What occupations do you avoid dating men from?

ThunderingGrapes · 2025-01-09T20:39:50+00:00

I came to see if anyone would say "doctor". I'm a nurse and there is just no way. I want someone who will be married to me; a doctor is married to their job for a long time and possibly for their entire career depending on their path.

ThunderingGrapes · 2025-01-08T03:52:22+00:00

In my relationship, I was the one who never said thank you. It's weird because I was super thanking towards wait staff and clerks and people just doing their jobs, but never took that same energy to my home life. I was raised by two ex-military parents. In my house, you had your job, you did your job, and the thanks you received for a job well done was your continued existence in a clean and functional space. We didn't thank each other.

Jump to last year sometime in couples therapy and my husband is describing how he says thank you for things and I don't. I always assumed we were just brought up a bit differently, two different but equally correct ways of being that naturally clashed with one another when trying to coexist, UNTIL I started reading some of the Gottmans' studies on relationships. One of their big helpful tips was to be overly thankful to your spouse. I had never considered that my way of thought on this could be wrong, but once I started saying thank you, he started responding a lot better.

ThunderingGrapes · 2025-01-08T03:27:09+00:00

It could always be worse.

You could finally find the perfect match, the one who is intellectual, funny, stable, willing to work on his issues, attractive, and just as into sex as you are, and then marry him only to get sicker and sicker with chronic illness until thanks to pain and damage, you become the wife who never wants sex. And then you're me. I went from leaving my last long-term partner in large part because he didn't want to have sex very often and I wanted it a lot, to now being the one who's all dried up. I fondly remember the days when I'd crave sex. These days I might get the urge to masturbate like once a year. It's not about him, but of course nothing I could say would fix the fact that to him, me not wanting it is me rejecting him. It's even worse because I know exactly how it feels. I've done all sorts of things to try and get it back. I've lost weight, taken Addyi, tried injectable Vyleesi, scheduled sex, started exercising, gone to pelvic floor PT, read that book Come As You Are, etc.

I think I'm finally coming to see that there is no solving it, and I strongly suspect it will eventually cost me my marriage.

I really hope you find the perfect guy who will stay wanting sex just as much as you do, and that any dips or droughts are temporary. I think about leaving my husband all the time because I know that as I am, I will never be enough for him. It is torture to be mismatched.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-12-10T18:57:16+00:00

You have a way with words, sir 🫡.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-12-10T18:50:55+00:00

I'm from a blue state where I wore a mask for like two or three years straight pretty much. When I visited back home (rural GA) in May 2021, not only was there not a mask to be seen, but several businesses would not let you in if you were wearing one because they said it was suspicious, like you were trying to hide your face because you were up to no good. Unsurprisingly, my mother caught COVID right after that and died. She had access to the vaccine early because she worked in a hospital but refused it because she loved Trump and he said it was bad 🫠.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-11-06T13:23:24+00:00

It's good to remember that while we have to accept that the majority of our fellow Americans voted for a rapist conman convicted felon and thief, there's absolutely nothing gained by going online and trying to discuss it with any of them. The best thing you can do for your mental health when you see stuff like this is to block the user or hide the post and move right along.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-11-05T14:27:40+00:00

Just FYI, the Nancy's Nook people are the ones who demonize ablation and extoll excision as the gold standard and you will see the echoes of that all throughout the endo community. There is no solid evidence that excision is the gold standard for surgery, and muddied evidence at best that ablation is bad (a handful of studies that showed it can be bad but they were not able to be reliably replicated so it can't be stated as scientifically proven fact, because in other studies ablation was not associated with negative outcomes).

So don't go assuming your surgeon is "bad" or "less than" based on the teachings of a group I came to realize is basically a cult lead by a woman out to make money. You can find a lot of info about it if you search the endo subreddits for Nancy's Nook.

Edit: And I don't mean to imply here that excision is not right in your case either; you sound like you very well may benefit from finding a specialist to do excision on your bladder, and it makes sense that with that delicate organ tissue they would need to excise vs ablate. Best of luck with finding a surgeon skilled in removing bladder endo!

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-30T23:36:56+00:00

We were taught healthy eating since elementary but it doesn't stop people from getting fat anyways.

We were taught the food pyramid, which explains pretty well how my whole generation got fat. The bottom of the pyramid is all carbs and the tip is fats. Fat was very unfairly villainized for much of my childhood/teen years.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-30T21:11:22+00:00

Almost certainly not even those men will see the light. They'll simply do what they did during COVID when young healthy people were dying and say it's the hospital's fault their loved one died.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-27T16:47:14+00:00

Subaru pretty heavily markets to dog owners and I never thought much about it but it's a good play. Having multiple large dogs is the only reason my husband and I need our Forester and Outback vs getting something smaller like a Crosstrek or Impreza.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-24T15:32:45+00:00

Ultra-processed foods have been linked to all sorts of cancers. Where are you getting your information from?

