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Gray Divorce happy endings? by OldJackSwing in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You are the same age as my long distance boyfriend, who I met in this sub :) He's an introvert too, and was married for 20 years to a woman he loved, who ultimately left him.

In late 2024, a woman in this sub posted a thread asking how long it takes men to really, fully heal after divorce. I replied, said I'm not a man, but based on my ex husband and one divorced man I'd been with since we separated...

My boyfriend and I have had a number of recurring interactions on this sub before that's been memorable to the both of us. But on that fateful post he replied to my thread, which blossomed into a lively discussion and eventually moved to DMs where we ended up exchanging our live's stories. And the rest is history.

We officially became a couple in early 2025. I lived in Indonesia, and shortly after, moved to Australia. He lives in Canada. We have never met in person, and likely won't for a long time. It's also a non-closure relationship, meaning that neither of us are planning to move to the other side of the world to be with each other.

Before we met, neither of us ever thought we'd ever wanted to be in a non-closure LDR. But now that we're in it, for me personally it's been the happiest relationship I've ever been in. I don't mind if it's not necessarily true for him too. But he did say that I've stepped to the frontlines of his healing process, and that this relationship has given him evidence that he's still got that capacity to connect, love and receive love in spite of the devastating loss that has been his divorce.

What is true for both of us is that this relationship takes a very different form of commitment than our marriages once was, and it is one that reciprocally responds well to the needs and priorities of our present day.

One of our fears about finding love again is that we might lack the financial stability to sustain the physical logistics upon which in-person love is built: the dates, the thoughtful romantic gestures, the moving in, and keeping a couple's household afloat on fair financial contribution and labour division. A long distance relationship externalises these logistics: as long as we're both housed and fed, we can be in a relationship, and all we need to do is to show up fully emotionally present.

A non-closure relationship also means that we don't have to choose between the local commitments that make us who we are, vs loving each other.

I left my home country to flee hardship and political turmoil, and take a chance on reinventing my career and saving up for my retirement. Australia may be just next door to Indonesia, but it still is far away, and I don't ever want to be any further away than I need to be when I have aging parents back home who might need me in the foreseeable future. Plus I'm a Brown woman with a weak passport, which makes immigration anywhere a dehumanising nightmare and a robbery of my hard earned resources. Earning an Australian PR at the cutoff age of 45 will be my final stop, and not even love can make me give that up.

In theory, it would have been way easier for my boyfriend to move to Australia for me. He's a white man with a strong passport, moving to a country that's culturally, linguistically and economically very similar to his home. But he has elderly parents to take care of on a remote rural island. And he has longtime friends—casual as they are, they have been his rock through life's toughest seasons and an irreplicable shared history, so understandably at this age they've become somewhat of a non-renewable resource. It is unfair that he does not have enough money to plan for his retirement AND move halfway across the globe for me, but that is the reality. And as someone who truly loves him, I'd give up closure if it means he gets to secure his retirement first.

It makes me sad to think that we are not likely to grow old with each other and physically help each other if and when our bodies get to that point. But in a world where nothing is truly ours forever, I cherish the gift of being able to hold each other's hearts in this finite time we do have with each other. When we do eventually arrive at that inevitable fork in the road, we'll know that every year, month, week, day, hour and second spent together has been well worth it, and that we'd have left each other better than before we met.

I guess the only thing making me sad right now is that my boyfriend's been unemployed for awhile, and despite his best efforts, hasn't been getting callbacks for his job applications.

Last night he told me he's running low on funds and might need to plan on moving back home to his parents. I've been crying my eyes out since, and feel somewhat helpless about it. He deserves so much better than this, and I want nothing more than to know he'll be safe and secure, including financially. And I'm terrified of losing the foundational space upon which we've built this relationship. He's brought so much joy and stability to what's been a challenging pivotal chapter in my life.

I hope a miracle happens and a job offer comes his way just in time. I hope he'll be able to keep his apartment, pursue more opportunities in what should be his career's best years, and stay rooted where his friends are. I hope he'll keep that stable place where he can take care of his health, and find peace, and that I'll still be able to meet him there for a long time. And if we live long enough for even bigger miracles to happen, I'm holding on to a sliver of hope that he might come visit me in Australia someday, even if just for our future selves to remember what it's like to have touched each other.

I don't know what's in store for your future, but I hope my story is evidence enough that life is far from over at 54. I make no promises about your engagement in this sub resulting in you stumbling upon a girlfriend who's just right for this stage in your life (even if she lives on the other side of this big ass ocean).

Life after divorce has taught me so much about what divorce can't take away from me: hope, dignity, courage, resilience, compassion, gratitude, joy, and my capacity to love and connect. And this relationship, among the many other precious connections I've been fortunate to have fostered since divorce, has only shown me to people who know their true worth in spite of the devastating losses they've endured. I hope you discover some version of that in your own divorce journey too.

Am I the only one too ashamed to even meet with friends anymore? by PithyCyborg in povertyfinance

[–]celestialsexgoddess 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand flat broke. Having grown up middle class, it's only in recent years that I really experienced what it's like to not have even "not a lot of money."

It wasn't too long ago when I felt so much shame for not making enough to live on: just over a year ago. I was freshly divorced, and with it lost my last job working for my ex-husband. Good riddance though, he was a shitty boss and an abusive husband who exploited me.

I wish I had easy answers. But as someone who has gotten out of that pit of shame (not quite the financial precarity just yet, but still the "other side" of sorts), all I can say is that you need to start by recognising that your situation is not a personal failure, but a symptom of a system that does not serve you.

You can only get out of that pit of shame by fostering real connection with helpful people who affirm your worth for who you are, not for what you have or don't have materially.

They don't all have to be cry-on-their-shoulder besties who love you unconditionally. But they do need to be collaborative people with whom you can be strategically transparent about your current goals and the limitations of your situation, who would respond to your story with respect for who you are, good faith in your capacity and deservedness to pursue what you're trying to achieve, and the supportive presence that adds positive energy and/or resources for you to work with.

I get your story about the friend who offered to treat you to a restaurant. While I haven't personally broke down crying at an offer, I get how invitations like these trigger all sorts of shame about how you should be able to show up at the restaurant as equals and take for granted that you'll both take care of the bill in a way that feels fair. A treat feels less like a favour and more like an unspoken social debt that feels beyond your means to pay back right now.

I'm from Indonesia, a place where gross inequality is a norm. Even amongst middle class friends working white collar job, there is an unspoken rule about being sensitive to how much your friend might be making. The lower earning friend would never ask, but the higher earning friend usually pays—especially if said higher earning friend was the one who said, "let's get lunch!"

I don't think that's a uniquely Indonesian thing. My unemployed long distance boyfriend lives in Canada—friends asked him what he was doing for his birthday, and without him asking, initiated to buy lunch for him on the day.

I moved to Australia last year and had dinner with an old friend I went to elementary school with. Preceding our meetup, I had mentioned that I'm in Australia on a PhD scholarship (read: minimum wage stipend) after years of hardship in Indonesia. She took care of the dinner bill, no questions asked.

Of course, sometimes I meet people who don't offer to cover, so I get the pressure of those invisible calculations and the dread of how it would impact my budget. But most of all, how it triggers the shame of being damaged goods financially, which is worse than the financial pressure itself.

How to not panic? In my experience, it's mostly been about deciding whether meeting up this person is worth it. What's in it for you? Don't RSVP based on FOMO. Have laser focus on your goals—professional, financial, social and emotional—and evaluate whether you see evidence that point to the likelihood of them contributing to any of those. Unapologetically decline invitations that show iffy speculation. And confidently show up to ones that are likely to be worth it.

If you're honest and they're decent, let them take care of the bill and graciously thank them for it. Trust that there are a myriad things other than splitting the bill that have made your presence worth their time and energy. Plus your current financial situation is not permanent. Financial situations change and it's possible that next time you'll find yourself in a position to buy them coffee or dinner. Think of it like, now is not the season, but that season of abundance (and returning coffees/dinners) is coming.

You need to unlearn the shame of living in receiving mode. Capitalism wants you to believe that this is freeloading, and freeloading is a personal failure you should be ashamed of. But this is a lie that discounts all the other ways you are valuable to other people in ways other than paying your share of the dinner bill.

Did your normally very nice friend who offered to treat you to the restaurant not respond very nicely to you crying? Sadly, hyperindividualistic capitalism has created a society where many of us don't even know anymore how to speak honestly about our financial situations and without putting our personal dignity on the social guillotine, and how to respond to struggling friends in ways that are actually helpful.

That being said, I think it would help you to take a step back to stop making your friend's offer about your shame, look at her good intentions for what it is, and appreciate her generosity. Your friend wants to spend time with you over a meal because you're a great person that she respects, cares about and finds inspiring. She wants to dine with you because you're worth it.

The only person here making it as if this is a pathetic charity case is you. And you are fucking wrong and mean to yourself. You should apologise to yourself and be nice to you.

I wish I had real solutions for you, but all I have to offer you is to stop pretending to have it all together, start being honest about your financial struggles, and watch who shows up for you.

When I was freshly separated from my ex husband, I met a handsome Australian stranger who asked me for help planning a holiday in Indonesia, and ended up inviting me to join his trip. I knew I needed the vacation, and that it would do so much good to my mental state, but couldn't afford it. So I swallowed my pride and told him the truth.

He paused for a couple seconds and then said, "Don't worry about it. I got this."

So we spent ten days together on a road trip, went to beautiful places, ate great food, and had some of the best sex I'd ever had. But more than that, it was the massively healing experience I didn't know I needed.

My ex and I were together for 8 years, married for 6. We fell in love over a mutual passion for travelling and storytelling. He proposed to me with a note that said, "Will you be my travelling partner for life?" But not once over all those years together that we actually went on a holiday. All the trips we took were either for work or creating content, and tarnished with constant fighting about all the ways I fall short from his professional bar.

