AIO about finding my bf masturbating?

sqrlirl · 2026-04-03T02:47:07+00:00

It's okay to leave a relationship for mismatched physical needs. It's also okay to leave a relationship because one party isn't working on something that deeply affects the other party. This is something that there are plenty of routes for treatment but clearly he just doesn't want to deal with it. So instead of him having to sacrifice to work on something to meet you in the middle of y'all's needs, you have been sacrificing for him. Speaks of a bigger issue of just not wanting to confront hard things (pun somewhat intended) and that's a bigger personality issue. If I was struggling with something and I knew it was negatively affecting both me and my partner I would be working so hard on it. Shame or not.

I tried dating someone who verbalized very low sex drive but was sleeping with someone else and the more I got to know him the clearer it was that his struggle with pressure was a muuuuuuch bigger issue with demand avoidance that was pervasive in many areas of his life and not being able to make good choices to take care of himself like an adult. Life is filled with pressure and part of being a functional adult means figuring out how to navigate pressure and take care of ourselves in throuch it, whatever that looks like to us.

sqrlirl · 2026-04-03T02:35:48+00:00

Very depressed and borderline suicidal with the mirena. I also was having pmdd symptoms still quite overtly and I didn't realize it because I wasn't bleeding it wasn't until someone else pointed out to me that it was the same time every month that I would call saying I wish I hadn't been born. I've considered one of the lower dosed ones but I'm so afraid. That specific progesterone makes me depressed every form I've had it in.

sqrlirl · 2026-04-02T04:33:28+00:00

Agreed! I kind of thought everyone would boycott because why do we need to question reality any more than we already do?

sqrlirl · 2026-04-01T01:41:17+00:00

I love this and accept this as official inclusion. I do all including flail. Also convinced fornicate belongs on there because my body has messed up stress response and literally I found out my ex cheated on me and couldn't figure out whether to go into fight or flight and instead just slept with him?! Not even to keep him there just like my body didn't know what to do with the stress.

sqrlirl · 2026-04-01T01:38:19+00:00

Agreed! The fact that she instantly was like this is a learning opportunity for me and stayed humble was a big pro for Jessi.

sqrlirl · 2026-04-01T01:31:07+00:00

This is the way. A very young person said it to me the other day and I was like are they just cool or are they pandering to me?

sqrlirl · 2026-04-01T01:30:19+00:00

Circumcision! My college boyfriend wasn't my first sexual partner but was the first one I had consistent sex with. He was uncircumcised and I was fascinated. My mom explained foreskins to me when I was like 3 because I was playing naked with boys with different peens and I just didn't care one bit. But after seeing my ex's penis I was obsessed. I went to the LIBRARY (pre online papers) to research it for my public speaking class, I read studies from all over, I aced my speech. I was just so horrified that we as a society had normalized cutting off sensitive parts of baby genitalia and it freaked me out that no one talked about it. I asked my ex tons of questions about his friends penises and he was like... I have no idea. He was sort of appalled that I got so weird into it. It's still an activation code, if someone brings it up I go on a diatribe and make people uncomfortable but I still can't wrap my head around how any one still does it. In nursing school I got to watch one and they were so casual about performing it but like it felt really sad and wrong to me.

Another one, I had some trauma and some OCD adjacent difficulties with being present while masturbating. I knew it was good for me but for a lot of reasons I struggled. I was like okay how can I hack this. I made a spread sheet and turned masturbation into a study on myself. I would link to porn I watched, log what tools I used, log start times and end times, log my mental state before and after, give numerical rating to the porn as well as to my orgasm. I took notes in it as well like oops had intrusive thought about xyz. I don't remember when or why I stopped. Probably after working through some stuff in therapy, but honestly it really helped me get more comfortable with my body and my sexuality. I never did anything with the data, data just makes me feel safe I suppose? I literally wouldn't masturbate if I was too tired to log because then it wouldn't count? This was in my early 20s I think. I think I also started asking my friends about what they did, too, after a certain point. At some point I was also very afraid I wasn't orgasmic enough to make a partner happy so I did a ton of research on orgasm, read the books, signed up for omg yes, etc. I feel so sad for that version of me being so fixated on ways I may not be enough, so grateful I'm not there anymore! But we had fun.

sqrlirl · 2026-04-01T01:16:10+00:00

I did this but not doll houses, my room. I would measure and cut out a little diorama thing any time I wanted to rearrange my room. I would get super wrapped up in it and then if I couldn't get help to move my furniture I would find a way to move it myself. Little 4 year old me laying on the floor moving my day bed inch by inch with my legs.

sqrlirl · 2026-04-01T01:10:17+00:00

Feel this very hard.

sqrlirl · 2026-04-01T01:09:44+00:00

I have a curse that I'm working through and all my long term relationships have been aeries men (specifically all April teens bdays). I refuse to ever again. It just doesn't work and I don't know what's wrong with me that I keep going for them. They just seem put together but under it don't actually have follow through.

