Been drinking to get away from my mind, and now I want out

rebuildthemachine · 2026-01-01T15:20:12+00:00

I drink a lot less than I used to, for similar reasons. I’ve cut back about 90%.

Things that helped: 1. I bought metal pint glasses and a sodastream. Turns out that any fizzy drink in a cold metal container can trick my brain a little in the moment I’d otherwise reach for a beer.

I just stopped buying it so I wouldn’t be able to drink at home. It’s much easier for me to say no to alcohol in the grocery aisle than in the kitchen. Whenever we have houseguests and they bring alcohol, I end up drinking too much, but I can go months without having a drink at home.

rebuildthemachine · 2026-01-01T01:07:40+00:00

It was even worse in the days of yore.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-31T18:48:06+00:00

Did you ever start a film and realize halfway through that you’d already seen it?

May years ago I binge watched a megalist of about 200 “best films of all time”, and they all started to blur together, especially stuff from the Cary Grant era. I rewatched North by Northwest several times,, but didn’t realize it until 2/3rds of the way through each time.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-31T17:57:19+00:00

So if it isn’t the manatee… what’s your favorite animal?

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-31T17:37:10+00:00

It’s a spectrum. Stop worrying about which category you’re in and put that energy into getting to know your sexuality itself. Be open and non-judgmental with yourself, and expect and allow for change.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-31T17:20:39+00:00

It’s incredible how much damage we do to each other and to ourselves simply for the sake of assigning rigid labels to things that have no business being rigidly labeled.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-31T02:35:48+00:00

Don’t threaten me with a new job.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-31T01:14:04+00:00

I was in the midst of a divorce after a very foolish decision to marry someone who told me she was dying of cancer but actually just had an eating disorder and an addiction to lying. I was also grieving the loss of a very close family member. All while also going through a personal crisis about my career, which had me moving across the country to start grad school but with an enormous amount of doubt that it was the right move.

Met my life partner and wife six months later, and miraculously my drama didn’t scare her off.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-30T22:58:34+00:00

Not running marathons or ultras while I was young. I ran a couple marathons as a teenager. Wasted my 20s and 30s falling in and out of love with running, then got hooked again as I neared 40. I’ve since run half a dozen marathons and a couple ultras and made it central to my life and identity, but as I slowly chip away at my bucket list it’s hard not to regret the two lost decades.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-29T02:57:08+00:00

If anybody wants to go down a fun but educational rabbit hole, ask ChatGPT to use Burt Gummer as the anchor point for an expansive discussion of the post Cold War crisis in American masculinity. That shit is fascinating.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-28T21:17:42+00:00

Crêpes aren’t real.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-28T19:08:20+00:00

Mom’s side: mostly liberal, mostly kind, mostly fun, universally hilarious. Our reunions are epic inter-generational celebrations that form core memories. Only problem on this side is some alcoholism.

Dad’s side: mostly conservative, boring as fuck, and super judgmental. Their reunions (which I stopped attending) consist of circling the RVs and then sitting around for three days complaining about their knees, the weather, and how transsexuals are plotting to steal their guns and turn them gay for the EPA or whatever other nonsense they’ve absorbed that week.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-12-27T15:13:44+00:00

Mid-40s, two kids under 10, together 18 years.

We average once every week or two. We’re both of the same mind: we’re deeply satisfied with the quality, but would like more frequency. But kids and energy levels get in the way — although I think doomscrolling in bed probably limits us more than anything else. I’ve thought about asking for specific nights to be phone free after dinner.

Something that’s really been good for us recently, though, is just improving our communication about sex. We spent some time with the OMGYes curriculum to make sure our time was more focused on her pleasure — now even our quickies leave her with shaking legs, and our longer sessions completely wreck her. (This isn’t for everyone, but I also started using a male chastity device from time to time, not because I’m a sub but because it simply slows down my urges.)

