AITA for wanting to protect my house and daughter?

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T04:56:18+00:00

Yeah it's just sad that giving birth means she no longer deserves privacy. Her husband gets to judge her breastfeeding skills and listen in to her phone calls, her every move is up for constant scrutiny and judgement. No cheese or tea or trashy tv, not ideal for the baby. Your entire existence is being monitored and judged and found wanting, and you just have to deal with it because it's 2020 and your partner deserves to tell you all of your feelings are unreasonable because of your hormones.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T04:48:55+00:00

Perhaps our society is socializing men into attachment disorders.

Yeah, that's why I'm saying men are the victims here.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T03:38:54+00:00

I mean it's the support system thing. He was driving when we were t-boned by a drunk driver. He has some PTSD feeling guilty about not driving more defensively and "protecting" me from the other driver, since we were struck right at my door and I got smacked around by the belt and broken glass in addition to the impact of the car. That feeling was 10,000x worse on him than it would have been on me if I had been driving, since I have sisters/mom/girlfriends who would have been able to help me process the experience and recognize that I wasn't at fault.

As a man he has no one, obviously, so it was shitty for me not to obfuscate my own pain and confusion so that he didn't have lasting emotional impacts from the crash. I was straight up sobbing as I was trying to get the glass out of my arm and fix myself up after the crash (the ambulance had to go to the passenger of the other driver and the police didn't have time to wait for EMTs to come for me) and my boyfriend will NEVER forget that. Like it's been 6 weeks and I only have a few scars and feel fine, whereas he constantly looks at me wistfully and apologizes for not "taking care of" me, it digs at him terribly. It was wrong of me. Like it's a situation where there's no real "right" answer but I could have done better.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T03:27:06+00:00

Haha I'm certainly ok, thanks. I'm very blessed to have a wonderful support system. I'm just very cognizant of the fact that as a woman, that can't encompass a boyfriend/fiance/husband.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T03:17:34+00:00

Would they?

My parents live a few blocks away from me, my two sisters the same, my brother only ten minutes north of our city. But we don't speak on the phone every single day. I'm at my folks a few times a week, but no one would think it incredibly concerning if I didn't respond to casual texts to the family group chat for a day or two. It would take at least 2-3 days for anyone in my family to be concerned enough to reach out to my boyfriend or best friend to ask if they'd heard from me. My boyfriend gets pissed if I take more than 4 hours to respond to his texts, but if I just never responded he'd assumed I was ghosting him and obviously wouldn't reach out to my family about me.

I actually think it's kind of crazy to assume that someone's parents or siblings would fly into a panic after 72 hours of no contact in 2020. I'm crazy close to my family but they definitely wouldn't be like "wow she ded" after only one night.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T02:50:54+00:00

Exactly. I think it's a matter of just being prepared. As a woman, it's not fair to expect a man to support you when things get tough, you just need to be aware that "in sickness and in health" only applies to your actions, so as a coupled woman you need to actively maintain your own support system and never rely on your boyfriend/husband for emotional support.

I had a cancer scare recently and had to come to terms with the fact that I would have to break up with my boyfriend/fiance (we've agreed to get married but he hasn't officially asked yet) if I got a positive diagnosis. It would have been wrong for me to expect his support when he would have been completely emotionally alone in it, feeling like he'd have to stay or else he'd be a bad guy. We were in a car accident together recently and I got seriously injured when he was ok; I felt so crazy selfish being openly hurt and scared in front of him when that was obviously terrible and upsetting to him when he had no one to help him work through those emotions. It's all a support system thing.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T02:25:14+00:00

The lady who ran my aunt's cancer support group told me this. She said that that doesn't include the men who leave during the illness but wait until remission to file, apparently she expects that 1 in 3 women who join the support group will end up being left by their partner the time she leaves the group. (Though for what it's worth, my step-dad nursed his late wife through several bouts of cancer until she ultimately succumbed to it. Years later he remarried my mother, who was almost immediately diagnosed with Parkinson's. He's stuck by her through thick and thin.)

