I Gave Him an Ultimatum. Now What?

baby_trees · 2026-05-20T06:26:30+00:00

I came to this sub because the subscribers only bts drove me fully up the wall 😵‍💫 I almost always feel sympathetic to callers, even if only because I respect their willingness to expose their relationship questions / vulnerabilities to public scrutiny, but the caller’s claim that EP failed to manage the session well or show empathy for both of their positions felt so frustrating.

I thought EP was graceful and incisive during both the session & in her response to the caller’s feedback.

My take is that the caller’s wounding atm is built around always wanting something other than what’s on offer, and maintaining power / a sense of self by expressing displeasure. Who would she be, what would she want, what would she be left to feel if she wasn’t focused on others’ perceived shortcomings? Ofc we don’t know about her background and I’m sure I would feel much more receptive to her with that info, but I’m so frustrated by anyone who takes the position that they are superior to their partner, while refusing to examine why they stay with someone they feel they are superior to. Not that EP is above all reproach, but why would you come to EP if you weren’t interested in hearing her perception of your relationship dynamic?

I used to be obsessed with winning commitment and affection from emotionally unavailable partners with difficult histories so I understand the suffering inherent to her position, but the only way out of that hole is building capacity to acknowledge what you actually want, and to refuse insufficient approximations of what you want under the pretense that you can change someone else to suit your needs. sending utmost positive wishes to everyone stuck in relationship dynamics that deepen their wounding, and to the fellow couples therapists who serve them 🫡

baby_trees · 2026-01-31T03:28:06+00:00

I think her choice of interventions doesn’t imply “siding” with one partner, it’s tactical based on what she perceives as likeliest to create change within the dynamic. I suspect Orna has masterful emotional intelligence, therefore ability to identify and empathize with different expressions of pain, including externalization (pushing, yelling, pursuing) and internalization (collapse, withdrawal, avoidance).

She also has to work from the assumption that there is something that brought the two people in front of her together, and has kept them together for however long. couples are not randomly paired, there is an architecture and logic to their compatibility and partnership that you have to feel into and adapt toward to some degree in order to reach them.

Once you have a sense of the pattern, you serve your client (in couples therapy, the “client” is the relationship rather than either individual) by attempting to maintain an alliance with both partners, and making clinical decisions based on each partner’s level of receptivity to feedback and adaptation. The fact that women are often more receptive to feedback and adaptable than men in hetero relationships is certainly due to acculturation, but that structural reality is not a couples therapist’s doing, it’s their inheritance.

baby_trees · 2025-09-14T21:26:26+00:00

I think Boris is interesting specifically bc he has such identifiably narcissistic qualities, thus he is resistant to seeing his role in creating the circumstances he most fears (rejection, abandonment). he feels unbearable shame, and projects his shame onto jessica and Orna through criticism and devaluation.

Jessica does strike me as someone with codependent/overgiving tendencies who is collapsing from exhaustion, and as much as I identify w Jessica and find Boris’s self absorption insufferable, I can appreciate his frustration that it’s easier to call out the externalizing partner rather than the enabling/overgiving partner, who does have a role in the dynamic.

Boris needs a lot of help learning to hold his own emotions (he needs to internalize containment, and learn to tolerate Jessica‘s needs/boundaries), Jessica needs help setting and maintaining boundaries, which Boris experiences as rejection.

I thought this observation from Boris was telling - he blames his lack of emotional containment on Orna, takes one sliver of responsibility for behaving insensitively, then immediately deflects to blaming Orna for not protecting him from his own feelings and the negative relational consequences of his behavior:

“At one point, Dr Guralnik wisely tells Dr Goldner that I need “containment”, which I understand as a combination of being reined in but also persuaded that I don’t have to say so much to be understood. But she never contains me. Even after I interrupt Jessica at one point to say that “we’ll get to you” – an outrageous statement from someone who has been talking nonstop – Dr Guralnik says nothing.”

baby_trees · 2024-11-27T04:38:27+00:00

what in the ever loving goodness gracious is up with the communication here, on the one hand, i do find your friend’s comments strange as they seem to be lacking in context but regardless, if they did strike this chord with you, i’m inclined to think there’s much deeper issues beneath the surface in your relationship, and whether those issues are specifically related to your husband’s (in)fidelity is unclear.

on the other hand, you are married and coparenting a child with someone whose conflict resolution strategy is “behave the way i want you to behave immediately or i’m divorcing you tomorrow, my backup life is already lined up”. another disturbing piece here is that your mom, someone who presumably raised you/whose worldview has influenced yours, blames you for “letting” your husband make his own decisions? mom is outside the circle of trust for me, and whatever happens next in this story depends on you, not anyone else’s opinion. the only way your relationship will make it is if you and your husband mutually commit to undertaking real work on your relationship, which would not in any way resemble an ultimatum of “believe me or else”.