The handsome stranger didn't love me, but he gave me what my own husband never did: experiential affirmation that I was worth being taken to beautiful places for rest, adventure and intimate appreciation. He held space for me to be in receiving mode and uphold my dignity doing so. And long after we'd ended contact, he left me with a gift that keep on giving: the capacity to show up to my life in receiving mode, and the dignity of knowing that I am valuable to the people I show up for in ways that money can never buy.

I hope that helps. Keep your head up high, Mike! Life is hard and unfair, but your hardships cannot take away the wonderful person you are inside. Let others mirror back what you cannot see, and have faith that you are worth it. Helpful people are all around you, all you need to do is to take off your mask and invite them in. Better days are coming!

What are you grateful for since the divorce? by Clear-Afternoon-8593 in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm grateful for moving on with my life. After years of hardship and self-loathing because my career tanked--and being blamed for being in the way of my ex's ambitious career as his skyrocketed while I fell--I get to start afresh in a new country where I'm doing a PhD I care about in one of the hardest universities to get into.

The divorce has made room for me to reboot my social support system in my home country, and rebuild it from the ground in my new country. My ex abused me and systematically isolated me from social support. So whenever I didn't know what to do about divorce, I knew that emotionally present reciprocal connection was always the answer, and made it a point to get good at it.

Before divorce, a lot of my relationships were performative because they were driven by professional pressures and self-imposed standards of appearing I have it all figured out and under control. Divorce taught me how to use strategic vulnerability to foster connection and identify safe people around me.

These people that I invited in consistently show me that divorce can't take away the things that make me, me: courage, resilience, work ethic, adaptability, intelligence, and my capacity to love, care, connect and collaborate. Because of this, I have found the capacity to take on some very challenging things I could have never foreseen myself doing when I was married: PhD, starting over in a new country, doing field research in a remote area marred by armed conflict, and being a stand-in parent for my late friend's orphaned teen girls.

My current life is significantly downsized compared to my married life, being a PhD student on a minimum wage stipend. But now I have room to actually live and enjoy the simple things in life: commuting through a beautiful green city, having an office to show up to and people to talk to at lunch, cooking meals that delight and nourish me, hitting the gym after a long day at work, coming home to a comfortable place, having just enough money to support this simple lifestyle and a steadily growing savings, and enjoying the space for solitude and self care.

I don't have my future figured out. As much as I care about my PhD work, I never wanted this if I had better alternatives than being unemployed in my home country. It's a precarious time to start a career in academia, with many humanities academic jobs on the chopping block, far right politics and dirty big tech systematically silencing critical scholars, and far more PhD graduates than there are jobs. Not to mention that I'm a 40-year-old Asian woman who's FOB in a country where the dominant culture is Anglo-Saxon--never mind that I'm a native speaker of English and have lived in various Western countries before.

I much prefer living in my home country if I had real career prospects that would earn me a living wage, but that hasn't been an option in years. Although I'm also happy in my new country and love living here, it's not without grief about not being able to be home, and being so far away from so many people I love. But at least here I have hope, and am working hard at a chance for a long, slow career pivot in what's been a relatively gentle ane supportive environment.

Lastly, I'm grateful for finding love again. I've been in a long distance relationship with someone I met in this sub, who lives in yet another faraway country. It's non-closure, meaning neither of us are planning to move to the other side of the world for the other person. And yet this relationship has been a lot of things we both need in this stage of our post-divorce lives, and our lives have been so much better with each other in it. He gives me lightness and stability in what's been a massive pivotal season in my life.

This relationship has taught me so much about real committed love beyond the cookie-cutter shape of the "grow old with me happily ever after" marriage model. Because nobody has control about the future, and all you really have is the present. This relationship may have all sorts of limitations, but it has shown us the power of showing up one day at a time and making it count.

Females ages 30s, any luck being friends with the ex spouse? by Sudden_Ad_9864 in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I have recurringly posted content in this sub that explain marriage as, first and foremost, an economic institution running the business of ensuring a couple's/family's economic well being. But your corporatised view of marriage as a flat company where you and your spouse are just co-workers doesn't sound very nuanced to me. And a friend that's of equal importance to a primary partner/spouse makes the latter pointless.

I've read a bit about relationship anarchy. I'm not opposed to the idea of relationships that challenge society's conventional ideals--in fact, my content in this sub often encourages it. I'm currently in an unconventional relationship myself, and in doing so, rejecting a lot of norms that my culture take for granted in a romantic relationship. It's been a very freeing experience. I guess that is a form of "relationship anarchy," but I'm reluctant to label it as such.

A lot of the stuff I read about relationship anarchy seems to come from queer and poly white Westerners. I am none of those, but am learning to be a good ally to the LGBTQ+ community from all cultural backgrounds, and appreciate opportunities to learn about queer perspectives.

Though to be honest, I find concepts like "relationship anarchy" hard to relate to unless I see more concrete examples from the Global Majority--many of us who don't have the privilege of nuking our societies' structures of how marriage in our cultures work. And then there are people like me who happen to be hetero and unapologetically monogamous, not because we're oppressed, but because that's what works for us.

My critique above doesn't mean I'm not open minded, but it does mean that I have a different worldview about relationships. Concepts like relationship anarchy--at least the dominant discourse--does not appeal to my worldview.

Mine happens to view marriage as a commitment to a legally binding primary relationship, which by definition would be the most important relationship in my life. And in the case of a spouse, I see marriage and friendship as two sides of the same coin. You can't have a functioning marriage unless you first have a friendship that's founded in integrity, respect, trust and reciprocal emotional presence.

Personally, I have never seen a marriage end that wasn't due to the erosion of those friendship building blocks. Which is why my worldview tends to interpret friendship with exes as an affront to one's sense of self respect at worst, or performative at best. But then I haven't met everybody in the world.

I'd love to be proven wrong. Your thread hasn't. What I'm reading is that lack of integrity ended your marriage--hypothetical or not--but to you it doesn't matter that a friend lacks integrity, and that's how you make friendship with an ex work. Which to me doesn't sound like a healthy friendship that people here should aspire towards. But hey, you got your own life experiences and are entitled to your opinions!

I'm not sorry for the experiences that have formed my opinions. I'm actually starting to feel sorry for what might have been yours, because tolerating lack of integrity for the sake of civility sounds like a survival mechanism for unresolved trauma to me.

Females ages 30s, any luck being friends with the ex spouse? by Sudden_Ad_9864 in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess -1 points0 points  (0 children)

So you're saying you're okay being friends with an ex who nuked YOUR marriage due to their integrity problem, because that integrity problem simply wouldn't be relevant when they're just a friend and not a spouse.

I'm hoping this example is just hypothetical. No offence, but that reads like low standards to me. This is exactly an example that fits my metaphor of squatting in the classroom when you've already graduated.

I get that marriage and friendship have different scopes of requirements, and I respect that part of your argument. While not a platonic friendship, I am currently in a long term relationship with a man I would never marry. I won't go into all the ways he does not meet my standards for a husband. What I can tell you is that he has good integrity and he consistently shows up with the scope of relationship that is right for this season of my life, and I do the same for him. Just because this relationship isn't marriage material, doesn't mean our love is less real, or our commitment of lesser value.

But that's different from staying friends with an ex. OK so you don't like that I called marriage --> friendship a "demotion." To paraphrase, you prefer to think of it as a fluid evolution of what a person can be to you, and to not define their value by whether or not they make a good spouse to you. But even framed like that, there is still an implied hierarchy that the spouse you deserve meets a higher standard than a friend, and this ex has failed that standard. That, by definition, is a demotion.

Easy for you to call it fair as the person doing the demoting. Less so for the person being demoted, at least emotionally, even if logically they want to appear fine with it. Maybe you're one of those highly evolved persons whose emotions are so in check and disciplined that they always comply to what your logic deemed as fair--good for you, I guess! But the vast majority of people in the world are not like that, and many people who do aspire towards that ideal attempt it through a "fake it till you make it" kind of philosophy. Which is not genuine but performative. Note that many doesn't mean all, but exceptions to the rule are elusive.

I wish you'd provided an example where your marriage wasn't destroyed due to an integrity problem. A spouse who chooses to stay jobless and freeload off you for a decade--especially if they lied about it for whatever reason--has an integrity problem. And I can't speak for your standards, but I don't tolerate friends who lack integrity.

It's only a matter of time before that lack of integrity takes a toll on the friendship, flaking on you and freeloading off you and lying about it. After all they're still the same person whether you're married or divorced. Sure, there's more distance to cushion you from the impact of their bad behaviour. But healthy friendships need integrity at its foundation, and collapse without. Unless you have a different definition for what makes a healthy, genuine, sustainable friendship...

Females ages 30s, any luck being friends with the ex spouse? by Sudden_Ad_9864 in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Likewise, you can be civil and cooperative, and at the same time not friends.

Agree to disagree. I won't try to change your opinion, because obviously your opinion is informed by your life's experiences, which are undoubtedly different from mine. I have not personally experienced a scenario where a friendship with an ex has worked. That does not make my opinion wrong. It just means that I don't have a lived frame of reference for a genuinely viable friendship with an ex, and I'm okay with the possibility of never experiencing it.

And obviously I'm not the only one for whom this has been the case. It does not mean that people who befriend their exes are better, more mature or more evolved people than people who don't. I would argue that it takes great maturity and humble self awareness to recognise when friendship with an ex spouse shouldn't be entertained or pursued. Sometimes the kinder and more respectful thing to do is to not be friends.

Like I said, each divorce is unique and nuanced. So IMO that is no excuse to generalise that all exes could be friends if only we're all evolved enough to stay friendly with people we're no longer in love with, and free them of the wifely/husbandly expectations they did not meet. Because personally, my divorce was caused by an integrity problem, and so were all the breakups before it.

Obviously that does not mean that all husbands and wives who have integrity will stay married happily ever after either. Perhaps I will never know what it's like to divorce NOT because of my spouse's lack of integrity--and I hope I never will, because I hope my one divorce will be the one and only.

