Posted by fxckfeelings on September 5, 2018
As our reader from earlier can attest to, the “Seven Year Itch” in marriage doesn’t really keep to a schedule, nor can it be easy to ignore, no matter how solid, smooth, and not-irritating your union has been up to that point. As with any itch, however, there are dangers to actually scratching it, especially in excess, like drawing blood and causing permanent damage that will do nothing to prevent a similar itch in the future. So instead, scratch satisfaction off your list and use these five ways to manage an emotional itch instead.
1) Identify Your Most Important Personal Goals, Independent of Itching
If you value independence and being a good parent and partner, you know how much you need to work at a job, not just for personal satisfaction but, more often, in spite of personal dissatisfaction, because you need the money for survival, security, and helping your children. Your partnership, which is also work, has a similar purpose; you stick with it because of how it contributes to your life and the life of your family, in addition to, or despite, how much it does or doesn’t satisfy your needs for fun and intimacy. That’s why you have to remember all your needs and values when the urge to cheat strikes, not just the ones that promise you happiness and satisfaction when you’re lonely or bored.
2) Dedicate Yourself To/Distract Yourself With These Goals
Build a busy schedule around relevant activities that contribute directly to achieving your big picture goals. That includes time for work and doing your best to provide for your family, but also a large amount of time for your kids, not just in terms of having fun with them but also caring for them and getting them to and from their activities. And of course, you also need to schedule time to nurture your marriage as well as your individual wellbeing, by maintaining friendships and getting exercise. With all that going on, you should be too tired at end of the day to get hung up on being lonely, bored or easily distracted by old flames.
3) Find a Friend or Coach Who Can Make Urge Management Easier
Dwelling on your lost love, wandering eye or or trying to understand the reasoning or motivations behind either will just make your urges worse and keep your old flame/new interests alive. Instead, look for coaching from a friend or professional, like a therapist or life coach, who can help you distract yourself from feelings that won’t go away any time soon by reinforcing your reasons and values for not satisfying them.
4) Teach Yourself To Identify Triggers
It may not be worth trying to understand why you feel a certain way, but it is helpful to note exactly when and how you do. By keeping a diary of when and how intensely you’re haunted by feelings of loss and identify, you’ll learn what events, places, and general circumstances trigger these feelings and are thus best avoided, if possible. Even if you notice that the feelings hit you when you’re tired or bored or irritated with your spouse, you’ll get better at seeing them as a side effect of exhaustion and not something to be taken seriously. Either way, note the patterns, if any, and remind yourself, with the help of a therapist or coach, that your feelings go away and don’t require you to act on them.
5) Regularly Remind Yourself Of Your Success
At the end of the day, don’t measure how you’re doing at dealing with and managing urges by how happy you are or how well you’ve eliminated feelings of loss or yearning. Instead, take time to view your day in the context of what you’re trying to accomplish and how hard you’re working towards it, whether or not it makes you happy, and give yourself credit when it’s deserved. Indeed, when you’re tired, bored, and somewhat lovesick but still manage to reach your goals and act like a good parent and friend, you’ve been more successful than you can imagine, whether or not you can appreciate it.
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 25, 2018
Many people, like the cancer-riddled protagonists of young adult novels, stars of reality shows who spend most of their time on screen bleeped or blurred, or anybody who’s gotten a neck tattoo on a dare, believe the point of life is to live intensely and in the moment and therefore any experience or relationship that makes them feel more alive has value. The major problem with that notion, aside from how it actually decreases one’s life expectancy, is that it devalues the work it takes to make a living, keep promises, build and support a family, and generally build a life you can truly be proud of. Sometimes these efforts are boring and do not yield joy for long periods of time, but it’s for you to decide whether you’d rather have a short life dedicated to thrilling romance and great adventure, or a long, boring one dedicated to being a good person.
