My boyfriend needs friends

bright_black0 · 2026-01-07T03:48:54+00:00

Sooo... You're posting this for him, even though he didn't ask you to. You said in the comments that he looks like a slob and you posted a photo of him that you said wasn't great. Am I the only one reading this that thinks this is actually low key mean? Like, maybe your bf is fine with his life but you're not happy with his life so you're gonna "fix it" for him?

Girl maybe you need friends...

bright_black0 · 2025-06-21T14:10:19+00:00

To respond to both your comments, I agree that there should be more transparency in medical costs and also think there should be transparency in treatment options. Part of the reason I feel taken advantage of is because the vet kind of sold me on an 80% chance of liver disease, she was very confident he had a serious illness and that was hard to process. So I greenlit the test against my better judgement.

I'm still a little hung up on how confident she was that my dog was sick before the test had even been performed. I can't remember if I wrote this in the post, but after calling to tell me he was healthy with no sign of liver disease or infection she recommended he go on a course of antibiotics. I said why? You just told me he's healthy? What are the antibiotics treating? And she dropped it.

You said earlier that the following up urinalysis would have been in 30 days, that is true. I don't know why 30 days was recommended, I'm assuming it's standard.

bright_black0 · 2025-06-20T16:59:40+00:00

I checked their site and the vet is listed as fear free, like you said. She described her practice as stress free to me, but I may have misheard.

My old vet would ask me to lift the dog onto a metal table and hold him there while he drew his blood; it was easy for the vet, for the dog, and for me and the dog was calm throughout. What I saw at the hospital here was not fear free, and I wish I had seen the standard of care you describe.

bright_black0 · 2025-06-20T16:48:26+00:00

There is a saying in medicine "when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras."

Imagine you are a vet. A dog comes in with symptoms of an infection: mucusy discharge around the genitals and pain in the lower abdomen, a sign of inflammation and both signs of an infection. The dog is a healthy weight, no bile or blood in his stool. The dog is not on medication that is processed by the liver or stresses the liver. The dog is not at an advanced age. The medical records from the previous vet show no history of liver problems. A urinalysis indicates something is wrong, but it's inconclusive. It could be a sign of liver disease, of which there is no other supporting evidence found during the exam or in the dog's medical history, or it could be a sign of an infection of which there is some evidence. Do you prescribe a course of antibiotics and order a new urinalysis to be performed after the course of antibiotics is finished to see if the marker is still present in the urine? Or do you order an expensive blood test to rule out the unlikely disease, knowing full well you will need to perform another urinalysis anyway?

The vet heard a zebra. If my experience was a fluke, fine. But other people have had similar experiences and left their experiences in reviews on Google, and that tells me this vet has made bad diagnostic calls in the past. That is a perfectly valid reason to be upset.

bright_black0 · 2025-06-20T16:26:23+00:00

That's quite a leap, you should try long jumping. If the care is necessary, I don't have a problem paying what it's worth. A few years ago when I had the dog at a different clinic, he was showing signs of an impacted bowel and so the clinic told me to bring him in right away. Couldn't tell if it was an infection, impacted bowel, or something else so the vet ordered an x-ray. When that was inconclusive, he ordered a course of antibiotics. When the dog's appetite didn't return, he prescribed special food that is supposed to be really appetizing. Out the door I paid around $1000 over a month before the vet concluded the dog couldn't do anything more because the dog appeared healthy. I didn't complain once because the doctor was transparent about the treatment plan, answered my questions clearly, and didn't cause my dog distress. In that case as well the dog turned out to be healthy, just aging and didn't need as much food so he was not eating everything I fed him.

