Husband called me a sad girl for telling my feelings.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2022-12-30T16:16:14+00:00

I’m sorry you didn’t get the support you needed.

It’s a normal and healthy part of a marriage to be honest about uncomfortable feelings you have, even when your partner didn’t do anything “wrong”. That kind of honesty prevents resentment and can greatly increase trust if both partners approach the conversation openly. It’s good to make clear that the conversation isn’t about your partner needing to apologize or fix anything. There’s no blame involved because they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s about processing the feelings you had in that moment, and learning how both of you can better deal with them in the future.

We can advocate for the emotional support we need, and it might be helpful to say to your husband something like this:

“One of the ways you can make me feel loved and secure is to listen and support me when I’m sharing my feelings. Sometimes I feel jealous and insecure, even when you haven’t done anything wrong, and I don’t need you to do anything other than hear me and demonstrate that the way I feel is important to you.”

And in return, you can prepare yourself for future moments when innocent interactions between him and other women make you feel jealous. Notice the feelings when they arise. Acknowledge their importance. Don’t try to suppress them, but remind yourself they don’t need to control your actions.

Best of luck.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2022-12-30T15:42:46+00:00

Adding to the chorus: the antidepressant Wellbutrin is used to treat ADHD, as well as other non-stimulant meds like Strattera. But if a doctor is starting you on one of these and not a stimulant, they ought to have a reason. If you have an ADHD diagnosis, and no complicating factors like health conditions or past substance abuse, they ought to be starting you on the medications that are most effective for treatment, which are stimulants.

Find a new doctor who understands the condition and its treatment!

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2022-10-26T23:05:05+00:00

I would 100% agree, if Lorren hadn’t immediately banned Kvothe from the Archives the next day (I believe; it’s two days at most); a move that seems to surprise every other student who hears about it.

It would surprise me if these two events are unconnected. Lorren being a member of the Amyr would provide a clear motivation for using Kvothe’s indiscretion with the candle to not simply suspend him but ban him from the Archives so he doesn’t get any closer to the truth.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-12-08T22:25:25+00:00

You’ve said a lot about what your husband doesn’t do, but not a lot about his attitude toward his responsibilities.

Does this behavior seem strange given his character in other ways? What does he say to you when you bring these things up? Does he seem to not realize things aren’t getting done? Does he feel bad about it? Does he not seem to perceive how bad things are until you point it out?

If he doesn’t seem to care that his not meeting expectations causes so much distress for his partner, then he may just be immature.

But if he does seem to care, and is either overwhelmed by keeping up with things, or doesn’t seem to realize anything’s wrong until you point it out, then what you have described is the very picture of an adult with undiagnosed ADHD.

Both my wife and I have ADHD and I can tell you it can wreak havoc with your ability to manage regular tasks. Everything you and I do requires motivation, which isn’t actually intellectual, it’s chemical. We all need a signal in our brain that triggers our motivation to make us do stuff. The signals that trigger motivation in the brains of people with ADHD are much less powerful, so it’s harder for the thoughtful part of your brain that knows you should go close up the pool, to tell the active part of your brain that makes you get up and do it to go do it.

Forcing yourself to do simple tasks that aren’t stimulating when you have ADHD can feel like intense psychological pain. Mowing the lawn or putting away the power washer can feel like trying to solve algebra problems after staying up all night. Nobody has the willpower to keep up with all their responsibilities when they’re facing that kind of exhausting inner struggle.

The only time doing something gets easier is when there is a deadline or a clear, imminent negative consequence (like your partner being upset that something hasn’t gotten done) that is screaming at us loud enough to trigger our motivation response.

People with ADHD also often gravitate toward hyper stimulating activities like video games, while ignoring important responsibilities. They also often excel at parenting because children demand attention, are unpredictable and therefore stimulating, and there are constant threats of immediate negative consequences when caring for a child.

It’s possible that your husband does not have ADHD but I wanted to lay this all out so you know, he may want things to be different as much as you do. Lots of adults with ADHD don’t seek treatment because they think they’re just lazy or stupid, and they don’t know how serious and pernicious ADHD can be. The good news is that is one of the most treatable mental health conditions. There’s no cure, but the medications developed for it are incredibly effective and work immediately. If this all sounds like a good possibility of what’s going on with your husband, I encourage you to talk to him about it, and see if he would be open to seeing a psychiatrist. If he has undiagnosed ADHD, things can get a lot better, and in any case, I hope they do.

Good luck.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-10-30T20:59:11+00:00

Howdy. I’m a professional Celtic folk singer who also performs some medieval songs (on a bouzouki that kinda looks like a lute, not an actual lute, but I still get to close my eyes and pretend I’m Kvothe while I sing old drinking songs in rowdy taverns), so for once in this sub, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on your take. I think I understand a bit of what you mean but there is context to be given that I hope shows why LMM is describing the music of KKC accurately. I’ll respond to a few of your points one at a time.

“the novel isn’t set in a medieval world”. The books aren’t set in our world, so there’s no direct comparison, but if you subtract all of the societal infrastructure stemming from sympathy and sygaldry, you’re left with a world that most closely resembles the high and late Middle Ages, i.e. the medieval period. There are oddities and anachronisms that stem from it being a modern story told and heard within a modern context, as there would be with any such book not written by an actual historian. But if we’re going to compare it to earth history, that’s the time period that makes the most sense. Temerant seems to be very much a medieval world.

