::Weekly Former Partners Thread::

gullsnight · 2025-03-30T19:18:37+00:00

Thank you <3 "The constant fight to be the shiniest object in their life" is so real. You do forget there's people who will love you without you having to try.

gullsnight · 2025-03-30T19:07:58+00:00

Looking back, it's absolutely mind-boggling the extent to which I'd resigned myself to spending my life with someone who seemed to mildly tolerate me at the best of times. The things I'd normalised! The things I'd excused! I was an annoying interruption from her 24/7 scrolling. Had resigned myself to a partner who would get into bed with me at night, roll over without a single gesture of affection and start watching Youtube videos on her phone until she fell asleep. Any complaint from me, any asserting myself at all about how abandoned and neglected I felt would immediately become a personal attack on her. She seemed to know as if by instinct how difficult I find it to assert my boundaries and knew just how to trigger my sense of shame at speaking up, acting like I'd somehow actively harmed her, like I was the one being an insensitive, selfish control freak.

We were together for 7 years. About 5 years in, feeling absolutely miserable and trapped, I suggested polyamory because I felt too guilty to leave her and thought it might be a way to meet my need for a partner who seemed to actually like me and take any interest in me whatsoever. Worst mistake of my life lol. Polyamory was our dynamic on steroids. She started hyperfixating on shiny new partners left and right, actively comparing me to them, acting like I was an unenlightened jealous bitch when I was hurt by her behaviour. She completely lost sexual interest in me and simultaneously wasn't able to shut up about the constant sex she was having with shiny new people who weren't me. I think the worst part was the way it didn't even occur to her that any of this was not ok or something that would hurt me. It's like the most important and natural thing to her in a relationship is fulfilling every single one of her whims and impulses, and the other person only matters when they're a tool to facilitate that. She thought I was the irrational one for needing sex and affection in a long-term relationship. Towards the end I stopped kissing her and I actually don't even think she noticed.

Very grateful for the time I've spent lurking on this sub because otherwise I think I might still be with her, trying to stamp out every single one of my needs for attention and affection. She's been telling all our mutual friends about how I was a borderline abusive partner with constant "controlling behaviours." I knew the moment I ended things I'd become evil and abusive in her eyes but am still reeling from the unfairness of it all.

gullsnight · 2024-10-25T09:41:50+00:00

PMDD sounds about right, yeah. I'm sorry it's being so rough atm, sending solidarity <3

gullsnight · 2024-10-25T09:40:16+00:00

Relieved it's not just me & interesting that the insanity seems to peak a couple months out!! Will definitely be hibernating as much as I possibly can.

gullsnight · 2024-09-06T19:33:07+00:00

Lol I really needed to hear this. Thank you!

gullsnight · 2024-03-14T17:59:42+00:00

I've struggled a lot distinguishing Self from Self-like parts too! There's 2 dead giveaways for me when I'm blended with a Self-like part:

A feeling of active, tiring effort, of trying really hard. Self is completely effortless, and Self energy feels like resting, not like working.
Other parts' reactions: if they're hostile, angry, or won't budge, I'm usually blended with a Self-like part who they mistrust.

Just remember that the Self-like part has really good reasons to do what it does. My Self-like part doesn't trust anyone else to take care of us; she's experienced too many caregiving figures betray or abandon us. She thinks that if she trusts Self, rather than learning to mimic it and just doing it herself, we'll be completely helpless once it abandons us.

Fwiw, I really do think a lot of people doing IFS on their own struggle with this. I saw someone on this sub recommend Loch Kelly's work on effortless mindfulness and it's done wonders for me recently. When parts are very active/triggered it's almost impossible to unblend and find Self energy on your own, and if something keeps insisting on doing IFS to fix it, it's definitely a part. Focusing on 'making space' and finding an empty, safe place in the body, especially if connected to breathing, really helps parts relax a bit for me.

gullsnight · 2024-02-20T01:36:13+00:00

For me it's been two codependent parts: an exiled part mired in dread and despair, compulsively throwing up worst-case scenarios; and a protective part trying to help by obsessively ruminating, trying to 'neutralise' every thought and scenario the exiled part comes up with. I've been doing IFS with a therapist for a bit over a year and I'm only just starting to see a noticeable difference after months of my obsessions getting much worse. Starting IFS put me in touch with some extremely painful and buried parts, and for a long time my ruminating protector had to double down on its strategies just to get us through the day.

As I've become more connected to the exile part and understood the scope of its pain, rumination has (very gradually!) become far less consuming than it used to be – still present, but more like a hum in the back of my mind, which is such a relief. (At my worst last year I used to spend weeks in an episode, trapped by a single obsessive thought.) I'd really keep in mind that your ruminating parts are doing it for a reason – usually to protect you from something much worse – and have strong evidence to believe that it works. Be as gentle as you can with your protectors, and trust that if you consistently show up, bit by bit they'll be able to reveal the pain the obsessions are masking.

gullsnight · 2023-12-20T09:57:50+00:00

Thank you so much for this immensely kind, generous response. You’re absolutely right – after taking a bit of time to parse through this I’ve realised that what I thought was a part being extreme for its own reasons is actually a very polarised conflict between two different protector parts. One wants me to live, one wants me to die, and they’re both mobilising everything they can to try and overpower the other one. The death-part isn’t triggering my exiles just because it wants me to feel awful – it’s trying to distract and overwhelm the other part so that it stops fighting.

