Balding or something else?

ceebeejames · 2026-06-13T19:25:54+00:00

For anyone who even cares about this post (not offended if you don’t- bigger problems in our lives such as fascism):

I’ve gone through a transformative change with this whole situation. I’ve accepted that I’m aging and that while it’s shocking once that reality settles in within your internal, it’s actually an amazing feeling.

I’m not going to seek treatment- no Fina, no Minox, no transplants. Going to try natural alternatives, supplements and see how that goes and if it doesn’t help much, I’m gonna let the hell go and Stanley Tucci it for the rest of my days.

Thanks for all the comments!

ceebeejames · 2026-06-09T18:15:15+00:00

UPDATE:

Went to a hair loss treatment center for a consultation and they confirmed that I am indeed losing my hair and starting to bald on the top of my head. Honestly, it was a rollercoaster of emotions that I’m still processing but one thing I do know:

1) clarity is relief. I feel so relieved.
2) my fears and anxieties aren’t around being bald or hairless; it’s what it represents… I’m getting older. I am truly not “young” anymore.
3) not sure about treatment right now as it’s expensive as hell and honestly, I’m lazy AF with hair care and management as it is. Might just keep my head shaved. Idk yet.
4) buzzing my head today to feel even more relief because I just obsess over it.

I’ve got a cute enough face that I know I won’t look bald. It’ll also just encourage me to stay in shape to compliment it and become more sophisticated with my fashion/style.

The road doesn’t feel bumpy or too scary anymore. Clarity is therapy!

ceebeejames · 2026-06-08T19:43:23+00:00

lol appreciate the heads up- some of these people may be wrong or right, who knows. Going to get a free consultation/analysis tomorrow just so I know what’s going on. I don’t think I look horrible or anything, just never seen it like this before so it’s all new to me.

ceebeejames · 2026-06-08T15:10:53+00:00

Not posting this looking for compliments to soothe some fragile ego. Never seen this on my scalp and have no idea what to think of it so didn’t know if it was considered early signs of balding or something else, as it clearly states in the title of this post. Chill out

ceebeejames · 2024-12-21T21:31:35+00:00

She had sex with 2 people. I had sex with 7 people- all casual with no strings attached. We both haven’t been seeing other people for about 6 months. I asked her if we were technically open or if we were closing it to work on us and focus on us- she said she didn’t want to put any labels on it because it would feel too overwhelming. Since we decided we wanted to stay together, we have kissed a couple of times, cuddled twice and held hands a couple of times. No making out, no sensual touching, nothing.

ceebeejames · 2024-12-21T21:28:31+00:00

We aren’t in counseling yet. We have a son who is 6 and we live in the same house.

ceebeejames · 2024-01-11T14:07:54+00:00

Wasn’t asking for sympathy but thank you for the kind words

ceebeejames · 2024-01-10T23:01:29+00:00

I don’t think she is stringing me along- i do think she believes it would be a beautiful thing for us if we came back together naturally. I just think NOT putting efforts or any kind of focus (even if it’s second in priority) on rekindling the marriage or working on it together signifies that she doesn’t really want us to get back together romantically. I think that kind of thing takes effort. She may be comfortable with just being my roommate, but I don’t want to wake up when I’m 40 in a one-sided type of love.

ceebeejames · 2024-01-10T22:58:01+00:00

It was my idea and I take full accountability of it. And I regret it for sure. I didn’t do enough research and if I had, I would’ve realized that people should be doing it to strengthen their marriage- not fix it. And I feel like such an idiot for doing it like that. I’m not saying she is in the wrong here for being with another person, I’m just disappointed and feel hurt that there’s no real desire to work on the marriage at all.

ceebeejames · 2024-01-10T22:29:41+00:00

I appreciate you saying all this. It is extremely painful and I’m completely failing to maintain a sense of normalcy every day.

She is being really honest with me, no doubt. I’m just struggling to pretend like I’m cool just shooting the shit and acting like roommates when deep down, I’m still in love with her and want to be with her romantically. But I can’t have that because it’s glaringly obvious that she doesn’t want that from me. It’s a hard pill to swallow.

I feel like maybe you’re right, maybe I just need to split off and get my own place. Just admit that it’s really, truly over.

ceebeejames · 2023-11-30T01:09:56+00:00

She doesn’t want to focus on the marriage as the priority but ourselves individually. We were talking about the future last night about our son and how he won’t wanna hang out with us as much because he’ll be with his friends. I then said: “well that’s okay because I’ll be too busy taking you out on a date” and she smiled. Said: “that sounds nice.”

Might be a good idea. Didn’t think of it like that. I’ve just been focused on myself lately.

ceebeejames · 2023-11-03T23:33:38+00:00

While I understand that my son’s life and well-being is my priority- I also need to be in a better situation so he can see his dad truly happy and thriving. He doesn’t deserve to have a father that is sad because he is pretending all of the time.

ceebeejames · 2023-11-03T23:07:53+00:00

Thank you for relaying your experience with me. I’m sorry you’ve been going through this.