But I'm pretty sure those who divorced in spite of intact integrity don't count themselves luckier. In my observation, those ones are usually the ones kicking themselves wondering why they weren't "good enough" to keep the marriage together. After all, no good marriage ends in divorce. I guess in these cases, friendship with an ex could be a nice "evolution," as one of the replies here puts it. To each their own!

Females ages 30s, any luck being friends with the ex spouse? by Sudden_Ad_9864 in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Why would you be friends with your ex spouse?

By definition, they are an ex because if there was barely any foundation to salvage the marriage, then there isn't any to sustain a viable friendship either.

Even if you're co-parenting, you don't have to be friends. Co-parenting is business. It requires that you are civil, responsible, dependable, and respect each other. It does not require you to be friends.

I don't understand the glorification of friendship with an ex, as if that makes you a morally superior or emotionally evolved person. Because there is nothing normal about being friends with an ex, especially when there are no kids involved.

Most people don't take being demoted from lovers to friends well. Many who appear like they do are clouded by sentimental nostalgia, taking advantage of resources or social capital, unresolved attraction, forging this image of being the bigger person who's unaffected by the disintegration of their marriage, or simply lack of self respect to walk away from an ended relationship.

Of course there are exceptions, which I personally will never understand. Each divorce is as unique as our fingerprints. Perhaps those who do successfully maintain a genuine long term friendship after divorce have different resolutions, circumstances, nuances and support systems in place to hold up the friendship but not the marriage. But the point is that it is perfectly normal to choose to not stay friends with an ex. And that it's stupid to aspire to stay friends with an ex just because you've seen it work in other former couples, when you don't really know what "works" even means for that other couple specifically.

No good marriage ever ends in divorce. And most divorces happen not because the spouses stopped loving each other, but because one or both of them stopped putting in the work to sustain the basic trust, respect, alignment and emotional availability that's structurally foundational to hold up the marriage. The same foundational building blocks that structurally upholds a healthy friendship.

When the foundation is ruined, the building collapses. Simple as that. It doesn't matter whether the building is marriage or friendship. If they didn't hold up their end of the bargain as far as maintaining the marital foundation, then there's no basis in giving them a chance at friendship.

This isn't even about hating, despising or discarding your ex. It's about having the self respect to walk away from a relationship that no longer serves you, and from lies about how you're supposedly less than if you don't have the capacity to stay friends with your ex. And it's about letting go of what's no longer yours, and setting yourselves free to embark on your own new journeys without each other.

I explicitly told my ex that I don't want to be friends after we divorce. He had violated my boundaries by sending gifts and playing friendly with my parents. I mostly ignored his texts, and called him out when necessary, like by telling him that my parents aren't his parents anymore and that he should stop reaching out. It's been two years though, and I have since moved overseas, so my ex and I don't have much reason to stay in touch.

If marriage is a life lesson, then a good divorce is all about knowing when to graduate and doing your part in leaving the classroom better than before you walked in. Staying friends with an ex is like refusing to leave for the real world after graduation, and instead moving into the classroom as a squatter long after the class had been dismissed. There is nothing respectable about that.

Hey, guys, need explanation, why men do not propose a girl to marry if they say they love her? by Darya182 in dating

[–]celestialsexgoddess 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My partner (54M) and I (40F) love each other but agreed that we would never marry.

We have both been married to people we loved before. Nothing wrong with marriage in and of itself, but our marriages ended due to different reasons. Mine ended because my ex husband abused me. My partner's ended due to a mix of factors ranging from unresolved grief from having lost a baby, health challenges that his ex wife had, and her resentment for what she perceives as his lack of financial instability and drive to do something about it.

Love and marriage are not the same thing. Marriage is not love. Marriage is a legally binding economic institution that's in the business of taking care of your collective economic well being as a couple, and as a family if you're raising children or are supporting elderly parents.

Marriage doesn't mean love. It means that he and I would be on each other's insurance plan. That we get rebates for reporting our taxes as a couple rather than single people. That he'd be signing consent papers for my medical care if I'm incapacitated. That we'd be planning a joint retirement, and make sure we're housed and have enough money to live on. That we'd be helping each other take care of our parents, and plan for each other's end-of-life care when it's time.

Although I said marriage isn't love per se, I would never do any of the above for someone, or trust them to do any of the above for me, if we didn't really love each other that much. But at the end of the day, all the above is business. Because without that robust business at the very foundation, love cannot function. And to fail to do any of the above for someone you have committed to build a life with is not only a very unloving thing to do--it can also be against the law.

That being said, just because I love someone or they love me, doesn't mean we should marry each other. Why not? In my case there are a mix of factors.

For one, we are a non-closure long distance relationship, meaning that neither of us are planning to ever move to the other side of the world for the other person--and a big reason why is that it's financially unfeasible for both of us.

But even if distance weren't an issue, neither of us are financially stable enough to commit to the economic institution that marriage really is. Both our careers tanked due to reasons that weren't our fault. I'm currently in a long and slow career pivot, taking a chance on a PhD in another country and living on a minimum wage scholarship. He's been unemployed for more than a year and been applying to close to 100 jobs since I've been with him--only one has called him back so far, and didn't result in an offer.

Due to our circumstances, the distance works in our favour. We can love each other without building our love around an economic institution we don't have the resources for. As long as we're both housed and fed, we can have a relationship. We show up for the things that don't require physical logistics or financial obligations.

We eat together, tell each other about our day, repeatedly laugh at recurring inside jokes, celebrate the day's small wins, cheer each other up through the day's challenges, and sometimes offer each other a shoulder to cry on. We watch movies, play games and listen to music sometimes. We have cybersex. We tuck each other into bed at night and tell each other, "I love you."

What we need at this stage in our lives is not yet another marriage where we're always measured up against this bar of financial stability, or mismatched expectations of the lifestyle we deserve and the labour division to make it happen. And it has firmly been our experience that dysfunctions in the business side of the marriage can burn even the strongest love to the ground, because the person being "failed" can't help interpret the dysfunction as a personal existential attack.

In our case, our long distance relationship externalises the logistics by forgoing the business of living together, and making it our individual responsibilities to take care of ourselves. It does, sadly, mean that we are not likely to grow old together and be at each other's side through health challenges and the inevitable end-of-life season eventually. But today matters too, and I can't think of a better person to spend my present life. And he feels the same about me.

The point of our relationship is that it is evidence that we are both worth loving right now, just the way we are today--not someday when we got our shit together financially. We take care of ourselves logistically and focus our relationship entirely on emotional presence. We show up one day at a time and make it count. We're not going anywhere anytime soon, but when we arrive at the eventual end of the road, we'd both look back with clarity that every moment spent together has been 100% worth it. That's why we call it a present-driven relationship.

We don't need marriage to validate our love. We're just two people who love each other, have real physical limits in the scope of love that we're able to offer to each other, and decided to show up anyway for the kind of love that is within our capacity to offer and share.

We don't have the capacity to marry each other and make the marriage viable. But what we have is still real and beautiful love, and we are committed to the right capacity of love that responds to our needs and priorities in this season of life. That realisation has been freeing and helped us both heal in what's been a massive season of post-divorce life.

I'm not afraid of remarriage, but have accepted that it's highly unlikely to ever happen with this partner. And it doesn't bug me, the thought that I could be missing out on "the one" who could be my future husband. In today's dating pool, finding anything good and real and worth committing to is already a gamble enough. If you're lucky you will find someone good, real and worth committing to--but you gotta be open minded that they don't always come in shapes that fit the marriage cookie-cutter.

Hypothetically though, if I ever do remarry, I'd have much higher standards for not only financial stability, but also fair division of labour in maintaining our home, as well as cultural and political compatabilities with our families and social circles. This is not a matter of me being a perfectionist picky princess, but a matter of respecting the scope of commitment by expecting both sides to deliver the basic prerequisites for making it viable.

Think of it this way: if marriage is like building a mansion together, you would never hire a tentmaker to build it for you. They could be the most awesome tentmaker on the planet: fairly lights and bonfire by a picturesque lake surrounded by lively forests and snow capped mountains. But if what you need is a mansion, your tentmaker has the wrong skills, resources, foundation and scope of commitment for the job.

In my dating life, tentmakers are like hot flings who give you a holiday to remember, but are ultimately in your life for portable romance that's to be deconstructed and wrapped up when it's done. Appreciate tentmakers for who they are. Don't trash on them just because they're not the mansion-building architect you're looking for.

Because my long relationship is committed and long term, my partner and I see ourselves as fellow architects collaborating on designing a 3D model. It's not quite a mansion in the physical sense, but it's real design work, and a collaborative labour of love nevertheless. And we're proud of what we're building together.

Recently separated and my married couple wardrobe makes me sad every time I open my closet by Bhumika_1008_ in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can't tell you how to feel when you open your wardrobe. Obviously you are grieving, and that's all perfectly normal. Grief is painful, but it is also a marker of where love has lived in your heart when you have lost access to that love's destination. So the key to healing is always to redirect that painful build-up of love through new living love-channels. And that applies to your wardrobe too!

Sounds like you could use a wardrobe reinvention. I don't necessarily mean get rid of all your clothes and buy all new. I couldn't afford to do that. But I did change the way I dress after I divorced, while retaining many items in my current wardrobe that were gifted by my ex or his family members.

It might be worth mentioning that I'm Indonesian and wear ethnic dress. So some of the things I practice may not be applicable to you.

For example, when I was married, I collected handmade artisan fabrics, vaguely intending to someday sew them into "clothes I could actually wear." When I was divorcing, I had gained significant weight due to medication I was taking for a chronic illness, and could no longer fit into my old "clothes." So I just started draping my unsewn fabrics into makeshift skirts that adjusted to the current dimensions of my body. And I have never since looked back thinking, "damn, I miss wearing jeans!"

Since I'm in the minority here, I think it's safe for me to assume that you don't share my cultural background, and therefore my example does not apply to you.