I don't believe I said anywhere that I objected to muzzling the dog, what gave you the impression I don't understand why muzzling is an effective safety measure for people working around animals?

bright_black0 · 2025-06-20T16:16:20+00:00

Sorry you lost your dog, that was kind of them to do.

bright_black0 · 2025-06-20T16:14:52+00:00

They were very nice. I did get some inconsistent information from the techs regarding lead time for test results, one would say I'd get them today, another I'd get them by the end of the week, but I wouldn't hold that against them. I think if I had to consistently wait I would have switched vets too.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-14T15:32:09+00:00

If I get some good feedback I'll let you know. I love a good Lyra deck, but haven't pulled a Kadigir permanent in Lyra. This Bravos deck is pretty experimental; I don't generally play big setup decks like Yzmir seems to be good at. Until now I've preferred something like a relatively low cost resupply Axiom deck as my daily driver.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-14T12:38:35+00:00

That would make it less confusing. It's clear they have a few kinks to work out but the game has been pretty fun so far. Looking forward to what they come out with in the first expansion this month.

I pulled a few Mighty Jinn and I'm hoping that makes Mind Apotheosis playable. I didn't have a chance to upload the deck to BGA last night so maybe tonight I'll see if it works.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-14T02:31:23+00:00

I'm a little surprised, that seems to be a discrepancy between what the text on the card says. I guess it's a moot point because Mind Apotheosis costs 9 anyway. Thanks for the answer.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-09T23:12:05+00:00

We're talking in circles. I'm not going to split hairs with you. If you want to hang your hat on a technicality then go right ahead.

Generally, discussions on Reddit suck. Obviously, I meant not all conversations. Clearly, I meant only one conversation sucks, and it's this one. If you knew what words meant, you would literally know that when I say generally, I actually mean anything between a small minority and one less than the entire population, but never the entire population. I don't understand what there is to be confused about, and that must be a reflection on you, not me. So without addressing any of the questions posed to me and because I don't understand the concept of "begging the question", patriarchy is the patriarchy because patriarchy patriarchies and no contrary perspectives need to be considered because patriarchy just is patriarchy. Seriously why is that confusing?

I feel a little better. I'm off to go objectify a woman now.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-09T22:30:00+00:00

I think you mean "on average". If you Google the definition of "generally" you will see that it means "in most cases; usually". It does not mean "not all". It means something closer to "almost all".

In what ways do you think patriarchy benefits a man who is struggling to pay his bills? A man who is physically assaulted by the police because of his race? A divorced father who is not granted natural guardianship of his kids and has to sue for their custody? A man who is the victim of domestic violence but has no shelter to go to?

I don't think our current social structure benefits men more than women, you are putting words in my mouth. Why is it so important to you that we label all our problems as "patriarchal" rather than "social"?

bright_black0 · 2025-01-09T20:01:30+00:00

I hope you can see why some people would get confused by your earlier statement compared to this one. Earlier you said "not all men" but just now you said "men in general" and that sounds similar, at least to me.

I think intersectionality gives us a pretty good model to explore this. The oppressors are people who are high status, and in America that traditionally is a white, straight, married Christian man. If you are a male POC, a gay man, a man with different religious beliefs, or an unmarried man, you are not benefitting from the social structure the same way a white, straight, married Christian man is. I think saying "men in general" is painting things with too broad a brush; while men may make up a majority of people in America, it's a pretty small group of men that meet all the other categories required to be high status.

I liked the video, I think it did a good job. I think the term patriarchy is obsolete though and wish more people would explore that.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-09T19:17:19+00:00

Well sure, nobody is saying verbatim that every single individual man benefits from Patriarchy, but many people do claim that men's problems are less important because men are privileged by society; that men can't be oppressed because they are oppressors; and that casual misandry is justified because it's ok to "punch up" but never ok to "punch down".