-Dr. Lastname
I’ve been married over 10 years but I just had a short affair with an also-married friend and it ended when he confessed the whole thing to his husband after the guilt of keeping secrets got to him. His husband made us cut all contact with each other so they can repair their marriage and I haven’t heard from him since. I also confessed to my husband and he has forgiven me and gotten over it, but I haven’t. I don’t think I was ever happier than during the time when I was having the affair. I do realize the affair was a fantasy situation—we both have young kids and care about our spouses—but the attraction to our significant others had diminished while the chemistry between us was powerful and ideal. My goal is to stop thinking about my affair partner, move on with my life, and be the spouse and parent that everyone needs me to be without constantly mourning this lost love.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 19, 2018
If, like our reader from a previous post, you’re feeling lost after losing a long-term relationship, don’t let the urge to sulk and self-flagellate prevent you from doing a smart, objective romantic post-mortem. After all, every bad break up is an opportunity to learn good lessons about what went wrong, so as a cheat sheet for your relationship evaluation, here are five unhealthy things that people are all-too-often attracted to; learning how to recognize your weaknesses is the only way to get stronger, smarter, and less likely to ever be this miserable again.
1) Attracted to Unavailability
Groucho Marx famously said he didn’t want to join any club that would have him as a member, but when it comes to relationships, most people feel the inverse; they only want to be with people who don’t seem to want them around. This may be due to deep-seated, unhealthy levels of insecurity and self-loathing, i.e., the feeling that, if someone loves you and is eager to spend time with you, there must be something wrong with them. So check to see if you tend to pursue those who keep their distance while avoiding those who show interest and seek your company. If you do, it’s worth taking time to get to like yourself a little more before finding someone else to love.
2) Cool with Constant Criticism
If you’re a perfectionist who is often self-critical or just been raised by a family of critics, you may find yourself attracted to people who also love picking you apart. As long as they aren’t also mean and unloving, that’s fine, but that’s rarely the case. Ask yourself if past partners have been cold and good at put-downs; if they have, beware seeking the company of critical people and get to work on finding ways to be kinder to yourself. Raise your standards for how you treat yourself and you’ll automatically raise the standards for how you expect to be treated by others.
3) You Find Slackers Sexy
You may be the kind of hard worker who’s drawn to partners who generally give making an effort a hard pass. Perhaps you’re drawn to the appreciative-yet-aimless because they make you feel useful and strong by comparison, but their inability to share your work ethic, along with a willingness to let things go to pot when you’re unavailable, will eventually make you nuts. So if you find that you have an unwise tendency to love the lazy, make an extra effort to try finding a partner with a job, a goal, or just an aversion to spending too much time on the couch.
4) The Need To Nightingale
Too many people are attracted to the damaged and wounded, likely because they get an extra good feeling from having someone they can’t just love but also rescue and take care of. This attraction may come from taking care of someone while growing up who was wounded, or from feeling wounded themselves. For whatever reason, helping the helpless is a hopeless situation; if they get better, you’ll resent feeling useless, and if they don’t, you may still eventually become disappointed by your partner’s persisting disabilities. If it becomes clear that a larger-than-expected number of your exes were the walking wounded, find a smart way to channel your nurturing instincts, like through volunteering, or adopting a one-legged cat, so you can find a partner who doesn’t require them.
5) Drawn to Drama
While it would be nice if everybody were happy to get their drama fix through tabloids, pro wrestling, or the Bravo network, too many of us enjoy and invite drama into our everyday lives. Lots of us are attracted to the kind of people who can turn real life into an episode of Real Housewives; the crazy, angry, and altogether dramatic who initially provide a lot of fun, excitement and passion (that eventually becomes exhausting and even scary). So if you tend to bypass boring people and seek out “big personalities,” it’s time to stop seeing drama as a draw and start recognizing it as a red flag.
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 5, 2018
Given the choice, most people prefer to hold the stars, a deity, or their own shortcomings responsible for the pain in their lives rather than accept the existence and power of pure bad luck. And while no one can definitively argue that horoscopes and gods aren’t worth believing, it’s objectively true that assuming responsibility for and blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong in your life, especially where relationships are involved, is a total waste of time. Sure, you can learn how to avoid bad partners, but you can’t control whether you’ll ever find or keep a good one, and some people just aren’t lucky that way. So if you turn out to be unlucky in love and heartbroken, don’t waste time cursing your sign, your lord, and especially not yourself; refocus your energy on what you do control, the kind of life you want to live, and the ways you can achieve that life on your own, regardless of whose company you’re blessed with or what crap the universe throws at you next.