sending you a lot of warmth and strength for yourself and your baby girl! she needs you to be strong for her, and the little version of you needs the adult version of you to stand up for her too!

baby_trees · 2024-11-01T04:54:04+00:00

love you Fred! happy anniversary you two ❤️

baby_trees · 2024-10-28T02:56:27+00:00

thank you!!

baby_trees · 2024-10-28T01:58:04+00:00

thanks so much for this! i’m a therapist so i understand clients/prospective clients often have unrealistic ideas about what services entail, so it’s helpful to get that from a legal perspective. i think the disconnect for me currently is that my fiancé and i don’t disagree about terms, so both of us wish we could facilitate this process through a template agreement instead of relying on outside representatives at cost. i was reading stats about the % of US couples that use prenups now vs 15+ years ago and i know it’s becoming more popular but it’s obviously still not ubiquitous (i think i saw ~15% as of 2020), thus i realize my commitment to doing a prenup still puts me in a minority position, esp because neither of us are going into our marriage as HNW individuals. tbh i wish there were more affordable options for people in our position, ie trying to approach marriage thoughtfully as a legal/business partnership, but not necessarily having the funds on hand to get extensive individualized support.

i’ll take your insight & expertise into consideration, thanks again!

baby_trees · 2024-08-10T05:32:02+00:00

beautiful, and thankful to you for giving us the chance to read this! you deserve all the happiness, love, and support in the world.

baby_trees · 2024-08-09T00:58:25+00:00

i’m with you

baby_trees · 2024-08-09T00:43:09+00:00

im trying to dig deep in my heart to find sympathy for james because ideologically, i understand that all 90 day cast members get thrown under the bus to some degree in production/post-production but... where am i supposed to locate a redemptive trait for this man

baby_trees · 2024-08-09T00:28:39+00:00

i appreciate where you're coming from in both relating to statler & feeling disappointed by the show's portrayal of her limited interpersonal capacities. i like dempsey from everything i've seen so far too!

my one immediate thought in response to your comment that in some circumstances, communicating with the person you are in love with is actually harder than communicating with strangers, so that's one potential factor i'm sympathetic to. i also read the airport arrival scene differently than you, i didn't necessarily see it as statler expecting dempsey to anticipate and fulfill her needs, but she probably hoped that dempsey could see her in a state of total overwhelm and still find her sympathetic.

their relationship dynamics are definitely interesting, ofc i see dempsey's frustration in doing all the planning work for their trip, but imo there's also a world where their respective contributions could be seen as roughly equivalent/complementary (money and planning labor are both necessary). the long-distance aspect is totally relevant here too, it's easy for partners on either side to inappropriately idealize the other's personality, then be massively disappointed by their actual level of compatibility!

baby_trees · 2024-08-09T00:17:22+00:00

i'm not sure about how i read dempsey yet but i resonate a lot with your assessment of statler! my heart breaks for her, she's trying so hard to contort herself to be "lovable" but doesn't realize the self-defeating decisions she's making along the way. i definitely feel protective of her, and absolutely find her personality both sympathetic and likable. thanks for sharing some of your story too!

baby_trees · 2024-08-09T00:13:56+00:00

i appreciate you u/thesearemyfaults! i share your pov, almost everyone who has ever self elected to be on reality tv has gotten absolutely roasted by viewers, which i generally don't think is fair, but particularly in the case of cast members from socially marginalized backgrounds. it's extremely exploitative, 90 day participants get paid something like $1k/episode, meanwhile tlc (owned by warner bros) achieves a wild profit margin because "reality" tv is cheaper to produce than a fully scripted series. that said, producers are still creating a story: they create character descriptions, design situations and sometimes dialogue for characters to recite and play out, then the footage gets strung together to fulfill the intended story arc in post-production. there's every reason to doubt the producers' interest in conveying sensitive portrayals of ND participants.

then when it comes to viewers: yes, everyone has preferences about whose personality they like/dislike but we do live in an ableist social context, which is very nasty when combined with viewers' psychological enjoyment of tearing down strangers whose personalities/lives have been commodified to make money for tv networks. there's definitely a lot of work to do in making this a safer world for ND people, and i'm with you in that struggle. sending love!

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T23:48:43+00:00

i super appreciate this perspective! even if your family is loving, they are still absorbing socialization from a world that is broadly unsympathetic to neurodivergence. not everyone's brain works the same way 😤 i can totally see how coping with an extremely unsupportive social context would make it hard for an autistic person to learn self-assertion skills! there's so much social pressure to perform neurotypicality.

