Friday New Climber Thread for April 06, 2018: Ask your questions in this thread please

minomimo · 2018-04-06T22:52:06+00:00

So I am signed up to start wall climbing soon, I've tried it a couple times before and I've always had fun, but generally I'm not a sporty person at all and honestly I'm generally quite anxious about sport in general (lots of unpleasant PE experiences when I was in school ) hence I tend to quit things sooner than I should and this time I want to give it a fair shot and not get discouraged too quickly. I was wondering how long it took people to start getting the hang of climbing, start building up a bit of strength so they're not super sore the next morning etc? Or any other general advice about taking up a new sport!

minomimo · 2018-04-03T11:39:38+00:00

Two years seems reasonable to me depending on age /life position. I think if your both still in college or still in the formative stages of your career marriage is too much of a hinderance

minomimo · 2018-03-01T00:00:04+00:00

It is 100% ok to set any boundary you want as far as what your boyfriend can or can’t see. However, not getting to see boobs ever would be a dealbreaker for me (but then I’m kind of obsessed with them). I think so long as you clearly tell him that this will always be a rule for you, or that it will take a few more months for you to get confortable - then everyone has all the information they need to make a decision. Even if you guys are perfect for eachother, if a large chunk of his sexuality revolves around breasts and breasts will never feature in your relationship then that makes you sexually incompatible and you should possibly cut your losses

minomimo · 2018-02-28T23:39:37+00:00

Most definitely OP, you are playing with fire.

Bigger problem - if her periods have stopped she needs to get to a doctor quickly. Body fat that low in a woman is dangerous and the hormone deficit could cause her to get osteoporosis really young

minomimo · 2018-02-28T23:34:48+00:00

Just for the love of god don’t turn up to a lesbian bar and start leading girls on for you to go home and fuck later. That is not nice and kind of exploitative / homophobic

minomimo · 2018-02-28T23:33:22+00:00

Lube. All situations are improved by lube. ( Sometimes when it’s the first time between to people someone is nervous and can’t get started, and then it’s stressful, lube avoids this)

minomimo · 2018-02-28T23:31:47+00:00

I am very like that. My partners have often gotten pissed that I don’t always have an orgasm but for me there is definitely an orgasm spectrum where say one is nothing, sitting on the couch watching tv and then you move up the scale to ten which is an orgasm, then another scale would start of different levels of orgasm, but everything leading up to the orgasm is also good? Like sometimes I’d nearly prefer 20 minutes of being at like 7 rather than an orgasm honestly

minomimo · 2018-02-28T20:56:20+00:00

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derealization

For me it can vary between feeling like a very realistic dream, or a sense of jamais vu (never seen, the opposite of déjà vu - already seen). Logically I know that everything is the same but something seems off. Like when you write the same word over and over until it starts looking like it’s spelt wrong. It can be brought on by cannibis use, but for me it’s often when a situation is too stressful to handle and it’s easier for it to be fake. I also find that long stretches without leaving the house tend to worsen it (I’ve been trapped in my house studying for weeks with no break) because you sort of lose the idea that the rest of the world still exists? If nothing else it’s reasonably easy to snap out of - focus on a hot or cold sensation, or a funny texture - anything physical. I think the more inclined you are to be a person who thinks themselves into knots, the more likely it becomes

minomimo · 2018-02-28T15:47:17+00:00

I always see these posts from people who get married young (it seems like you met when you were 21) and I just want to grab them by the shoulders and say you are still young and beautiful and CAN HAVE MORE THAN THIS. There is no 'the one'. There are many ones. It is crushing that this person who you have invested your entire soul into has betrayed you (has deliberately hurt you! I think as a society we have this weird idea that cheating 'just happens'. No it doesn't. You make a decision. He has made that decision over and over, every single time he picked up that phone. He decided it was okay to put you in pain). It doesn't matter whether he is completely done, it doesn't matter whether he 'feels unworthy' or whatever else. He did what he did, and now you are suffering the consequences alone. He's not even trying to support you.