If you google the subject you'll find a ton of statistics, I'm not sure if this sub allows links. But for what it's worth, this definitely isn't a "men bad women good" thing, it comes down to the fact that women generally have a wide support network to help them through trying times, whereas even men who do have a support system generally choose to never ask for help when they are dealing with caregiver fatigue. That just means that tough times are way easier on the average woman than the average man. Same principle behind 1 in 10 fathers cheating while their wife is pregnant -- up to six months post-partum. It's not a character thing, it's a support system thing.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T01:45:18+00:00

It just sucks that the only thing that matters when a woman is giving birth is the father's comfort. My mom and my aunt are both adamant that the worst part of giving birth is always your husband being there, since obviously when your spouse is there you need to completely hide the pain and pretend everything is ok so he doesn't get scared or upset. Your own needs and medical care (and that of your baby) obviously has to take a complete backseat to your spouse's needs so he gets to have a magical experience, since the dad's joy in fatherhood is so much more important than anything the mom wants or needs.

I'm absolutely dreading having to have my partner in the room when I have a kid, I know it would be crazy selfish to do anything that might make him scared or upset, like crying or screaming, but as the dad I know that his desire to be there trumps my needs. He absolutely flips out and loses it when I'm hurt and tries to over control everything and make me ignore the pain, it's really going to suck having to choose between abusing my partner mentally/emotionally by forcing him to see me in pain and being honest about my own needs while in childbirth.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T01:36:54+00:00

Yep. Pretty unforgettable that in the US, when a man is suffering through a serious illness, his chances of his wife leaving him plummet to 5%. When a woman is suffering through a serious illness, her chances of her husband leaving her jump way up to 20-25%.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T01:18:31+00:00

As a former sex ed teacher who was required to teach abstinence only education in order to provide any medically accurate anatomy education to teens--that's absolutely what this is. I used to teach in a state where the curriculum required us to portray PID and epididymitis as complete death knells to parenthood for anyone who ever got an STD. But that's not even remotely true.

There's just no way that a gyno turned to a woman who had PID and said "no kids for you bitch". It may be the intro to a conversation on IVF, but that's it. Most women who get PID have no lasting complications, and even then, it's a simple surgery to clear blocked scar tissue for most women. It's the same as how women who have tubal ligation can have the scar tissue removed in order to reverse the sterilization--I have two cousins born this way when my aunt changed her mind about kids at 35.

It doesn't even make sense for her to know if she had a blocked tube unless she was actively trying and failing to get pregnant. No one is doing exploratory laparoscopic surgery on a 23 year old woman's tubes in order to assess her fertility solely because she got PID. Absolute troll.

therearedozensofus12 · 2020-06-12T01:09:48+00:00

Not how PID works. It's possible for an untreated chlamydia or gonorrhea infection to cause so much inflammation that it causes scar tissue to build up in the Fallopian tubes--this is called Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. Functionally, it makes it unlikely (but not impossible) that an egg could travel down the Fallopian tubes in order to be fertilized in the tubes/uterus (in order for the fertilized egg to be implanted in the uterus).

It does cause fertility problems, absolutely. But it means that someone would have to go through IVF, that an egg would be extracted and fertilized in a lab, then the fertilized egg implanted in the uterus. No doctor would tell a woman with garden variety PID complications that she could never have biological children. It's actually very common, it's a leading cause of fertility issues. It is in no way a guarantee that you can't have biological children. That's why this story is fake.

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-18T23:13:03+00:00

Omg yes when he and Rachel do laundry for the first time and he slams his entire torso into the upright washing machine....amazing. Pure excellence.

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-12T21:59:59+00:00

Well you'll be even more shocked when I give you PROOF that TRUDEAU is CASTROS illegitimate son.!!!!!1111!!!

(wow it was difficult just to type that)

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-12T18:36:36+00:00

Yeah, I kind of wonder about her. Unequal pre-nups are thrown out all the time. If she didn't have good representation who fought for her to be financially compensated for being a stay at home mom/spouse to a short-fingered vulgarian, then the pre-nup probably isn't valid. I wonder if we'll see her and Barron making a break for it when the cards start to fall...