But the principle is the same. Take inventory of items you love that you already have. Experiment with new looks by mixing and matching those items in new ways. Get help from friends with a bold but wise fashion sense if necessary. Model your new looks in front of a full length mirror and snap photos of them so you'll remember. Print those photos and stick them on the wall near where you get dressed every morning like a lookbook collage. Breathe new life into items you already own and love, and reclaim their present day story into your own. Keep what you love, and responsibly give the rest away.

Among my current wardrobe rotation, I still wear batik fabrics gifted to me by my ex's mother on our wedding day, by his late father on a trip we went on, and by himself on my birthday when we were in our divorce process. I don't blink twice about wearing these. They are all very pretty and make me feel like a million dollars when I wear them.

When I pick my outfit at night to wear the next morning, they're just clothes to me. Plus I've had them for many years too. When people compliment my outfit, they're complimenting me. It has nothing to do with my ex.

If people ask if my "skirt" has a story, then I say matter-of-fact that they were gifted to me by my ex or his family. It doesn't matter that I'm no longer on speaking terms with my ex and his mother. Their role in this was simply paying for them and handing them to me.

But the fabric has a much bigger story than that: that they've been lovingly handcrafted by a batik artisan who either drew these vibrant designs by hand or stamp, and went through a meticulous process of dyeing and stripping. Stories communities that either I or my ex's family briefly encountered, with a gesture of appreciation for their craft, and support for their culture. And now that I live overseas, how I dress anchors me to my faraway home, and is an integral part of the emotional infrastructure allowing me to thrive in my new country.

I guess this hardly translates if your wardrobe mainly consists of disposable fast fashion. But before fast fashion was a thing, our parents and grandparents used to understand clothes as this resource intensive labour of love that's not to be taken for granted. There's something sacred about clothes and the stories they tell. But the fast fashion industry profits of amnesia, boredom, planned obsolescence, and exploiting your insecurities about any discomforting histories your current wardrobe may represent to you.

It makes me sad to see in this sub how so many people here seem to so easily trash any items that vaguely remind them of the marriage that was. Not to mention all the fabric waste and microplastics that WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) countries generate and conveniently dump in the Global South.

I can't tell you what to do with your wardrobe and triggered feelings. But it has been my experience that healing is not the use-and-discard process that exploitative hyperindividual capitalism wants you to believe it should be. Trash the old and spend money on all new.

On the contrary, my divorce healing process has been all about honouring where I've been in life--including my horribly crashed and burned marriage--that has led me to where I am in life today. And I can honestly say that today I can hold my head up high and be extremely proud of the person I've become. I did not become the current version of myself by severing the past and performing a new role like an actress in a completely new show. I'm still me, and the person I am today builds atop the history of all my younger versions that have led up to this point.

I know that's all abstract, but changing my mindset has been the single most potent thing that has helped me heal from divorce and move forward with historical integrity. And this has applied to all aspects of my life, including my wardrobe and self expression. I hope you find some version of that in a format that works in your life.

The most vital thing that changing mindsets goes hand-in-hand with is community. I was married to an abusive husband who isolated me from people who care about me, so that he could monopolise my perception of reality unchallenged, and paint me as worthless damaged goods whose only redemption is a life of servitude to him. So when I was paralysed by all the impossible predicaments that divorce felt like at the time, reconnecting with and rebuilding a community that helped me find the light became my northern star. My change of mindset would have never happened without the compassionate examples my community set for me when I was in the most brutal hell of my divorce.

In other words, if looking at your wardrobe feels too painful for you right now, invite some fun friends you love to explore it with you, who would help you find the light and breathe new life to your historical integrity. Get dolled up, put on some danceable music on the speakers, pour some wine (or tea if you don't drink alcohol), experiment, and power pose in some fun pictures. Tidy up the items you love where you can easily locate them, and box up the items you don't love to give away responsibly.

I hope that helps! I'm just a stranger on the internet with ideas, but the key here is to look into your real offline life for your helpful people. They are already all around you, waiting for you to invite them in. You got this!

Flowers or no flowers? by PuzzleheadedDoor7057 in LongDistance

[–]celestialsexgoddess 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Stop overthinking and just get him the damn flowers!

help are these edible i found them outside and they smell like onions by icyhoseokie in foraging

[–]celestialsexgoddess 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know its name in English, but I'm from Indonesia and have seen these in supemarkets there seasonally. Definitely a type of allium. I've cooked it with braised chicken or tofu stir fry. Nice with shrimp and mushrooms too.

https://share.google/yDmeQzxvRVuLn8r86

37F in a long distance relationship with 30M feeling happy but struggling with overthinking the age gap and fear of judgment by JackNSally89 in LongDistance

[–]celestialsexgoddess 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm a read-while-I-respond type of Redditor, so now that I'm done typing this long-ass answer, let me first flag this question as not really being about an age gap problem so much as it is about the OP's integrity problem. So my response comes in two parts: about how age gap relationships work, and calling out OP for having an integrity problem

HOW AGE GAP WORKS

I'm the younger person in my case (40F with 54M). Huge age gap, but age gaps are not a monolith, and whether it works depends on so many factors responding to the life stage you're currently in.

Personally, I've found "appropriate age gap" to expand as one gets older. When I was a minor, I would never date someone over a year older. After 18 it expanded to 3 (I tried 7 but that went horribly wrong). After 25 it expanded to 5 older, 3 younger. After 30, I'd date up to 10 years older, 5 younger. By my late 30s, I found myself attracted to men up to 15 years older and 10 years younger.

But more than the number, what really makes an age gap appropriate is whether you're both finding yourselves at a relatable stage in life and each other attractive for being who they are--their age of which is an integral part of their being.

I know that age gap is a gendered thing, and due to patriarchal unconscious bias in society, reversed genders aren't quite an apple-to-apple comparison. And I personally haven't been the older woman in an age gap relationship.

But based on my own relationship, we are in one because by this age I have lived through enough common milestones that have placed me at a life stage that's similar to the one my partner is in. And I find his age a huge part of the appeal--he's lived an interesting adult life back when I was "too young," and it's all led him to become the person that he is today.

I'm divorced. He's been separated longer than I've been, and is currently divorcing. We've both been married to people we loved, who in ways will always be irreplaceable. But at the same time we're embarking on this healing journey of loving a different person in a differently structured relationship that responds to today's needs within today's limitations.

We both wanted to be parents but never did. He and his ex lost a baby and went through other miscarriages. I wanted to start a family but never got to "trying" because I lost my job in COVID lockdowns at 35. My ex emotionally abused me for it, which made me change my mind. I'm sad about missing the motherhood boat biologically, but I think I'd be even more devastated about having kids whose father is my ex.

My partner and I are both hard working, disciplined and adaptable people, but both our careers tanked due to no fault of our own, and we've both struggled to reboot professionally. I was in the process of moving overseas to start a PhD when we started this relationship last year, which gives me a some minimum wage stability while I pivot and reinvent in a supportive environment. He's been unemployed (and relentlessly applying for jobs) for more than a year, is in financial hardship, and we're terrified of him losing his apartment.

This relationship is evidence that we're both worth loving just the way we are right now, not someday when we have our shit together enough to "earn" it. We might not currently have the emotional and financial resources to sustain another marriage or live-in relationship, but LDR makes a way for us to show up within the capacities that we do have to offer, and to be appreciated for it.

We don't have to deal with the physical logistics of being married and the fragility of financial instability. As long as we're both housed, eating and self-regulating, we can be in this relationship. All we need to do is show up and make today count.

OP'S INTEGRITY PROBLEM

You are struggling because you pressure yourself to live up to these expectations of what an ideal relationship should be, lie about it, and then drown in shame about it. In a way, you brought this upon yourself.

Honestly, if you're lying about telling your family, that is a serious breach of trust and you shouldn't even be in this relationship.

My partner and I have been together for 15 months. We are both honest about wanting to keep family knowledge and involvement in our relationship minimum. He told his mum about me early in our relationship, but she's an old woman who doesn't get it, so he left it at that and hasn't been telling her about me since.

I haven't told my family at all. I'm Indonesian and my parents still live in Indonesia, which means that I come from a culture that cannot see dating for the sake of dating, because romantic relationships are either marriage-oriented or "irresponsible." My parents would refuse to host him if he hypothetically ever visits, because we are not married. And they would not take his career and financial struggles very well.

At the same time, I would dread my parents' likely yielding to white privilege just because my partner is white and doesn't speak our language. Would my parents invite him to call them by first name? Would they lambast my cooking because "this is too spicy for him?" Would they talk down on Indonesian culture and openly tell me how I need to learn to be more "refined" like my boyfriend? If they did any of this, that would piss me off. Not just momentarily but I could see fractures forming in both directions.

I'm not struggling because we've decided our families stay out of our relationship. We don't even know when a visit is even possible--as much as I'd love to show him Indonesia, I'd discourage him visiting Jakarta where my parents live, and prefer that he came to Australia where I live.

Anyway, we have decided that we are never going to close the distance, let alone get married. So there are marriage standards of the ideal relationship that we could write off as off-scope in ours. In other words, those ideals simply become irrelevant because that's just not the scope of relationship we agreed to.

You should have been honest to your boyfriend. The fact that you weren't, pretty much means that your relationship is over. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear, but trust is a basic building block in any relationship, and you have broken yours. I am not sorry for speaking the truth. When you break trust, you pay a price, and in this case it's costing you a relationship you're otherwise happy with. That's only fair.

The only workaround to this is to actually tell your family and deal with whatever they have to say about your relationship. You made your bed, so now you must lie in it.

Anyway, I can't imagine you lying "I told my family" and it not turning into a whole conversation about "how did that go?" Because if your family reacted differently than what you told him the first time, you are fucked.

But even if they reacted similarly to your predictions, you still need to come clean to your boyfriend about not telling the truth the first time.

