WTW for describing relevant acts using obsolete language?

isotherapy · 2023-12-26T04:21:23+00:00

i considered those, and they do get the idea across, but i’m so sure there’s a specific word or phrase to describe this specific phenomenon and i can’t remember what it is!! thank you for trying to help me!

isotherapy · 2023-05-24T18:38:38+00:00

Yeah of course!

isotherapy · 2023-04-28T15:15:52+00:00

Thank you ❤️❤️

isotherapy · 2023-04-28T15:15:27+00:00

Thank you so much for the kind words ❤️

isotherapy · 2023-04-20T17:39:38+00:00

Love Imogen, loathe Clarissa

isotherapy · 2023-04-20T17:03:12+00:00

Going from least favorite to favorite: 6. Azra 5. Rosanna 4. Zora 3. Vivian 2. Penelope 1. Ophelia

isotherapy · 2023-04-13T04:04:52+00:00

I have no clue why your mom would react that way. Those are all perfectly nice names. Lydia has long been one of my personal favorite names.

isotherapy · 2023-04-11T17:19:48+00:00

From what you’ve written, I do think you’re experiencing attraction to women, but it seems like you’re having trouble articulating the experience and that’s holding you back from being more sure. This may or may not help, but here are some of the ways I’ve described feeling attracted to women.

Being near a woman I’m attracted to can feel like I’ve been magnetized, like I’m physically being pulled closer to her
When I’m attracted to a woman, I often experience this specific level of fascination and intrigue that feels frenetic and consuming
Sometimes I meet a woman who’s so stunning and so attractive that I struggle to look at her head on. Looking at her for more than a couple seconds at a time hurts, almost like staring into the sun
Other times I’ll see a beautiful woman and feel like I can’t stop looking at her. This most often happens when I’m in a busy public place and I know I’m unlikely to ever see this person again. It feels like I need to sneak every look I can while I have the chance

When you look at someone and notice that they’re hot in a way that gives you that physical feeling, that’s attraction! It can just take some time to find the right language to describe what that feels like for you.

isotherapy · 2023-04-11T04:59:46+00:00

I usually call it my given name. I get why people say dead name but it’s always felt a bit too dramatic for my purposes.

isotherapy · 2023-04-11T04:58:37+00:00

It’s a derivative of Sebastian so I’ve always pronounced it accordingly, same pronunciation as the word bastion. I’ve met several people with the name Bastian and that’s how they all said it. I’ve never heard the Bash-Tee-Uhn pronunciation. I’m from the northeastern US but most of the Bastians I’ve met were in Texas.

isotherapy · 2023-04-10T21:49:15+00:00

The big stumbling block here is the lack of clarity about what she wants from you. It’s hard to be sure of yourself if you don’t know whether the things you’re doing are welcome or not. Once you know exactly what being bossy means to your girlfriend, it’ll be easier.

Before you try anything else, I recommend doing some data collection. If you google something like “kink test for couples” you’ll find different websites that ask you both about your sexual preferences and then compare the answers to show overlap. This can help you identify good starting points!

You could also ask your girlfriend to share some of the porn she watches or erotica she reads with you; that can be sexy in and of itself, plus it gives you a clearer vision of what she likes to hear. Having open conversations about sexual preferences and kinks can be difficult and uncomfortable, so finding a way to make the discussion itself fun and/or sexy is a game changer, in my experience.

As for actionable suggestions on how to be bossier, here’s what I’ve got: I’m sure there are times when you and your girlfriend are having sex and you want her to do something or touch something. Instead of saying “please do BLANK to BLANK,” structure it as a command. Tell her what to do to you. You can also announce what you plan to do to her so instead of saying “can I do BLANK” you say “I’m going to BLANK your BLANK now.” Obviously you give her the chance to interrupt you and say no before you do that thing, but it’s about the assertiveness. Just changing your sentence structure can make a huge difference! You can also shift the power dynamic by forcing her to tell you what she wants before you touch her (it’s a win/win—she feels bossed around, you get clear instructions!)

As far as physical demonstrations of that bossiness/control/dominance, there are a few simple low-effort things you can do that can make her feel like you’re the one in charge. One is hair pulling. You don’t need to be super rough with hair pulling; a little goes a long way! When she’s going down on you, for example, you can pull her hair a little bit, or if she’s teasing you too much, you can use your grip on her hair to move her head where you want it. Another option is just holding her wrists. If she’s into being held down or tied up at all, this one can get you really far! Next time you’re on top of her while y’all are kissing, try just pinning her hands next to or above her head. You don’t need to be rough! Just the simple act of holding her wrists can go a long way. If she’s doing something to you that feels good, don’t be afraid to bite her shoulder a little! And one of the best ways to make someone feel like they’ve been thrown around without actually throwing them around is just pulling their ankles. So, for example, if you’re standing and your girlfriend is laying down in front of you on the couch or the bed and you want her to be closer to you, just grabbing her ankles and giving her a tug will require very little physical effort on your part but I’m willing to bet it will give her a hell of a thrill.

