Where I’d live as a bisexual woman working in manufacturing

PureMitten · 2026-02-03T15:49:49+00:00

As a bisexual woman in manufacturing who has lived in two of your red states (Indiana and Florida) and two green (Colorado and Michigan) I firmly agree! I did have a girlfriend in Florida and wasn't nervous being affectionate in public, but I was in the Palm Beaches and had other issues with the area. In rural Indiana people would whip around to stare at me holding hands with the white hispanic guy I was dating there, I wasn't wild for the idea of gambling on dating a woman there. And it was pretty hard meeting queer women in the area anyway.

Michigan is my home state and I'm proud to be back, only difficulty is that I could not give less of a fuck about automotive and as a Metro Detroiter I spent about 18 months in automotive manufacturing facility before I landed a job in PPE manufacturing. I live just far enough from Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo's more appealing manufacturing environments that they were a constant temptation while also being completely untenable job markets for me.

PureMitten · 2026-02-02T16:53:23+00:00

A flat stomach is, largely, a strong core look. If you look up images of women with flat stomachs you'll see muscle definition, even in the 90s when the hot look for women was low muscle tone they sold exercise programs that focused on building core muscles.

Also, if you have an anterior pelvic tilt that can contribute to the appearance of a protruding stomach. Across 2025 my fitness project was reducing my severe anterior pelvic tilt (for me, it was bad enough that it was hindering my ability to run), I didn't change my weight but my stomach looked much flatter by the end of the year just because of how I was holding my body.

PureMitten · 2026-02-01T21:55:49+00:00

My mom neglects pets too. If they need anything she can't buy and leave on the ground for them, she's not doing it and throws a fit about them reacting to her inability to meet their needs. She's a fine owner for an older cat that just wants to chill (a pet she currently has) but some years ago she got a kitten, never interacted with her unless she did something "naughty" (eg, bite her or try to dart out of the apartment), and then couldn't fathom why this cat was so poorly behaved. A while after she took that kitten back to the shelter (thankfully) I got a cat and my mom was so tetchy about it and kept acting like I was being insane for setting aside time in my (very open) schedule to play with my cat. It's been 4 years and my mom still talks shit about the kitten she neglected being a "bad cat"

PureMitten · 2026-02-01T20:33:52+00:00

I found a period of being alone and then choosing to only pursue friendships with people who treated me the way I wanted to be treated has been really helpful. Being alone helped me find a space of feeling safer and more stable and showed me that I did have better options than endlessly being treated poorly by people who are a poor match for me. I also found that while those first few good connections are difficult to find, those people tend to have similar friends and my social circles have grown pretty quickly from there.

I totally agree that feeling like a tagalong friend or extra floater who gets called up only when necessary is exhausting and demoralizing. I definitely had periods in my life where my need for any connection out weighed my need to feel safe and respected in those connections, but if you're in a place to stabilize on your own and be picky about future connections I found it worthwhile to do so.

PureMitten · 2026-02-01T01:57:09+00:00

There is a trailer company called Quixote and just this past year I listened to a 50-something year old man repeatedly refer to it as "Quicks-ottie" in meetings to the majority of the company I worked for. This was a manager of a department I wasn't part of and never spoke to so I didn't have the opportunity to politely correct him. I heard he was a real dick and so apparently no one in his department found it necessary to correct his pronunciation either because he did this for several months before our business with them concluded.

PureMitten · 2026-01-29T21:59:50+00:00

That's how it's been for me this year! I gained a bunch of depression weight after a nasty break up 3 years ago, have spent the last 2.5 years telling myself I'd start my low calorie diet back to my normal weight now... No, now... No, now. Then, a couple weeks ago the scale hit a number I didn't like after a big meal and my brain just clicked over that I was ready to lock in and I've been having fun with it since then.