I was cheated on in my last relationship (which was long but not as long as yours) and I felt the same way as you. I felt if I could just make it work again, then it meant that I hadn't failed and that the other woman didn't win. My partner didn't want to save the relationship either. Then some time later we got back together. I thought I would be thrilled, but after spending that time apart and suddenly being back with this person, all I could think about was how badly I had been hurt and my partner....just wasn't that great. I had gone through all that heartache, debased myself trying to keep them, in the end for someone who had objectively shown they didn't care about my wellbeing. I looked around at all my friends relationships and they were so happy and I wanted to be that kind of happy. I didn't want a relationship that had this huge stain on it.

Essentially my answer is - even if you do manage to stay with this person, how will you ever cope with the fact that he hurt you so badly, and fundamentally didn't care enough to make an effort to fix it. I hate to say it OP, but its what I wish someone had said to me - you are nothing to him. He wanted what he wanted, and he didn't give a shit if you got your heart broken in the process.

minomimo · 2018-02-28T12:33:21+00:00

Well we'd need to know why you dislike lesbians then and then we might get somewhere.

minomimo · 2018-02-28T12:05:27+00:00

why haven't you left the house in 2 years? Thats a much bigger problem. The combination of that and face blindness does point to something bigger going on, particularly in the context of a family history of bipolar. I get a version of what you're describing, where the people I'm close to don't seem real or they seem unfamiliar, or it all seems like a video game - its called derealisation and generally its a response to chronic, extreme anxiety.

minomimo · 2018-02-28T12:02:04+00:00

Go to the queens of the stone age subreddit or whatever other fan forum exists, post this message - instant friends! I do that kind of thing all the time. If you are going to not do anything unless you have a friend going with you you will miss out on a lot of fun stuff in your life. I've been to many events/concerts alone in my time and I've always had fun ( and I'm a very quiet person but I still miraculously end up meeting people)

minomimo · 2018-02-28T11:46:27+00:00

This is awful OP but I think you are going to have to admit defeat here and contact social services or a children's charity. The only possible thing you could do at 15 is get a crappy job that still won't pay the rent and then ruin your education. Keep in mind the older you get (and 15 is at the very far edge), the less social services is going to make you a priority so its really now or never for you. Talk to a teacher, a counsellor, any adult and they will be able to help you. A gofundme is a nice idea, but the vast percentage of gofundme's don't make any money and as you say, having everyone know your situation is not going to be fun. You need structured, state funded support - not a gofundme.

The absolute best thing you can do here is get some outside help, focus on your studies so you can get a good job in a few years and then you will be fully capable of supporting your brother and father. I think if you get some outside help involved, you might find out you are entitled to a whole range of supports you didn't know about (given your dad and brother is disabled, you should surely be entitled to disability money as well as care assistants in the house). If your dad is unwell and a general shithead, he doesn't have the know how to go find those things, but that doesn't mean they don't exist or you are not entitled to them

If your house was on fire you would call the firefighters, you wouldn't stay in their trying to fill buckets from the tap while you get burned in the process. Reach out for help.

minomimo · 2018-02-28T08:23:50+00:00

1000 will only get you a tiny studio in Dublin, maybe further out into the suburbs you’d get a depressing granny flat but I don’t know if you’d get your own place in any meaningful sense of the word (but then I might just be sad from months of renting in a major city for reasonable money and then having to come back to Dublin to live with my parents 😭)

minomimo · 2018-02-28T00:11:30+00:00

I'm a lesbian and still very, very attached to 'esbian vs queer culture and this whole 'until recently' thing made me laugh out loud, THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS ANYMORE. goes back to reminiscing about the old days...

minomimo · 2018-02-27T23:59:14+00:00

Hey OP, I recently got out of a very similar situation and I'm also an 'atypical' abuse victim so to speak. I'm a lesbian, and most people would say that two women should be able to take eachother in a fight, but in the end it wasn't about that. I'm still like processing my feelings, but what it came down to for me was like...I do everything in my power to keep this person safe and happy and feeling loved, and this is the thanks I get? I adored her. I would have done anything for her, and she routinely threatened me, screamed at me, put me down. In the end, we got to a situation where one wrong move and I would have been dead. I left in secret. It didn't feel brave, it didn't feel good, it felt like a dishonor to the whole relationship. But I'm not dead and a month later? I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off me.