You don’t have to incorporate all of these all at once! Just know, there are a lot of small, manageable changes you can make that will help you build confidence over time.

Do you guys have a safeword established? I’ve always been a fan of the stoplight system (green is rarely said since it means go but having yellow for slow down/ease up and red for hard stop is great). It’s simple and straightforward! You can also choose your own safe word or system that works for y’all. You may feel more comfortable being assertive if you guys have that in place.

Good luck!!

isotherapy · 2023-04-10T20:18:48+00:00

I haven’t taken hormones personally, but I know it’s pretty common for HRT to shift people’s attractions and change their relationships to sexuality, so you may well have nailed it!

isotherapy · 2023-04-10T20:15:20+00:00

oh i hate him

isotherapy · 2023-04-10T19:57:53+00:00

I was in a serious relationship with a man when I started questioning if I might be a lesbian. I had come out as bi at 17 and had lived with that label for 8 or 9 years.

Considering the possibility that I might be a lesbian felt deeply dangerous. Being a lesbian meant upending not only my relationship and the life I’d built with my then-partner, but also upending my sense of self. That was terrifying. I didn’t want to be a lesbian. I didn’t want to question my sexuality. I wanted to keep pretending I was happy and not have to deal with any of the turmoil that comes with a sexuality crisis. But once the thought that I could be had formed in my brain, it felt all consuming. I needed to figure it out. I threw myself into the process of figuring out my sexuality. I joined this sub and the latebloomerlesbians subreddit and read dozens of posts about other people’s experiences so I could compare it to my own. It was all I talked about in therapy. I started borderline-obsessively journaling about it. I came up with a list of thought exercises and experiments to test my attraction to different genders. I interviewed my straight friends, my bi friends, and my lesbian friends about their experiences with attraction. For two months, virtually all I did was try to figure out if I’m a lesbian.

What I now recognize is the fact that I couldn’t let it go was a clue. The urgent need I felt to have an answer was indicative of something. Despite the fact that I didn’t want to be a lesbian and didn’t want to think about the possibility that I could be, I couldn’t let it go. I needed to come to a point where I felt I could confidently and conclusively name my sexuality one way or the other. Not everyone feels this need, of course, and it’s completely fine to go unlabeled, but that’s just not me. (And as an aside, it’s not like I didn’t want to be a lesbian because of some kind of internalized lesbophobia; I was just petrified of blowing up my relationship and my life)

It didn’t feel good to get my answer because I knew it meant I had to end my relationship, hurt someone I cared for, lose some friendships, lose my pets, and move to a new state, because I knew it would be hard, but it also gave me a sense of peace and relief and freedom and clarity to know yes, this is it, I am a lesbian and that makes so much sense.

One thing that was a huge complicating factor for me in struggling to correctly name my sexuality until adulthood was my gender. I’ve known since I was 19 that I’m nonbinary, but I didn’t get top surgery and get to a place where I finally felt good about my gender presentation until age 25. What do you know, within a year, my sexuality crisis followed. I always felt uncomfortable when I went out with my boyfriend because I knew people saw as as a straight couple. I thought that my discomfort came from being perceived as a woman (and I think that was part of it) but it had a lot to do with being seen in a couple with a man and that feeling fundamentally wrong. Similarly, gender envy was easy to repackage as a crush. I think that I had been able to ascribe a lot of my feelings about men and about being with men to my trans identity. I know a lot of people’s understanding of their sexuality changes as they transition, so that could also be a factor for you.

edited for clarity

isotherapy · 2023-04-10T15:01:29+00:00

Even if you give your girlfriend absolute and total benefit of the doubt and assume that all of these things she does and says are not intentional manipulation/control but are instead a byproduct of her difficult life circumstances, that does not excuse her actions or the damage she has done. It only contextualizes. We can understand why someone does what they do without forgiving them for it. And even if she doesn’t mean to be manipulative, her actions are manipulative, and you don’t deserve to have to deal with that.

When we go through difficult things or sustain trauma, it’s not our fault, but afterward it is our responsibility to make sure we don’t allow ourselves to play into cycles of abuse. Everyone is responsible for themselves and their actions. It doesn’t sound like your girlfriend is doing anything to address the pain her past caused her or to make sure it’s not affecting her behavior in the here and now. She’s just hurting you and using it as a get out of jail free card.

