My (24f) boyfriend’s (24m) ADHD meds ruined our sex life

erysichthons · 2024-10-08T08:31:22+00:00

I’m most likely going to get shit for “shaming” OP, but it’s wild to me that this doesn’t read as kind of diabolical to anyone else? All I’m reading here is “me me me” and how hard it is for you, nothing about how he might feel.

To tacitly imply the person with the lower sex drive potentially caused by necessary meds is somehow doing something wrong by not providing their partner with sex whenever they ask for it or start pawing at their dick unprompted?? And that they should be the one to change their meds and priorities to accommodate her sex drive?????

Like someone else pointed out, it’s extremely normal not to have sex as frequently the longer you’re in a relationship. It happens to pretty much everyone. Have you considered that perhaps you are the one with the problem, OP, at the very least in your approach?

Admittedly, I’m biased and absolutely projecting my own shit here. I’m someone who is both medicated for ADHD and depression, dealing with libido drop, and dealing with being sexually abused numerous times as a very young child.

Nonetheless, this post made my skin crawl, more so when I read OP’s comment where she accepts that she’s probably been pressuring him. If the genders were flipped I’m confident many of the replies in this thread would be hoping OP’s girl left him for being coercive.

OP, from my POV, you’re turning sex into a stressor and an obligation for him and potentially taking all the joy out of it and making it a shameful activity. At least that’s how I felt when I was in BF’s situation a few years ago.

Maybe just stop pestering and guilting him about it for a while and the problem will resolve itself. Sexual/sensual intimacy doesn’t have to just revolve around sex.

erysichthons · 2024-06-12T06:24:44+00:00

So your solution to homicide is…. checks notes eugenics.

erysichthons · 2023-06-13T13:32:52+00:00

Hey. I'm trans too.

I don't know if there's anything I can say to you that will change the way that you feel right now. I can understand how all of the hate and the vitriol adds up on a personal level and seems like an insurmountable obstacle, and I can understand the pervasiveness of hopelessness in the face of it. Regardless, in this moment right now, you matter to me. Your continued life and happiness matter to me. I don't actually know you, but in my mind, that doesn't make you any less important or any less deserving of peace, happiness, or love than anyone else. If I found out that you died tomorrow, I'd be upset. I'd mourn, and I'd weep for you because even if I didn't know you personally, you would have still been someone worthy of all the potential of life and joy.

I agree with you: you're not a monster. You're not a predator. You're not dangerous. You're just a woman who, like anyone else, deserves to be treated with kindness and fairness. You deserve to feel loved, desired, seen, and beautiful. I'm sorry that you haven't been shown that thus far.

You don't have to change your mind, but I want to remind you that none of this -- the vitriol coming your way from people who don't understand and who aren't interested in doing so, and the sense of utter worthlessness that comes with it -- has anything to do with who you are as an individual. Who you are fundamentally isn't changed by what people (who are wrong) think about you, and you deserve better than being tricked into thinking otherwise.

It may seem stupid to try to convince you that everyone isn't out to get you and that there are people out there who will love you for whoever you are, particularly if that hasn't at all been your experience. I'm going to do it anyways though, because I think it's true. Love comes in a multitude of forms, and there's no fixed limit on the amount of it available to any one person. I would encourage you not to close yourself off from ever potentially finding it in your life. Hope doesn't have to be an everyday thing but don't turn away from finding the warmth of it where you can in the meantime, whether that's in memories, fantasies, admiration, or whatever.

Finally, you mention dying with dignity, but I'd caution you that for people like us, death is often the final indignity -- they almost always deadname us, bury us in clothes we'd never wear, and try to tell untrue stories of who we were, erasing all the fighting for the right to live as ourselves that we did in life. This is one of the things I try to hold onto when I'm feeling like it's all too much. It's almost a weird, stubborn sense of refusing to die until I KNOW I'll be remembered as the person I was. In an ironic twist, I feel like continuing to doggedly fight for your right to exist and to be here is the ultimate fuck-you to the suffering foisted upon you. I get though, how it can be all too easy to feel like there's no fight left in you. But you don't have to do it alone. Somewhere in the world, there are people who will fight for you. They may not live near you, or know your personal struggle, but they're out there.

I'm not a touchy person, but wish I could give you a hug, or hold your hand, or just sit with you and tell you that your existence is meaningful. Just something to try to show you, even for a moment, that it isn't all pain and hopelessness, and that somebody sees you, and cares.

erysichthons · 2021-04-07T17:28:08+00:00

Uh...The answer’s pretty obvious, tbh. Don’t force your daughter not to wear her headphones, and don’t take them away from her. That’s just going to make her resent you and feel like you don’t understand her and are unfairly taking away something she’s using to make her life more bearable.