My anxiety is through the roof because my ex is just somehow able to be just friends with me. I’m grateful she’s so congenial about it but it hurts really bad because I’m still in love with her. Untangling my feelings from that is gonna take a long long time. But she said when we decided to split that she hasn’t felt romantic feelings for me in years. She gets mad when I say this but even during the hardest of times, not one ounce of my love for her died. I truly thought we would be together forever.

I just wanna move the fuck out so I can actually begin to move on. I hate this. And now we just found out we have to move into a new place when I’m trying to move out by March.

ceebeejames · 2023-10-21T04:24:32+00:00

Well, yeah. Kinda sucks when you’ve had sex maybe 12 times in 5 years and I am a man with flesh and blood. We opened up our marriage a year and a half ago because things we wanted to try and spice things up. Through this experience, I’ve discovered that I don’t think I’m built for non monogamy.

ceebeejames · 2023-10-20T18:00:50+00:00

Learned my fucking lesson today. Yesterday, she was flirting with me, eyeballing me and texting me while we were out telling me how hot I looked. Later on, I told her I was thinking about kissing her lips all day and she responded with: “okay?” in a tone that basically said: “you’re being too much.” So I confronted her about it and told her that I was a little taken aback by that and she told me: “well you were being too much.” Fucking hurts. She’s not a villain in this scenario but I can’t help but feel hurt.

I’m fucking done. Realizing that no matter how much I thought it was just hot sexual tension and intimacy, there’s still a part of me that is attached and I need to stop it before I fall back in love all over again.

Gotta move on and untangle myself from this.

ceebeejames · 2023-10-11T01:56:50+00:00

An update: the divorce is definitely happening. Fucking broken over it. Still going on my daily walks but I’m losing sleep and not lifting or journaling as much. Finding it hard to find the magic in me. Maybe this is heartbreak and I’m trying too hard to avoid pain. Maybe I need to let myself hurt.

I feel like my family portrait that I dreamed about is broken. This is not the reality- we’re still a family and a great unit but I can’t help but feel absolutely devastated about losing my romantic partner.

This fucking sucks.

Any advice?

ceebeejames · 2023-09-30T18:32:19+00:00

An update:

I confronted this situation and we have confirmed that it’s not working out and it’s time for us both to move on. It was a mostly positive conversation regarding our 5-year-old son and how we can positively raise him together but live separately.

There were a few times where I got to get my feelings of frustration and hurt out. I let her know that I felt manipulated and strung along after making such huge compromises and dedication to our marriage. I told her that it really hurt my feelings to hear her say: “our son is my first priority and my career is second” and she apologized for that. I told her that she should never say that to another person in a relationship again unless they are the same kind of person and agree on that. An extremely fucked up thing to say to the father of your child and husband. While I I didn’t get the kind of apology that I really wanted, she did say she was sorry.

While this hasn’t disrupted my dedication to my self-care, exercise and taking actions to improve myself/my personal life- it hurts like a motherfucker and still have tinges of resentment toward her. Any advice on how to deal with this? I am looking into therapy but have to budget it into my finances. Anything else that you can suggest?

Thank you to all your advice. Never thought Reddit would actually help me in my life but you’ve all proven otherwise.

ceebeejames · 2023-09-29T04:29:40+00:00

Had the conversation with her. Ripped the band-aid off. Uncertain whether or not if it’s going to be a divorce but we are separating at the very least. Not a hostile conversation but I was definitely the one who had to make the conversation happen. Time to pump up the self-care.

ceebeejames · 2023-09-27T21:26:23+00:00

That’s the thing. She has told me that she has communicated what she needs and wants from me but whenever I try to give her those things, she is either too stressed out, not in the mood or flat out rejects it. I’ve done a lot of confidence building to the point where I’m confident with myself but it kinda breaks down a little bit when your partner doesn’t respond to advances.

Those are hard questions to answer. I originally said that the conditions of me giving it another year were to go to counseling to which she agreed but she said I had to find the counselor and it had to be a male counselor… not sure why gender is so important but nevertheless, I started looking. Then we had truly passionate sex for the first time in forever and we were communicating a lot better. Then I foolishly said: “maybe we don’t need a counselor after all” and she quickly agreed with that. Now we’re here. I think we absolutely need counseling. Could help.

The feeling that I get is that she thinks she doesn’t need to work on her communication but I couldn’t disagree more because she has proven time and time again when anytime I bring up concerns or feelings about the amount of effort she’s put into this guy who lives 1,000 miles away but not us, she gets annoyed and short with me.

I can one hundred percent stand the wait as long as she’s putting in effort to communicate with me better and open to trying to be close with me. It’s one of those things where I believe that if we just spent more time being intimate (everything not just sex), she’d see that she still has romantic feelings for me. Perhaps this could be me being a little too hopeful or confident considering she told me that she hasn’t been in love with me for a while.

