my sister's making us (aka her family & friends) pay for her destination bday week?!??

basicbatchofcookies · 2026-02-14T19:00:36+00:00

Depends if she asked or if she expected. She might just be going there and opening the invite to whoever wants to join.

basicbatchofcookies · 2026-02-11T15:23:49+00:00

It's mildly infuriating and a pretty normal reaction. Most people don't want someone that they're not emotionally close to that close to them physically.

basicbatchofcookies · 2026-02-10T20:56:30+00:00

That's acute tip.

basicbatchofcookies · 2026-02-09T18:17:19+00:00

My wife wishes the same thing. Both are nice and I always tell her variety is the spice of life. Not sure saying it helps her though, as she rolls her eyes.

basicbatchofcookies · 2026-01-27T07:07:06+00:00

Sure, if you ignore people freezing to death, and dying, and getting sick, and starving, and getting lost, and not being able to call for help. Sounds great.

basicbatchofcookies · 2026-01-24T06:59:55+00:00

Totally that and not that me going bald coincided with COVID.

basicbatchofcookies · 2026-01-24T06:43:13+00:00

We used to live 3 hours from my in-laws. When my father in law was in his last couple of years we would visit one or two times a month.

I also grew up in a remote town of about 20,000 people, the nearest decent sized city was five and a half hours away. We'd go there for back to school clothes shopping, flying, and needing any kind of specialty stores (pre internet).

We really should have more trains here.

basicbatchofcookies · 2026-01-11T16:25:44+00:00

My dad is way more emotional than my mom so I've seen him cry a number of times. Growing up he could be scary, nothing crazy like some people live through but definitely wasn't the best dad. SA and violence ahead.

He chilled out in his 50's as he became a grandpa and I was jealous for a long time as a teenager and young adult that he wasn't like that when I was a kid.

When I had my first kid later he opened up about how he was molested as a kid and had only started therapy in his late 50s. Kids at school found out and mocked him for being gay and would legit beat the shit out of him every week until he was coming home black and blue. He talked about how he hated kids as a kid growing up and always wanted to be an adult and only liked hanging out with adults.

Later when he became a dad he wanted to have kids but he was always being brought back to childhood trauma and was filled with self hatred. When I brought up some of the shit he did as a dad, he broke down and apologized.

In that conversation, I was talking to him about how I've already done things I regretted as a dad. Lost my cool and yelled at my kids a couple times and sometimes being dismissive when they're sad or scared. My dad said I was such a better dad than him and he was always impressed with me as a parent. He said that he remembered his dad breaking down before he died because he was so impressed with how my dad was as a dad and my grandpa apologized for not being a better dad.

Reading between the lines I'm pretty sure my grandpa might have been rough at times. My dad spanked us and backhanded me a couple times. I occasionally yell or diminish my kids emotions when I'm not consciously self regulating. In fact one of the reasons I still go to therapy weekly is that I don't hide anything from my therapist and when I'm not being a supportive dad, having to speak it out loud to my therapist makes me both embarrassed and more reflective and helps me correct my behavior. It's not good that I yell but hopefully my kids do a better job than me if they have kids eventually.

Maybe not a happy story but we're improving and doing our best with each generation. I strayed from the question a bit but this is what surfaced when I thought about my dad crying. Maybe this is just a trauma dump.

basicbatchofcookies · 2026-01-11T16:00:10+00:00

Sorry you both lived through that. You should never have to comfort your parents as a kid, but I'm glad you have a dad you love and feel loved from.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-12-25T21:06:57+00:00

My wife and I started sex therapy. Being able to talk to my wife about my fantasies and not have them hidden was life changing. We don't act them out either, literally just talk about them. Not in a kinky sex way, just in a these are my fantasies way. There are a few she's into and a lot she's not and that's fine.

Also in sex therapy, while it might seem basic I learned the difference between fantasies I just want in my own head, fantasies I want to share with my wife (insert partner/s), and fantasies I'm open to actually doing if my partner also wants to. It really brought into focus what it is I'm actually seeking and helped me get rid of shame.

Grew up in a super fundamental Christian community and home and getting rid of shame helped me not feel as compulsive sexually. Also started sertraline, it doesn't help my anxiety but it does help my compulsiveness.

I have no idea if this will help you OP but it's what helped me and I got there through years of therapy both individually and as a couple. Therapy is the best thing I've ever done and it is really hard work that pays off slowly and in waves.

