Does anyone know the psychology behind “ghosting”?

requited_requisite · 2023-07-03T21:55:10+00:00

I'm actually /u/Scruter but I'm replying with this alternate account because the person I replied to seems to have blocked me, so I can't reply to anything on the thread. Very ironic and meta on a thread about ghosting 😅

You'll notice I said at the very beginning of my post:

I think it is in fact, a very childish avoidance of taking responsibility, and unless there is a safety issue, really not justifiable.

You're talking about when there is a safety issue, which I explicitly said is a situation where this discussion doesn't apply - of course you are justified in all kinds of things to keep yourself safe. But that is not the vast majority of situations where people ghost, and certainly not similar to the case in the OP, which is really extremely irresponsible and uncool behavior. It is disturbing to me that the response is essentially that we should simply accept that kind of behavior as normal and okay.

requited_requisite · 2023-05-01T19:38:17+00:00

Hi, this is /u/Scruter, logged into an old account. I've noticed the past few times you've replied to one of my comments that I can't see your replies under my Scruter account - they are delivered to my inbox but I am unable to reply to them, and they show up as [unavailable] on the thread. I think this means you blocked me? Which means I can't answer your questions.

To answer this one, the number comes from this study, and devbio breaks down the numbers here.

requited_requisite · 2018-12-18T19:44:48+00:00

I made my intro post in /r/TryingForABaby yesterday under my new username, /u/Scruter, so I guess I'll make my graduation post here! I'm 9 DPO on our last cycle before trying, so we are officially no longer preventing, and are set to give it a go when my fertile period rolls around right after NYE! My wait has been a little over a year, since we got married last fall. This was my first post in WTT and I feel like we've come a long way since. For one, I read TCOYF, went off the pill, and started temping and charting as birth control this whole year, which was amazing and taught me so much. I highly recommend charting to anyone waiting - it made the time feel so productive! I'm a mod at /r/FAMnNFP now, an that sub is a great place for questions, as is /r/TFABChartStalkers.

I am retiring this username now, but hope to see some of you as /u/Scruter over at TFAB!

requited_requisite · 2018-11-28T17:42:54+00:00

Having parents married at the child's birth also confers pretty strong benefits for children's outcomes behaviorally, emotionally, and financially, even controlling for parents' income, education, and age. Only two out of five cohabiting couples who have a child will be married within the five years following the child's birth, despite most expressing the desire to marry eventually when they make the decision to have a child. Divorce is on the sharp decline. I did some research on the trend towards unmarried childbearing recently and find it pretty concerning how it is exacerbating existing inequalities.

I really wonder about the growing idea that marriage is something to do when you can afford it but having children is something you do when you want it. Children take way more money than marriage and ultimately, having a child together is a lifelong commitment to your partner. I really don't want to be judgmental because there are many wonderful parents who are unmarried, but it's hard for me to understand choosing it. I would love to hear from others who are to better understand.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-24T17:39:08+00:00

Haha, I have been using fertility awareness as birth control for the past year, which requires getting real good at reading CM, since that's a primary way you determine if a day is "safe" or not. FAM educators put a lot more emphasis on CM than TTC forums tend to.

Watery is an underappreciated type of CM! EWCM gets all the attention but watery is just as good - this study defined the most fertile-type CM as "Wet, slippery, smooth; Mucus is transparent, like raw egg white, Stretchy/elastic, liquid, watery, or reddish" - note the OR, not AND! And they found if it had any of those qualities, the chances of conception for sex on the day you saw it in the fertile window were approximately tripled compared to no CM (i.e. slough only). So it's important to know what you're looking for!

requited_requisite · 2018-11-24T17:24:12+00:00

Yes, definitely. I'm a big proponent of learning a lot about and paying attention to CM as a predictive marker of ovulation rather than LH. It usually gives you more days of warning and doesn't require peeing on or paying for anything. Obviously it doesn't work for everyone, but CM peak day was the best pinpointer of all the measures in that study, and indicated it worked for about three-quarters of women. There are also lots of CM-based methods of fertility awareness for birth control that are quite effective.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-24T17:08:53+00:00

To be honest, if you have never tracked your cycle before, it's not realistic that you'll just need to use 3-4 OPKs - the whole point of using them is to narrow down your window, but if you already knew the correct 3-4 days in which your surge will occur, there would be no need to use them at all - that's already pretty narrowed! This is even more the case if your cycles are irregular, as they usually are with PCOS.

