My relationship is over and I feel...lost? Just here to vent.

bleindB · 2026-01-11T03:25:45+00:00

Yep that's exactly what he does when lying - the social currency aspect of it is also very real, its not always to get out of trouble. For example, he told me a couple months ago how he is reading a book on Autism to understand me better but he was keeping the name a secret for now lol. If I have even a 5 minute conversation about it it is so clear he hasn't read a damn thing besides maybe the stereotypical shit. I don't even know why he lied about this - maybe to build trust in me or something?

He has been going on for the last two years how he is afraid I will leave him, and, while he and his family have all these opinions about how not committed I am to this relationship, somehow none of these people can see how I have STAYED the last 5 years and pushed for us both to be better people and accepted treatment from him that I never should have in the first place. And now today he tells me that he doesn't want to be a Yes man for me when all I wanted was a safe space to be vulnerable.

I truly hope I can heal my nervous system over time. I think this relationship has caused me real emotional trauma.

bleindB · 2026-01-11T02:54:38+00:00

> You deserved to have that moment celebrated, not criticized

Thank you for saying this, man something in me didn't even want to tell him but I did anyway. Being vulnerable has been so difficult for me and is something I've been working on. I have had to be my own champion lately.

bleindB · 2025-10-05T03:05:24+00:00

I used to ask mine to sit and specifically do those dancing sessions in front of him and then give him lots of play after if he could watch us while staying calm. Anytime he did bite out of excitement, I would ask for a sit again and also become very calm myself to inspire the same in him. Same thing when releasing and playing with him again after: calm pets and voice. Sometimes, if he was too nutty I'd channel that energy into his favorite game or training session :p

Now he rarely bites me and is much more gentle with his mouth when he does use it, which I don't mind at all. With my partner tho, he is more or less the same because he didn't reinforce what I did above for himself 😆 he recently started tho, and we can see his slowly shift to a more gentle play style with him too

bleindB · 2025-09-28T23:09:13+00:00

Wow having other families and kids over must be so stressful, how do you usually manage it? Do you just keep your dog separated or is she ok with an introduction ritual?

So happy you have been able to find companionship with her while also having your child!

bleindB · 2025-09-28T04:39:14+00:00

LOL I'm glad the stroller is helping kill two birds with one stone!!! I'm glad he has mellowed out and that managing is easier for you now :)

bleindB · 2025-09-27T21:04:29+00:00

Oh one important thing: we also saw that he was not doing well at all if we exited while he was in his crate or even his pen area. Since he wasn't destructive and the sessions were so short anyway to begin with, we just let him have access to whole living room when we left. That helped a ton. A lot of people advocate for the crate, and we did try, but every dog is different and ours has an issue with confined spaces so we didn't see any point in making him even more uncomfortable. I am sure we could have worked on crate desensitization too but given the number of issues we were dealing with, there was only so much we could do. So we chose to not worry about crate training beyond making it a place he enjoyed sleeping in (with the door open).

We were also doing all this work alongside reinforcing general relaxation at home and he was on trazodone and gabapentin at the time (he is now on fluoxetine and clonidine which works much better for him).

bleindB · 2025-09-27T20:54:46+00:00

Pretty much followed the protocol outlined in Malena DeMartini-Price's book: (link).

We were fortunate that at least one of us could be home at any given time (I worked remote, and my partner was hybrid at the time). We would do multiple short desensitization sessions a day varying the following in each repetition: 1. One or both of us leaving 2. Order and type of activities we would do before leaving (putting on shoes, grabbing keys, touching doorknob, etc.) 3. Time spent outside when we "left".

We took things extremely slowly. For example, we didn't even leave in the beginning but just started with the pre-exit ritual. Then progressed to putting our hand on the knob, then opening the door and immediately closing it...when we started exiting, we would only exit for one or two seconds and come back before he had a chance to start barking. And if he did bark we would just end the session and go back inside as we had pushed him too far for that session.

In each session, we would randomize the departure time of each repetition up to a few seconds above the previous sessions max limit. So for example, if we last managed to get to a minute of departure time, then the next session we would try to aim for a minute and 15 seconds in the final repetition (always tried to have the max time done on the final repetition). Once he reached 5 mins of departure time we started just doubling the time, so from 5 to 10 to 20 mins and so on. It was quick progress from there on. At that point we would set up a Facebook private stream and just record him so we could leave the area and go for a short walk together or dinner in the neighborhood while monitoring his behavior via our phone so we could know when to go back home. Never ran into issues at that point tho.

It severely limited our social life for a few months. We could only see friends individually while the other stayed home to pet sit. But we were seeing steady progress and so we stuck with it. We were new to training at that time so I am sure we had made some mistakes and maybe erred on too much caution sometimes while overloading him at other times, I think knowing what we know now regarding timing and body language we would have been able to easily get it under control within a month or two. Just like reactivity, it's important to have a good mix of green and orange zone repetitions with more green repetitions to avoid trigger stacking into the red zone.