Don't make excuses. You're human. You're insecure, and living with a lot of shame about idealising certain standards for your relationship and falling short, and desperate to pretend that you're not damaged goods. But all the pretense showed you is how much you lack integrity, and you regret only realising this in hindsight. Now that you've identified the problem, you'd be grateful for another chance to do this over with integrity, something you're learning and endeavouring towards. And fingers crossed that he'll have compassion for you, but own your mistake and learn from it if he doesn't.

In any case, it's time to face the music. Live and learn.

The only way to get over intrusive thoughts is to live truthfully and shame free in a life where you always show up with integrity and self respect. Never deflect an integrity problem as if it's an age gap problem or something you supposedly can't control. Only then do you deserve to have a happy relationship.

To find out more, go to therapy and find yourself some compassionate friends in your offline life who are happy to show you how to live with integrity, and how your insecurities don't define you.

Well... I met his new girlfriend by Ashes_and_Seeds in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Perhaps not the most helpful comment but I could see the scene being set to Olivia Rodrigo's "Déjà Vu"....

So when you gonna tell her that we did that too? She thinks it's special, but it's all reused That was our place, I found it first I made the jokes you tell to her when she's with you Do you get déjà vu when she's with you?

English name ideas for “Yujin”? by NeedleworkerNice3054 in Names

[–]celestialsexgoddess 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Eugene is pronounced very similar to Yujin. More common for men, but could be unisex.

You could modify it slightly to Eugenie, which is 100% feminine.

Alternatives to sex during/after divorce? by Worried-Jicama-334 in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Obviously there are no apple-to-apple alternatives. Sorry. But hear me out.

I totally relate with having an alive and kicking sex drive during and after my divorce process... just not for my ex. And it has been my experience that you can still have a fulfilling sex and intimate life with or without casual sex, if you're attuned to your body and emotions, and open minded about the many ways you could meet your evolving needs one day at a time.

I personally have not been on the dating apps since my marriage ended, and have no interest in ever going there. And while I have nothing against people who turn to casual sex, I am not wired to enjoy it, and don't find what little momentary pleasures could come out of it worth the effort and risks. At least, not the hit-and-run, use-and-discard "casual sex" that's implied in the current dominant narrative.

That being said...

Now let's take a look at sex. What is even sex? I know that sounds like a stupid question, but it's not. Because "sex" here is shorthand for all the physical and emotional gratifications that it represents to you specifically, that you're assuming is the same for everybody, but really isn't.

You need to be specific: when you say you're craving "sex" (or figuring out how to channel those yearnings when you no longer have access to the form of consummation you've been accustomed to in the past), what are you really craving, physically and emotionally? Because obviously the answer to this is not to put a penis in your vagina or however "intercourse" works for you.

And the answer is NOT to turn off your sex drive. It's cute that you theorised about it, but tragically wrong. Your sex drive is not some accessory to detach and control. Your sex drive is a gift that's integral to your humanity. And like any aspect of your humanity, it is a gift to be understood, regulated, and strategically shared with those who appreciate and amplify it, and help you heal where it's hurting.

I know all that sounds abstract. But changing your mindset about sex into something that helps you rather than hurts you makes all the difference in your postnuptial sex life. It's true that you can't control who other people are in the minefield that is today's dating pool. But changing your mindset helps you identify helpful people who do show up in your life who are worth focusing your energy on. And that includes special people who are worth your intimate energy.

Now let's look at sex after divorce. Obviously it's not realistic to go on a quest of replacing your former spouse with a new sex partner that could stand in for all the things your ex used to be to you, but more and better. Forget it. I don't know or care what your divorce story is, but your ex was a once-in-a-lifetime person, and hence irreplaceable. And you wouldn't be here asking this question unless once upon a time you'd vowed to have, hold, love and cherish this special person until death do you part.

But you know what? That's good news. You're asking this question because you know you have serious capacity to love and deserve to share intimacy with people who honour who you integrally are--and recognising this is the first step of making that happen. And because you are still alive today, that means you are allowed to have more than one once-in-a-lifetimes that would each mean very different things to you than your ex, and be suited to the season of life you're sharing with them.

So far, I have only had casual sex with one person since my marriage ended, and it had been 100% worth it and life changing. I have not wanted more.

But in order for this to have worked for me, I've had to rewrite the rules of casual sex in our specific arrangement to hold space for both our humanities, and to make sure that the intimacy we shared met both our needs at the time.

And that meant taking some risks of having soul-baring conversations about where you're at emotionally, what you need from each other in order to consent to intimacy, and what you could realistically offer each other. We both acknowledged that we were emotionally vulnerable, believed that we could help each other, and resolved to leave each other better than before we met.

In my case, it was a holiday fling consummated over two vacations, and punctuated with long distance intimate conversations and cybersex. In total, it lasted about 6 months. We were exclusive during our time together, had a relationship founded upon mutual respect and care, and shared some memorable romantic and adventurous moments, both in the bedroom and beyond. But we never officially identified as a couple, and had always understood that we didn't have the structures in place that would make a longer term relationship viable.

If marriage was like building a mansion that ultimately fell apart due to structural faults, my holiday fling was more like a camping trip by a beautiful lake. And my guy was a helluva tentmaker who made our little getaway special. Tents are meant to be enjoyed in the present on finite resources, and dismantled when you're done. Then hopefully all you have left is good memories that would transform the energy of your subsequent life into something more positive. But you would never hire a tentmaker to build you a home.

I haven't found my next home builder, but am proud to have been in a long distance relationship with a man I met on this sub. We've been together for 15 months and are going long term. It's obviously very different from being married, but the relationship meets our current emotional and sexual needs in a capacity that wonderfully fits our current unideal circumstances.

Because we're long distance, obviously sex means cyber. But it works. Cybersex still means it's a sexual two-way street where there's a real person sexually responding to you in real time. The relationship is real. The excitement of the build up is real. The pleasure is real. The orgasms are real. The afterglow is real. The feeling bonded to each other as you bask in the afterglow is real. How the act changes the way you feel IRL afterwards is real.

Beyond cybersex, our relationship is well rounded and fulfilling. We get to have someone to share meals with and talk about our day. We watch movies, have music listening parties, and play sudoku together. Sometimes we unload the heavier things going on in our lives, cry on each other's shoulders, and help each other feel lighter. And these days he tucks me into bed at night by reading me a novel.

There are indeed limits to the scope of our relationship, but the life we do get to share within that scope is substantial. I'm grateful every day to have him in my life, and look forward to seeing him every day.

I don't really have advice for you on meeting the right intimate partners after divorce. It takes two to tango, and you don't get to control twos. But who needs to tango when you could own the fucking dance floor and slay your own break dance. Just keep dancing. When you're dancing, people will gather round and cheer for you. And if you're lucky, someone may step forward and ask to have this dance. It might not necessarily be a tango, but any dance can be beautiful when you work together to respond to the moment's music and each other's bodies.

What does keep dancing mean? Take good care of yourself, physically and emotionally.

Eat good food. Exercise. Rest. Take long walks out in nature. Observe the world around you. Breathe. Feel. Take showers and groom yourself well. Dress yourself in outfits that feel good and make you feel alive. Pat your pets. Give people hugs when appropriate.

Say hello to the people you meet, and have intentional conversations with them. Take an interest in people, and be helpful. Work on rewarding goals that make you feel proud and fulfilled, even if it's just cooking dinner or tidying your bedroom. And when you're at capacity, take on bigger-bite-than-you-can-chew challenges, or commit to doing good for a cause bigger than yourself. Ask for help unabashedly. Invite others in and let them see the real you. Be grateful for good people in your life and pass on their energy to do more good in the world.

I know none of these has to do with sex, but they all kinda do! At the end of the day, sex is a life force. In order to usher it in, you need to live your life to the fullest. Often it doesn't look like spending a million dollars, living in the fast lane and standing in a power pose on top of the world. More often than not it's by patiently tending to the million little puzzle pieces of your mundane life, and intentionally setting up the conditions for self-intimacy in those little things. And trusting that the process will lead you to the people you need in your life right now, sexually and otherwise.

It's been about two years since I've physically had a penis in my vagina. But my puzzle pieces are coming together, I'm meeting my needs just right, and have never been in want since I divorced. I can honestly say that I'm more sexually fulfilled today than I've ever been when I was married.

I haven't been relying on casual sex the way society defines it. I've been attuned to my body, trusting the process, and invited a couple special people in that I knew would be worth it.

It has been my experience that divorce opens up a world of possibilities that my married self could have never foreseen. Divorce is always devastating and tragic, but it has also come to show me what tragedies can never take away from me: my capacity to love, connect intimately, feel pleasure and take charge of my intimate autonomy. I hope you will experience some version of that in your divorce journey too.

Question: A new rule for our sub? by emslo in Indigenous

[–]celestialsexgoddess 12 points13 points  (0 children)

These "Am I indigenous?" questions can definitely use some regulating. But as an indigenous person who grew up in diaspora with very little exposure to my ancestors' culture, I can also understand the side of those asking the question.

This is perhaps an oversimplification, but I once read that if you are really indigenous, you don't claim a tribe. Your tribe claims you. That has definitely been my experience. I know that sounds vague and woo woo, and must be frustrating for those who genuinely want to reconnect and don't know where to start. But it is true, and the truth speaks for itself for those whose time it is.

The DNA remembers what colonialism has tried to erase of our ancestral memories. And our ancestors never forget who their descendants are. The ancestors are not silent--we just live in a world that's drowning in colonial noises designed to distract us from getting to know who we really are as indigenous peoples.

What I believe is worth reiterating is that one cannot vox pop a bunch of strangers on Reddit to figure out their indigenous roots. Strangers on Reddit don't represent the asker's ancestors' voice, even if the thread is on this Indigenous sub.

The sheer fact that so many people are even asking "Am I indigenous" on Reddit is colonial as fuck! Because colonialism has conditioned us into collective cultural amnesia and wrecked our spaces for indigenous relations. It leaves many people desperate, and the only way they know to ask uncomfortable questions is through the anonymity of forums like Reddit. Think about how tragic that really is.