-Dr. Lastname
I’ve been in and out of a relationship with the same married man for 17 years. I’m ashamed of the stupidity of it all, including moving hundreds of miles to be closer to him. I broke it off again a few months ago and he seems fine, but I’m not. We are not in communication and it continues to hurt, but I’m determined not to ever allow him back in my life. I honestly don’t trust myself though if the opportunity presents itself. I’ve been divorced for 24 years and living and working on my own, but I feel addicted to this man and have no idea how not to be. My goal is to finally end things for good and find a way to move on.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 9, 2018
If, like our reader from earlier, you have a shady/”complicated” past, it can be easy to imagine all the not-good ways your current, not-shady friends would react. Often, however, those imaged responses are the kinds of things that are far more likely to come from the anxious, critical, demonic recesses of one’s brain than the mouths of others. So, in order to both demonstrate how unlikely these responses are and how easy they are to rebut, here are five horrible, hypothetical reactions to your past and the best (or at least snappiest) ways to respond.
1) “I get it—you’re”
As someone who’s managed to clean her life up, get a real job, and function as well as whoever could be lobbing this insult your way, you should know better than to take this seriously. “If crazy means putting myself through school, saving some money, and establishing myself in a real career, then fine, lock my ass up. But even a crazy person—this one—can understand when someone’s being a judgmental asshole.”
2) “Now I don’t think you can be trusted.”
If someone can talk frankly about stuff in their past that’s hard to admit to or talk about, that’s an indication that they’re more likely to be honest, even under the toughest circumstances. “I got to where I am the hard way and I’ve established a good reputation with my employers and friends. If you can’t see my ownership of my past and what I’ve accomplished in spite of it as reasons to trust me instead of the opposite, then the only untrusted thing here is your judgment.”
3) “From now on I’ll only see you as a whore.”
If you’re talking to someone who throws the word “whore” around, then it’s not worth talking to them for much longer, let alone trying to earn their understanding. “You can’t make me feel ashamed for doing what I had to do, just as you can’t convince me to judge someone by anything but how hard they work, how they keep their promises, and how they deal with adversity. If you can only see me for what I did instead of who I am, then it’s best for both of us if we shouldn’t see more of each other than is absolutely necessary.”
4) “How can I rely on someone so clearly damaged?”
Baggage doesn’t necessarily mean damage, because if you were truly damaged you wouldn’t have found the strength and will to come as far as you have. “Whether you’re talking about a car or a person, you judge damage by how well something functions after it’s been put through the ringer, so by those standards, “damaged” doesn’t apply to me. If your perception of me is too damaged, then that’s on you, not me.”
5) “My opinion of you has irrevocably changed for the worse.”
Anyone who wants to cut you off for having gone through hard times is not someone worth holding on to. “If someone has a negative opinion of me, I always want to know why, because I try to live up to certain standards and criticism may reflect my failure to do so. Then I can assess how their reaction compares to my perception of what happened and apologize if necessary. From what I know of my past and my efforts to overcome it, however, I have nothing to apologize for, so let’s just come to terms with the fact that our opinions of each other have now both irrevocably changed for the worse and wish each other well on our opposing trajectories.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 28, 2017
Finding stability after an especially shaky period is a major and worthwhile achievement, but it may leave you feeling a new kind of uncertainty, stranded between troubled old friends who know you well and well-balanced new friends who would be totally thrown if they learned about your past. Gaining respectability, however, doesn’t require you to hide your past or get approved by other respectable types; instead, decide for yourself whether your efforts have helped you become a decent, independent person. If you respect what you’ve done with your life then you can insist on finding solid friends, whether you have a solid past or not.