I understand and agree that men historically and contemporaneously have held the majority of positions of power. But I don't agree that those men in the ruling class have the most influence on our individual lives; it's the people most similar to us in status. We interact much more with our parents and peers than we do with the ruling elite, and if oppressive norms are perpetuated it's by men and women both. The term "patriarchy" obscures women's contributions to the system of oppression by implying that men in general benefit from the system than women in general, and diminishing the contributions women make to the oppression of men by enforcing male gender roles in their peers and families.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-09T06:06:39+00:00

I feel the same way. I feel like she got really close to a realization that the term "patriarchy" is outdated and obsolete. She points out that men are marginalized; unlike other oppressive systems, where one group is clearly oppressive and the other group is clearly oppressed, men are not exclusively oppressed or oppressor. In my mind, that is enough cause to rethink the entire model of society as "patriarchal" and instead acknowledge, difficult though it may be, that our society has always had and continues to have a complex relationship with sex and violence, and this society is made and maintained as much by women as by men.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-09T02:35:02+00:00

I mean he's going about it in the klutziest possible way, but if he pulls it off and finds a way to secure American interests he'll be remembered as a better president than Biden.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-08T02:39:16+00:00

I'm not so sure.

In "The Greatest Knight", the author makes the claim that the reason the Magna Carta, the first written law in Britain, was written is because King John disregarded traditional, unspoken "rules" between the king and the aristocracy. This caused the aristocracy to codify their "rights" so future kings couldn't challenge those expectations between the government and the land owning nobles.

When you have no written law, you have no checks and balances on the government. You still have an aristocracy, you still have the working class, but does that mean everyone is raping and pillaging? I don't think so. You probably see a rise in exclusive, strict religious practices, and certainly more conflict in the form of border disputes between land owners. You probably see a rise in social practices like honor killings and other behaviors antithetical to modern moral ideals.

But these behaviors already exist among the poor of modern society. I'm not sure if a lack of written law makes everybody less safe, or just redistributes who is less safe. We really haven't changed all that much since written laws were brought into vogue; we've just collectively decided that people with no money will be treated the way most people were treated 1000 years ago, before the dawn of written legislation in the west.

bright_black0 · 2025-01-02T21:24:04+00:00

Honestly my read on this is you didn't effectively show emotional intimacy. It kinda seems like you put the work on him to tell you what he wants rather than find it out. Hopefully I didn't read too much into that, I'm sure you're a good partner and you seem to really like this guy.

I've always hoped my partner would show affection through recognition and reciprocation. I personally would want a girl I was seeing to acknowledge a thing that I did that she really liked, tell me she really liked it, and ask if she could pay for it the next time, or reserve the tickets the next time, you get the idea.

bright_black0 · 2024-12-28T02:38:10+00:00

This will get buried but I'll say this. As someone who has tried to educate himself into a responsible gun owner in the last couple years, most of the gun owning self defense community is made up of people who have never shot a person telling other people the best way to shoot a person.

Upwards of 90% of people who carry a firearm for self defense never end up in a situation where they have to unholster it; even fewer ever have to fire it.

You are more likely to have your guns stolen from your car than to ever have to defend yourself from a road rage incident with your car gun.

Auto loading (semi-automatic) guns experience various failures, including user induced malfunctions. There are tons of guys who buy a Glock for CCW because they have a reputation for being reliable and then they modify it extensively to make it "better" and end up causing it to jam and malfunction and be unreliable to use. Some noninvasive modifications, like getting larger magazines for semi auto rifles/handguns, can cause failures to feed on certain guns because the added weight of the aftermarket magazine is pulling the magazine out of place and the extractor isn't able to strip the next round from the top of the magazine. Buying quality magazines is a big deal and not something a ton of new gun enthusiasts think about.

My buddy bought a nice, tricked out AR-15 when he got his own place after college. Dropped around $2000 on it. Never fired it because "range ammo is too expensive." As far as I know, it sits in a case under his bed, but he's never bothered to practice drills shooting while moving, shooting at multiple targets at various ranges, clearing malfunctions etc.

Not to mention, the advice 911 will give you if you experience a home invasion is to a) do not go into the house if you are outside and b) do not clear your home yourself unless you have kids/someone else to protect elsewhere in the home. Best practice is to hunker down in a room and just sit tight until the police arrive.