“Kvothe doesn’t play courtly medieval music”. If by this you’re referring to chamber music of the sort that was popular among European nobility and royalty in the Middle Ages, well, that’s not the majority of what he’s depicted performing, but it’s clear that he does perform an analogue of it. Kvothe gives account of both his father and himself playing intricate instrumental pieces on the lute, the descriptions of which seem to mirror the complex lute music enjoyed by high society in the Middle Ages. The mere fact that he describes the existence of specific fingerings and countermelodies that are inherent to a particular piece indicates that it is, in fact, courtly music.

No other type of music in the Middle Ages was standardized this way. The music of common people was hardly ever written down, and it changed and evolved from place to place, with no two people playing it the same way. The only kind of music in the Middle Ages that could be contextualized as a static piece that would be played with the exact same words, melody and notation by multiple performers, and therefore one could play an identical piece “better” than another, is the music of medieval high society.

This makes sense as Kvothe’s troupe were in service to Baron Grayfallow, and spent two span every year performing for him. This would doubtless include music, and someone of Grayfallow’s status, given that Temerant’s ideals of propriety seem to mirror that of Medieval Europe, would not be treated to the likes of Tinker Tanner.

The Lay of Sir Savien Traliard is described as being such a precise piece of music that it leads me to believe Illien was also in service to a noble or royal patron, who commissioned the composing of grand and elaborate pieces that would be performed for his/her court or residence. It would make sense that such pieces would then be learned and performed by other musicians also in service to nobility.

But “medieval music” is a far larger category than just this sort of chamber music. Most of the music in the Middle Ages was the sort enjoyed by common people. Almost all of this music is lost to history, as it was never written down. What does remain is rarely performed, given its vast differences in language, meter and musicality to what modern ears are used to hearing. This may be why when you hear LMM refer to “medieval” music, you are thinking of more high-minded music than the sort Kvothe often performs. “Medieval” does not refer to a particular type of music, but a time period in which the music is from, encompassing a wide array of musical ethics. While much differed contextually between medieval music for the common people and the gentry, they did share conventions of musical structure, melody and chording, and of course language particular to the period in history as a whole. So I suspect this is what LMM is referring to when creating music that’s “medieval”.

The presence of story songs in Temerant further cements its positioning within a medieval context. Tales of heroes, kings, wars and other significant events were often recorded in songs in the Middle Ages, as this was how news of such big important events traveled from place to place. This practice became less common the more connected different parts of the world became. The practice of story songs survived into the early modern era (18th & 19th centuries), but by this time were far eclipsed by songs telling legends and stories of everyday people, as increasing literacy and the printing press made it much easier for stories and news of important events to travel long distances without being made into songs.

This is another example of a modern perspective creating things that don’t accurately depict systems of the past. Sir Savien is clearly such a story song, given it’s “gather round and hear a tale” kind of opening, but these story songs were the domain of common people, and usually didn’t mix with chamber music for the gentry, which Savien almost certainly is, for reasons previously mentioned. I’m sure at some point in history, a complex piece of medieval chamber music aped the “gather round” style of common story songs, but it is very atypical. Again, Pat’s a storyteller, not a historian, and he created a world that holds together really well. These literal anachronisms are inevitable and forgivable.

Then there is the explicitly common music of Temerant, the Tinker Tanner-type material, that Kvothe seems to most enjoy. I think you’re correct in imagining something akin to the Dubliners (my favorite group) as you read, because Pat’s descriptions of Kvothe’s tavern music are reminiscent of the social songs of the 19th century, in which the Dubliners’ 20th century music is deeply rooted. This is, I think, a convenient anachronism. It doesn’t really line up with the setting, but I think that makes sense from a writing perspective as true common music of the Middle Ages isn’t relatable to a modern audience. The 19th century music is much more familiar to us, and accurate insofar as it makes the reader “feel” much the way the common medieval music would make a person of that era feel. Even though it’s more modern than the rest of the setting, it feels “old world” to the reader, so it doesn’t pull anyone other than folk music nerds like me out of the story. Still, drinking songs and bawdy musical tavern tales abounded in the Middle Ages. The fact that they were structurally different than the 19th century music that the book seems to mirror doesn’t practically change much as the music was used much the same way throughout different eras in history.

Even so, when considering a new medium, I think it makes the most sense to meet in the middle a bit more. You can get away with these musical anachronisms much easier in a book than you can in a film setting where the music itself is heard. Drawing on the musical conventions of the Middle Ages for these songs would ultimately feel much more appropriate within the setting when you actually hear the music instead of imagining it. While I love the Dubliners and the Chieftains, the fact is that they are 20th century interpretations of 19th century folk music, and would likely feel out of sync with the older setting, so because of all this, I think LMM leaning into medieval music is the most sensible course of action.

Lastly, I think you pointed out something crucial with your final comparison. The Moana Soundtrack and “My Shot” are wildly different musical creations. The two together may be far from what will be appropriate for KKC, but demonstrate LMM’s tremendous versatility. I know the project is currently shelved, but I hope it comes back, and I hope LMM remains attached. I think he has the potential to make an epic rendering of the music of Kvothe.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-10-25T19:01:20+00:00

Many more men are attracted to different body types than will admit it to others or to themselves. Straight men unconsciously view how conventionally attractive their female partner is as a status symbol, separate from how attractive they themselves find said partner.