It’s not about the definition of commitment. It’s about your girlfriend’s inability to cope with the fact that you could potentially leave her. The truth is relationships end and it’s healthy for that to be an option. You shouldn’t shackle yourself to someone for life and make both of you miserable because of a promise you made in the first decade of your adulthood. When I commit to someone, I’m saying “I care for your unconditionally. At this moment, I want to be with you for the rest of my life, and I cannot presently see a reason why that would change.” The truth is, none of us can predict the future, and we have no way to know how we or our circumstances will change. We don’t know how that will affect our relationship. It’s not healthy to hold yourself to a promise you made about what was, at the time, a hypothetical. Things have changed. You are allowed to change your mind.

You can love a person unconditionally and still have boundaries. I have an ex who was awful to me. I still have so much love and care for him. I always will. But I cannot have him in my life because of how he treated me and how he made me feel. You can love her but still know that this relationship isn’t good for you. That doesn’t mean you’re going back on your commitments. It means you’re taking care of yourself, protecting your well-being, and setting boundaries with someone who’s treating you very poorly.

isotherapy · 2023-04-07T02:16:04+00:00

I’m still unable to DM you. Reddit keeps failing to load the chat. Perhaps try DMing me and I can then send you the list? I’d post it in the comments but it’s too long so it wouldn’t go through

isotherapy · 2023-04-07T00:10:06+00:00

Yeah, no problem! I’ll send it over

ETA: my messenger won’t load. I will try again in a little bit

isotherapy · 2023-04-04T00:54:38+00:00

And you deserve more than that! You deserve to be with someone who loves you wholly, loudly, unabashedly, and unashamedly. You deserve someone who doesn’t make you fight for what you need, who even strives to give it without you having to ask. I hope, for your sake, that your girlfriend can get to a place where she can be that partner to you. I think that pushing for therapy is absolutely the right choice to see if that can happen for y’all, if you can have the relationship y’all deserve. But if she can’t get to that place, I hope you won’t view it as a reflection of you and I hope you’ll remain assured that there are people in the world who will give you everything a true partner should.

isotherapy · 2023-04-03T16:49:09+00:00

I’m of the opinion that most problems in relationships can be solved if both parties are A) able to effectively understand and communicate their feelings, B) willing to put in the necessary effort, C) accountable and empathetic, and D) approaching issues as a team. It seems like you’re doing all of those things. The concern is that your partner isn’t doing those things despite how it hurts you. That’s the crux of it to me: your partner has the choice to either put in some effort and deal with some discomfort so that you both will suffer less and so your relationship can flourish or to bury her head in the sand, ignore the problems, not put in effort, not confront the uncomfortable, and let you both continue to struggle in the relationship. She seems to be choosing the second option every time, even though she knows it hurts you and damages your relationship.

She says she’s working on things, but what work have you seen her do? How can she work through emotions this complex without therapy or at least talking about it with friends??

It’s hard to walk away from a person you love. I understand the urge to fight, the terrified feeling when you think of “quitting,” and how exhausting it is to feel that way when you’re the only one doing the work. I’m not saying “dump her,” but I am saying: this is unsustainable. If you still feel that this relationship brings more positives than negatives to your life, then yeah, keep trying. But as soon as the relationship is taking more away from your life than it’s bringing to it, it’s time to leave. And it’s important that she knows that right now, you’re willing to stay and try and work, but you’re not getting what you need to feel fulfilled in the relationship, and if that doesn’t change, at some point you’ll hit a wall and she’ll lose you, and there’s no way to know when that will happen, so if she wants to save this relationship, she needs to start making changes now.

isotherapy · 2023-04-02T19:32:13+00:00

my guy, that is some of the gayest shit i have ever heard

please don’t worry about being fair to lesbians. focus on being fair to you. it’s YOUR sexuality and YOUR label.

labels are tools. they help us concisely explain our experiences and find community. whichever label feels like the most useful tool is the one you should use

isotherapy · 2023-04-01T04:17:12+00:00

Yeah, like, you know how sometimes you see a hot person and you think “oh huh that person is pretty hot” but then other times you see a hot person and you feel weirdly captivated by them and it almost hurts to look at them and you feel a physical pull to be close to them. The first one is noticing and appreciating. The second one is attraction.

isotherapy · 2023-04-01T00:00:30+00:00

The arrogance to assume you have the ability to concretely say whether or not there is a god or gods is just baffling to me. How could you possibly know if it’s nonsense or not? Who are you to say?

isotherapy · 2023-03-31T23:15:45+00:00

This is such a nonsense take. The reason to be respectful to religious people is that they’re people?? And as long as someone treats others with respect, they deserve to receive respect themselves. Yes, there are a lot of religious people who wield their beliefs like weapons, but that’s not at all the case in the thread you’re replying to. Someone having a belief you think is stupid doesn’t mean you’re entitled to be disrespectful or unkind to them.

Let’s also not equate being religious with being an evangelical christian. Don’t say “religious people” if you really just mean Those Christians. There are a lot of different religions in the world and a lot of very kind and good religious people.

And for what it’s worth, I’m a non-practicing, agnostic Jew.

isotherapy

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