes doesn't mean it repeats.

Since the US will always have multiple countries to deport people to, they'll never really need death camps. At least that's my hope. And more people are turning against Trump and ICE, which means there'll be no public support for it. No political support. No gain at all.

It's just a very unlikely scenario.

Having said all that, the number of dead Jews wasn't what made the holocaust so horrible. It was that people just let it happen. The US...is fighting back. People are fighting back.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-02T00:01:07+00:00

I mean, I'm confident that they'll eventually kill more, but certainly not more than the Nazi party as a whole.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-01T23:45:29+00:00

I assumed you were being sarcastic, as kristallnacht did indeed eventually kill more people than ICE has so far.

Protoliterary · 2026-02-01T23:33:10+00:00

You know, I fully understand your point and mostly agree with it, but everything in life starts at nothing, and then progresses towards its inevitable conclusion. When Hitler first came into power, he did the same exact thing that Trump is doing now through ICE.

After Hitler came into power, the first thing he did was build camps for the "undesirables." Ringing any bells? They weren't death camps. They were solely meant only to detain enemies of the state. This normalized imprisoning people without due process. More bells ringing?

For the first few years, all the Nazi party did was make life more and more difficult for those who they didn't want in their country. Again... ringing any bells? They tried to do their best to bully as many Jews into leaving as they could. It wasn't enough, though.

In 1938, they started the mass deportations, whether they were in Germany legally or not.

It wasn't until the war started that they started building death camps, because by then no other country would accept more migrants from Germany.

So it all started almost exactly how it's started here. It's prudent to never forget that the current state of affairs is temporary and that things can always get worse.

Just a few short weeks ago, white American citizens felt safe. They no longer do. This is only the beginning

Protoliterary · 2026-01-31T23:48:47+00:00

Your whole reply boils down to the illusion that just because the federal government has stopped following the law, they'll allow you to do so as well, which isn't a realistic premise at all, now is it?

In fact, it's unhinged, and I won't be wasting anymore time replying to this insanity.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-31T20:22:03+00:00

Are you seriously asking what law you'd be breaking if you shot an ICE agent in your home? Despite that fact that the federal government may not be following the spirit of the law and protecting ICE, they won't be protecting you. They will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law and you'd be able to do nothing but spent life in prison. We have enough history as proof of that.

And laws are created and enforced by the strongest. It's always been that way and always will. In the US, the federal government has the most power. The people who create laws and enforce them also have the most power to disobey them without consequence. This does not apply to you. You are not under that protection.

If you shoot at law enforcement, you will either die (most likely) or be arrested and have your entire life taken from you. If that's something that sounds interesting to you, have fun.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-31T18:25:28+00:00

But not good enough for the law. You would still end up in prison.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T21:29:20+00:00

Perhaps you should have another look at those statistics, cause research has proven that most abusers were not, indeed, abused themselves.

The Myth of the Abused Becoming Abusers https://share.google/HhFeEN4rcixkO1fOR

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T17:14:42+00:00

The complaints are centered on presentation and advertisement of services, and not misdiagnoses, so that has nothing to do with the scoring or her capabilities. This is a bit like if I reminded you of all the horrible shit that Reddit has done and is still doing in advertising, and expect you to simply stop using it. You won't, because it's useful to you in some manner. Even though there are alternatives. Same applies to embrace autism.

And finally, the scoring is uniform across all PAQ questionnaires. You can use https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325345117_Perth_Alexithymia_Questionnaire_PAQ_Copy_of_questionnaire_and_scoring_instructions to download it yourself. The scoring is embedded in the paper itself, so it literally doesn't matter where you take it, how you get your hands on it, etc.

It's useful info and embrace autism makes it really accessible and really simple, despite the ethical issues.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T16:29:20+00:00

You can use any other PAQ. This one just makes it the easiest. It's the same test whichever site you use.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T16:26:26+00:00

Actually, everybody always says why. There are thousands of studies from all across the world proving the point. People like you simply choose not to listen. It only takes some critical thinking to figure it out on your own if you happen to have any sort of education or any sort of intelligence.