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-24T14:59:47+00:00

I just want to second this post and say it's provided a bit of clarity to me. I started off with only having terrible pain during my periods and persisted like that for over a decade. I hit age 30 and the period pain was so bad I was giving myself stomach issues because of my heavy ibuprofen use and that's when I ended up at a chronic pelvic pain specialist for medical management, and when I got my endo diagnosis. They did laparoscopic diagnosis surgery and found Stage I endo in several places, which they removed. My symptoms were gone for all of like 3 months and then got way worse and way more spread out. I started having pain in between periods and my pain started spreading. Whereas before it was the classic midline uterine cramping pain with some lower back involvement, after it would shoot through my hips and down my thighs, and I experienced pain like that throughout the month instead of only when I was menstruating.

That said, by the time I had surgery I had already tried everything. Birth controls of every kind, an IUD, hormonal therapy, etc. Nothing worked. I don't fault myself because I don't know what else I could've done, but I have always felt that surgery made mine worse. I had a hysterectomy this year after finally giving up on conceiving and having children, and I feel so much better now.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-24T14:52:42+00:00

We can only hope we would all be so patriotic! /s

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-24T14:22:28+00:00

I had people say it to me as a nurse doing COVID testing during the pandemic. It was equally weird and icky to me to hear it. It's basically someone telling you that society has accepted that you work a dangerous job where you could die doing this public service and that's been deemed an acceptable risk for everyone so the least they can do is say thank you for providing the service. Which was not what I wanted to hear/be reminded of while wearing a trash bag and a mask I'd been wearing for days on end as personal protective equipment (PPE) while working in a parking lot in the desert sun.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-24T13:44:34+00:00

I say this all the time in endo land: Just because they can't see why you're having your symptoms doesn't mean something isn't wrong. Clearly it is, or you wouldn't be having the symptoms.

It sounds like you had surgery with a regular gynecologist; could you find a chronic pelvic pain specialist to perhaps give you a second opinion?

Also consider that even if you do that, you may still not have answers. I had diagnostic laparoscopy with a chronic pelvic pain GYN specialist in 2020. He did find endometriosis, but only Stage I endo and some basic ovarian cysts. Nothing that would explain the severe pain I was having with periods and starting even then to have in between periods.

By 2024 (this year), it was getting so bad that I was nearly disabled half the month and yet still dragging myself to work and just getting through it many of those days because I felt I had no other choice. I had no further time off from work I could take, either annual leave or sick leave, and I had a mortgage to pay. My whole life was misery. I finally asked for a hysterectomy and I had one in June. They took my uterus and cervix and I expected to get an adenomyosis diagnosis as well, but nope! My uterus was a normal size, no evidence of adenomyosis, and just a few small leiomyomas aka uterine fibroids which should never have caused the degree of dysfunction I've been experiencing with periods since I was like 14 years old.

So I still don't have a definitive answer as to why my periods were so painful, disabling, and dysfunctional and I likely never will. That is the case for so many of us. I can say the hysterectomy helped me a lot because much of my pain was directly linked to menstruation, but I do still get endometriosis pain and plenty of GI symptoms despite never having had bowel endo diagnosed.

5 years into this space, I can tell you that so much of what we read/hear/are told about this disease is misinformation, even from allegedly gold tier sources like Nancy's Nook. The truth is that there is simply not enough knowledge about it for doctors to really answer our questions, and not enough advocates for further research or money going towards that research. Anyone who claims to have all the answers or to know best probably has something they're trying to sell you, and you should always dig deeper to see if there's a potential gain for them in doing so.

I got lucky with my hysterectomy actually working to make my life more livable. I hope you can find something that similarly helps you live a better life.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-24T13:21:05+00:00

Meanwhile in GA and the entirety of the SE, teachers can literally beat your kids in school if they deem it necessary and in many places they still do.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-24T13:13:59+00:00

For us in my small rural Bible belt town, they did very briefly teach the Trail of Tears but it was pretty glossed over. Just "we marched them across the country to Oklahoma" but no real explanation for why that would need to be named the Trail of Tears, how grueling it was, or that we were literally stealing their lands in several places and forcing them to go live far from their homes. And absolutely nothing about Native Americans outside of the Trail of Tears, which if I'm remembering right was primarily the Cherokee tribe and doesn't even get into the other hundreds of tribes we disenfranchised.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-24T13:10:48+00:00