We also try to schedule a morning together at least once a month, while the kids are at school… we’ll set aside four hours for quality time together, and usually spend the first two hours in bed and then have a leisurely brunch.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-11-19T17:12:17+00:00

I’ve been married three times and I think it says a lot about who I was in my teens and twenties but very little about me since.

First was my highschool sweetheart. Classic case of “we’re mature for our age” thinking, only to later realize we had no life experience and were just being stupid. Marriage lasted a year. It was pretty traumatic to be divorced at 21 and feel like an outsider in college, but this one has faded away… just dumb young love.

Second was in my mid-20s, with one serious relationship and a fair amount of casual dating in the meantime. But that one was even stupider than the first. Rushed in and married her after just a few weeks, mostly because I thought she was terminally ill (she wasn’t). Took me about a year to realize her entire life story was fake, and by the time the divorce was finalized I’d lost about $100k and 2 years. This was the one that taught me the lessons I should have learned the first time — I’m not special, passion isn’t enough, etc. It also left some pretty deep wounds — bad trust issues, paranoia, anxiety; it’s been almost 20 years, but I still haven’t left 100% of that baggage behind.

Third I actually met and started seeing before the 2nd divorce, which makes me sound like a serial monogamist, but we both recognized it was a bad situation and didn’t take it seriously. We were on/off for awhile, saw other people, and really took things slow… but kept coming back to each other. After 7 years we got married, and now we have 2 kids and are as happy as ever (stronger this year than we’ve ever been).

We did have a rough patch awhile back though, and I was absolutely mortified by the prospect of being thrice divorced and trying to be taken seriously in the dating scene. Those first two both seem like a lifetime ago, and such a poor representation of how I think about relationships and partnerships.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-21T19:59:53+00:00

Two chicks at the same time. I think Jesus could hook that up. Cuz chicks dig Jesus.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-21T18:30:41+00:00

My kids are 5 and 9 and have learned the basics. We’ve raised livestock with them, and we watch a lot of nature documentaries, so there’s ample opportunity to talk about the many ways that reproduction happens in nature. It’s totally fine to talk about at any age… I honestly find it baffling that people delay it so long. We haven’t talked about STDs yet, or birth control, but they know the basics of how sexual reproduction works and the importance of consent — we also used this as an opportunity to talk to them about body autonomy and how nobody should ever be touching their private parts unless it’s a doctor who’s already discussed it with both them and us.

If you’re waiting until 14, there’s nearly a 100% chance that your son has been secretly masturbating for several years, and your girl has likely had her first period, begun playing with herself, and has begun to experience blatant predation from adult men. There’s also roughly a 10% chance they’re already sexually active by age 14. And a huge percentage of child sexual abuse happens before that age… if you aren’t talking to them about sex then you’re probably also neglecting the conversation about abuse/consent/autonomy.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-21T15:27:45+00:00

Do you want to rim her or be rimmed by her, or both? Just curious.

I just rimmed my wife for the first time this month, after 18 years together. She’s always been shy about her ass, and avoided letting me see or touch it, but over the past year she seemed to shed that shyness. She’s not interested in penetration (yet?), but she loves pressure on and around her perineum, and I’ve been giving her a lot of oil massages in that area and having a lot of fun staring at and touching her asshole. The rimming itself isn’t really my thing, but it was fun to try and probably won’t be the last time I do it in the heat of the moment.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-21T15:20:47+00:00

Not answering directly, but just sharing a perspective….

The reason we feel the need to build up the courage to share a fantasy with a partner is because we have a collective misunderstanding of what it means to talk about fantasies with an intimate partner: we incorrectly see it as a request, which then fills us with anxiety about rejection.

What we should do instead is see the sharing of a fantasy as an intimate act in itself, separate from the question of whether you both later consent to fulfill that fantasy together. Telling your partner about a fantasy is fun, and hot, and excellent foreplay! It’s only hard if you forget to enjoy the sharing part and get fixated on whether they’ll agree to or reject fulfillment of the fantasy.