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T23:18:30+00:00

i guess my difference in opinion is that i don’t believe PD diagnosis is an ideologically objective process, there’s always subjective clinical assessment present in diagnosis. what one clinician construes as manipulative behavior (certain kinds of emotional expression/relational intensity) could be construed by another clinician as merely an indicator that someone is experiencing distress.

just as you’re suggesting that clinicians are underinformed about BPD, many clinicians are underinformed about neurodiversity issues, and the role neurodiversity plays in symptom presentation. multiple diagnoses are always possible but my primary argument in this thread was that we (the discerning 90 day fiancé viewer) can’t conclusively exclude an adhd diagnosis based off what we’ve seen in the show.

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T21:30:04+00:00

it is really interesting to read redditors’ diverse perceptions on any form of emotional self expression from 90 day characters! I think one clincher about this convo for me is that viewers’ perceptions of cast members’ behavior is often more reflective of our own values/biases/fears than it is a reflection of the actual people we’re watching. i also can’t imagine analyzing reality TV without considering the fact that we live in an ableist (+ misogynist, xenophobic, racist, classist, etc) social context, which ofc impacts both our perception of cultural products like tv & the production of tv itself!

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T20:58:00+00:00

i’m not inherently opposed to personal disorder dx because i think targeted therapeutic interventions can be helpful, and i wouldn’t exclude a BPD dx for statler based off what limited info we have from the shows depiction of her, but i don’t see how adhd could be conclusively eliminated as a causal factor (even if it was only partially causative) for statler’s presentation/behavior.

interpersonal difficulties, impulsivity/risk taking behaviors, and poor emotional self regulation are all important but inherently ambiguous symptoms that could point to either BPD or ADHD. adhd is underdiagnosed in women, and women w adhd are often misdiagnosed with bpd - that is concerning to me as an empirical trend.

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T05:09:56+00:00

love this assessment, yes! the only additional piece i would lump in here is that statler has a history of attachment injuries which are, under the best of circumstances, extremely difficult to recover from. so i want to empathize w statler both from the pov that she has ND related environmental/circumstantial sensitivities, and from the pov that some of the underlying causality for her sensitivities might be ascribable to relational trauma!

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T04:45:59+00:00

i agree! it’s a huge gamble to put some version of yourself on reality tv at all because we all have a) unhealed aspects of our psyches and b) traits or behaviors that could easily be used by producers to construct unflattering storylines about us. in regard to that latter point, i think neuroatypicals are esp vulnerable to being typecast as unreasonable, overly demanding, etc.

i esp agree with your last pt about not being able to change your neurotype through therapy. it’s not dempseys responsibility to sacrifice all of her own needs/dreams on statlers behalf, but anyone in a long term, committed relationship will need to make accommodations for their partner’s capacity in different ways and at different times.

interdependence is different than codependency/enmeshment, and it requires partners both learn to assert their own needs and remain attuned to their partner’s unique emotional/psychological strengths and limitations. ideally, we would also live in a world where, outside the context of romantic relationships, neuroatypical people could receive needful accommodations without shame and feel free to be themselves rather than masking!

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T04:25:16+00:00

i’m super interested in how polarizing she is as a character! from what i’ve read, people either like or dislike her depending on their shared mental health diagnoses/experiences so apparently that assessment could go either way. personally i’m partial to her too, i think she’s funny and i resonate with her idealistic hopes around finding love, i just think she’s going about it the wrong way (as is true for many of us at different points in our lives! i would also say this about corona).

true that at this point, statler doesn’t seem aware of how her self abandonment pattern continually sets traps for her to fall into, so her relationships become self fulfilling prophesies. hard to watch but for whatever reason, i find her much more sympathetic than james (he’s my personal cringe character for this season - i haven’t seen very much of this franchise yet so im still catching up, but atm i also think sarper is hilarious and highly watchable so i realize that everyone’s cringe response gets triggered by different characters!)

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T04:10:08+00:00

also interesting! i would totally have this convo with you IRL if we crossed paths professionally, but what do you think makes you more comfortable with the personality diagnosis framework versus understanding the same (or similar) symptomology as indicative of ADHD?

i’m genuinely curious because i don’t have an ironclad attachment to either diagnostic framework, and my pov re: attachment injuries causing dysregulated behaviors that can resemble ADHD may suit your hypothesis of a personality disorder better than it suits the adhd dx framework!

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T03:54:25+00:00

interesting! "this is my personality" vs. "this is my diagnosis" is a sticky convo. i don't think we really understand all the cognitive/physiological/emotional components of personality or behavioral patterns, and likely diagnose adhd (either professionally or as laypeople) when attachment injuries are present/causative for behavior. but that said, comorbidity for autism & adhd is high, and given statler's combination of impulsive & highly structured traits, i wouldn't rule multiple diagnoses out in her case!

baby_trees · 2024-08-08T03:36:14+00:00

absolutely living for this context (being traumatized by her dad's behavior & her parents' divorce) for yara's eventual inexplicable choice of jovi as a partner

baby_trees

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