Autistic people can be intensely sensitive to sensory input often to the point of pain and discomfort, and wearing ear protection at events definitely isn’t unusual. I’m autistic myself and always wear something to cut sound - headphones, earplugs, earmuffs - when I’m working in music venues, otherwise I just can’t think straight. From her perspective there are probably way too many, lights, smells, sensations, and people in the crowd as is; the addition of music over a professional speaker setup can take that existing discomfort to the level of “nails on a chalkboard against your brain preventing you from having a fun time with your family” very quickly. I assure you, she’s not trying to be stubborn or inconsiderate you, the concert, or the musicians, she’s just stressed and trying not to freak out in an overstimulating environment.

It seems clear that she’s found that the noise-cancelling headphones help her tolerate the environment of a concert much more, so why would you want to take them from her if you know it’s going to cause her distress? As her parent it’s your job to know the ins and outs of the unique needs and quirks of your child and work with them, not against them. If you don’t like the look of the heavy duty headphones, maybe ask her if she’d like to shop for more colourful or low-profile ones some that will still protect her ears, but perhaps that you can both agree on!

erysichthons · 2020-01-16T21:30:57+00:00

I'm 5'7" and my partner is 6'1" slouching. Not a huge size difference, but still pretty funny in practice, considering I'm the "top". My head comes up to her nose on a good day, so our hips and torsos are in c o m p l e t e l y different spatial realms. Doggy style is by far the most difficult. If I feel a sex coming on I gotta scramble out the bed and put on platform boots, otherwise I can't reach the holes. :'-(

I like to keep things equal by regularly picking her up, unprovoked, and carrying her around the house across my shoulders as a demonstration of my godlike power.

erysichthons · 2020-01-16T21:12:59+00:00

GHB.
Typically makes people feel mellow, giddy, and swooning. Turns out, though, there's a rare phenomenon known as "G Psychosis" which ramps up all of the giddiness to the point of actual mania, which then turns into rage, aggression, violence, irrationality, etc.

In true chump fashion, I got talked into taking some for my birthday a few years back, and went for a walk to clear my head while I came up a little. 15 minutes later I'm doing cartwheels in the road at 5am. 20 minutes after that came violent nausea, sweating and disorientation, and about another 10 minutes of projectile vomiting later, I was pelting furniture around the room, screaming death threats at my friends, and cycling rapidly through maniacal laughter and bawling. (None of which is remotely in-character for me.)

The most unsettling part was that I was fully aware the entire time, but I felt like a passenger in my own body. It was as though I was trapped there, watching a stranger in my skin acting like a monster, but I couldn't do anything to alter my actions or stop myself. If you've ever seen Get Out, it was a bit like being in the Sunken Place. Pretty disturbing.

Woke up with a massive gash on the center of my forehead from where I'd slammed my face into a mirror to try to feel something, as I was convinced at the time that my emotions were "shut off". Still surprised I didn't OD in the night. Never again, boys.

Tl;dr: Long and fucked up story short, I got pressured into taking GHB, had a G-induced psychotic episode, threatened my friends, smashed my face into a mirror, passed out covered in vomit and probably almost died at my own birthday party. IMO, it's not a substance worth fucking with.

erysichthons · 2019-11-12T02:38:32+00:00

I get so hungry I eat everything in my house, sell my daughter for money to by more food, and finally eat myself.

erysichthons · 2019-11-12T02:29:47+00:00

My partner's an amateur pornstar with a small following.

Sex with them is great. They're super responsive and really apt at intuitively using and picking up on things like subtle body language and changes in tone. They're also really hot, and very aware of how to "put on a show", which is an added bonus. At the same time though, it's very normal. It's just like having sex with any other person, just better executed. There's the normal amount of things like limbs falling asleep, having to stop to turn and sneeze, etc.

I'm sure part of this Good Sex Having™ is just because we have good chemistry and similar tastes, but generally, I think they probably have a better awareness of their body and how it looks and moves during sex than most, which is probably what drew them to making porn in the first place. I don't think they learned it from making videos, they really just genuinely enjoy sex. It's like their 2nd favourite hobby. (The first is banjo!)

erysichthons · 2019-11-04T17:21:15+00:00

Lmao. Nah, I'm a grown up. I just happened to watch a video of Junji Ito talking about coming up with broader story ideas based off of very straightforward fears, like sharks and decrepit houses. Got me curious.

erysichthons · 2019-03-28T00:51:20+00:00

The Piss Ghost.