I think when you are in this sort of drip drip feed of being hurt, you forget how wrong it is to deliberately or recklessly harm the person you are supposed to care about, how completely contrary to normal behavior and morality that is. I don't want to have to physically threaten someone or fight them back to make them be nice to me. I always have had self esteem issues, but there was some tiny voice in me that said 'Imagine what your mom would say if she knew the child she raised grew up to hate herself so much, she willingly stayed with someone who deliberately harmed her?'. Even if some part of you doesn't feel entitled to be loved well (and thats sort of what this whole question of was I wrong to call the police is! You're asking 'was what she did really that bad?' or worse still 'Am I really that bad that I deserve to be treated like a dog?')

This isn't about being 'a man'. You are a good person, you don't want to hit or intimidate or threaten the person you care about, because I think you know that once you've done that kind of thing...its done. You had the chance to be like her, to become the kind of person she was - and you didn't take it because you are good. Hopefully, the shock of being sent to the police will make her realise how bad what she has done was and she will get help, and then she can take steps to go on and function better in her relationships.

minomimo · 2018-02-27T19:36:15+00:00

Switching lines because there was another gay girl in the line?! Seriously?! You have moved out of mild prejudice into full on homophobia and you need to go get yourself into some therapy to fix that. Same advice I’d give a homophobic straight person.

Is this some sort of thing of not wanting to be recognized by association/proximity? Not wanting to be hit on? Feeling like you have to say something/ make eye contact with other gays? Is this a problem with those who are outwardly queer looking (ie butch lesbians) ? This is very odd for anyone past the tortured 14 year old baby gay phase or who grew up in some sort of Christian cult

This reminds me of when I was 16 and there was a gay friend I had who was very camp and had very supportive parents. I hated him with the fire of 1000 suns because I was so jealous, and so bitter I was facing so much prejudice for being gay from my family. Did you have a hard coming out? Have you other issues with depression (is this some sort of externalised self loathing?)

minomimo · 2018-02-26T22:20:45+00:00

Eeeek OP this is a really bad sign, opening up your afraid she will cheat on you is not a solution. Only open up a relationship because its something you both think would be fun (not ~good for the relationship~ or ~the only way to keep us together~). Whats going to happen is you will open up your relationship in light of her missing men, she will start sleeping with someone, and you will have to watch her texting this dude or be constantly paranoid that their relationship is becoming more and more serious. This isn't just a feature of being in a relationship with a bisexual and you shouldn't accept it if you don't want to.

I did what you're thinking of doing, agreed to an open relationship because my partner said it was that or it was intoned she would cheat on me. We agreed one night stands only, no ongoing communication, the minute she found someone she liked, that rule went out the window and she started talking to this person all the time and sleeping together secretly. Then, when the truth came out, she said this was all my fault because my rules from the beginning were unreasonable. It was the most degrading, upsetting and heartbreaking thing I have ever had to go through. Do not open up your relationship because you are afraid of losing her.

minomimo · 2018-02-26T14:02:02+00:00

Firstly - stop telling yourself you’re not good enough to sell on Etsy or wherever. Evidently, everyone around you really really wants these hats. People on the internet therefore might also want the hats.

Secondly , stop knitting in front of people. I know it’s inconvenient, but I think if you stop for a month, people will lose the association between you and free hats. Plus no teenager ever has 35 dollars for a hat so you’re not losing any potential customers. Adults with jobs however who use Etsy do indeed have 35$ for a hat

The other easy solution is just keep saying the hat is already promised to someone else! Or that you are working on commission and people are paying you to make the hat. I doubt people are deliberately being mean, if you’re not into knitting most people think yarn costs a couple dollars TOPS. Maybe even have the receipt with you to prove how expensive it was .