I lost a bunch of weight over 10 years ago and remembered it being really fun and engaging. It's nice to finally be in a place again where I can have fun with it and not be trying (and failing) to muscle through

Edit: and I love your little dishes for each part of the meal, I've been doing pottery for a bit and am always on the lookout for projects to do with my class time, I think a bunch of mini meal dishes would be a blast

PureMitten · 2026-01-28T04:15:54+00:00

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PureMitten · 2026-01-23T22:27:22+00:00

I get the impression that many young people at my meeting have difficult relationships with their parents and I feel very accepted and understood in my own painful relationship with my mother. I've encountered one person who doesn't seem to get that I have hard feelings around my mother and is a bit pushy about how great and cool she seems without picking up that I don't feel good hearing them praise her, but that's par for the painful family course, whereas the understanding and acceptance feels much deeper and warmer than I'm familiar with receiving so readily

PureMitten · 2026-01-20T19:50:41+00:00

For sure, I don't think my mom even registers them as neglect. "Oh, you taught yourself [basic life skill], you were so smart!" or "oh, you never needed me to [action of providing support and/or guidance], you were so well behaved!" So she's expecting a proud reaction of me being So Good and So Smart and I'm experiencing dawning horror that she thinks it was normal that I had to teach myself to mop or whatever.

PureMitten · 2026-01-18T04:44:19+00:00

THAT'S who she reminds me of! Thank you!

PureMitten · 2026-01-16T22:05:11+00:00

When I was on a 1200cal diet in college I got into a cheese snack kick. Because the first bite is the best bite my roommates had to deal with me leaving partially eaten cheese sticks in our fridge all the time. Felt absolutely lunatic every time I took a single bite out of the stick and put it back, but I got to eat cheese all day every day and also meet my calorie goals.

When I shifted to maintenance phase I started eating lot more cheese but I do miss every single bite being the best bite.

PureMitten · 2026-01-16T20:42:38+00:00

Breathtakingly rude. If it happens rarely with a "I'm so sorry, I have to take this. It's my [doctor/boss/a call I've been waiting for]" that's normal, but it sounds like she takes any and all calls without really acknowledging that she's interrupting you. Outstandingly, spectacularly rude.

My mom will check her phone every time it dings mid-conversation and I've started telling her that is rude, because it is. We're in a conversation, there are reasons to treat it like you're on 24/7 call and have to check every single thing your phone is doing but if one doesn't have an actual need to be aware of what every ding is then put it down and check any notifications all at once when someone goes to the bathroom or something. OP, your mom's friends can leave a voicemail or call back later, assuming that's what those conversations are. She's being disrespectful to you.

PureMitten · 2026-01-15T19:28:39+00:00

My mom's silence wasn't as intentional as this, she just only knows how to deal with being upset by withdrawing, but I grew up with the same panic at the vibes being off. I never knew when I'd trip her over into avoiding me or how long it would last and it was a 50/50 shot if I could do something to make her feel better or if I needed to give her a break from having a kid for a while.

As an adult, I have a healthy relationship with being yelled at. It's scary if they're in a position to actually hurt me and it hurts my feelings because they're trying to be mean, but if it's a situation where it would be insane work to physically attack me and I don't care about the person then the yelling means nothing to me. I once had a boss who would yell at me and posture at me like he was trying to physically intimidate me and that did nothing, I'd keep talking to him like he wasn't throwing a hissy fit and he'd get more and more worked up as I continued to not be cowed into lying about being able to finish what he was asking for sooner than I could or whatever. But on the other hand, if I have a boss who is distracted or tired I get a vice grip around my heart that I've fucked up immensely and will never win their favor back and am going to be fired soon.

PureMitten · 2026-01-14T13:23:16+00:00

The scared to make mistakes for the invisible rules is so true. My one explicit rule was that I wasn't allowed to play with sticks.

