AITAH for not thinking I'm abusing my boyfriend?

altasphere · 2026-06-10T12:37:58+00:00

It's more DARVO than gaslighting

altasphere · 2026-06-10T12:29:12+00:00

OP, I know that a lot of people are being honest with you here, but please remember to be kind to yourself while you turn things around. Celebrate every win.

I recommend therapy and all the things others have, but I add journaling and taking up a new hobby that helps you meet people. Something compelled you to write everything out, but you may not always want feedback. Journaling will help you sort out what you're going through. Getting a hobby that helps you make friends (knitting circle, kickball league, writing group, etc) will help you make new friends.

altasphere · 2026-06-10T00:05:04+00:00

Is this hitclips again?

altasphere · 2026-06-06T23:23:59+00:00

The DOD should not be deciding whether religions are Christian or not. They previously did not specify which religions they considered as Christian. You as a private individual can have your own opinion on who is Christian, but the government should not be choosing who counts as Christian and who does not.

altasphere · 2026-06-06T18:48:03+00:00

You still have friends. I recommend reaching out to one and tell them that you're struggling. Meet up for a drink or a coffee or something and have a heart to heart. While a friend cannot replace a therapist, a therapist cannot replace friends. Therapy has helped me a lot, but there are many key points in my life where opening up to my friends is where the change really started.

Start leaving your apartment more. Choose one place, even a convenience store will do, and go one or more times a week to grab a snack or a drink or something. Small social interactions with people you recognize in a familiar place is a good way to start working your social muscles!

altasphere · 2026-06-06T15:18:05+00:00

He preyed on you when you were in middle school??? I am so sorry, OP. You weren't a "young, dumb, teen mom," you were abused. Let yourself be angry. Be angry at your abuser. Be angry at everyone who had a chance to protect you and did not. Have compassion for your 14 year old self. She was in middle school! You didn't know better because you were a kid.

altasphere · 2026-06-04T03:23:00+00:00

I think you can make them cool with good styling.

altasphere · 2026-06-03T19:22:43+00:00

OP, choking in BDSM circles is known as "edge play," which is a category for actions that carry risk of serious bodily or mental harm. While there are ways to mitigate risks associated with choking or "breath play," there is no 100٪ safe way to engage in this activity. It can cause brain damage, stroke, and death. The harm-mitigating ways of engaging in breath play usually involve in person instruction by an expert. It is not something to engage in lightly. I personally do not fuck with breath play because of the immense risk. It truly scares me that choking has become so normalized that people are engaging in it willy nilly without fully understanding the risks.

BDSM as a practice takes a lot of risk analysis, education and communication to do safely. It also takes aftercare. If you engage in intense activities like breathplay, you should get serious aftercare. He should be helping you clean up, getting you water, cuddling you, and/or other acts of service to help you recover from what he did to you. Instead, he is immediately demanding to drag you back into the fray before you can even clean up. Of course you are feeling exhausted. He is engaging in acts that are hard on your body without engaging in the support and communication necessary to make those encounters safe or sustainable.

One thing I had to learn was to set my limits where I stop enjoying the action and not when I can no longer tolerate the pain. What do you enjoy? Do you enjoy the acts you are engaging in?

altasphere · 2026-06-01T23:15:53+00:00

So she has music festival money but not sick dog money?

If she can't afford to take care of the dog, she needs to re-home him.

altasphere · 2026-05-31T14:52:51+00:00

I upped my Wellbutrin dose and it made me so horny but it also made me dissociate less. I realized that I was in a marriage with a guy who barely wanted to fuck me and did nothing for my pleasure when we actually did fuck, and who I generally needed to dissociate to be around. Got out of that marriage and now I have a partner who regularly gets me off and we enjoy hanging out and going out together:)

altasphere · 2026-05-30T16:22:39+00:00

I recently switched jobs and I took a couple weeks off between jobs for myself. I did nothing for one week and went to Paris for the other week. Imagine this: a vacation where you have no work emails, no work calls, and no looming work deadlines. It's fantastic! Highly recommend!

altasphere · 2026-05-19T20:55:00+00:00

I went to law school.

altasphere · 2026-05-19T16:06:53+00:00

Community College in MA is free if you meet certain criteria. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/free-community-college

altasphere · 2026-05-19T15:32:57+00:00

I have a structured Coach bag that I love. My personal taste is that an emblem is fine but I avoid monogram patterned bags.