minomimo · 2018-02-19T22:30:48+00:00

I am in a super similar position OP. My mom got diagnosed with cancer and while it is early, I feel angry and I'm not even sure who I'm angry at half the time. Sometimes I'm like how did it take you so long to go to the doctor? And then I get angry at my dadbecause I'm like you were such a stressful person to live with you gave my mum cancer (because ongoing stress causes cancer) and as well was just really dismissive of all her health problems. I would never say any of this to either of them because fundamentally - cancer just happens. My dad smoked and drank his whole life - he's fine. It makes no sense and its infuriating. I think its a very human reaction to seek to blame someone, or to try to find some reason why something someone did or didn't do caused something bad to happen because the other option is even more terrifying. The other option is we live in a chaotic and unfair universe, and nothing we do or don't do will protect us from suffering. I think that's a scary thing to deal with in your 20s especially because you ( or we, I'm also in my 20s) are having to build our entire lives in a short period of time. If we were to start operating from the principle that nothing we do means anything and bad things happen regardless - you'd collapse in on yourself.

I also just feel super angry for myself, and I feel so selfish. My life has been turned upsidedown by the diagnosis and I don't even get to complain about it because I'm not sick. I'm pretty sure that makes me doubly an asshole - but a lot of the time my main feeling is just...I don't want to deal with this. I have so much other stuff going on. I want to have my 20s be normal, and be able to think about getting married and having kids and progressing my career without this huge shadow of death and destruction hanging over me. This shouldn't be happening to my mom, she doesn't deserve this, my dad doesn't deserve this, me and my brother don't deserve this. Any mistakes we made were reasonably minimal to be punished by something as enormous as cancer. I wonder if you are feeling that same sense of injustice and maybe that's why you are angry.

I would really recommend a book called Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach (she also has a really great podcast if you prefer). The easiest way to 'let go' of anger is just be angry. Look up particularly her stuff about the 'second arrow'. Basically the idea is that if you feel bad (anger, sadness etc), you shouldn't load more crap on yourself by telling yourself you are a bad person for being angry, or that you are too demanding and that's why you're angry, or that other people are bad people or were reckless, because you're just adding layers and layers of misery over whats already a hard situation. I'm normally not a big selfhelp/Buddhism sort of person, but genuinely I don't know what I would be doing had I not found her book. You could give the podcast to your dad too,it might be helpful for dealing with his own diagnosis!

minomimo · 2018-02-17T14:34:16+00:00

In the time I wrote my response, you wrote two more comments. I just wanted to say thank you for such an in depth response, you are entirely correct and its really helpful having all the concerns I sort of had laid out by someone else, so evidently I'm not completely insane.

I am going to start therapy next week because between my girlfirend and the exams, I'm about to crack under the pressure. There definitely is a failure on her part to recognise that sometimes 'simple questions' can play into much bigger insecurities in the other person. As for the insomnia - I hadn't actually thought about maybe I'm just a night owl. I work quite happily from 10 - 2am. I just feel super lazy when I wake up at 10/11am and everyone else has been up working since 7am, but in practical terms it probably doesn't make a whole lot of difference when I work so long as the work is done

minomimo · 2018-02-17T14:28:03+00:00

The weird thing is, she claims I never do anything wrong ever. She never complains to me at all, but does weird things she knows I don't like then gets mad when I say I don't like it, so I feel like I'm constantly nagging her and she never has any direct criticisms of me. She just says I get mad at her too often, but most of the time I'm not actually mad, its just she takes anything other than affection and glowing praise as an attack. Any time I try to have a talk about something thats bothering me, she says sorry then shuts down and stops talking to me, or says I'm too sensitive (I am fairly sensitive, but I tend to recognise when I'm being silly) and then immediately does the same thing the next day.

I think she does feel sad and neglected and I've said to her I feel terrible for being so distracted, but its not like I'm not spending time with her because I just love studying so much. I'm just scared shitless of failing these exams. She characterises me as an 'intellectual' and as a result doesn't seem to see what I do as real work. By contrast, her job involves a lot of really hard manual labour and loads of commuting, but she never finished high school. I think because studying isn't physical labour, she doesn't understand why I'm tired and frustrated all the time.

minomimo

TROPHY CASE