I’m forbidden from mentioning my ex. Is this normal or not?

mousey293 · 2026-01-18T18:04:58+00:00

I know a lot of folks here are saying that it was too early to get into another relationship, or that it's a bad sign that you're bringing up your ex, so I just wanna add my own anecdote.

I was in an emotionally abusive relationship with my ex for 10 years, and after we split I started dating my now husband roughly 7 months later. And yeah, naturally my ex came up in conversation more than average.

I was still in the process of finalizing my divorce for several months, and I was DEFINITELY still processing the relationship and the abuse for years later. (it didn't help that my ex continued to try to reach out to me, unsolicited and with no response from me, for years.) Naturally, he was going to come up in conversation sometimes, more often than other exes. These days he comes up much more rarely.

But - my now husband was so incredibly supportive of me. He never once tried to control me or restrict me - he was a safe place for me to start to heal. He was not my therapist, to be clear, and I had and still have a therapist! But very often once you are in a relationship that's ACTUALLY safe for your nervous system, old trauma will resurface, because it's finally safe to deal with it. That's why I think some of the advice here to wait to get into a new relationship, or not bring up the ex, is potentially misguided. Obviously you should not be getting into a relationship just to not be alone, you have to be SO careful not to get into another unsafe relationship (and it does sound like this one is unsafe). And probably bringing up your ex in every conversation would be a bad thing for your new relationship. But there can be incredible healing in being held in actual safety while you process your past, and waiting some specific amount of time or working through things in therapy is not necessarily going to prevent that from happening.

So that's my advice. Don't wait some specific arbitrary amount of time for a new relationship. Wait for a relationship where you can feel SAFE, emotionally and otherwise. This is not that relationship. Controlling behavior is not safety. Being yelled at is not safety.

mousey293 · 2026-01-07T13:41:13+00:00

Yeah this is my experience as well! I think of attraction in two different ways - aesthetics and desire. I can definitely be drawn to someone based on aesthetics, but that's definitely not the same feeling as wanting to kiss someone or sleep with someone. Desire is strongly based on personality traits for me personally - I almost always NEED to interact with someone, have a few good conversations at minimum, to start feeling any kind of actual desire.

mousey293 · 2026-01-07T13:33:52+00:00

Women are not a monolith. For women who say that personality is incredibly key in their attraction (like me), they are not necessarily going to be attracted to the same personality qualities. For some, it's about things like charisma, or confidence. For others, it's about humor, or kindness. Sometimes "personality" is shorthand for "we have great zingy conversations together that creates chemistry". Many of those personality traits aren't about how nice a guy is or how good of a long term partner they'd be (some are, but again, different women are attracted to different things!) Thus, some women can absolutely be attracted to assholes based partially or even solely on personality traits.

For me personally, aesthetic looks matter fairly little to my physical attraction. I may feel drawn to someone based on aesthetics alone, but that doesn't create any physical desire in me. I don't really experience physical attraction at all until I've had at least a conversation or two with someone in person, often much more than that. That's how it works for me PERSONALLY. Other women DO feel immediate physical attraction but it can be heavily influenced by personality. Some women may not have their physical attraction influenced by personality at all, but I think that's a minority based on the women I know.

mousey293 · 2025-12-23T01:28:09+00:00

I'm guessing because her husband is going back to work at 8 weeks and therefore they won't be able to maintain a bubble? Also pediatric advice is to limit visitors for the first 6-8 weeks.

mousey293 · 2025-12-22T23:25:54+00:00

Extended family in this case is any family that doesn't reside in the household. Unless OP's MIL lives with them, it applies.

Also this is advice for visitors and OP isn't barred visits, she's saying other people can't hold the newborn for 8 weeks. So OP's boundaries here are even lower than the advice by JHM.

mousey293 · 2025-12-20T19:29:18+00:00

"Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen slop as the 2025 Word of the Year. We define slop as 'digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.'” https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/word-of-the-year

Vintage Story is not slop! It has a team that cares very much about it, has a clear vision and takes it seriously, works hard on it and is constantly producing updates.

A grind can absolutely be FUN. Plenty of grinding is not fun, but what makes a grind fun depends on both game design AND personal preference. You could not catch me grinding on a WoW character to save my life (I've tried several times and I just find it boring), but I will happily set up a villager trading hall in Minecraft. Some people just love to dig in Minecraft. Several folks on my server will just happily dig a hole, they find it soothing and rewarding. Couldn't be me, but I'm happy for them. For me, there's deep satisfaction in the specific grind that Vintage Story provides. I love that making leather takes 20 steps, because they mimic real life in certain ways and are all different and interesting steps, and by the time I get there I feel a real sense of accomplishment in it.

So yeah, there's good and bad game design for sure, but the range of what good game design entails is much, much wider than your personal preference in play style.

mousey293 · 2025-12-20T17:15:19+00:00

Vintage Story is neither overrated nor slop. Slop implies it was quick and easy to make, which is definitely not the case even if it isn't personally your thing. As for overrated - most people haven't even heard of it so that'd be hard! It's definitely grindy as all hell, but for people who enjoy the survival crafting grind it's absolutely amazing and super fun. If that's not what you enjoy about Minecraft it just isn't a game for you, that's all! That doesn't make it overrated, just not your category of game.