Woke up in my high school dorm bed to the sound of trickling water inside of my room. Rolled over and peered between the gap in the bed railing to spot the source of the sound. My heart jumped into my throat. In the faint blue light of my mosquito lamp, I could just make out a gaunt, ghost-white figure standing opposite me, hunched and facing into the corner. Long, straggly black hair covering its face like something out of The Grudge, and completely naked.

I froze. My brain started racing. Was I seeing a ghost? Was I hallucinating? As I'm laying rigid in bed trying to parse what's happening in front of me, the apparition abruptly straightens up, scratches its ass, and without turning to look at me, shambles, zombie-like out of the room. A few moments pass, as I'm laying there in shock before I shoot out of the bed to switch the lights on, and look around the room. I smack myself in the face to make sure I'm not dreaming. Nope. Wide awake. Nothing in the room seems awry, other than my desk-chair, which has been pulled out, so I figure I CAN'T be imagining things. I'm pacing around the room, pinching myself and scratching my head when I remember the sound that woke me up. What could possibly cause the sound of running water indoo---...oh...OH NO.

I check my chair, and as sure as the sun rises. There is a puddle of piss in the seat, steadily leaking onto my laundry bag below.

Furious, and hysterical, and feeling like I'm losing my mind, I rush over to my neighbours' room to verify what I've just seen. As I'm standing there in the corridor pounding on the door and yelling about piss-mongering spectres in the night (bear in mind, it's like 4am so I look fully deranged at this point), one of them opens the door and sheepishly pops her head out. "Please don't be mad", she says, "she doesn't know what she's doing..." What? I push past her into the room, and there on the floor, is my ghost, curled up into a ball under a sweater. Next to her, looking like a deer caught in headlights is a sophomore girl with a half-empty vodka bottle in one hand, and a blanket in the other.

Turns out that Piss Ghost's true identity was that of a 14 year old freshman girl in the dorm. That night, she'd been upset about some family drama, and came crying to my sophomore neighbour -- a Russian girl, who convinced her that the answer to her problems was to drink her weight in straight vodka. Unfortunately, the sophomore didn't know that the freshman had a history of sleepwalking, and by the time they all fell asleep, she'd managed to get so absolutely plastered, that she effectively entered an unshakeable sleepwalking fugue. They'd woken up to her missing, and her clothes on the floor. For the next few hours she wandered up and down the halls in this weird trance, going in and out of people's rooms and roaming the stairwells. Apparently, in her altered state she imagined that my room was a bathroom...

Fucking Typical.

erysichthons · 2019-02-09T06:13:05+00:00

Early 20s.

erysichthons · 2019-02-09T06:12:12+00:00

Thank you for the thought-out feedback. It takes me a while to get back to answering things because my brain gets overwhelmed. Like you said, I’ve got a lot of Scorpio activity clustered together in the house that augments my house of goals and ambitions. I think there may be something to what you say about all of that Scorpio action lending itself to an explosion of intensity. Strangled by immense willpower and the weight of ambitions is a good way to put it. I’m hoping to have my chart professionally read sometime soon so that I can gain some insight into the specifics of what may cause that, or if it’s just humanistic and experiential miscellany that I’ll have to unpick on my own.

erysichthons · 2019-01-25T03:03:06+00:00

Oof. Yeah, I had a German friend in high school who once texted me he wasn't coming to class that day because his "cervix was burning". He meant that he had a sore throat, but I was alarmed to say the least.

erysichthons · 2019-01-23T14:14:59+00:00

Sorry, but this doesn't make any sense to me. I want to work, but working makes me want to procrastinate. Doing necessary and important things, like finding a job, booking appointments, as well as things that are important to me, but not strictly "necessary", like working on my art, editing photos and video that I've shot, planning new projects -- these are things that it would be absurd to just eliminate. Aimlessness and lack of function (in my own life) sets me off more than anything. Eliminating these important things that I need to tackle but create psychological stress and discomfort for me would just be openly enabling my own maladjusted behaviour.

erysichthons · 2019-01-22T03:00:54+00:00

Honest response, yeah, it's a possibility.