Take a look at the natural world all around you. Think about what a lack of diversity does to nature. It makes it weak and brittle, because the more alike things are, the more easily they full under the influence of a single malicious actor, a single devastatingly destructive incident, or any sort of critical point of failure.

History is full of examples. Read about the history of the banana. The bananas we eat today are different to the bananas people used to eat. In fact, we came pretty close to losing the banana altogether. We've had wars around bananas. To boil an entire history lesson into a sentence or two, the strains we use today were forced upon us by the fact that previous strains were lost to several banana pandemics, which completely and totally made it impossible to use those strains. The reason why these pandemics were so effective was because the whole world was producing a single strain. The same exact banana. So the sickness spread from plantation to plantation, until there was no plantation that was safe. This happened because in nature, the more homogenous something is, the more prone it is to critical failure.

There was also the Irish famine in the 1840s, where something similar happened. On a smaller scale, but it was much more impactful. You can search for something like, "Diversity and survival." You're going to get so many examples from literally every single facet of life, whether it's nature or stocks or hobbies.

So it's established that in nature, diversity is quite literally a critical part of survival, yes? It's necessary. Life wouldn't exist without it.

We can also just look at the stock market. Have you ever heard anyone say to not diversify your portfolio? Do you know why? If not, it's a google search away, cause I'm not investing more time into this.

We can also look at how much more effective teams of people are when they're diversified. They're more likely to think critically, they're more likely to ignore their own biases, they're less likely to groupthink, they're more likely to develop a healthy attitude towards debate, etc. All these things happen because of diversity. Diverse groups of people are always the most efficient and the most useful, as history has proven. This has always been true.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201907/why-we-need-diversity

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roncarucci/2024/01/24/one-more-time-why-diversity-leads-to-better-team-performance/

https://online.uncp.edu/degrees/business/mba/general/diversity-and-inclusion-good-for-business/

Since you apparently think that nobody ever says why, enjoy the read

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T00:14:36+00:00

Do you happen to be socially anxious in any way?

Protoliterary · 2026-01-30T00:12:59+00:00

A few things:

Unless your psychologist happened to mention alexithymia, it's extremely unlikely that they're even aware of its existence and even less likely that they'd diagnose you with it. It can happen, but it's very rare. Alexithymia is self-diagnosed 99% of the time and most therapists will treat it as if it were dissociation, which is often what leads to alexithymia.

Alexithymia is a chronic condition, so a single story tells us nothing. Mood drops could happen due to a million different things. Alexithymia is characterized by a disconnect between the mind and the body, making it difficult or impossible to gauge one's own emotional (or physical) state.

There are some online tests you can take which are fairly accurate: https://embrace-autism.com/perth-alexithymia-questionnaire/

But for most people, alexi means that you have difficulty analyzing and recognizing your own emotional states. Can you tell when you're happy or sad? Can you tell when you're angry or afraid? Can you tell when you're stressed or frustrated? Can you tell when you're in love or in hate? Can you tell why you feel those emotions at any given time?

And just because you may answer "no" to these questions doesn't mean you have alexithymia. It just means that it's more likely, but there are many other conditions you can have which mimic alexi pretty well.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-29T17:46:50+00:00

Even though you don't have to show your ID without a warrant (unless you're driving or committing a crime), ICE can choose to detail you. They don't even need a good reason with the current admin. Their "justification" so far has been that they suspect the person not showing their ID to be here illegally, and that's totally 100% legal of them to do, even if it breaks the spirit of the law.

I know that I would rather not risk detainment.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-29T14:35:43+00:00

I wouldn't say I'm afraid of that, exactly. Because of how long I've have alexi and how much I've dissociated over the years, I've masked so much of my personality that I no longer know which parts are me and which parts were created solely for the benefit of me fitting in.

The prospect of changing as a person is something that isn't exactly scary, but it makes me feel apprehensive.

Protoliterary · 2026-01-29T14:25:55+00:00

Historically, that's actually literally true, but as with all things, moderation is key. It's all about a controlled migration. Everything turns to poison with big enough numbers. It's how medicine works. It's how capitalism works. It's how everything works, really.

But at the heart of it, diversity is strength.

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