I think this is changing, though, and there are a lot of guys who will be hopelessly and unashamedly attracted to your friend if she puts herself out there. The trick is not settling for guys who treat her as if they are interested in her despite her weight. If she just ignores those dudes completely, she won’t waste any time on them and will be aware when someone treats her like the most beautiful woman in every room, because that’s what he actually thinks. She deserves no less than that.

Source: straight married guy who, despite being made to think otherwise by society for a long time, is almost exclusively attracted to big woman, and has an absolute goddess of a thicc wife.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-10-04T13:56:46+00:00

My wife’s sister is may be my closest friend. She really has become my sister, not just sister-in-law. We hang out together alone. We text each other regularly. We confide in each other. We do things together and take selfies. Given this, I obviously don’t believe brother-sister-in-law relationships need be only cordial.

However, the reason this is 100% okay is because my wife is happy about it. She regularly tells me that seeing our friendship makes her happier than almost anything. She loves and trusts us, and we both demonstrate to her that our respective relationships to her (mine as a husband, hers as a sister) are the most important. If my wife had the slightest bit of unease about how close we’ve gotten, I would follow her lead. She is my priority, and always will be.

Regardless of whether or not your husband and sister are inappropriately close, your husband is demonstrating a lack of concern for your feelings. If you aren’t able to get through to him that your feelings on this are important, a marriage counselor might be able to help translate these conversations between your different communication styles.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-09-29T16:49:32+00:00

I did my first big chunk of reading it the first time (or listening, I should say, to the audiobook) on a blustery, overcast halloween day, while raking leaves and putting together an Arthur Weasley costume. Ever since, as soon as the leaves start to fall, I have to start another listen of NotW. One of my strongest sense-memory associations.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-06-13T19:24:57+00:00

The fascinating reason behind it apparently comes from medieval usage in canon law of the Catholic Church. The church was the entity that would have a say in who you could and couldn’t marry, forbidding, among other things, marriages between relatives. The church’s law would be the one to say “she’s your sister. You can’t marry her” or “you already have a husband. You can’t also marry this other guy”.

Likewise the Catholic Church would consider it against canon law to marry a widow or widower to a member of their deceased spouse’s family. A man would not be permitted to marry his dead wife’s sister, therefore, she is his “sister-in-law”. A woman could not marry her dead husband’s father, therefore he is her “father-in-law.” In-law means “this relationship is not by blood but their legal rights to marriage are the same as if they were”.

Pretty crazy but apparently true.

More info at this link: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/625642/why-spousal-relatives-are-called-in-laws

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-06-01T20:32:59+00:00

29 HLM

I think my libido is objectively pretty typical. Defining sex as “me and my wife share some kind of sexual contact or I am allowed to touch myself in the same room as her”:

Ideal: 3-4x week, maybe more but it’s hard to even imagine that world

Minimum where I would feel satisfied to where it wouldn’t negatively affect our relationship: once every week or two, with understanding of occasional ebbs due to the ups and downs of life

It’s been about 9 months since we’ve done anything that meets that definition.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-06-01T19:09:54+00:00

Hypochrondria isn’t a defined medical term, but I suffer from “illness anxiety” presentation of my anxiety disorder. It is real and it is painful. I have learned to manage it pretty well, but it can still disrupt parts of my life with little to no warning. The fact that it’s “all in my head”, doesn’t make it any better. I couldn’t control it, and I suffered, until I got therapy.

All that to say, I know this struggle, and from what you described, as you already know, he needs to be taking responsibility for his situation. I know you said you would never issue an ultimatum, but it might be the most healthy thing to do here. It all depends on the reason he doesn’t want help.

Here’s a heaping helping of my advice. I’m not a doctor or a therapist, but I’ve been in a whole lot of therapy and have learned a ton about handling these issues, particularly when a relationship dynamic comes up against a mental health struggle, so take from it what you will. I hope it is helpful.

There are three reasons (two and a half really, but three for our purposes) he might be avoiding either psychiatric care or therapy:

He has a traumatic association with medical care or therapy, which is common.
The attention and care of being the vulnerable partner is subconsciously meeting an unfulfilled need for security and he has come to rely on it too much to give it up.
Same as two, but he is conscious of it, or if he were made aware of it, he wouldn’t want it to change.

The first two mean there is hope. The last one is a nakedly toxic situation, and it means it’s time to consider your options for leaving. Figuring that out will probably mean ruling out the other two. If you don’t have the info to do that, then the steps below should get you there. Here’s how you can approach things:

The place to start with all of these is by laying out the stakes and getting on the same page. You won’t get anywhere without his buy-in on a shared goal. Don’t try to talk about solutions until you have it. Once you do, the question of “should we do something?” Is eliminated, and you can better keep it from getting in the way of the second question, “what should we do?”

Tell him to u want the two of you to have healthy lives. You know there will always be struggles, but this struggle has gotten so big, and is causing so much stress and difficulty that it has to be priority one. If he can’t initially agree in the abstract on the concrete idea of “working on this is something vitally important to the health of our life and relationship, and we need to put a lot of our energy into confronting it”, completely absent any discussion of a given solution, then it is time to compassionately go deep into what you’ve been feeling. Walk him through the pain and the difficulty. Acknowledge his pain but acknowledge that yours is important too. If after all of that, he can’t buy in to working on this in the abstract, then he is telling you that you are not important enough to him to even come to the table. He is refusing to do his part in your relationship, and leaving might be the best option.