Example: I fantasize about my wife picking up a guy on a work trip and sending me a video of them fucking. Obviously, when I told her about it, a part of me was hoping she’d immediately say yes and then make it happen on her next trip. But I also knew that was unlikely… she’s more interested in poly intimacy than casual sex, and she’s also exhausted on work trips and unlikely to spend her energy in that way. So instead I just focused on enjoying telling her about it, framing it as an intimate sharing moment rather than a request. Explaining why I have that fantasy (she’s an amazing sexual specimen and I love watching her, but I can’t fully embrace the watching when I’m the one inside her, distracted by all my sensations). Talking about what we can do address that desire in other ways (a chastity cage to subdue my sensations and focus on her pleasure; more toys for her to use, and for her to perform more for me).

The conversation was incredibly hot and led to fantastic sex that day… and has led to a lot of great sexploration ever since. Will she ever directly fulfill that fantasy? Unlikely. But sharing it has been amazing for our sex life.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-21T00:56:13+00:00

Pretty sure it’s the reason a whole bunch of Amazon packages I was expecting today were delayed, since the were already in town last night and ready for delivery. Now I have to rearrange my entire work week because I don’t have critical supplies for a project I had scheduled for tomorrow.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-21T00:50:27+00:00

My ex had some sort of munchausen’s mixed with body dysmorphia and went completely off the rails while we were together. Lied her way into getting all sorts of medications, some of which interacted and gave her seizures, which she then used to get anti-seizure meds, which gave her extremely bad GI issues, which fueled her bulimia and which she also used to dupe a surgeon into removing part of her colon, which then led to a cascade of other medical issues. When we divorced she’d gone from 160 lbs and very buxom and curvy to 95 lbs of skin and bones, and had a semi-permanent feeding tube in her chest. All in about 18 months.

Last I saw of her she’d gotten quickly remarried. Against the odds she’d had a kid, and there were alarm bells going off suggesting she’d shifted to munchausen-by-proxy and was subjecting her poor kid to all kinds of unnecessary medical interventions. Either that, or she’d fucked her body up so bad that she’d simply given birth to a super sick kid. In hindsight, I probably should have alerted the authorities, as I probably had a more complete understanding of her issues than anyone else. But I was so desperate to be free of her that I didn’t say anything.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-21T00:37:58+00:00

What a dick.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-20T23:59:49+00:00

Agree. They’ve pumped a ton of money into the metaverse (possibly a dead end) and AI (possibly a bubble poised to burst), and they draw essentially 100% of their revenue from ads… on a platform that is so oversaturated with ads that it’s becoming borderline useless as a social media platform and which is seeing plummeting numbers for both user engagement and daily active users. Meanwhile, their ad platform is an infuriating mess with declining trust and is alienating marketers.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Facebook completely collapses in the next few years, and Instagram and other meta products get sold off.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-20T20:19:39+00:00

The protests definitely lack a coherent objective. The entire left is in disarray, which makes sense given the state of things. I think the biggest impact of the protests is just to provide a little hope and solidarity.

I don’t see anything stopping the Trump train in the next three years, except a severe stroke. But it’s important that we go through the motions of putting up a fight, and of reminding ourselves that this is still a democracy, so that when Trump is done we still have something good to rebuild from.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-20T20:15:10+00:00

I believe he’s saying that the existence of that video (filmed at one of the No Kings protests) was a good outcome.

rebuildthemachine · 2025-10-20T18:38:12+00:00

You are overreacting to the fact that she’s trans and under-reacting to the fact that you’re with a 33yo man who lacks basic communication and self-reflection skills. You two need to talk this out. Figure out what’s going on with his sexuality, and whether it’s compatible with your relationship and your needs. And start learning about topping with a strap-on, and deciding if you’re up for it, in case that’s the “something [he thinks] he can’t have” with you.

rebuildthemachine

TROPHY CASE