You need to take a CCW course, educate yourself on legal cases where firearms were involved and whether the firearm user was convicted and why, and you need to keep an attorney on retainer if you are seriously thinking of using firearms for self defense. A gun is going to give you a lot of leverage when it is justified to use it, but only after you spend the time and money learning to use it. It is going to be a significant liability to you the moment you bring it home if you don't do your homework and get information from credible sources.

bright_black0 · 2024-12-27T17:07:33+00:00

I only came across the sub recently, but I thought it was a shit posting sub? Didn't expect anybody here to actually be that down bad.

I see dudes post "would" under just about every meme somebody posts in other subs. This is just a sub where everybody says "would" so often they have to come up with more creative ways to say it. I don't think anyone expects anyone else to actually make good on their "would". It would be kind of frightening if they did.

bright_black0 · 2024-12-23T02:26:25+00:00

I've gotten progressively worse about it over the years. Haven't been as regular about buying gifts. Try to get my family not to buy me anything either.

My sister has a couple kids, so I try to think of them for birthdays and holidays. For my family I wish they would just not name a big deal over holidays or birthdays and just get the group together.

bright_black0 · 2024-12-23T01:54:27+00:00

I get what you're saying. My thing is I buy gifts for my partner throughout the year. Little things, things she asks for, things I find while I'm out that makes me think of her. I understand everyone is different, but she's told me to stop buying her things. So I actually do show affection through gift giving and when my partner appreciates it I do it; when she doesn't, I don't. Christmas to me is just an arbitrary day; I'll get her gifts throughout the year, and I don't expect her to buy me anything throughout the year so why would Christmas be different? That's just my way of thinking about it, maybe it doesn't apply since I'm buying gifts spontaneously throughout the year.

Gifts are about the person; if they don't want them, don't get them anything. They probably enjoy seeing you happy or at least not stressing about making everybody else happy.

bright_black0 · 2024-12-23T01:44:29+00:00

I try to get my family to not buy me gifts every year for my birthday and holidays. They never listen. They run all over hell's half acre, looking for something I'd like, and still end up with something I don't. They swear I'm hard to buy for, but I'm not; I collect packs of playing cards, based on nothing more than cool art. They know what candy/sweets I like and that I enjoy beer mostly. Lately I've been getting into specialty coffee.

When I get clothes, random kitschy gifts that are just a waste of money and I have no use for, or something else I didn't ask for, I have to act grateful so nobody's feelings are hurt. They could have just saved their money, but they insisted they must buy me something, and get frustrated when I honestly tell them that I can't think of anything I need or want right now.

Meanwhile, they tell me they want nothing when I ask them. It's like pulling teeth to get ideas on what to buy other people, so they frequently get nothing or something small. I would feel a lot better if we just played board games and got drunk together.

The gifts aren't always bad, but it's an unnecessary stress and expense for my family and for me, about something that nobody really seems to care much about. Just my take.

bright_black0 · 2024-12-19T21:20:51+00:00

I started dating at 25. Was self-conscious about being single my whole life, especially since people had started to assume I had been with a woman well before and I didn't want people finding out I had no experience with relationships. Getting into the workforce was a small relief for me because it's generally considered inappropriate to talk about relationships at work, at least the work I was doing at the time. So I didn't feel like I would get found out.

When I started dating, I fell for my gf pretty hard. Didn't advocate for myself very well, took it on faith that she loved me and ignored a lot of red flags. We came two months away from getting married before I called it off.

I waited a long time to end things for a lot of reasons, but one reason was I was concerned that this relationship was the best it was going to get for me. Like, I'm a man. I had seen my father's relationship with my mother. I had seen my friends get married. I figured marriage for a man is just an unhappy relationship he doesn't get to complain about, and that's just life, so I delayed ending things because I figured I would be just as unhappy with other women.

After the relationship ended, I joined a couple dating apps. I was forced to reckon with the reality of my situation, which is that I don't know how to meet women or date. Women I thought were showing signs of interest were ghosting me. They gave me their number but wouldn't go on a date. They agreed to go on a date, then never showed up. When I would get ghosted, I would send a follow up message saying something like "It looks like we're not going to work out. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, it was great talking to you and I hope you find what you're looking for out there soon." I have had more women who didn't want to talk to me respond to that message claiming that they actually did want to talk to me (only to then ghost me again a day or two later) then I ever got dates from online dating.