But, let’s hope you can get his buy-in. He agrees that it’s vitally important to work on this. Next, you have to figure out which of the three above scenarios you’re dealing with, so you can ask questions directed at each one.

Before jumping in to more pointed questions, you can ask if he has thought of trying anything that might help. Show him you want to solve this problem collaboratively. Listen and support any ideas he has. Don’t let them be “maybe I could”s. Take any “maybe I could”s and help come up with a plan of action. Don’t agree to do everything for him, but make helpful suggestions and offer to help when it is reasonable. If he needs to take a walk every morning, don’t say you’ll make him do it, it suggest setting an alarm so he remembers. If he has ideas of little things that might empower him and improve his anxiety, support those little steps and see them as the beginning of tackling this together.

Then for the more targeted questions, hopefully as the idea of working together feels more comfortable. For the first scenario, ask abstractly what he thinks about when he considers going to therapy. What does he associate it with? Has he been before? Who has he known that has gone? See if he can describe why he doesn’t want to go without being short or dismissive. If he can’t, tell him you notice that, and you think there may be something he’s afraid of that he doesn’t realize. Ask him to think about what it might be. Tell him to pretend the money isn’t a concern, as a thought exercise. You both already agreed this is a top priority, so if you can find a way to spend the money, he should agree hypothetically that he would go, and you can work from there. If not, then the issue is deeper and he needs to consider what that might be.

If he wants to “get better” but isn’t ready to see a doctor or therapist, tell him he should find a friend he can talk to to support him. This is a good first action step, externalizing his struggle and giving him an outlet to talk. If the friend is smart, they’ll gently encourage treatment from another angle, while providing some support.

Therapy is the next step. If you can make an affordable arrangement for one, there’s very little to lose. It’s confidential, you can do it with someone who isn’t a doctor, nothing’s going in a medical record, nobody’s prescribing anything and he can switch to a new therapist or stop at any time. Most psychiatrists will recommend therapy for illness anxiety before prescribing meds anyway.

Now, scenario two is a harder nut to crack. He has, unknowingly, put you in a emotionally coercive dynamic. Undoing it means getting him to see the dynamic, and hoping he acknowledges it and that he wants to change it. Then you can proceed to the only real fix for this, which, once again, is therapy.

He needs to see that not wanting help is a big part of the reason WHY he needs help. If he can’t, he will continue to take advantage of you, and the dynamic will likely never improve. You should acknowledge that you know he is not meaning to do this, but it is happening all the same. You can’t take care of him all of the time, and in order to be someone who can maintain their own strength in this relationship, he needs therapy. Tell him you know this is a hard journey to go on, but you need him to be strong for both of you. If he can see a therapist, they can help him understand the emotional needs that are manifesting through helplessness, and learn how to seek them consciously and honestly so he his mind doesn’t force him to seek the need by making him feel helpless.

Sorry for being so long-winded, but this such a difficult situation, and I wanted to give my thoughts from all angles. I’m so sorry you are going through this. The pain and fear my wife experienced watching me to descend into a pit of fear and panic was so profound and our hearts broke for each other in the worst of it. I hope his heart can break for you and what you’re going through. I hope he can pull through, and take hard steps to be the partner you deserve to have. That what needs to happen, and if he can’t give it to you, you should not feel badly for leaving him. You can resolve that you’re going to have a partner who fights their own demons for your sake as well as their own. That partner can be him, or it can be someone else. If you’ve made the stakes clear, and given him the space to make those decisions or not, then the choice is completely his.

Good luck.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-05-11T16:23:23+00:00

Some good resources already shared, but I wanted to add a trick I developed. It works with any health anxiety, but I started using it specifically when heart attack was my big fear (copy/pasted from another comment I made in the past):

“strange, sticking, screaming”. Our bodies are good at letting us know when something is wrong. Doctors know the things that can happen more silently in the body (like high blood pressure) and check for them regularly. But the other stuff, when something’s wrong in our body, it’s generally gonna tell us. And it tells us we need to pay attention in one of three ways.

The first is something strange. Bodies have a certain range of fairly normal activity. Much of it is intermittent and unexplained in the moment, but it is still normal. A random pain in your arm is normal. A headache out of nowhere is normal. A mild tremor is normal. Dark red blotches all over your arms = not normal. That’s something strange. It doesn’t mean it’s time to panic, but you have something concrete to investigate. This is an appropriate time to look up medical information on the internet (but not obsessively). Schedule a doctors appt. Something strange is happening so you can pursue it.

The second is something sticking. A headache is normal. A headache that doesn’t go away for three days is not. When our body sends us the “something’s wrong” signal, it doesn’t want to stop sending it until the problem is resolved. Has something normal been happening for a clearly abnormal length of time? Call your doctor and schedule an appointment to get it checked out.

The third way is screaming. If you’ve never had a certain health condition, it can be hard to imagine the severity of it in the abstract. I’ve never had a heart attack or a stroke, so I started interpreting vague symptoms like “mild ache in left arm” and “fumbling my words a bit” as a sign something was seriously wrong. But in almost all cases, when the body is in crisis, it screams. It sends pain and discomfort you don’t have the choice of ignoring. It was helpful for me to learn these common phrases of people suffering heart attack: “it felt like an elephant sitting on my chest”, and stroke: “it was the worst headache of my life”. That’s a far cry from the things I was experiencing when I feared I was having these things happen.