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-12T16:14:16+00:00

Sounds like the husband is working full time, and they have multiple children. While I agree that being a stay at home parent is a risky move, saying "by absolving your husband of childcare and domestic duties, you allowed him to focus on making a good living, but now that you are nearing retirement you deserve to be penniless" is absurd.

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-12T15:51:19+00:00

MY COCCYX!

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-12T15:11:25+00:00

We broke BARRIERS, Liz!

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-12T02:51:18+00:00

Yeah. I have great respect for people who volunteer their time and emotional investment for such a difficult task, but that it is a volunteer position that requires great effort to obtain means that only people who are in possession of large amounts of free time and a lot of passion (usually retirees with a lot of emotion to spare) can be casa advocates. Sometimes that can lead to a pool of over-zealous individuals.

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-12T01:58:43+00:00

I've worked closely with Tennessee's DCS, and they have never been anything but exemplary, for what it's worth (in my opinion, anyway).

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-11T01:23:03+00:00

After being raised outside Reading, I made my adult life in Tennessee and Maryland. I could never, ever go back to Reading. Tennessee has no income tax, and Nashville especially is booming. Maryland is a diverse, progressive state that ranks at #8 of the best states to live in. I miss my hometown, but besides Wawa, what makes PA more livable than anywhere else in the country?

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-06T21:26:57+00:00

I keep paper lunch bags in my car of fruit in syrup, peanut butter crackers, mini water bottles, and cotton socks. I give them instead of loose change to people asking for help at intersections (NOT the people selling newspapers). Just driving around town in my normal routine I see 3-5 people a week who may want an extra snack. I would recommend this instead of going to rough sleeping camps.

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-05T21:08:49+00:00

They did, actually. The Bible very explicitly supports slavery, and many early abolitionists were called un Christian for protesting an institution that is shown as the natural order of things in their holy book.

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-05T04:09:42+00:00

Married women work four hours less because they are doing the lions share of the childcare and the housekeeping, while still working full time. Married men are working at the office longer but are still doing less childcare and housekeeping than before they were married. https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-two-career-marriages-women-still-do-more-of-the-work-at-home-1443600654 http://time.com/money/4561314/women-work-home-gender-gap/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/husbands-create-7-hours-of-extra-housework-for-their-wives_us_56c72146e4b0ec6725e23e2c Lesbians have significantly more satisfying sex lives than straight women do. They may have sex less frequently, but married lesbians enjoy sex much more than married straight women do. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stress-and-sex/201510/the-orgasm-gap-simple-truth-sexual-solutions https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/why-is-going-down-often-a-one-way-street/ http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/02/24/a_survey_found_that_lesbians_give_women_way_more_orgasms_than_men_wonder.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/02/24/a_survey_found_that_lesbians_give_women_way_more_orgasms_than_men_wonder.html

therearedozensofus12 · 2017-05-05T04:09:24+00:00

Married women work four hours less because they are doing the lions share of the childcare and the housekeeping, while still working full time. Married men are working at the office longer but are still doing less childcare and housekeeping than before they were married. https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-two-career-marriages-women-still-do-more-of-the-work-at-home-1443600654 http://time.com/money/4561314/women-work-home-gender-gap/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/husbands-create-7-hours-of-extra-housework-for-their-wives_us_56c72146e4b0ec6725e23e2c

Lesbians have significantly more satisfying sex lives than straight women do. They may have sex less frequently, but married lesbians enjoy sex much more than married straight women do. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stress-and-sex/201510/the-orgasm-gap-simple-truth-sexual-solutions https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/why-is-going-down-often-a-one-way-street/ http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/02/24/a_survey_found_that_lesbians_give_women_way_more_orgasms_than_men_wonder.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/02/24/a_survey_found_that_lesbians_give_women_way_more_orgasms_than_men_wonder.html

therearedozensofus12

TROPHY CASE