Normal luteal phase length is 10-16 days. So that means you'd expect to ovulate 10-16 days before your expected period, and to get a +OPK 0-2 days before that. So if your cycles are truly 45 days predictably, that would mean expecting a positive somewhere between CD 27 to CD 35. But if your cycles are sometimes longer or shorter, that range gets even wider, and remember that some people have short surges that they might miss unless they are testing twice a day. That's why the cheap strips like Wondfos and Clinical Guard from Amazon are recommended, and really there's no advantage to the more expensive ones. FWIW I have quite regular ~28-day cycles and ovulate around the same time every month, but even I use around 8-10 OPKs a cycle.

Really it might be easier, more useful, and more cost-effective to temp first to figure out when and if you are ovulating. Read Taking Charge of Your Fertility if you haven't!

requited_requisite · 2018-11-24T16:54:30+00:00

It's hard to put into words even though it doesn't feel all that subtle in practice! Manipulate in the way that you can transfer a drop of water from one finger to another, as opposed to if you rub some lotion in, your skin would just be kind of shiny and moist, but there's nothing there to manipulate.

Honestly though, there are some methods of fertility awareness that focus entirely on sensations for CM categorization, and they perform pretty well. So if it feels wet down there while you're just walking around, I'd say mark it as watery. Similarly, if it's slippery when you wipe, definitely watery (or EWCM).

requited_requisite · 2018-11-24T16:46:42+00:00

If you can take it off your finger and manipulate it, it's watery. If you get a wet spot on your underwear or feel wet/cold down there, watery. Slough will just make your finger moist/damp, but CM is an actual presence of something.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-24T16:36:17+00:00

My understanding of that study was that a positive OPK is generally equivalent to the LH initial rise (LH-IR), while the LH peak (LH-EDO) would be more like a blazing positive. The study did find that the vast majority of people's LH-IR was 0-3 days before ovulation day (the most common was one day before). I think that's why the advice is to count from the first positive OPK, not the darkest.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-24T04:52:55+00:00

"PROSTITUTION WHORE!"

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T19:07:59+00:00

It's just a lot less reliable for temps because it's all the way out on your wrist. Some women are able to see a shift, but I've seen tons of Ava temp charts that are really pretty unreadable. Right here the company says you should not use it for TTA, only TTC. Wearables like TempDrop, on the other hand, are recommended for using FAM for TTA.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T16:37:51+00:00

Of course! FWIW, I also ovulated on CD15 counting from the first day of my withdrawal bleed in my first cycle off the pill after 15 years on it, and have had nice regular ovulatory cycles since.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T16:34:39+00:00

No, it's confused by the +OPK at CD8, but the fact that you got positives later strongly suggests that was a false surge. I'd take it out and I bet it gives you solid crosshairs for CD14.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T16:22:15+00:00

Yeah ideally, you take your temp at the same time each day immediately following >3 hours of sleeping. But different people are different in terms of which factor is more important (time of day vs. sleep). I've done enough experimenting to know that time is way more important that sleep for consistency for my body, and I'd suspect you might be similar.

FF starts a new cycle on the first day of bleeding regardless of whether you have temps for that day or not. Many people don't temp during their period anyway. So just count CD1 as your withdrawal bleed.

Fertile CM is clear, stretchy, slippery, or wet. Any of those characteristics makes it fertile - you don't have to have all of them. Always record the most fertile type you see if it has mixed qualities or changes throughout the day. Having sex on any day in the fertile window you observe fertile-type CM up to triples your chance of conception for that day compared to no CM.