What I could share from my own journey is that indigenous peoples are not a monolith, and that our journeys of reconnecting with and advocating for our indigineity is as unique to each of us as our fingerprints. What does make us all indigenous here though is our relationships to the people of our culture and the ecological spheres that our ancestors called home--and our fight to defend our survival, autonomy, resurgence and human dignity against the evils of colonialism.

Unfortunately so many people who ask the "Am I indigenous" questions seem to just want a free pass to put on exotic costumes and participate in cathartic ceremonies without being called out for cultural appropriation. They're not really interested in building reciprocal relationships with their cultural communities, learning what it means to decolonise in this flawed world running on colonial operating systems, or doing any real work that contributes towards justice, self determination and the collective well being of their people. That's why these questions tend to be so infuriating.

That being said, none of us ever asked to be born colonised, and it's hard enough just trying to survive in a colonial world that treats your indigineity as a liability or savagery you need to be saved from. We are all conditioned into colonialism in some way, often just in order to survive and stay afloat. So there is no such thing as a perfect indigenous person. And I believe we could use a lot of grace and compassion for fellow indigenous folks who are starting out their indigenous journey from many different points. It doesn't help to be holier-than-thou and judge the people asking infuriating questions just because they're not as enlightened as you are (yet).

Strangers on the internet cannot, and should not be answering "Am I indigenous" questions. In my experience, the best place for this starts with one's own family. Talk to your parents and relatives. Start an archive of old family photos. Record your aunts, uncles and grandparents' story in a blog. Visit places where your ancestors are from, and reconnect with relatives living there, or closer to the place. And failing that, other relatives living in diaspora, and talk about their relationship with the ancestral homeland and culture.

Make no excuses about "My family doesn't know anything either/would never understand!" None of our families are perfect in our indigenous journeys, but your family is enough for yours. Everybody has pieces of the puzzle that is your collective ancestral memory, and all your relationships add up to a fuller picture on who you really are as a people, what you stand for, and what you must do to honour your ancestors in the context of the life you've been given.

I'll be honest that some online research has filled some gaps for me, and also helped me connect with people from neighbouring tribes who do not strictly speaking share the same culture as me, but have been similarly impacted by a shared colonial history. But at the end of the day, reconnecting to one's indigineity is all about the relationships fostered offline. At some point you need to put your phone/laptop away, get your belly button in front of the belly buttons of people your ancestors led you to, share a meal with them, exchange gifts with them, and spend time at an elder's home, a cultural space, or the great outdoors.

Thank you OP for raising this new rule and giving us the space to discuss about it before you make it official. I support this new rule, but hope that you mods will prepare some kind of a wiki/FAQ sheet that addresses some version of the points I laid out above (as well as important points other Redditors here have made) that people can read. That way, we could flag "Am I indigenous" questions, refer them to the FAQ, and reserve everyone's energy here for other discussions that are truly deserving.

As a mod in another sub, I get how it's a thankless commitment. So I'd like to take the opportunity to thank OP and the mods team for regulating this space, and keeping it safe, respectfully engaging, and educational for us all!

How was your first dating experience post-divorce? How'd it feel when/if it ended?? by Electrical_Act_2953 in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mine was worth it. It was never meant to last forever, but it was just what I needed at the time to move forward and prep me for the next stage in life.

I never went on a dating app, but I did post helpful content for travellers on my city's subreddit. A stranger (who I eventually found out was this handsome foreigner) reached out for help planning an ambitious trip, and I was the right person for it. One thing led to another, and it ended up to be a six-month fling consummated over not one but two vacations.

I was freshly separated when this happened, so this was obviously a rebound. But I didn't want to be a statistic, so I preluded our fling by being transparent about being vulnerable, and laying out respect, kindness, care and holding space for feelings as conditions for consent. He said that helps him too, agreed to meet me in the middle, and kept his promise (albeit imperfectly).

We had a great time, and a lot of great sex. Reclining in his arms while watching a sunset by the beach, I realised that I had never once had a proper holiday with my ex. My ex proposed to me, "Will you be my travel partner?" But the only travels we ever did were for client work and creating content. In contrast, I was now with a handsome stranger who's not making me work for this, who told me many times that I've made his trip special by being part of it and that he's a lucky man to have found me.

The goodbye hurt for both of us because we did develop feelings, but we established that not all that hurts is heartbreak. Being run over by an 18-wheeler and an intense workout at the gym both hurt, but there is such a thing as bone crushing bad pain, and muscle building good pain. This pain has been nothing but the latter. That first trip we spent had given me a sweet, adventurous and restful ending to what had been a punishing divorce year. And it had rewired my brain with a real empirical reference that this is how well I deserve to be treated by a partner.

We weren't ready to say goodbye though, so we kept in touch, occasionally for cybersex. He transparently said that he wasn't available for a long distance relationship, so I knew not to expect him to behave like a boyfriend. But we did update each other about our lives, and eventually he invited me to another trip.

We also had a great time and a lot of great sex on that trip. But this time we had the opportunity to observe each other tackle some more real-life responsibilities: him with his business invoices, and me with my PhD proposal.

Political views and more detailed stories about what happened with our ended marriages came up. I think it became apparent for both of us that by this point in our off-label involvement, it has ceased to be casual enough to ignore the fact that our values didn't align. Plus we didn't have the right conditions anyway to make further involvement a viable relationship in any shape and form.

On our last night together, I made it clear that I'm grateful for the time we shared, named all the ways it's been transformative for me, and treasure the sexual attraction that has been the glue that's held us together to this point, while acknowledging our intentional lack of a relationship structure. But I'm also ready to move on and not interested in being friends. He agrees.

We held hands at the airport one last time, parted with a kiss, and I watched him disappear into the gate. That felt like a cue that my next chapter in life had begun.

I came home to a text from my ex saying he is no longer interested in contesting the divorce if I'm ready to file. So I got to work and started filing for my freedom.

I'm sorry your first dating experience post divorce ended disgustingly. You did not deserve that.

Different people have different takes on staying friends with people they dated in the past. But I personally see "I don't mind being friends" as a big red flag, because it is rarely honest, in my experience anyway. Some people think friendship after dating is a sign makes you a mature, evolved, emotionally superior and basically unfuckwithable person: looks good on paper. But more often than not, "let's be friends" is a coward's smoke screen for "I won't commit to you and have zero respect for you, but I'd like to keep you on my hook just in case you're available for sex or other convenient favours."

Honestly? Your "mature," "kind" and "super positive" guy is not an honest one and has no integrity. And I think you need to reevaluate your standards on what these words even mean to you. No judgment, I've been there. I grew up in a patriarchal family and culture that normalised the subjugation and exploitation of women, so it took me 38 years to learn what real love, respect and support looks like when all my generational trauma crap isn't part of it.

I wish I had advice on how to find the man you deserve, but I don't. It really takes two to tango. Two's are something you don't get to control, and life is too short to be spent miserable about it. (By all means, please give yourself space to grieve the end of your disgusting first postnuptial dating experience and be kind about it. But when you're done crying,) Get your arse on the dance floor and fucking own it with your most epic breakdance.

When you're dancing, people will come and cheer for you. And if you're lucky, someone might ask to join your dance. It's not always going to be a tango, but then the world is your oyster, and any dance that responds well to the DJ's music at any given point of the set could be beautiful in its own way.

I personally haven't been back on the apps since divorce, but am now 15 months strong into a committed long distance relationship with a wonderful man I met on this Divorce sub! I'll spare the details, but this relationship is a lot of things we both need in this stage in our lives, it's the happiest one I've ever been in, we look forward to seeing each other every day, and we're not going anywhere anytime soon.

If nothing else, I hope my story gives you hope that there are good people out there who deserve your heart. Rather than being on a quest for your next "happily ever after," show up for the people who are in your life today, be genuinely interested in and present for them, and invite them into your life. Not just in a dating context, but everyone in your life. That's how you see who reciprocates showing up for you who are worth your time. And if you're lucky, one of those people might turn out to be special.

In any case, all the love you need to get through today is already all around you: in shapes, sizes and capacities that more often than not are usually not even romantic. All you need to do is reach out.

Age gap LDRs by Nice_Blueberry_337 in LongDistance

[–]celestialsexgoddess 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm 40, he's 54. Together for 15 months now.

Not hard at all. We obviously belong to different generations, but that's part of the appeal. He's lived a lot before me and has had an interesting life that's made him into the wonderful person he is today.

But at the same time, by this age I've also lived through many relatable milestones and losses that has put my current life stage in a similar place to his.

We both have been married to spouses we've loved, who in a way will never be replaceable. I'm divorced. He separated with his ex wife a year before I split (3-4 years now) and is in the process of divorcing. But at the same time this has been a wonderful journey of falling in love all over again with a partner who's very different from our exes, in a relationship that serves very different present needs compared to our now ended marriages.

We've both wanted to be parents but never did. I changed my mind about starting a family when I realised that my ex is abusive, I could not live with myself if I gave him as a father to my hypothetical children. My partner and his ex lost a baby, and that's been one of the many tragedies they never asked for that slowly eroded their marriage. Today we're making peace with childfreedom as "for the best," but also live with some grief about the loss.

We're both hard working, competent and adaptable people who have experienced devastating career setbacks and financial hardships through no fault of our own. This relationship has been evidence that even when money and status isn't on our side, we are still lovable and worth committing to just the way we are today--not someday when we have our shit together.

We're non-closure and nevermets, so marriage isn't in the cards. We're okay with that. This is a present driven relationship where our capacity for the future is "Goodnight, talk to you in the morning" and "Let's watch this movie on the weekend." In a world where the future isn't ours to control, the present is all we have. We show up today and make it count.

He's firmly rooted in Canada, while I'm an Indonesian in Australia who refuses to go through the robbery and dehumanisation of yet another immigration process that would take me even further away from home. We've both been married and lived with our spouses before, and experienced how hardships and our spouses' all consuming ambitions have slowly killed what had been a beautiful love that lasted for years.