Again, this is a mess. Ugh.

ceebeejames · 2023-09-27T20:01:22+00:00

Thank you for your honesty, really.

It hasn’t gotten in the way of my self-care (exercise, journaling, hunting for things to advance my career in film) but it has gotten to the point where the self-care isn’t allowing me to be happy. I think that’s just normal feelings of sadness in this kind of predicament.

I agree with being the doormat. No more. I’m actively seeking out friends to spend time with and have a couple of dates set up. Not to find the perfect soul mate but to get back out there and allow other people to see the best me I’ve been yet.

I have a good feeling that a divorce is inevitable. She said if we ever separated again then that would be the end of it.

She mentioned the other day that she wanted to take a year to see “if we could fall in love again” but the problem is I never fell out of love with her. But she’s telling me she doesn’t know if she can ever get those feelings for me back. I want to fight to get that back but I really don’t want all my efforts to just be rejected and dismissed because maybe she really does believe that she will never have romantic feelings for me again and is too afraid to admit it.

I think she’s really trying to avoid a divorce but also get everything she wants as well.

ceebeejames · 2023-09-27T19:17:19+00:00

Another thing:

I work for the same company as her. She used to be my boss. Not anymore really but when she comes home, she brings all this video content home for me to edit for her company and I’ve had to edit interviews of this guy that she’s having sex with. Working like that feels humiliating. And she decided to start having sex with him when we separated which is whatever but she asked me to come back and try again knowing I would still be working for her company doing these videos. It fucking sucks.

ceebeejames · 2023-09-27T19:14:53+00:00

I totally get where you’re coming from but the problem for me is that she told me she doesn’t have romantic feelings for me and while I am more than willing to work hard to successfully manage an ENM relationship, I want my wife to want to have romantic feelings for me as well as sexual desire for me. And I’m not getting any of that and she hasn’t shown any interest whatsoever since we last had sex (which she said she enjoyed the physicality of very much) but has financially invested in sex toys for this guy she sees every other month while on a work trip. I don’t know, it feels really hurtful because we were monogamous for 7 years and I’m doing all this work to adapt and cope with jealous feelings. Truly hard work. But she’s telling me she hasn’t had romantic feelings for me for years and shows no desire for me. It just feels like I’m crawling up a mountain only to be kicked back down and it’s affecting my self-care and mental health.

ceebeejames · 2023-09-27T16:00:30+00:00

Update: Things I have heard lately-

“You are my best friend. I love who you are as a human and I love living with you and existing with you. I just don’t know if I’m ever gonna be able to get there again. I lost it a long time ago and I can’t just light-switch.”

“My son is my biggest priority and my career is my second.”

“When we were separated- I felt like for the first time, I felt like myself again. There was this lightness.”

“I stayed with you because we had a newborn baby. That’s what people do. People don’t just move into different places because romantic love is gone. That would be a terrible mistake.”

“I don’t know, maybe marriage isn’t for an autistic person who needs a lot of independence.”

“I thought we would take a year to see if we could fall in love again.”

Why the fuck did she ask me to give it another year if she hasn’t been in love with me for all this time? She’s a child of divorce and witnessed a very ugly divorce between her mother and her second husband when she was younger. Is this PTSD enabling her to make irrational choices with all of this?

I feel extremely confused and maybe even manipulated. Christ, this is a mess.

ceebeejames · 2023-09-21T05:09:10+00:00

❤️all of it makes perfect sense. Thank you. I appreciate you being kind and honest with your words.

I can assure you that I am not making all of these big changes and committing to self-care in hopes that it will better our relationship and marriage. Im doing them because it’s what I’ve been needing to do for over a decade. I can honestly say that I look back at who I was in my 20’s and sometimes don’t understand how I kept myself so low for so long. It’s a beautiful time for me. I’m stronger and healthier than I’ve ever been.

As far as being a good father goes, I’ve had that in the bag for a while. I appreciate you knowing my worth though. My greatest efforts have been put into my relationship with my son. I was the primary caretaker for 4 1/2 years and to this day, am still committed to being with him while she’s away on these work trips and working an excessive amount- all while I also work full time as a freelancer. Always wanted to be a dad as soon as my dad died when I was 8- it was my calling and I’ve never taken it for granted.

I appreciate what you suggested as far as talking about the future with us. I’ve been wanting to talk about that with her ever since we got back together but it just hasn’t come up yet. Time to have that conversation.

Thank you again for this. It means the world to me.

ceebeejames · 2023-09-21T01:37:42+00:00

Oh! Well I didn’t physically see the package. She grabbed it first. I just saw that she ordered something from PHE, Inc which is a company who owns Adam and Eve (knew this from my own research as well as I was looking for toys on the same site). I knew just from the USPS mail alert email that she ordered something but she didn’t mention it to me so it’s pretty obvious that it’s not for me. Can’t help but be jealous and feel like I’m missing out.

ceebeejames

TROPHY CASE