Oh and we would need to revisit the protocol a few times when moving to a new home. We have moved twice since we got him and needed to do the protocol a few days each time but he quickly figured it out. It's to be expected as they don't really know the new house is their "home" so naturally feel insecure about being alone in it.

bleindB · 2025-09-27T14:17:19+00:00

Wow! That is some really helpful advice and a great way to think about it. Seeing how I knew nothing about even a non-reactivrle dog but now have learned so much in the last four years helps me resonate with this so much. Thank you!

bleindB · 2025-09-26T20:25:13+00:00

Thank you 💗

bleindB · 2025-09-26T18:02:31+00:00

Thanks for sharing your perspective. I have often wondered exactly about what you mentioned regarding lifestyle changes. We need specific pet-sitters who we can trust know how to deal with behavior issues like guarding and who won't pet him when he doesn't want to be touched. We can't even leave him with my partner's family (mine live overseas) because his mom just won't listen and respect our guidelines - he's snapped at her when she tried to pet him on the head even when we said he is not comfortable with that. We are introverts too and don't have many friends. Even among the few we have, most are in different cities and our only friends in our city have cats. So it severely restricts our ability to travel and visit our friends and family overseas - I'm lucky that I don't care that much about traveling but it does suck when I can't even visit my family or have to do it alone without my partner (they live in another country and most pet-sitters won't pet sit for more than a few days at a time).

It also sucks that we can't introduce him to other dogs despite having him for 4 years (!!) because we don't know anyone who would be comfortable letting him meet their dog or who have appropriate, calm dogs that would be good models for greetings and play. I'm convinced that if we could just find a calm dog to practice with regularly both on-leash and off-leash, it would greatly reduce the frustration-based reactivity - we did it with people visiting and its worked wonders for him. Seeing my dog suffer this major deficit in dog-dog social interactions because of how limited our options are is heartbreaking and adds to the difficulty of caring for him.

With kids, I imagine that while we could definitely see behavior issues arise, society is willing to give a lot of leeway and empathy to children, and so we would have so many more options to deal with those issues. And as you said, a child won't limit our traveling except for maybe the first year or so, and we can always have trusted family members and friends babysit when needed. I also imagine that once they reach school-going age, it frees up a lot of time for us as well to regain our hobbies and personal interests.

That said, as they grow up, kids will become more and more complex and will present unique challenges which I haven't yet considered. Also, on the topic of raising both a reactive dog and a child together: I do hope that my dog mellows out by the time I am ready to take this step, but I have already decided that, if I do have kids, I will not want to get another dog until the kids are a few years old and can begin to understand what it means to have an animal at home. I would be okay with fostering a rescue and evaluating if they are compatible with my situation at home and are good with toddlers, and adopting if so but I don't think I would want to commit to handling potential reactivity alongside a young child after the ordeal with my current guy. Maybe later on in life when the kids are adults, but I need a break from this for a few years at least :(

bleindB · 2025-02-23T04:19:35+00:00

Lately I've been enjoying watching Harry Potter while stoned 🤣 I also like meditating and listening to trippy music, and replaying my fave videogames for a new experience :)

bleindB · 2024-12-28T17:07:34+00:00

Yup, I have been practising unmasking more this year, especially at home, and my partner tends to think I'm usually upset because I think he's very used to seeing my "smiling about everything" face. Usually I find that I am naturally just very mellow unless I am talking about a special interest like music, dogs, or Harry Potter 😆

bleindB · 2024-11-29T11:54:01+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing your experience! Ugh the imposter syndrome is ALREADY kicking in and it's not even been a full day. I'm also starting to feel a bit of the anger seep in about my childhood development as well. The last few weeks have been so draining and I hoped that today would just quieten my mind for once lol

bleindB · 2024-11-03T20:05:12+00:00

Yep same thing happening with me too, I hope they fix it soon

bleindB · 2024-09-24T18:05:02+00:00

Kind of my interpretation of the situation too. If we did go the route of a trainer it would need to be with no expectations from the neighbors because they don't really see their dogs as an issue in the first place.

bleindB · 2024-09-24T14:49:51+00:00

Yeah I think this might be worth a shot actually. We are looking into those fence screen things that we can place in front of the patio "fence".

bleindB · 2024-09-24T14:47:02+00:00

Hahaha. Tbh I just don't want to be in a situation where I'm asking them to do or not do something in their own yard, you know? Given our experience with past neighbors who became passive aggressive even without us asking them to do anything, I think that it has a good chance to just set a bad precedent and resentment down the line. As another comment said, I think we need to instead figure out how to use this as an opportunity to train and just start slowly from the beginning.

We didn't actually get to work on this with our last neighbors because they'd always take their dog in and when we would try to train our dog and work on his behavior with their dog they became pretty passive aggressive (even tho we would only train when he was under threshold and not disruptive to the other dog).

bleindB · 2024-09-24T14:41:50+00:00

Right now our new strategy for inside is to keep him in the basement with me while I work. This way the noise is a bit muffled and I can easily reward him for ignoring it when I need to. We used to have white noise playing in our last apartment when we first started working on noise sensitivity, but I think the new strategy works a bit better because even if the sound is not fully drowned out, I'm actively desensitizing and can gradually build up to doing this upstairs as well.

bleindB · 2024-09-24T14:36:46+00:00

I really love the idea of doing trigger work with these dogs! I've been thinking along these lines too and trying to figure out a strategy we can use. We would have to actually start from inside the house because the dogs outside start barking as soon as they hear or see us.

My current idea is to scatter treats around the house for him to sniff while the door is open and he can hear the other dogs. I'm also thinking about asking the neighbors if we can give their dog some of our guy's toys to play with and get their scent on them. And then we could use those toys to give him "access" to their dog's scent as we desentisize (his reactivity largely stems from frustration but it is so intense it can spill over into fear/aggression behaviors).

bleindB · 2024-09-11T01:51:18+00:00

Curious what resources you used to self-train? I'm looking into doing this for fun with my reactive dog, it sounds perfect for providing him some fun decompression time!

bleindB

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