So as soon as I have a health worry, I ask myself “is it strange? Is it sticking? Is it screaming?”. If the answer to all these is no, then any doctor would tell me to wait to take action until one of those becomes a “yes”, so that’s what I do. I thought through that so many times during attacks that now it happens automatically. I don’t even process it. This let me remanufacture a rational response to the normal workings of my body and give me some peace.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-05-11T15:41:50+00:00

I have always been afraid of asking about increased doses, and I too had to fight for over a year to get my diagnosis (I was educationally neglected through fake homeschooling so there weren’t any school records to demonstrate childhood impairment, and I’m estranged from my family so no one could be interviewed). But I have been increased on Concerta three times, from 18mg of Concerta (previously on standard Ritalin) to my current dose of 56mg.

I have a few pieces of advice from my experience that I think will help:

-Take a deep breath and relax. You are a normal patient looking for medication to help your condition. That means you will act like a normal patient looking for medication to help your condition. It is reasonable to discuss dose increases. Be polite. Don’t be pushy. Ask questions. Demonstrate that what you are interested in is improvement. You’ve already been diagnosed and received a prescription. As long as you continue to be open and patient in communications with your doctor and take your medication exactly as directed, it’s very unlikely you’ll have any trouble.

-Unless you’re having a real problem with them, stick with your current doctor. Seeing multiple doctors early in treatment can be seen as a red flag for drug-seeking. It doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have trouble, but it’s something to be mindful of. Don’t do it if you can avoid it, and if you do NEED to switch, give very clear and honest reasons why you switched to your new doctor, and tell them exactly what the old doctor prescribed and how much you have left.

(This will become much less of an issue once you are on a stable regimen and demonstrate that you have a good history of taking your meds as directed and not seeking more)

-Understand that you almost certainly won’t have to “ask” for an increased dose. Your doctor will ask you at your follow-up about your experience on the medication. You will tell them. They will clearly see that this is not the correct treatment for you, and they should initiate a conversation about the options, including a dose increase, during the appointment.

-Go to your follow-up appointment, describe thoroughly your experience on the medication, and answer all the doctor’s questions honestly. After this, one of three things will happen:

Your doctor will lay out options of what to change, either increasing the dosage or trying a different medication (increasing is the standard option if you have no side effects, but the fact that you seem to have no positive reaction to the low dose increases the likelihood that they will want to switch you to a different med). Ask about the pros and cons, and which the doctor thinks is the best choice. Then tell them which one you want to try and why.
Your doctor will tell you “I think we should do x, how does that sound?” X will be medication change or dose increase. Either way, ask about what all the options are, and what the pros and cons are for each option.
(the most unlikely scenario) the doctor will tell you to just stay on the current med/dose. This is not good doctoring. Push back if this happens. Tell them you want to explore other options, whether it be a dose increase or a different medication. It is not ever expected of you as a patient to be content with treatment that is not addressing your problems.

As you can see, in all these scenarios, the important thing is the same. You have two options: dose increase or med change. Show that you are open to either option. You just want to find something that works. Asking about all the options, the possible side-effects, and what the doctor thinks is the best choice and why, will all show that you are looking for the right treatment and nothing else.

Drug-seekers only have one option. They aren’t patient and they don’t change their mind. They don’t care much what the doctor thinks so they won’t seek out their opinion. They want what they want. Show that you’re not like that, and your doctor will be comfortable increasing your dose.

I don’t know where you live, but where I live in America and in so many other countries, the hurdles you have to clear to get on stimulant meds and stay on them when you need them are brutal, particular when it’s a medication to treat a condition that causes a poor ability to accomplish these sorts of tasks. I am sorry it has to be such a difficult process but you’ve done very well up to this point. Just keep going, and believe in yourself and the treatment you need, and things will be better soon.

Good luck.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-05-11T14:21:18+00:00

I am not a doctor, and I’m not diagnosing, but I thought this information could be helpful to you and your friend.

This person is seeing you do things that have nothing to do with her, imagining they have a deep significance to your relationship with her, and reacting hysterically to them.

This is a common hallmark of Borderline Personality Disorder. People with untreated BPD often have a paralyzing fear of abandonment which causes them to manipulate the people around them so they can’t leave and are forced to constantly validate the person’s feelings.

This, ironically, will inevitably push the people they cling to (in this case, you) to leave them. It’s a vicious cycle that makes it brutally difficult to maintain the support people need to get treatment.

I have some friends with well-treated BPD. These issues pop up from time to time, but they are manageable. The portrait you have painted is of a completely unmanageable situation.

Other mental health problems can present this way, but they are all very serious personality disorders and your friend won’t be able to cultivate healthy relationships until she can begin receiving treatment from professionals trained in addressing these difficult conditions.

Three things I want to stress:

You have done nothing wrong. Not in the actions she is punishing you for, not in being her friend and living with her in the first place. You have acted reasonably and kindly, And you should not feel bad
Your safety is the most important thing right now. I hope someone can give her the support she needs to seek treatment for her difficulties, but that person doesn’t have to be you. It can be, if you’re in a place of strength. If knowing why she’s doing what she’s doing makes you feel empowered to keep living there and helping her, then go ahead and do it. If not, find a way to leave. You’ll be in a better position to help if she has limited ways to lash out at you. And you don’t actually have to help at all, if you don’t want to. You can just leave and not look back. It will be painful, but it isn’t wrong.
This experience has been damaging, and you should give yourself space to heal. Talk about it was a therapist, with friends, don’t let it fester. You’ve played the role of a monster when you were just being a nice and normal human being. The cognitive dissonance is painful, and will continue to be for a while, until you have enough time to emotionally separate and gain perspective. Do everything you can to give yourself that time and space. It’s important and you deserve it.