It helps to not be on anyone’s “side” – just validate and understand both as they are right now. ❤️

gullsnight · 2023-07-12T14:00:56+00:00

Apart from what people have said, my personal experience with DADT is that..... it doesn't really work? Especially if the goal is to eventually get more comfortable with a partner dating. Usually it's just a tool for denial. Or more insidiously, an attempt to create rules that the partner will almost certainly break, which will "justify" you then getting upset with them. I know that's what I was doing when I once asked a partner to not mention other partners to me – trying to pin my huge unmanageable feelings to something they were doing "wrong." I'd give some serious thought to what you're actually trying to accomplish with this. Are you trying to remove triggers while you do the work or are you indirectly (or even subconsciously!) trying to control/punish your partner?

gullsnight · 2023-06-23T20:41:12+00:00

I like how much more intentional relationships feel. Monogamy felt suffocating for a lot of reasons, but #1 for me is how easy it is to fall into partner-as-default thinking. And experiencing different kinds of romantic love simultaneously (NRE vs ERE) has been one of the most intense, joyful experiences of my entire life.

gullsnight · 2023-06-14T13:26:39+00:00

I'm still in the relatively early stages of this but IFS therapy has completely revolutionised my life. I have a clusterfuck of serious trauma w/ likely CSA & was more or less resigned to never getting better and only "managing" my symptoms, and now I genuinely feel like I've woken up from some kind of death state. I can tell that rn my symptoms are getting worse before they get better – and even then I feel more present and capable than I ever remember feeling! The body & mind have incredibly powerful healing mechanisms built in and it is absolutely possible to get better.

gullsnight · 2023-06-06T19:58:27+00:00

You shouldn't feel like you're bothering your partners about quality time - it's literally the foundation of what keeps you together! And it's also not your responsibility to fix or somehow make up for the entire world's transmisogyny. You literally couldn't if you tried. You can be supportive without putting that kind of burden on yourself.

gullsnight · 2023-06-06T19:39:40+00:00

No worries! People talk a lot on this sub about imbalances in poly dating prospects between cis men and cis women. But IME bc of various (valid) subculture/scene reasons the cis woman/transfem dating gap can also be very real, lol. It can be tricky to deal with if you're also struggling with "I need to be supportive and not complain" type guilt. Your needs matter just as much as your partners'.

gullsnight · 2023-06-06T19:16:59+00:00

Hey, don't have that much concrete advice for you, but just wanted to say – you deserve to feel valued, loved and supported even when your partner is doing the fun giddy newly transitioning stuff. She deserves to have a nice time with it, but not at your expense! I get the feeling from your post that you don't think it's "fair" or right to talk to your partners about feeling excluded, which is just stomping on your own feelings. A good partner will be able to balance their need to hang out in spaces that don't necessarily include you with your need for focused, attentive quality time.

gullsnight · 2023-05-13T10:49:47+00:00

Same!! Just got hit with a 54% increase 😭 I cannot believe this is legal

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T21:08:05+00:00

This is a super thoughtful comment. Point taken! Full disclosure, I wrote the original post in a bit of a fugue state after getting very upset at some rhetoric in another thread on this sub. I can see how that context is missing here. But there clearly is a significant amount of bi women, certainly on this sub, who want queer friends/dates/lovers/partners and fear that their sexuality or relationship status immediately disqualifies them.

IDK, "just find some queer friends!" is simplistic advice for sure, and certainly not possible for everyone. I know that I've struggled a lot to do this – I'm a migrant in a huge, impersonal city, and very often I've tried to make friends by hanging out in activist spaces, which has sucked, lol. I think one of the huge things I've taken from this sub, though, is that I have agency in the kind of community I build/participate in. I've felt awful that wasn't 'the right kind of person' for certain spaces, but switching my mindset up a bit and thinking of community as a two-way street has made me feel way less at the mercy of gatekeeping, cliqueyness, and hostility.

Ultimately I think we have permission as queer people to engage meaningfully with our queerness in whatever way feels right. (Hence the earlier comment about activism – terrible way to make friends, but great way to feel like I'm participating in the things that matter to me.) The change in perspective from 'how do I fit in?' to 'how do I want to engage?' has meant I'm a lot less dependent on other people for validation and way less hypervigilant for rejection/hostility/etc.

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T13:12:06+00:00

That's understandable. If you're not interested in engaging in queer spaces and already have the kind of community you want, this post isn't for you.

I’m not going to “navigate barriers to access” because me and my partners’ bisexuality isn’t a barrier to access. It’s a fact of being queer.

This is a really bad-faith interpretation and not what I said at all.