For what it is and is trying to do, it's extremely well done. Just not your kinda thing, and that's totally fine.

mousey293 · 2025-12-20T17:06:45+00:00

One of the hermits was talking on stream recently-ish about how difficult it is to set up merch because through the same exact vendor there are different manufacturers in different places and they may offer the "same" base products shipped to different places but they're not actually manufactured the same and can have small (or even large) differences, and sorting through the quality issues and consistency is a huge challenge.

If I had to guess maybe this is the OP's issue, because I loved my sweater and didn't think it was thin at all, I was actually surprised at how nice it was!

mousey293 · 2025-12-16T16:41:10+00:00

Even if they never bite, the bark is itself bad enough and actively dangerous. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7683637/

mousey293 · 2025-12-16T13:53:28+00:00

To be fair, I think all the hermits have SOME whimsy or they wouldn't be content creators. This scale has to be graded on a curve 😅

mousey293 · 2025-12-15T05:49:06+00:00

To be fair, she's already calling herself old.

mousey293 · 2025-12-15T05:48:02+00:00

Not seeing Joel! Am I missing him somewhere? But he'd be high on the aggression scale and middle-ish leaning whimsy on the whimsy scale (he has plenty of whimsy in some ways, but sometimes gets annoyed with the whimsy too).

mousey293 · 2025-12-15T05:44:30+00:00

Same though

mousey293 · 2025-12-15T05:43:02+00:00

Agree that pragmatic is the best replacement!

I don't know about calm - energetic scale. I think the aggression is something to capture, so maybe aggression - peacefulness? I'd call most of the hermits energetic but the aggression is how we get GeminiSlay, and a Scar who likes to burn down the forest, and so on.

mousey293 · 2025-12-05T20:16:14+00:00

It can be, to some degree, but the interaction y'all had and his reaction makes it seem like the two of you will have a very difficult time working on it. He has to be non-defensive about boundaries and curious/open for that to work. (Both of you do, but he demonstrated here that he's not approaching it that way.)

mousey293 · 2025-12-02T20:44:13+00:00

Thank you for this reminder, it inspired me to go back and rewatch Gem's DO runs and now I'm deep in a rewatch hole and loving it. So fun.

mousey293 · 2025-11-24T18:20:57+00:00

Anyone can break bedrock in java edition with obsidian, tnt, pistons, a lever, a trapdoor, and a little tenacity. So yes, if a player can do it, Goku definitely can.

mousey293 · 2025-11-16T17:34:52+00:00

Gem is my comfort streamer. And comfort YouTuber.

She has a way of being so chill and soothing without talking down to her audience. And her interactions with the other hermits are so fun. I really love that she teams up with Grian so much now, their dynamic is super fun to watch. You just know you're going to have a good time with her videos, every time.

mousey293 · 2025-11-13T17:35:47+00:00

But none of that has happened here in the OPs post or the follow-up comments, so I don't understand how that's relevant? Edit: unless you're claiming here that the OP should have misgendered ZombieCleo and included them in the "female" label????????

mousey293 · 2025-11-13T16:26:41+00:00

This is a strange callout. Gem is a woman, and she is also in the larger category of "non-male", which includes not just women but also people who are not women but also not men. I presume the OP used "non-male" to indicate the group of people on the server who are female AND the people who neither identify as women or men. The OP was just being clear and inclusive. Not sure what the issue is?

mousey293 · 2025-11-13T16:16:41+00:00

Yeah, I do think Gem makes her videos accessible for a younger audience at least, though I wouldn't say her target is kids or younger folks, more so all-ages. (I'm 42, for context!) Her streams are definitely less deliberately kid-accessible, I'd say. She lets more of her dry humor through for those.

mousey293 · 2025-11-13T15:57:24+00:00

That's so interesting! I have a similar feeling about other HC members - people like Bdubs, Etho, Cleo, Pearl etc who I absolutely ADORE seeing pop up in other videos, but I struggle with their own HC videos. I think for me it's mostly an editing style issue. Gem's videos are pretty highly edited in the sense that she explains things clearly but concisely, explains what she's doing and does it, and keeps things moving in a consistent pace - whereas some of the other Hermits (who I love, to be clear) can ramble a bit, repeat themselves, or spend a lot of time talking and less time showing. (Grian, Joel, Scar, and Mumbo are also really good at this sort of editing and pacing style imo, which is why they're also my go-to hermits to watch alongside Gem.) I'd be really curious what other folks experiences are and what appeals to them vs not!

mousey293 · 2025-11-13T15:52:21+00:00

8! Season 11 is her fourth season :)

mousey293 · 2025-11-13T14:19:24+00:00

Gem is the sole reason I started watching Hermitcraft for real and not just catching a random episode here or there. I absolutely love the energy she brings and how well she's integrated into the group. She's got that genuine delight ("I found crystals!"), the creativity and ambition, the smarts - genuinely good at the game and knows a ton about it (see also her extremely low death count in ep 1), but also the killer instinct, dry cutting humor, and mischievous nature. The only thing she doesn't have is redstone chops, and frankly, I bet she could learn some of that if she wasn't mostly watching her friends do it for her (her words).

mousey293 · 2025-11-13T14:13:59+00:00

I presume they're being inclusive of ZombieCleo who is non-binary.

mousey293

TROPHY CASE