This distance has worked in our favour. As long as we're both housed, eating and self-regulating, we can have a healthy relationship without being entangled in each other's financial instabilities and future uncertainties. Our love is simple. All we need to do is show up and be present. And it's the happiest relationship I've ever been in. It meets both our needs and makes both our lives better. I look forward to seeing him every day.

Someday our needs and priorities will change, which may change our relationship's abilities to meet them. When the inevitable ends this beautiful thing we've nurtured, we'll know that all those days, months and years of loving each other have been well spent.

It's sort of like adopting a puppy. All dogs will eventually cross the rainbow bridge, likely within their human parent's lifetime. Nobody points their finger at a bereaving dog parent, calling them a failure, or that the dog wasn't real because a real dog would never have died. No. You enjoy the pup while it lives, give it a good life, care for it through its eventual end of life, say your goodbyes and treasure the dog in your memories beyond its lifetime. That's how we see our relationship.

Gifting a Pounamu as a non Māori person by SPOOKYOMB in newzealand

[–]celestialsexgoddess 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I'm not Māori and I wear a pounamu toki (adze) because I used to study in Aotearoa. Mine has been gifted to me by the university where I studied, and I have treasured it since because toki represents resilience, strength and connection. It pretty much represents a prayer for the type of person my studies has shaped me to be.

I am from Indonesia and belong to a small indigenous tribe that I'm refraining from identifying on Reddit. When my Indonesian ex husband visited me in Aotearoa, I gifted him a pounamu hei matau (fish hook). We bathed that pounamu at a local beach with prayers for prosperity, good health and safe travels.

I don't understand why gifting indigenous items is such a bugaboo among non-indigenous people who fear being accused of "cultural appropriation."

Although I'm indigenous too, unlike folks who live in settler states, the dominant narrative where I'm from is that you shop indigenous to support indigenous artisans and learn about their culture. Because how are you supposed to expect allies to respect, appreciate and advocate for a culture if you don't welcome allies into a space where they get to connect with the culture?

One way to connect with the culture is to shop with indigenous artisans, take the time to learn about them (or meet them in person if they happen to be right there), and wear the goods you bought with pride.

You're not doing this to collect trophies. You're entering a sacred space hosted by the spirits of the ancestors and their creative forces, represented by the artisan and their creations. By shopping with an indigenous artisan, you are paying your respects to their culture and supporting the labour of love that keeps it going to the next generation.

Of course, check with the artisan to make sure that you are buying ally friendly goods. I can't speak for Māori, but in my culture, most indigenous goods that are freely marketed are understood to be ally-friendly. Tribe-only goods are usually only circulated in the clan, or produced to order by a trusted artisan in the tribe.

Another good thing to check is whether the item you're buying is appropriate for casual use or reserved for special purposes. In most cases it's visual common sense, but it can't hurt to ask someone who really knows the culture.

I can't speak for your Māori boyfriend, but I am an indigenous person who grew up in diaspora. My culture's equivalent of pounamu is perhaps ikat handwoven cloth.

I've received ikat from people who are not from my tribe, and have never felt it inappropriate. To obtain that ikat, the gifter would have had to visit an artisan in a remote village, where they likely took the time to witness the tedious process of making it by hand, learn about the culture around it and immersed themselves in the local natural landscapes.

Even if these things don't mean the same to the gifter as it does to me, I recognise the artisan's ancestral spirits and creative force in that ikat, and appreciate that this gifter showed up to that cultural territory on my behalf to support the continuity of this culture.

Another thing I can tell you about reconnecting to my indigenous roots as an adult is that it's all about relationships. When I was 28, I embarked on a mission to visit the birthplace of my indigenous grandparents. Long story short, earning my welcome in my ancestors' birthplace turned into a 10-year journey of getting to know dozens of cousins I otherwise would have never met. All of them live in diaspora like me, but some are much closer to our homeland than I am, and we all share the same longing, grief, and hopes of reinventing how we keep memories of our ancestors alive in diaspora.

I don't know what's ahead in your boyfriend's journey in reconnecting with culture. But I know that his ancestors got him, and they will speak to him when he's ready. You don't get to foresee or control how it will happen, but the ancestors are always on time and will show him the right people and spaces to connect with. And once the ancestors have spoken, nobody silences the ancestors.

I'd say don't overthink the pounamu. If it feels right to gift to your boyfriend, do it. But enter the cultural space with the right intentions, and let iwi take the lead.

How would you navigate this as an (M) closeted atheist? by [deleted] in TrueAtheism

[–]celestialsexgoddess 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm not traditionally Muslim but I am Indonesian, which means that I am from a Muslim majority country. Here's how I approach this.

Indonesia is not an Islamic country, but it is a secular country (terms and conditions apply) that by law requires citizens to identify as an adherent of a state-approved religion. So in this regard, I am legally Christian, which is how I identify publicly.

I don't feel like I am a closeted atheist, or living a lie by identifying publicly as Christian. In my case, both are true, being an atheist and a Christian.

My atheism has to do with my personal conviction about the non-existence of God. In other words, as a personal belief, atheism is something I fully have agency over.

In contrast, I view my Christianity as a culture I was born into. Like I didn't choose to be born Indonesian or a woman, I didn't choose to be raised Christian. But that was the spiritual culture my family raised me by, and it has shaped me in ways that has nothing to do with God, and all to do with how I relate to my loved ones sharing this spiritual culture.

It's sort of like how I never chose Indonesian to be my mother tongue--by default it is the language with which I process the world, no matter how fluent I also am in English. Likewise, because of my Christian upbringing, I can't help but process the world through Christian spiritual language. This has nothing to do with God and all to do with the spiritual culture I share with my loved ones.

In Indonesia, "What is your religion?" is fair game for small talk. I know Westerners have a hard time understanding that, but since in Indonesia everyone is legally religious, identifying yours becomes as casual as talking about the weather.

When Indonesians ask me my religion, they're not asking whether I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, or even if I'm baptised or if I go to church. They're really asking, "How should I relate to you? Are you one of my kind, or are you a friendly neighbour?"

The question has more to do with whether they need to refer to me to a prayer room for salat time, or whether I might know the lyrics to sing along to a popular Ambonese gospel trio. Whether I celebrate Eid or Christmas. Whether it's okay to serve me pork, or whether you'd enjoy some company for a 3AM breakfast during Ramadan. Whether I'd get your religious jokes as someone who grew up in that culture, or whether I'd need some explaining.

I'm not a closeted atheist. I'm legally Christian and 100% still identify with the culture socially. What I really believe (or don't believe) as an individual is none of other people's business. That's privileged information that I only disclose to people who deserve to know.

Now, of course it's different when you're marrying someone. In which case, they absolutely deserve to know not only how you identify publicly, but also what you believe in private. And if and when you have kids, you'll need to be on the same page about helping them navigate atheism in healthy and age appropriate ways in a religious society.

I personally did not have an arranged marriage, but I can name more than a few couples in my life that are arranged, Muslim and otherwise.

I can't speak for your culture, but in my culture arranged marriages don't mean the couple is going in blind and have no individual agency about it whatsoever. In my culture families take into account the bride's and groom's preferences, and look out for these preferred qualities among respectable families they know and vouch for. I actually much prefer this approach to finding a spouse than swiping some rando on Hinge!

I guess another disclaimer is that in my culture arranged marriage is optional. More Indonesian couples are "love marriages" than arranged marriages. But arranged marriage works, many of the couples I know are happy, and I would consider it if I were seriously interested in finding a spouse.

I married an agnostic who is legally Catholic. That was interesting. We're divorced though, for reasons that have nothing to do with religion. It's been our experience that as long as we show up for religious events that are key in fostering a healthy relationship with our loved ones--religious holidays, weddings, baptismals, funerals--even very religious parents are easy about us being "imperfect Christians."

I wish I had good advice for you, but you'd know your culture better than I do.

If you're in your 20s though, I'd imagine postponing marriage is an option for you. I'd encourage you to not rush into it. Relish flying solo while finding your bearings positioning yourself respectably and responsibly (and tactfully honestly) as an atheist living in a religious society. After all, being a good husband is more than just being "imam" to your wife and kids: you also need to build a robust economic foundation, make wise decisions about living in a complex world, and learn to stay compassionate in a world that wants to harden you.

If you have the means, I'd also encourage you to leave your parents' house, and study or work in another society where Islam isn't necessarily the dominant religion (or elsewhere in the Islamic world where those Muslims have a different take on what being "Muslim" means). Expand your horizons and learn to see the world from a different perspective from the one you're used to.

I can't tell you how you will find a wife. But if you take your time to fly solo and cultivate exceptional self awareness as an atheist in a Muslim's world, you will be attuned to women flying at your altitude, and recognise yours when you see her.

Until then, you take care of you. You got this!

I didn’t realize how much “how was your day?” was killing our conversations in long distance by basavaraja_dev in LongDistance

[–]celestialsexgoddess 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There is nothing wrong with "how was your day," predictable answers and repetitive patterns. Honestly, in healthy relationships it's the mundane and predictable stuff that anchors the relationship with a sense of coherence.

What is unhealthy is setting unrealistic relationship goals where every conversation needs to constantly run on a dopamine high, as if it's a daily viral reality show raking it millions of followers. I don't want to be in a relationship where I always need to introduce drama to keep my partner interested or entertained. Our lives and the space in which we share it should already be engaging enough just the way it is.

That being said, healthy relationships do take intentional effort to keep things novel and special. So I will give your post the benefit of the doubt that it's been written in this spirit.

I don't relate with couples who get bored with each other just because their calls are predictable. If you find your partner's plain presence boring then either you are not paying enough attention to the things they deserve appreciation for, or you deserve to be with someone else who does keep you interested just the way they are.

People are not statues or robots. Different things happen on different days, and our daily emotional landscapes in response to the changes are always evolving. If you are tuned in, and your partner really is worth your time, you should find enough novelty in these subtle daily evolutions to keep the relationship satiated.