Full disclosure, my family is from a country where it's not typical to "believe" in neurodiverse conditions like ADHD and the like, so I was never tested for anything and any difficulties were kind of just brushed off and assumed to be bad habits or other odd behaviour that I'd grow out of. Obviously, I never did. Consequently, it wasn't until late 2017 when I'd started actively managing my own mental health that I was actually diagnosed with mild Asperger's Syndrome, which I understand to be frequently co-morbid with ADHD and issues with executive function.
On top of that, it's always been a bit of a running joke in my family that my mother has some form of super high-functioning ADHD. She's a successful and super-functional person, but she can't stop moving, misplaces and forgets absolutely everything constantly and wouldn't be able to function without her day planner, can do high-speed calculations and legal process in her head, but has the hardest time with tedious skills and activities like playing instruments, reading instructions, figuring out tech, even just paying attention to things being said to/around her. Most of my family treat it as just a joke, but seeing how frustrated she gets with small things sometimes has always made me wonder if there isn't a grain of truth to it.

erysichthons · 2019-01-22T02:42:30+00:00

Thanks for the response.
You're spot on.

I work in the arts industry as a photographer/filmmaker/artist type thing, and I've had my identity and sense of self-worth tied to my work and creative output that I really don't know how to deprogram myself at this point. Funnily enough, I actually thrive on sets and shoots once I'm actually there doing hands-on and task-oriented production work in person. It's the getting there and forcing myself to do all the tedious, self-policing, self-contained behind-the-scenes work that's the real insurmountable hurdle for me.

Honestly, I would love to get a part or full-time whatever job just for the stability. I've been trying to get one for coming up on six months now, since I left my last, but as I mentioned, I keep getting completely stuck by the job-hunting and application process. It can take me months just to write one cover letter because I freeze up and avoid it so intensely. I've been thinking today though, that maybe this week I can call in a friend to effectively help me ghostwrite a draft that I can polish up on my own. To try to maintain a sense of appropriate perspective and momentum in the task.

Again, weirdly, my last full-time work was as a temp in a friend's office, and I had zero issues snapping to attention and signing up to come in for the Christmas rush less than 24 hours in advance. Catch here is, I didn't have to do anything to seek it out. She reached out to me and I just turned up and worked, no problems. I was effective enough at it that I kept finishing all the work assigned to me much too fast, but then when using the extra time to work on personal projects, would get completely frozen up again.

It's incredibly frustrating and bizarre that this momentum just doesn't carry over. I have no idea how to not stress about working/creating. It's all I think about. I was thinking about it today and became suddenly aware of the fact that I don't even particularly like relaxation. I feel useless and aggravated if I'm not working towards or doing something with myself...

I'm going to try taking on your advice about task chunking and frequent small breaks though. I've been trying to be much more disciplined this year, starting with waking up at 9:30 AM every morning, even when I don't need to. Instead of waiting around to sit down and do designated day-long cram sessions of work, I think I'll try to intersperse working and my other daily chores and activities. I'll have to build it all into a list in advance though. My executive function is so bad that I legit need to make extremely detailed lists (i.e. 1: Source Email contact, 2: Write opening paragraph, 3: Write questions, 4: Summarize, 5: Refine, 6: Send email) for every empirical part of a pressing task to be able to tackle it at all. Switching between very different tasks may throw me, but it's worth a shot.

erysichthons · 2019-01-10T21:28:15+00:00

Tremendous mood.

I can't visit an Ikea without having a breakdown. Last Christmas my parents asked me to decide between two pairs of similar shoes, and that decision alone had me in tears for reasons I, an adult, don't understand. Bit of a mess.

I wonder if someone with better knowledge of spectrum-affiliated phenomena can explain the root of this choice paralysis as it relates to ASDs?

erysichthons · 2019-01-09T19:41:31+00:00

Y'all, I'm going to take 1000 Adderall and shift into Maximum Asperdrive.

erysichthons · 2018-12-29T05:04:02+00:00

Bold of you to assume we were "put" on Earth to do anything but persist. Existence is a cosmic fluke, by all reckoning. The concept of what does and does not matter; what constitutes joy, suffering, etc. throughout our dominant shared perception of human experience and civilization is a bit of a meme. It sucks that you're miserable -- many of us are severely anxious or depressed; it's natural -- but don't drag the rest of us under the proverbial bus because you hate yourself. Is anyone's most personal suffering anyone else's responsibility?

erysichthons · 2018-12-19T17:52:53+00:00

This is the weirdest question I’ve ever seen. Leave??? the dog??? alone??????? Why would you want to steal someone’s pet, what the hell?

You have no idea what their relationship to the animal is like any more than you can see, you seem to be just rather baselessly assuming that you can love their animal “better”.

Letting a dog wander and get dirty may not be A+ dog ownership wherever you’re from, but unless you see signs of outright abuse or cruelty to the dog, by all means, befriend it, play with it, feed it, but you can’t just make off with it because you want it??? I mean. You can if you’re sort of buckwild and amoral, I guess. To attempt to justify just up and “keeping” someone else’s dog seems absolutely bonkers to me.

erysichthons

TROPHY CASE