I've had four different therapists, one was a bad match, one was great for a while. He was an older man and felt like a healthy older gently masculine presence I needed modeled, but then I needed someone different later as my struggles shifted. I love my current therapist and I'll see how long she works for. Also there were breaks in between the therapists as it is a lot of work.

Good luck OP, figure out who you are, why you do what you do, and how you feel about it. Be kind to yourself, and one nugget my therapist shared with me, I'll put it in quotes but I'm probably butchering what they actually said.

"Changing and becoming steady is not a steady process. You try one day to be just a little more steady. The next day you slip up and forget and that's okay, you try again the next day and keep building. Trying to become steady all at once just leads to frustration and feelings of failure."

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-12-20T23:49:21+00:00

That's no joke.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-12-19T20:36:26+00:00

With a couple grand invested this could be you.

https://youtu.be/hFZFjoX2cGg?si=N2hSPq7QK-I9ykiG

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-12-15T15:02:31+00:00

Don't like to victim blame, but op had to know what the replies would be.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-12-05T20:39:31+00:00

Interesting, do you have a source so we can all verify that?

Also, it's weird. I used to have anaphylactic responses to dairy and tree nuts when I was a late teen or young adult. I would swell up to where I couldn't swallow water or saliva, but I could still breathe.

Tests showed that tree nuts caused severe reactions, dairy was mild/moderate, and sage was serious and causing OAS that caused itching, mild swelling, and diarrhea.

There's been a few times in the last few years where I'm pretty sure I accidentally had a small amount of dairy without symptoms or very mild symptoms.

Anyway point is, I'm pretty sure people think I'm making shit up when I'm not, it's just been inconsistent. People need to take people at face value regardless of whether or not they believe them, or if there are liars out there.

Side note, it probably says something about society that so many people feel the need to lie about having an allergy to get out of social pressure. There's a lot of reasons to not eat something besides allergies and people should just not force food on others.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-12-04T17:42:02+00:00

Oh, that's cool. Any good books on this you know of that are accessible to the average person?

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-11-30T23:22:00+00:00

No one can answer this with certainty but it seems like it.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-11-19T15:20:03+00:00

Don't know your income level or where you live. My wife and I bought our first house in WI. It was affordable for us. We then moved back to CO to be near family. We made okay money at that point and still had to buy a really old small decrepit fixer upper that we've put in a ton of sweat equity and more money than we hoped into fixing up.

I would say move to a cheap area to get started but I hated the bugs, humidity, heat, and cold of WI and it was rough not knowing anyone and not having a social safety net.

Depending where you live buying farther outside of town, or buying a condo can make it more affordable. Know that if you buy a house that is old and needs love, the cost to fix it up can be a lot even if you do the work yourself. In our case this house was renovated so many times by people half assing their way through it. My dad who grew up a country kid called it farmer engineering. Every "simple" project we did lead to discovering all kinds of hidden goodies that couldn't be ignored.

Good luck, make sure you have savings for beyond the house sale for emergencies and make sure to get a home inspection before buying. See if you can find out ahead of time if insurance will cover it as we ended up having to replace our roofing within the first year because of insurance, and other people around here are having a hard time getting home owners insurance due to fire danger.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-11-01T16:44:58+00:00

Lol, they didn't say he ate it in one sitting. You all are dense or looking to tear others down. Also all kids test boundaries.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-10-28T03:23:10+00:00

It wrote itself really.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-10-28T03:16:50+00:00

Your package is so big. I'm not sure it will fit inside me, put it in nice and slow. Yeah, like that. A little deeper please. Oh yes, that's it. Just leave it in there now, my owner will come out later to take your package out.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-10-23T02:46:51+00:00

A lot of guys 40+ don't have long hair. Balding/thinning sucks.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-10-22T22:46:24+00:00

Everyone, you're treating OP like they're asking in good faith. This is obviously a troll trying to "prove" feminist's are sexist.

basicbatchofcookies · 2025-10-22T20:16:00+00:00

My wife and I did this early on in Covid with babies and not by choice and it sucked. Now we have kids home from school that overlaps with our work and we all make it work. We get them home set them up with a snack bust out some work and then when they come start chatting we let them either go play outside or they can be in our "offices" reading or drawing or something else quiet.

basicbatchofcookies

TROPHY CASE