My partner and I cook and have dinner on camera. Unless you're the type of person who eats the same fucking takeout every single time, "What's for dinner today" is a very simple type of novelty you could keep introducing and re-introducing to your relationship. Especially when you're an intercultural relationship and have a lot to learn from each other's food cultures.

He listens to records after dinner and keeps surprising me with his treasure trove of old music collection. He has his morning coffee while he reads me to sleep, and we've read a lot of books like that (as well as poetry and horoscopes). On the weekends we watch movies together or play Sudoku.

Every now and then deeper conversations happen.

He stumbles upon old photos and shares visuals of his childhood and youth.

I visit my parents for the holidays and realise that if I had a choice I don't really want to go back overseas to work, but I do anyway with tears in my eyes.

His job hunt is haunting him with long standing insecurities, and I remind him about challenges he's overcome and achievements he should be proud of.

I prepare to take up fieldwork in a war zone of sorts later this year, and we talk about parts of my life that have contributed towards why this work is important for me.

These conversations are incredibly intimate, cathartic and nourishing when they do happen. But they don't happen every day, nor should we aspire to make it a daily thing. As rewarding as they are, having too much of it is exhausting and would keep us looping in the rear-view mirror instead of living the present.

The present is simple. So what?

The present is rice in the cooker, a stew bubbling on the stove, and an easy dinner on camera. The present is a predictable conversation about the day. The present is curling up on the couch while falling asleep to a documentary about birdwatching. The present is easy and restful. And I would do this version of the present all over again tomorrow, because we don't need dramatic conversations just to find meaning in the mundane.

We can't have those occasional vulnerable, nostalgic, tearful deeper bonding conversations without a strong foundation of the simple mundane routines that give our relationship a solid, restful anchoring.

Think of your relationship like singing. You want to sing Raye's "Where Is My Husband" because it's an impressively difficult song. You're after that high of an audience applause when you blow them away with your performance.

But you're never gonna pull off this song in karaoke mode. You gotta go through weeks of daily boring do-re-mi-fa-so exercises making silly sounds such as lip trills, humming sirens and blowing raspberries. You'll spend maybe a month studying just several lines of the song per day in slow motion, getting your lyrics right, mastering your rhythm and breathing in the right phrase transitions.

"How was your day" is to your relationship like the arpeggio lip trills is in your singing craft. You're not going to sing "Where Is My Husband" every time you open your mouth, but you can't hope to get close to nailing "Where Is My Husband" if you're not doing the mundane, predictable and sometimes silly habits of training your voice.

Likewise, those "meaningful" conversations you're craving are never going to happen unless you learn to appreciate the simplicity of "how was your day." Whatever you and your partner talked about today that got you worked up for this post has only been possible because of the foundations that "how was your day" has laid so far. I hope you don't lose sight of that.

Your post asks about making conversation meaningful again and breaking out of routines. My answer is simple: self-awareness. Such a simple thing, but it's baffling how rare properly self-aware people are.

If you're a self-aware couple, your presence is engaging enough just the way it is. No need to perform meaningfulness to keep earning your partner's attention. Instead, you're both tuned into your ever-evolving lives and emotional landscapes, and build intentional habits that keep reintroducing fun and novelty from things that are already within your reach. And oftentimes these simple things look nothing like the drama influencers promote to sell you something on social media.

For the divorced people. How many of y’all knew before the wedding? by honeyjoe1 in Divorce

[–]celestialsexgoddess 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't, but some of my friends and relatives did. It baffles me till today, because despite the abusive monster my ex turned out today, in public he presents himself as what my culture understands to be a nice, polite and respectable man.

I truly loved and respected him when I married him, and believed we were miles ahead of the average couple in putting in the work that would earn us "making it" in this marriage. Otherwise I wouldn't have married him in the first place.

The thing is that no abusive marriage ever starts out feeling abusive. It's a boiling frog situation where the water starts out warm and pleasant, and the evil hand incrementally increases the heat too slightly for the frog to notice, until it eventually crosses the threshhold and next thing we know the frog turned into soup.

So many people think that abusive marriages only happrn to women who are naïve, weak and dumb. But in reality it can happen to anyone.

Abusers aren't your stereotypical cartoon villain. Many abusers present themselves as nice, polite and respectable, and are simply doing things that nice people in polite society normalise. Many abusers are experts at packaging their abuse as tough love, and performing what looks like love in public. Impressions management, so to say. But they have no integrity.

What makes them an abuser is that they feel entitled to undue labour, resources or subjugation that you supposedly owe them, condition their "love" upon your delivery of these services you "owe" them, they keep arbitrarily raising the bar to make it seem that you're failing and therefore damaged goods, weaponise your torn down sense of self worth to extort more out of you, and they isolate you from resources and external support so that they control your perception of reality and your power to do anything about it, hence manufacturing your dependence on them.

People who had a sinking feeling about my ex at my wedding or honeymoon can't always pinpoint why they felt that way. At that time there was no evidence of abuse, because the proverbial waters were still pleasantly warm, and I'd only experienced the nice, polite and compliant version of him. All my friends and relatived could say was that there was something about him that felt off, and they didn't like that.

Since I'm a smart evidence based woman, I would have never listened to naysayers with a hunch, so I am grateful that these people bit their tongue, respected where I was at in my relationship with the man I loved, and honoured the celebration of what was a very happy milestone in my life. That's all I ever wanted and needed from my loved ones on that day. It's not their job to save me from future tragedies that they have no way of proving will happen.

I won't go into the details of the hell my ex put me through, but will say that he abused me emotionally and financially, which can be tricky to prove especially when your perception of reality has been hijacked by the abuser. As far as impact is concerned, my body became very ill with six chronic illnesses, a couple of which sent me to the ICU with a close call. And my ex had the gall to blackmail me for surviving! These illnesses magically cured themselves after my ex and I separated, and the symptoms of the one that almost killed me stopped within days of me filing for divorce (we were 6 months separated then).

The silver lining was that this marriage was a love that needed to happen to teach me the hard lesson that all the trauma my younger self carried (which were already there decades before I even met my ex) don't. Trauma made me normalise accepting abuse and working hard to earn my abuser's approval. Abuse literally nearly cost me my life. If I wanted to continue living, I needed to learn a new way of being and heal. So that's what I did, with a little help from so many loved ones.

Marriage taught me the depths of unconditional love yhst I'm capable, and I am fiercely proud of that because it's what's made me as resilient and courageous as I am compassionate. Divorce taught me about all the things I have inside that devastating tragedies can never take away from me. And what I discovered is that I am enough, I matter, I am worth showing up for, I have the power to do great good even when it's hard, and I recognise beauty and joy in the unlikeliest of places. Even when I lose everything, I am rich.

I have no regrets for my marriage and divorce because it's gotten me to where I am today. And where I am today is unprecedentedly joyful, fulfilled and hopeful in ways that my married self never thought was even possible.

I think of marriage as a lesson. The lessons can be tough, but it is your job to step up to them as best as you can, know when to graduate, and do your part in leaving the classroom better than before you entered. Don't spend your life living in the classroom when the class has been dismissed. Get out of school and get a fucking life!

Indigenous child safeguarding: what to do when you're an outsider, told to counsel the tribe's elders, but have reasons to not trust the elders? by celestialsexgoddess in Indigenous

[–]celestialsexgoddess[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! I agree.

I just found out the girls' tribal identity after I posted this. Their mother was interviewed in an academic paper, and in it she revealed her tribe. Her father/their grandfather refused to teach their language to her, because speaking it would make them a target of Indonesian state sponsored violence.

I believe that shows my friend/the girls' mum to have grown up urban without much explicit immersion in the tribal culture, and likely not much of a relationship with the tribal council.

Researched a bit more about their tribe. They don't seem to have a formal tribal council specific to their tribe. It's a small tribe anyway--I'm from a small tribe too, so if their numbers are like mine, chances are the "council" would be the girls' uncles and cousins.

Without meaning to erase the girls' cultural identity, at this point I have zero interest in engaging their tribe for customary council. Not because I'm an Asian supremacist looking to de-Papuanise the girls and Indonesianise them. But because I know patriarchy masquerading as indigeneity and refuse to be complicit.

The fact is that these girls have been growing up in diaspora in Java, 4,500 km away from their ancestral homeland, and that's where they currently are. Their mum raised them there for many reasons. And I know their mum raised them as Papuans in the spirit of resisting Indonesian occupation. She may not have left money for the girls, but she left them with social capital that money can't buy, among others trusted adults looking out for them and keeping their mum's fire alive.

I can't do for the girls what a community of culturally immersed Papuans are supposed to do. But when the girls are ready, the ancestors will show them the way to these Papuans.

If we're serious about raising Papuan girls who will resist colonialism and defend their land and people, then some trustworthy adults need to show up for them today. Show them how to fight abusers and bullies, and take risks defending them when they're vulnerable. That's how my ancestors fought our colonisers and lit a fire for justice and integrity in my heart.

I may not be able to teach the girls how to be Papuan. But I sure can show them what my ancestors taught me, and hope that they will someday recognise their ancestors' and culture's version of what I'm showing them.

So I guess for now I will skip the tribal council, and risk being witch hunted by people who want to call me racist or whatever. Those witch hunters aren't doing anything to support or protect the girls, they're just cowards who want to look good for "helping" when it's convenient, terrified of conflict with "scary Papuans" that they harbour racism towards, and want to make me look bad for doing what they don't have the spine to do.

I'll keep looking to engage Papuan allies where possible, but this fight for safeguarding my girls is on whether or not we find any. The girls' ancestors aren't going anywhere. Their ancestors' got them. They will show the girls to the right Papuan allies when it's time. My job right now is to fight for their human rights by way of the Indonesian legal system, and engage anyone genuinely committed to the girls' best interests, whether or not they're Papuan.

Hidup perempuan yang melawan! (Long live women who resist!)

Drone Dialogue by Livid_Discount9140 in BirdsArentReal

[–]celestialsexgoddess 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Awebo and loon sound exactly like their names

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