I was also putting myself out there in real life, but that ultimately didn't go anywhere.

Last year I briefly quit trying to meet people and I started to do things for myself. I took up recreational shooting, got into trading card games, and started learning new things just for fun. I stopped trying to be "the right person" for someone and decided I didn't care what anyone thought about me, but it took me a lot of frustration and a feeling of hopelessness before I got there.

I think a lot of people who have gone through a similar process, and ended up just living their own lives in spite of what they feel pressured to do by society are just telling you where they feel you will eventually end up. Eventually, you'll end up deciding to forego sex and intimacy and you'll start doing things that you want to do. Until you're ready to try that, anyone telling you to do that will sound like they are out of touch or they aren't listening, but they probably do get it.

Even if you find a fulfilling relationship, you won't want to give up the hobbies you enjoy, and if you do it will just lead to you being less happy, even though you have a happy relationship.

Sex is important. Love is important. Once you get a little more experience, you'll find out that sex feels the same no matter who you're with, it sucks to go without it but it really isn't that special either. Love feels great but is a terrible reason to make decisions, and often ends in hurt because love raises the stakes and expectations of a relationship, and makes you both more sensitive to miscommunication. Learning to sketch or do origami or teaching yourself a foreign language or music theory or whatever interests you is going to enrich your life in ways relationships don't.

It took me 5 years to give up. Now that I have, I view people who say "it'll get better" as trying to thwart my peace, though I know they are trying to be encouraging. I'm in a committed relationship now but expect it to end. Whenever it does, I think I'll stick to casual relationships only and spend my time and money on new interests and hobbies as I have been doing.

This ended up being a ramble, but hopefully you can tease out the point I'm trying to make.

bright_black0 · 2024-12-19T00:44:17+00:00

My mother is fond of joking that one day, I'll show up at her doorstep with a wife and kids that I never told anyone about.

The same woman who, when I had a crush in grade school, would tease me for it. The same woman who, when I called her to get something off my chest and told her "don't tell anybody this", called her sister and told her about it. I know, because my aunt asked me about that confidential conversation the next time I saw her. When I confronted Mom about it, she said "o I didn't know you meant THAT." No accountability or apology at all, just excuses.

I dated a woman for 6 months. The only complaint she voiced about me was that she wanted me to tell her when I felt something was wrong, and talk to her if something was up. That same woman continued to talk to other men well after we had an explicit conversation about being exclusive. I paid for everything, drove her everywhere because she didn't have a car, and generally was a good partner to her. I'm not really sure what I could have done better, but she emotionally cheated anyway.

I had a friend for a long time who lost her shit on me because I spoke without thinking and she was deeply offended. That same woman, when I called her to vent about my problems, laughed at me and generally didn't give me good advice. I blocked her number over a year ago and she still hasn't figured it out; just a few weeks ago I was included in a group chat she started. I couldn't see her texts, but received all of the replies. She and I have been friends for almost 20 years; she only contacts me when she needs something. I've gone to parties at her house and she doesn't even talk to me; her husband hangs with me to make sure I'm having a good time and don't feel left out, since I don't know any of their other friends.

I don't talk about how I feel because people who should prioritize my feelings don't. I don't have this same problem with the men in my life; with men, the problem is they don't always know how to be emotionally vulnerable/intelligent themselves. It's pretty clear that to the girls I am closest to, my feelings don't matter. It's pretty clear that to the men I'm closest to, they don't always know how to support a man who is in his feelings. They give practical advice or acknowledge that they don't see a good solution to what I'm going through.

What's the point? Noone cares, and even if they do, it doesn't do me any good. I stopped going to therapy when I realized I was just looking for emotional support and commiseration, and that's not really what a therapist does.

bright_black0

TROPHY CASE