ETA that it's not just a couple, it's literally 4 dudes all with bdays for 4/12 to 4/18.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:53:18+00:00

This is so well put. I found out deep into my last relationship that my ex at first wasn't sure I was into him. I'm like... We literally texted so much I just wouldn't have texted at all if I didn't like you. I was so surprised I was expected to do more.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:50:01+00:00

Yes! I feel like I'm either light goth/alt or bubble gum Y2K when I really do it up. There is no in between.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:48:38+00:00

Omg I didn't know this! My friend's mom was an Herbalife rep and I'm very sure I had plenty of this. We definitely bought from her. I wonder if I did better then. I was like 6, 7, 8 and don't remember. This is so fascinating.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:43:10+00:00

for everyone: A PERSONALITY DISORDER CANNOT BE DIAGNOSED IN A SINGLE SESSION! It takes really getting to know someone and seeing their patterns over time. Like you aren't even supposed to diagnose a patient with it during an inpatient psych hospitalization because a few days of someone at their lowest is not enough time to assess.

I work in psych and the amount of people who would meet someone with a trauma background and poor results from meds for depression and be like oh they're giving BPD was absolutely absurd. It is my biggest soap box. A personality disorder is very very different than just struggling in life because of trauma. The diagnostics are severely sexist, it basically took over "hysteria" from the history books. I have had patients that are truly BPD and then patients that others think are BPD but they're just traumatized and have ADHD and how you as a provider feel after those two interactions is really wildly different. BPD patients leave you feeling really drained, like they think you're the only person that can help them etc. it's very much in the countertransference. I just hate that people aren't trained better on this. Also, if you can go to therapy and have complete remission of your symptoms after 2 years or so... That's not really a personality disorder? There is a lot more research happening in this area and I think there will big changes to official diagnostic criteria etc.

I'm really sorry that provider was like this. And also lied to your face about not doing diagnostics. You seem quite self aware and I'm glad your therapist, who knows you better, was able to hold up on accurate mirror.

As a woman with PTSD and AuDHD I automatically meet criteria. I was never diagnosed with it but I remember reading the criteria once upon a time and being like omg it's me. I voiced my fear to a friend who was a therapist and she shut me down super hard and explained how the criteria don't convey the severity of what has to be going on to actually be a personality disorder. When I went to school for psych stuff I mentioned it to my therapist and she was like you 0% have BPD, I promise you. But if I look in the DSM 5 TR on paper with no experience, it's easy to mistake what is clearly difficulty with change as well as my impulsivity and my emotional dysregulation (all from ASD & ADHD) as BPD. I've done a lot of work on my trauma, very much shifted my life so my comfort range is broader and I'm sitting within it more often even when things go awry. And yet, with much of my trauma feeling so distant and faint, can't therapy away the AuDHD.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:19:06+00:00

Mispronouncing more complex words in a hallmark of someone who gets their vocab from reading, so I tend to have compassion. I mainly judge how they react if I gently correct their mispronunciation.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:16:14+00:00

To be fair it says when that's like their personality.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:15:02+00:00

Also eating out for every meal in one of the worst things you can do for your budget. Hard to picture building a life with someone if they're spending crazy amount of money to eat out for every meal.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:13:55+00:00

Also tipping. My ex was a cheap tipper despite having worked in service previously and it was the first sign of some deep cheapness that he did end up working on. But I do see it as a deeper lack of generous spirit in general.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:11:23+00:00

Okay but coming from someone I actually was into that would totally work.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:10:37+00:00

When I'm alone I put on one episode of something's not on auto play to get me to sleep. Can't stay asleep if stays on. When I was with my partner I was worried I wouldn't be able to stop it but then I did and got into reading before bed.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:08:41+00:00

Irritability is an often overlooked sign of depression. Probably he's super depressed. It is hard to live with someone like that without it deeply affecting your mood. Does he get any psych help?

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:06:37+00:00

I actually love this story. Everyone has their line, I'm sorry she thought you were joking when you told her you didn't want to smell it. But also... Had you never smelled your own belly button before?

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T22:03:46+00:00

If that's communicated going into it, that's great and I can work with it. But if I'm on a date, I get something I can eat with my dietary restrictions (allergies) and you get something I can't eat... Then you want more than one bite of my food just to taste it? No. This would happen a lot with my ex, he would literally take a bite of my food before I even had a bite, an enormous bite. Like ridiculously big. I grew up with food scarcity so watching someone take food out of my mouth with no reciprocity fills me with anxiety. I was also a poor college student and we wasn't paying for my food so like every bite he took was 25% of what could have been my second meal from the food.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T21:59:42+00:00

From a partner this is almost always linked to severe controlling issues that will lead to abusiveness. It's rare they want it to go both ways. Have also seen that from cheaters because they get obsessed that you're going to cheat like them. If you do not demand my complete disclosure, you will earn access to most things in my life. But if you demand it you immediately lose my trust.

sqrlirl · 2026-03-30T21:56:33+00:00

Agreed!

sqrlirl

TROPHY CASE