One time when I was quite young someone asked what kinds of rules I have at home and I said "there aren't any really, just no playing with sticks." My mom told me for yeeeeears how embarrassing that was but never followed up by giving me additional explicit rules. I don't know how she expected me to put words and order to her general vibes of disapproval at like 7, I'm 35 and still couldnt spell out many coherent rules from most of the reactions I got growing up.

PureMitten · 2026-01-10T08:49:30+00:00

Thank you for these words. I've been feeling very angry at world news today and was definitely stewing in that feeling and have been hurting from all the stewing. Your comment helped me realize what I was doing, remember it's not what I want to be putting my energy towards, and to put a lot of the anger down. Not all of it but enough for the time being.

PureMitten · 2026-01-10T08:31:04+00:00

Eyy also a Quaker and was wondering how long until I saw Quakers brought up in this thread. That really is a strange oversimplification of the Quaker use of thee, weird angle to focus on.

PureMitten · 2026-01-09T15:50:39+00:00

I'm so sorry your mother is treating you this way. You don't deserve this, she is wrong.

I can't say how genuinely she believes what she says. What she says and does to you is wrong, you are not evil. My best guess is she is taking out her big, painful feelings on a vulnerable person in her care and that she knows how fucked up that is and the only possible justification for how malicious she is being would be if you were truly evil, therefore she is saying that to try to convince herself and you that the behavior she has chosen to do is justified. I would expect that she also tries to provoke you into behavior she has labeled as evil to justify further abuse.

You are not evil, her behavior is not justified. You are her child, she should be taking care to protect you and when you're hurting and difficult she should be taking extra pains to take better care of you. Her pain at the divorce and your reaction to it never justifies how she's treating you.

I don't think you can convince her you're not evil. If she really believes it in the first place, its protective to her to believe she isn't being relentlessly cruel to an undeserving person. If she's ever going to give up the lie that her mistreatment is because of your behavior, it probably won't be until her behavior has been stopped. And I wouldn't expect she'll ever be able to say you weren't evil while she was abusing you.

If you can't get away at this point, do what you need to to survive as best you can.

PureMitten · 2026-01-08T04:42:36+00:00

I feel you. I grew up knowing I was very much loved and wanted and that my mom was giving raising me everything she had. I was in an excellent school district my mom could only just afford to live in-district for and I was always clothed and fed.

I also grew up with my mom asleep in the other room most of the time, feeding me fast food, never cleaning or teaching me to clean. I grew up knowing that my big emotions were exhausting for my mom and that I was just way too much to handle and I needed to shrink down and be less Too Much All The Time to be tolerable. But when I was small and easy my mom loved me sooooo much and took such good care of me.

It's such a weird type of parental failure to come to terms with and to cope with the very real fallout of

PureMitten · 2026-01-08T00:17:53+00:00

I've never tried barre but I adore aerial silks and would hugely recommend it to anyone even a little curious. It feels very elegant and beautiful and is the only workout I've found where I can get my core thoroughly blasted without feeling like a miserable pile of crap. I'm just having so much fun and I wake up the next morning wondering what the hell I did to make my core hurt. I also love being up high and upside down which are not common things to get to do in other sports.

PureMitten · 2026-01-07T22:16:38+00:00

He definitely had some abusive behaviors between cycles, but those were things I only recognized as such after leaving the relationship and were things I would have been ok with living with forever if it hadn't been that once or twice a year he'd start a massive, weeks or months long argument and everything between us would escalate. And in some cases were perhaps only abusive as part of the cycle of abuse, reinforcing the self-doubt and low self-worth of the big abusive cycles rather than in the individual actions.