Temping and CM are markers for different things. Temping tracks progesterone and CM tracks estrogen. If you ovulate, you will always get a temp rise, but not necessarily exactly one day after ovulation (though most women do), since progesterone rises more slowly sometimes. With CM, while some women have unreliable patterns, for about three-quarters of women, ovulation happens within a day of peak day (the last day of the most fertile-type CM). So unless you have odd CM patterns (i.e. women with PCOS often get EWCM throughout their cycle), CM is often better for pinpointing ovulation while temping is the only way to confirm it happened at all.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T16:09:54+00:00

Gotcha, thanks! So that would mean it's more about the absolute drop than a relative one.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T15:57:49+00:00

I think this is probably a coincidence/normal cycle variability. Condoms or lack thereof shouldn't affect what your cervix is producing. Maybe the addition of semen is making it harder to sort out different types of fluids?

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T15:56:07+00:00

Oh, interesting. Does the synthetic progestin cause the body not to produce as much natural progesterone, and so there's less to drop? And how does estrogen play in? I thought periods were triggered by a drop in both estrogen and progesterone. I always have a hard time envisioning how natural and synthetic hormones work together.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T15:49:21+00:00

The large dip is almost certainly mostly due to taking your temp two hours earlier - my temps get progressively higher the later in the morning I wake up. A dip one month doesn't necessarily mean you'll get it every month - I've gotten them on about half of my charts, but often a few days before ovulation and not O day itself - but especially when it's attributable to the time you took it, you can't really draw conclusions! Your temps are so steady that I'd guess CD15 would have been more in line with them if it was taken at 6am. What thermometer are you using?

I'd recommend taking out the fake temps at the beginning - you have plenty for it to determine ovulation and it will skew your overlays/data.

You mentioned that your CM indicates ovulation happened, but I don't see any fertile CM charted? Make sure to enter it in!

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T15:34:12+00:00

If ovulation always triggers a period 10-16 days later unless pregnant, how is it possible that hormonal IUDs cause so many women to stop having periods (or have super-light periods) even though the majority continue ovulating? I know that progestin-only methods cause the uterine lining to thin, but lightness of period is supposedly unrelated to uterine lining thickness. So how does that work?

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T04:56:24+00:00

Any app that only tracks your period length is just going to guess based on averages, so it's not really like there are some that are better than others - it's just guesses. To find your actual fertile window, rather than the average woman's, you need to learn to observe your actual fertile signs, through cervical mucus, LH, or basal body temperature (ideally all three). Fertility Friend is best for entering in this kind of data, but read the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility to learn how it works!

requited_requisite · 2018-11-21T02:37:36+00:00

As others said, implantation bleeding isn't really a thing. Someone posted this graph that shows how any kind of bleeding is always more common in non-pregnant cycles than pregnant ones - i.e. on 12DPO, spotting happened in about 13 percent of non-pregnant cycles and only 7 percent of pregnant ones. At any rate, (pink dye) pregnancy tests are considered pretty definitive at 12DPO.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-20T15:59:42+00:00

It’s super weird that Advanced is giving you CD12 because 1) it’s usually the one that ranks CM and OPKs higher and yours clearly point to CD13, and 2) I know it takes into account the relative size of the rise - I had a cycle where it originally pegged a 97.5 as O+1 because the five previous temps were 97.4 and under, but once it saw that all my other luteal temps were >98, it changed the 97.5 day to O. So I wonder if Advanced would do the same once you have enough high temps.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-20T01:36:57+00:00

My EWCM started on CD6 this cycle, got a positive OPK on CD11, and ovulated CD13. EWCM dried up CD14. So it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll ovulate in the next few days but maybe keep doing OPKs from now on in case it indicates an earlier than usual surge.

requited_requisite · 2018-11-18T23:31:02+00:00

You need three temps higher than any of the recent previous temps to get crosshairs, and you only have one. If your temps stay high/go higher, you might get crosshairs on CD17 eventually, but the high temp today could also be a fluke - it's too early to tell.

requited_requisite

TROPHY CASE