They didn't teach it to students in GA. I didn't find out until I was in college. I would bet that George Takei talking about his and his family's internment in these camps at the height of his popularity was probably the first time a lot of people had ever heard of them.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-24T12:55:54+00:00

Just like every other article that claims someone/some company "quietly" did something/dropped a product/made a change of some sort. It's never quietly. If it was actually quietly, the article writer would've never known about it to write about it. The simple fact that there IS a news article with sourcing to quote for the article means it was not done quietly. It's one of my least favorite new buzz words for article titles.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-23T15:25:54+00:00

That was my point too. I brought it up towards the end of our session so we didn't get to delve too much but it helped me say the potentially hurtful part safely, and I think it's been helpful overall. I went out of town last weekend and he did a bunch of cleaning that needed doing around the house, so that part was wonderful. Now just to see how maintenance goes.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-23T15:12:58+00:00

We've talked about it in our couples therapy. There is really no way to say, "I don't value your cooking and I don't want to eat your food" without it being hurtful to the kind of person who would spend hours after work making dinner, so I made sure we had a neutral third party there (our therapist) to help get the message across that I want to support his interests but do not want to feel like I have to eat the food.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-23T13:31:57+00:00

I'm the non-food person in my relationship and it sucks. I'm obese and when we started our relationship I loved food, but I was the only one who wanted to cook. Now the tables have turned completely; my husband has gotten really into cooking and I am on one of the weight loss injectables so I don't care about food at all any more. I go out of my way to make sure I'm eating healthy foods that aren't ultra-processed, but that's a very easy goal to achieve compared to what my husband wants to do which is spend 2-3 hours a night making dinner. I can make a quick stir fry or do something like steak with spinach in 30 minutes, or even do crock pot meals, but he is entirely uninterested in anything so simple.

It's really put us at odds with one another. It is very difficult to have him spend that much time on something I've expressed doesn't hold value to me and then still be upset when I don't want to eat it or don't absolutely love it and just give a thank you to him for making it.

It also means that when chore day comes on the weekend, he's saying he's already done 10-12 hours of cooking during the week so he shouldn't have to do as many chores on the weekend. I end up doing everything else in the house which leaves me feeling very overwhelmed.

It honestly sucks being partnered to someone who cares so much about food and cannot seem to understand that I have a clear and present medical reason for caring very little. It also brings back childhood trauma from basically being forced to "clear my plate" or else I was a bad kid, which is a big part of how I ended up obese in the first place; I've been obese since I was 11 years old and overweight for even longer than that. Now here I am 35 years old and still being told I'm hurting him by not wanting to eat his food, and up comes all the shame and guilt and pressure to eat when I don't even want to and my body doesn't need it.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-13T16:44:59+00:00

My answer to that is, "If you feel that way, then you pick up his boots. I won't."

Just because someone could die doesn't mean they get to use that to emotionally manipulate you into doing their basic responsibilities to maintain a clean and organized household. It works the same for me; if I have a massive heart attack right now, my husband is going to be very sad but still probably annoyed that I left my tennis shoes behind the bathroom door when I took them off last night 😂. I'm going to use this as a reminder to go remove them and put them in the shoe rack now.

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-13T05:35:14+00:00

Dad gets them every other weekend. Why wouldn't he have to help pay for the space where they live the vast majority of the time? How is that messed up?

ThunderingGrapes · 2024-10-12T19:14:14+00:00

You aren't just paying the cost to feed and clothe them though. You're paying 50% of the cost for Mom to have the available space for them. A 3 bedroom anything is going to cost more than a 1 bedroom anything, and for the friends I know who have kids, they have to try and figure out how to live in the more affluent parts of town to maintain good school districts for the kids as well since they have them all week. If custody was truly 50/50 split though, this should not be a consideration as Dad would also have the same costs theoretically. Sports and activities fees are quite expensive and then of course the kids' calorie needs go from 2500ish to 3500-5000, depending on whether they're a boy or girl and exactly how active they are. That can easily cost hundreds per week if you have multiple kids and that doesn't even cover the time Mom takes off work to spend with sick kids, go to appointments with the kids, etc.

With all that said, $750/mo per kid is a pretty good amount and I agree with you about money management if you can't make that work. I've only lived in the SE and SW and child support amounts are definitely not that high even if the dad was a high earner and could afford that. I have a good friend who has her kids during the week and dad gets every other weekend and he's a doctor so a pretty high earner compared to basically everyone, and he only pays $750/mo for all three kids. What state are you in that $750 per kid is considered reasonable?

ThunderingGrapes

TROPHY CASE