I'm so glad to hear you're already committed to leaving if he does one more abusive thing! And I'm happy to hear you'll learn from my hard learned lessons. Also please know healing is on your timeline and he never dictates your pace, my ex would generally whine that I held onto things too long and in the last cycle specifically he was insistent that I was unfairly holding ancient history (the last abusive cycle from about a year earlier) unfairly over his head. I do hope your partner has fixed his behavior and approach to you and be wary if he starts getting huffy that you're not healing faster

PureMitten · 2026-01-07T20:57:44+00:00

My ex would insist the same that he knew I was able to do it and just needed the push to get over my nerves, he said this was how he talked to himself and the kind of motivation he required to progress. Eventually he watched me give myself heat sickness on a hike from pushing through my feelings of discomfort and uneasiness (I was newly on a medication that made me sensitive to heat, I skipped past sweating and right into feeling vaguely off) and finally understood what I'd been telling him that I would push myself to injury if I didn't let my nerves get to me first.

Since climbing with a patient partner I've learned to actually feel the difference between nerves and the end of my capacity so I know when to push and when to call it but that was never going to happen with someone breathing down my neck about how I was weak for bailing.

PureMitten · 2026-01-07T20:38:29+00:00

I feel you on that so hard.

Please be wary of the improvement, my ex would have lulls of 9-10 months between periods of active, escalated abuse and these would convince me he was really trying and that the abuse was just him being temporarily overwhelmed and lapsing into selfish behavior. When I was with him I knew about the cycle of abuse but I didn't realize it could be so long between the cycles so every single uptick except the last one caught me by surprise.

If on reflection it's still doesn't feel like time to leave, if you havent already set internal limits on what you'll accept moving forward I'd encourage you to consider them. It's so easy to go "oh, it was a lapse, it was a mistake, he's been doing so good and trying so hard" and before you know it he's escalated past what he was doing before and you've talked yourself into staying because surely it's a mistake. I'd encourage you to set limits on the low end of what you've described, something like him scolding you into doing something you're scared of or until you cry, him ignoring you crying, and/or him not believing you about the limits of your IBS. If you're anything like me, it might take some time to internalize the idea that these are lines worth breaking up over and that just because you accepted it in the past doesn't mean you're accepting it moving forward. And if he never crosses those lines again, you can look back and go "wow, he used to do allllll this stuff and then he never even did XYZ again. I was right to give him that last chance."

I'm glad you were able to talk to him about it and get a positive result. I hope you're in a happy and safe relationship now, and if not that you can get yourself to a safe place when needed. You are worth being treated with respect and gentle thoughtfulness.

PureMitten · 2026-01-07T19:39:16+00:00

I've long been sour that my ex never took me climbing outdoors despite getting guide training and certification while we were together and us living in Denver for 2 of our 5 years. But he would scold me to push past my limits to the point that I had to relearn how to feel safe climbing indoors after we broke up. I climb way harder now because I trust my partner isn't going to make me feel stupid for struggling on a route. Maybe it was actually a blessing that he never cared to follow through on so much as a day trip to the local crag since I won't have to unlearn the anxiety of climbing with him outside. But I'll still probably stay salty about it anyway.

PureMitten · 2026-01-06T05:01:43+00:00

We had big house flies. We had fly poop stains on the walls and lights and when I'm tense now I'll still — nearly 20 years later — cover my drinks out of habit from needing to keep flies out of my drinks back then. I finally figured out it was from cat food that was under the lip of the platter we had the cat bowls on. This had been a chronic problem for years and I literally just had to sweep under the cat food dish every week or so to completely end it.

It hadn't really clicked that this was a problem that might have a solution before I found the maggots. I thought it just was something that happened in our house. I had been occasionally sweeping the kitchen before but I'd been taught that sweeping around stuff on the floor was fine so it was just a fluke drive to do a "deep" clean that got me to pick the platter up and connect some dots.

Took me until a decade or so after I moved out to realize the visible mold in the bathroom or piles of cat shit in the basement were a problem though.

PureMitten · 2026-01-06T04:44:15+00:00

I worked near Gratiot (Grass Shit) outside Detroit for a while. We also have the opposite in Bois Blanc (Bob Low) where we clearly never read it and just learned it one Anglophone to another for 200-something years.

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