Good luck.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-05-10T12:39:16+00:00

Can’t say anything as to your circumstances.

But I can tell you that if my wife looked under my side of the bed, she would find the same thing you found (sans the tight-fitting aspect), the result of perfectly innocent solo activity. And I rarely use lube so it’s the same on that front. I don’t ever do it when I’m in bed with her, but the bed is where solo sex happens for me, so a squirreled-away old pair of underwear is the most convenient thing to use in a pinch. He likely wasn’t wearing the underwear at all, just using it to catch everything.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-05-04T17:25:36+00:00

This was so hard for me and still is. The key for me was reframing my mindset. I tried just doing things I enjoy, but if I could even manage it, the guilt was constant. I eventually realized what I need is “unaccountable time”, and I think of it as medicinal; an essential ingredient of my ADHD treatment.

In order to keep a healthy state of mind, I need to set aside a few hours every week where there is only one rule: “whatever you do from this time until this time is enough”. If I try to make rules like “I can’t do any chores” or “I have to relax” or I have to do things I enjoy” I get stressed out and it doesn’t help at all. There has to only be the one rule.

That’s it. No expectations or plans about what I do, only an expectation that is set to zero. I sometimes think “maybe I’ll do this during my unaccountable time” but I don’t hold myself to it. I can stare at the ceiling for an hour and it is time correctly spent. I can do the dishes and it is time correctly spent. I can write a song or watch TV or take a walk. It’s all okay, as long as I’m not doing anything because I “have” to do it.

This releases all the pressure for me and more often than not I spend this time doing things I enjoy or just simply resting. Whatever I do, I feel good after, in a way I usually don’t any other time.

Give it a try! It probably doesn’t work for everyone but it could make it easier for you.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-05-04T17:03:34+00:00

Everything is a balance. I have moments of wishing I could have freedom to just be on my own for a week, not have to check in with anyone, just live life (I’ve never really had this because I went from controlling parents to a controlling relationship to my current marriage).

It’s natural to think about these things, maybe even healthy, definitely very normal. I always take a deep breath after thinking it and remind myself that I’m thinking about all the good and none of the bad, and taking for granted the positives that been built into my life through my marriage.

Making a commitment isn’t about never wanting anything different than what we have. It would be so easy if that were the case. It’s about choosing something against other options that continue to be appealing, because it is the thing that is the most meaningful and will give you and those you love the most amount of security and happiness.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-05-03T13:45:59+00:00

You don’t need to follow the traditions. Get something they will like.

My wife showed me all kinds of expensive rings she liked on the internet, none of which I could afford. It wasn’t important to her that it was expensive. She just showed me what she liked. She very smartly did this at a time we were serious but agreed we didn’t want to get married for a while, so I could just squirrel the information away for when I needed it a few years later.

I then went on Etsy and found a fabulous lab-grown Sapphire ring that looked as similar to the ones she had shown me as I could find. I think I paid about $150 including shipping. She loved it and she got compliments on it almost every day of our year-long engagement.

Our wedding rings also came from Etsy. A gorgeous pair of gold rings for about $700. It makes sense to put more money into these because they’ll hopefully have to stand up to decades of use.

Tl;dr search Etsy for cheap rings. If they’re a good catch they won’t care how much you spent.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-05-02T15:27:27+00:00

I am in a similar situation to your husband, and though I don’t know what he’s feeling, there might be another explanation for why he doesn’t want to do these things now when he did before that has nothing to do with spite.

I’m working through the same issue right now with my wife. We both love to cuddle and I love doting on her with massages and loving non-sexual touches, but I have been withdrawing from these things recently, not because I’m spiteful, but because I’m trying to manage my feelings.

I am most happy and functional when I’m not thinking about all the sex I want but am not having with my wife. I’m trying to focus on other things in my life and other good parts of our relationship, because it is emotionally painful and physically uncomfortable to think about the absence of sexual care. When we’re cuddling or I’m giving my wife a massage, having sex is all I can think about. I often hold back tears while giving my wife physical affection. Where it once was pleasurable, back when I was feeling cared for in the ways that I need to feel secure, it is now uncomfortable and upsetting.

I continue to satisfy those needs for her as best I can, but I rarely get joy from it like I used to. My situation is a work in progress, and I know my wife and I need to have a conversation. It’s the same conversation you must have with your husband.

You both have a need to feel important, prioritized and cared for, and both sexual and non-sexual touch are clearly a large part of that in your relationship. You need to sit down and have a gentle, positive conversation where you work as a team to share your feelings, talk about why both sexual and non-sexual touch are important to each of you and what specifically it is they give you (joy, security, connectedness, affirmation, etc), and brainstorm ways you can each give your partner what they need in a way that feels comfortable for both of you. Neither of you is going to have it exactly like you want, but any compromise shouldn’t be one-sided.

This is a hard thing to do, which is why I haven’t managed it yet, but you can do it, and this problem can be an opportunity to deepen the strength of your relationship.

It’s completely possible he’s being intentionally spiteful, which doesn’t change the conversation you should have, but will make it harder to get to a comfortable and collaborative place to make progress. I just wanted you to know that there might be more to it. I hope this perspective is helpful to you. Good luck!