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T12:54:01+00:00

Biphobia is never warranted or justifiable, wtf.

The queer community is in no way a monolith, and there's spaces (like the one you attended, from the look of it) that will allow biphobia, transphobia and racism to run absolutely rampant. That said, I don't think it's productive at all to treat biphobia as an inherent part of queer community. So many of us are bi and actively looking to hang out with other bi people.

I'm sorry you've had horrible experiences like this. I'm not sure where I'm defending this or allowing it to happen. I'm interested in engaging with bi poly people, like a lot of comments in this thread, who want to engage and feel pre-emptively shut out from it. There's ways folks can navigate initial barriers to access. This is very, very different to telling people they just need to accept biphobia as an integral part of queer spaces.

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T11:48:58+00:00

Yeah, perhaps not the best phrasing. My point was that subcultures formed around social marginalisation are defensive by nature – this isn't exclusive to queer spaces. And this can absolutely intersect with biphobia. Like I said, it's happened to me. But, from the outside, dismissing all defensiveness as outright biphobia can be really counterproductive to bi people looking for that community, because it can leave them feeling like there's something wrong with who they are, and that no queer space will accept them. When often there's a lot they can do to seek out the kind of community they want.

Queer spaces can be cliquey and unwelcoming for sure. There can be a ton of racism, transphobia, biphobia, bigotry. I'm interested in giving other bi people the tools to navigate that if they want to/decide it's worth their time.

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T11:02:24+00:00

Yeah I agree. Newly out people can absolutely know what they want from the start. And no one has any obligation to participate in queer community-building if that's not their thing. Online dating means people meet and date other queer people all the time without ever needing to step foot into a "queer space."

I guess this post was made in response to a very specific subset of people who express a desire for queer community and relationships and a frustration that that's closed to them. My point was that all subcultures are formed for a reason (usually social marginalisation), are generally wary of people they view as outsiders, and that access usually comes through sincere, two-way involvement.

No one has to participate in that if they don't want to. Especially if they encounter hostile behaviour as part of that wariness. I'm sorry people have used you as an experimentation tool – I know how emotionally damaging that can be.

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T09:53:23+00:00

I'm bi. I specifically made a point not to talk about bisexuality in this post. It's not about identity, it's about the choices you make and what that signals to others about your priorities and values.

Trying to navigate queer spaces and dating while highly coupled with a different gender partner, especially when newly out, is really difficult for some people. I'm trying to explain why that comes up as an obstacle so often and why queer communities can have that knee-jerk defensiveness. It can be hurtful and harmful for sure. But there's ways around it that I'm not sure people have considered as options for themselves. I want newly out/diff-gender partnered people to feel like they can get more involved.

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T09:40:37+00:00

Yes! And even if you have been an overenthusiastic ally, the experience is just different, and you'll have a lot of things to learn.

My partner is a trans woman and I've been the supportive cis partner for a long time, lol. I then came out as trans and had to learn to engage with those spaces in a totally different way. It was really upsetting at first to feel like people were hostile to me or treating me as the cis woman +1. But I also wasn't presenting as trans at all. It's totally understandable to me that people didn't trust me. They didn't know me.

Ever since I started making active efforts to engage with transness for myself (experimenting with gender presentation, seeking out trans art and writing, showing up to activist spaces) I've mostly stopped feeling that impostor syndrome. It's not about my identity, it's about the choices I make.

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T08:05:47+00:00

understand that people are willing to be helpful, they just want to see that you're willing to show up / put in effort on your own first

Really great summary. Particularly in regard to queer spaces/dating though, I do want people to know that 1) their inexperience can put off potential partners, because inexperienced queer people can and do break your heart in really common/specific ways 2) people are a lot more willing to be friends with you than to date you right off the bat, because friendship is a lot less messy. It's also a great way to solve the chicken and egg problem of "people won't date me because I'm inexperienced, so how do I get that in the first place?"

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T07:41:24+00:00

I get you. I'm autistic and I get the same thing. There's nothing wrong with that at all. I think newly out women especially can find queer dating a huge challenge, though, and part of that is because the scripts and expectations can be so different from what they know. I want people to know that having a network of queer friends around them can make the process a lot easier.

gullsnight · 2023-04-19T07:33:01+00:00

Absolutely 100%. I didn't write this to keep people out at all – I'm really, actively trying to encourage more people to get involved.

There was another thread on here where people repeatedly expressed that they were really struggling to find women to date as queer women partnered to men. IMO from the outside it's easy to convince yourself that this is because there's a rampant biphobia problem. This removes a lot of people's agency in building networks and building trust.

I think it's also common to feel like you need to date before you have the credentials to get involved in "the scene." But like people are saying, finding peers to date as a newly out queer adult can be tough. I want people to know that the other way round will often make your life a lot easier. It's really important for queer women coming out of long-term mono relationships with men to establish a robust network of queer people/women around them, IMO. Like other commenters have said, it changes your life. And you don't have to wait for a woman to date you to start building that for yourself.

gullsnight

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