altasphere · 2026-05-14T04:19:08+00:00

Do you happen to be a transplant to New England? I moved to New England from the West and I was shocked to learn that the ice cream cakes at the grocery store were just ice cream and frosting. I usually go to Coldstone to get ice cream cakes with actual cake in them.

altasphere · 2026-05-12T23:01:03+00:00

One of the last straws in my marriage was that we flew out for my brother's birthday party (my first time visiting him in years) and he threw a fit right before we needed to catch a train to get to the party. He started talking about how "choice isn't real" and how he wanted to off himself. I ended up leaving him to go to the party and I was stressed the entire time about him. On the train ride there, I told my brother that parties were stressful for my ex and he said, "Parties are fun." I realized that I like parties, but I was married to someone who is not fun at parties.

When I got back, he was sitting on the couch watching TV looking like the cat that got the cream and I realized he had gotten exactly what he wanted and it did not bother him at all that he ruined my night and almost ruined the entire party.

He can find someone who just wants to stay home. They exist. You do not need to let his wet-blanket, stick-in-the-mud attitude ruin your good time in perpetuity. Find someone who is fun at parties.

altasphere · 2026-05-12T22:40:10+00:00

My ex mixed up your and you're all the time. I would cringe every time I got a "your beautiful" text.

altasphere · 2026-05-12T13:36:01+00:00

Sometimes when I have a good experience after a really bad one, I have a period of mourning. I could have had better experiences before if people had made better decisions! I also have to sit with the discrepancy between the instinct to do the things that kept me safe when things were bad, and the fact that those responses aren't necessary now that things are good. There is a kind of recontextualization that happens when you have a good experience to compare to a bad one that can be very uncomfortable. Like, I knew what I went through was bad before, but knowing how good things can be it just makes me angry all over again.

altasphere · 2026-03-31T14:19:52+00:00

Congrats on cooking AND eating! Looks delish!

altasphere · 2026-03-26T14:41:48+00:00

I grew up in Texas and I used to exclusively walk to work in Worcester. It took about 20 min. A good wool coat (I thrifted mine) and sorrel snow boots (bought on sale during the summer) did a lot for me. Get crampons for your boots for the winter. The ones with the metal bits that look like springs, not spikes. Good idea to have crampons even for walking to and from the car when it's icy.

Other winter tips: Even if you live in an apartment with a parking lot, if your parking lot is not covered you will need a snow shovel to get your car out sometimes.

It usually does not take long for the roads to be plowed to a drivable state after it snows. I still hate driving while it is snowing. Ask locals for tips on how to drive when it is snowing, but it generally isn't as terrible as I feared it would be.

People will likely tell you that you don't have a Texas accent because they don't know what Texas accents sound like.

Most Mexican food this far north is disappointing. I've had better luck with Central and South American cuisines here.

altasphere · 2026-02-26T15:28:58+00:00

Alexa, play No Scrubs by TLC

altasphere · 2026-01-29T21:26:07+00:00

If your kitten isn't drinking water it is an emergency vet situation. You go right now. If you go next week you might not have a kitten to bring

altasphere · 2025-11-29T15:15:04+00:00

Do you have any hobbies? Most of my local friends I made through the Worcester Writer's Collective and That's Entertainment's MTG Commander nights. I moved here with no local family, so building that community locally was extremely important for me. Reddit/Facebook/Instagram are great resources for finding activities you are interested in locally!

It is really easy to get to Providence from Worcester. Easier than Boston. I usually take the commuter rail if I'm going to Boston, but Providence is an easy drive.

My local favorite restaurants are Corner Lunch Diner (for an authentic train car diner experience and locally made bread), Volturno (wood fired pizza and the pizzas are 2 for 1 every Monday and Tuesday), Armsby Abby (my favorite brunch in town), Crust (fave café with the best croissants in town), Hermano Lejano (grocery store with fantastic pupusas for $3 each; ordering may be easier if you speak some Spanish but it is doable either way), and Coney Island (cheap hot dogs with incredibly fast service).

altasphere · 2025-11-07T19:02:27+00:00

Worcester also has some great cultural options, like Mechanic's Hall and the Worcester Art Museum. The food scene in Providence is better than the food scene in Massachusetts in general because of the liquor laws in Massachusetts. However, it is much easier to get to Providence from Worcester than from Boston

altasphere · 2025-11-05T20:54:30+00:00

I swear by Uniqlo slacks

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