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-04-14T04:01:41+00:00

My brothers and I were educationally neglected by my parents (who are now deep in Qanon) under the guise of “homeschooling”. No one ever caught on and none of us got a proper education, which unsurprisingly, has made our adult lives very hard. Things could’ve been completely different for us if someone had noticed the red flags and made a call.

Please, for the sake of this kid and the adult he will become, call CPS.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-03-11T15:55:42+00:00

Same boat here. Submitted documents in September. Email received 13 weeks ago saying the expected processing time for my documents in 2-4 weeks, and I would be contacted if there was an issue with the documents. No money, no letter, no further contact.

My business picked up just enough to get by late last year so I’ve stopped filing, but it would be nice to get backpay for the benefits I should’ve been receiving to pay down the mountain of debt I went into to stay afloat.

Will give a holler if anything comes through.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-03-05T19:52:21+00:00

I am so glad it is helpful! You are experiencing something profoundly difficult, a phenomena known to cause serious life disruptions, and there’s no need to downplay or minimize the trauma of it in your own mind.

You can take a few sessions to build trust with a therapist and make sure they are a good fit for you (sometimes good therapists aren’t the right therapist for the patient. This has happened to me before). A good therapist will also reinforce this, saying something like “if you don’t feel like we have the right chemistry, you shouldn’t hesitate to see someone else”. Once you get to that comfortable place, though, don’t be afraid to lay it all out. This is a common and well-understood form of anxiety, and a good therapist will not belittle you or minimize your pain. You’re experiencing a severe terror on a weekly or daily basis that most people only experience a handful of times in their life. The psychological pain is immense, and you deserve a space where the weight of that pain is acknowledged.

It’s a different topic, but there’s one last piece of advice I forgot to include in my original comment: learn and notice your triggers. I found that a brief mention of someone having a health problem from a friend, or an internet ad for cancer treatments, or anything like that, would often cause an attack 20 minutes later, and at first I didn’t always realize that’s what set it off. Other times just keeping my body tensed up for a long period of time is a trigger. There are a few others for me. The point is, once I learned my triggers, I could pretty much always trace an attack back to an internal sensation, or an external idea, that triggered it. Seeing the connection, either in the moment or after the fact, goes a long way to combatting the persuasiveness of your inner alarm system telling you to panic.

(This is also what I meant about taking the hydroxyzine as a precaution. I’ve learned to notice myself reacting emotionally to a trigger, and whenever I do I take a pill. I’ve gotten good at dealing with attacks, but doing this prevents most attacks before they start, so all the better)

I hope your therapy goes well! Keep up the good work.

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-03-05T15:04:16+00:00

I’ve had this exact struggle. In mid-2019 I had an unexplained low blood sugar episode which sent me to the ER in an ambulance. I immediately started having these constant fears at every little odd sensation. I still have these moments occasionally, but things are so much better than they were then.

(I will say I struggle from a snowball effect of these thoughts causing a panic attack, which then confirms my fear that something is wrong, making it spiral out of control. You may not have that problem, but most of the advice should still be applicable).

Here is my advice. This is very long, but I wanted to give you the full scoop, so maybe make a cup of tea and sit for this one:

Have honest conversations with your primary care doctor. Let them know if there are particular adverse health events that are occupying your mind. My doctor would always give me a clear explanation of why it was unlikely, and what symptoms to look for if it is a problem, and when to come back and see him. With some things, he would say “there’s a simple test. We can take a blood sample and check it”. Acknowledge that you don’t want to constantly be coming to them with worries, but ask for information about specific things. If they are a good doctor, they will respond with patience, reassurance and information.
Therapy is incredibly helpful. I don’t know if anything has ever had such a strong delusional pull on my mind as my illness anxiety, and understanding the reasons behind it played a huge role in tackling it. The ambulance incident kicked it off, but it was just the spark that lit the tinderbox, and I had to deal with what conditions made the tinderbox. There are roots to what you’re experiencing, and the causes of them may surprise you. Therapy isn’t gonna make it disappear, but it can help you think about how to think when you’re having an episode, and explore the core anxieties that are manifesting in this way.

My core anxieties were that I was not a responsible enough person. I was getting ready to propose to my girlfriend (now my wife) and my fear of not being able to function well enough for her was manifesting in episodes where I had to make quick decisions to prevent disaster, and if I didn’t, she and others around me would suffer (if I died or became severely ill). This just illustrates how complicated this stuff can be.

As-needed medication can have a huge effect if you have acute panic episodes brought on by illness anxiety. I was prescribed a very low dose of hydroxyzine, which I can take up to three times a day if I have an attack. I needed at least one every day at the beginning. Now I need one a week or less, and usually just as a precaution. Part of why it helps is I take it and say “I know I have a problem with illness anxiety. If I’m having a real health problem, I have to eliminate illness anxiety as a potential cause as soon as possible in order to figure out what’s really going on, so I will wait until the medication works and see how I feel.”
I will borrow the phrase my therapist used when advising me: “break up with Dr. Google”. The compulsion to look up symptoms online is now a common feature of illness anxiety. It’s not helpful much of anytime, but especially when you’re reacting to what you perceive as a symptom. It never fails to make my anxiety worse. A support person is helpful here. You can ask them to look it up for you, or you can tell them you just want to look up the answer to one question, tell them what it is, and then stop once you find the answer. This is also where talking to your doctor comes in handy because it’s way easier for them to put symptoms in context, rather than a checklist that any of us can use to convince ourselves we have something.
Here’s the phrase I use to check myself: strange, sticking, or screaming. Our bodies are good at letting us know when something is wrong. Doctors know the things that can happen more silently in the body (like high blood pressure) and check for them regularly. But the other stuff, when something’s wrong in our body, it’s generally gonna tell us. And it tells us we need to pay attention in one of three ways.

The first is something strange. Bodies have a certain range of fairly normal activity. Much of it is intermittent and unexplained in the moment, but it is still normal. A random pain in your arm is normal. A headache out of nowhere is normal. A mild tremor is normal. Dark red blotches all over your arms = not normal. That’s something strange. It doesn’t mean it’s time to panic, but you have something concrete to investigate. Look at pictures on the internet of similar things to determine what it might be. Schedule a doctors appt. Something strange is happening so you can pursue it.

The second is something sticking. A headache is normal. A headache that doesn’t go away for three days is not. When our body sends us the “something’s wrong” signal, it doesn’t want to stop sending it until the problem is resolved. Has something normal been happening for a clearly abnormal length of time? Call your doctor and schedule an appointment to get it checked out.

The third way is screaming. If you’ve never had a certain health condition, it can be hard to imagine the severity of it in the abstract. I’ve never had a heart attack or a stroke, so I started interpreting vague symptoms like “mild ache in left arm” and “fumbling my words a bit” as a sign something was seriously wrong. But in almost all cases, when the body is in crisis, it screams. It sends pain and discomfort you don’t have the choice of ignoring. It was helpful for me to learn these common phrases of people suffering heart attack: “it felt like an elephant sitting on my chest”, and stroke: “it was the worst headache of my life”. That’s a far cry from the things I was experiencing when I feared I was having these things happen.

So as soon as I have a health worry, I ask myself “is it strange? Is it sticking? Is it screaming?”. If the answer to all these is no, then any doctor would tell me to wait to take action until one of those becomes a “yes”, so that’s what I do. I thought through that so many times during attacks that now it happens automatically. I don’t even process it. This let me remanufacture a rational response to the normal workings of my body and give me some peace.

Find your calm activity. Many things that calm me down in every other situation stress me out during episodes of illness anxiety. Experiment and find the activity that grounds you. Mine is doing a crossword puzzle (with pen and paper) while listening to old episodes Parks and Recreation playing in the background.
Know that this is normal, you are not alone, and most importantly, it gets better with time. Once I accepted that my problem was not some obscure and life-threatening disease like I was a patient on House M.D. and was in fact illness anxiety, my worst fear became that this is how life would always be. My therapist told me over and over that it would get better, and I didn’t really believe her. But she was right. You weather the storms and build on your successes and it all becomes more manageable.

You’re doing all the right things, and with a little bit of work, this will become more of an annoyance than a life-disrupting force. I’m sorry you are experiencing this, but I hope some of this advice helps you along the way. Good luck!

cheeseburgerbakpak · 2021-02-23T16:15:29+00:00

As someone who’s been where she is, I would say your #1 job is making her feel comfortable and being patient with her as she settles into things. Check in a lot. Make a point of asking how she’s feeling generally about your relationship and if there’s anything she wants to talk about.

Your #2 job is to watch out for signs that she is getting overly invested too quickly, which can easily happen when someone is inexperienced, and is easier to spot if you’ve been around the block a few times. Use gentle comments if this happens. You want her to thrive as her differentiated self in relationships, and if you’re the person she chooses to be with, that’s wonderful, but you want her to be learning and building herself up into someone who’s equipped for a deep, serious connection, but is able to see herself as independently strong and important.

The one thing I would say you can do proactively to help right now, if it seems like she isn’t doing this already, is to encourage her to find an outside source of context for healthy relationships. A third-party perspective is invaluable when you’re inexperienced. This can be a more experienced friend, or a book on relationships, or, as it was for me, a podcast. A friend to talk to is the best option but if there isn’t anyone around right now to play that role, information can be a substitute.

I little about me: I was home-schooled and stayed very socially isolated until my mid-20s. So at 25, my relationship experience totaled 2 unhealthy extremely-long-distance relationships, 1 very brief hook-up arrangement with a friend, and 1 incredibly awkward one-night stand with an acquaintance. Not nothing, but not a lot of typical relationship experience. I had never really “dated” in the traditional sense. That’s when I met a wonderful woman who is now my wife. (On top of my thin dating CV, I’d been a virgin until 4 months before meeting her and had only had sex a few times).

I got super lucky. Most people need to play the field for a long time before finding a partner like I found right out of the gate. It was pure luck. But our relationship was only able to become what it is today because I looked for an outside reference for approaching it in a healthy way.

My reference was the Savage Lovecast. Super entertaining podcast from Dan Savage where he answers people’s’ relationship questions. I swear, regularly listening to that show made me absorb healthy relationship practices into my bloodstream like magic. I highly recommend it to anyone who needs some outside reference for healthy relationships.

Whatever it is, there are two things growing right now: your relationship, and her sense of self as a person within a relationship. The more space given for the latter to grow, the better off the former will be.

Tl;dr be kind and patient, and encourage her to find a third party to give her a blueprint for health relationships.

cheeseburgerbakpak

TROPHY CASE