-Dr. Lastname
Due to a combination of bad luck, poor decisions and generally reckless behavior, I went through a difficult patch in my late teens/early 20s. A brief highlights tour: abortion, severe depression, being broke, sex work, failing out of college…all in all, it was shitty. Ten years later and I’ve gotten a degree, a good therapist, some success in a far-less-shady line of work…I’ve even gotten engaged to a very nurturing and wonderful man. The problem is that these two realities—my past and my present—are so at odds with each other that it’s becoming increasingly hard for me to deal with. For example, having lost a lot of friends during the bad years, I have recently started trying to make new ones with colleagues I really like and would like to be closer to, but having to hide the details of my past/“double life” means they’ll always be at a distance. The same thing applies to my fiancé’s family, since knowing about my past will make them both wary of me and create difficulties for him. Even my long-time friends (who know my history) are reluctant to talk about the topic, and now that I’ve recently started experiencing flashbacks and panic attacks about that time, it does hurt that I can’t seem to confide in them about the practical problems that I am currently facing. I am functioning quite well about 75% of the time, but my moods can be unstable and at the times when I see this situation stretching out of me for the rest of my life I feel, frankly, almost as depressed as I did in the bad old days, despite being happy and extremely grateful about how well things have turned out. My goal is to A, find some way of making peace with my past and B, figure out some way of sharing my experiences with friends in a way that is appropriate but lessens my feelings of loneliness.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on August 24, 2017
If, like our reader from earlier, your best efforts to find someone to be friends with, let alone date, are constantly fruitless, it can be hard to deal with both loneliness and the desperation that comes with it. So, instead of letting loneliness push you to lower your standards and reach out to the wrong people, let yourself embrace being alone a bit more. While you keep searching for connections, here are five ways to like being alone so you can’t be spooked by being lonely in the meantime.
1) Seek Out Activities You Can Enjoy Solo…
Take up hobbies that you can enjoy alone or in groups, like crafting, gardening, or running. If it makes you stronger, wiser, or richer on Etsy, so much the better, but the main goal, after getting used to your new hobby, is to actually like it and look forward to it. What you’re after is not a Fortress of Solitude but a well-stocked zone in your house, well-tilled corner of the back-yard, and well-established running path where you look forward to spending time of your own and/or with some other people who enjoy the same yarn/plants/stride lengths that you do.
2) …While Soaking In Activities You Can Enjoy Solo
As smart as it is to find solo activities that can also be done in groups, it’s also worth pushing yourself to try things alone that you’re used to doing with others; from going to the movies alone to driving cross-country by yourself, take on tasks that you might be wary of doing without a partner in crime. By doing so, you’ll gain a sense of independence that will help you overcome the fear of loneliness and teach you to enjoy your own company. Plus, you will often find that people are more eager to chat with you when you’re by yourself and the best adventures are more likely to happen when you’re not part of a couple or crowd.
3) Volunteer Your Time
You may think that being alone is pathetic, but there’s nothing less pathetic than contributing your otherwise solo time to a good cause, like teaching or caring for others. Even if you don’t meet like-minded people, you’ll feel useful, not just social, and build meaningful relationships with those you help. If they happen to be people in your community, you can stay in touch over many years, but if they’re not you can learn about other cultures and widen your view of the world. In any case, you’ll start to see your non-working, not-friend-filled time as a gift, not a burden.
4) Get A Damn Dog
Cats may be fine pets (for some people, who aren’t the authors), but they tend to encourage anti-social, house-bound behavior; even if you force your cat to go out for walks, most people are keen to avoid someone with a pissed off cat on a leash. Dogs, on the other hand, aren’t just loyal in-house companions; walking them forces you to be active and, if you live near a dog park, even social, although they also allow you to talk to yourself in public without seeming crazy. Most importantly, they oblige you to think about the needs of others (particularly when it comes to their need to eat, poop, not eat something that will make them sick and poop way too much, etc.), which is really what having a family, or any loving relationship, is all about.
5) Never Stop Looking For A Better Match
Just because you’ve learned to love your own company doesn’t mean you should then give up on finding someone who appreciates it as much as you do. For many people, finding worthwhile friends doesn’t result from trying to be more friendly or sociable; in most cases, there was nothing wrong with their social approach in the first place, but, for lots of reasons beyond their control, there was something wrong with the ability of their personality to mesh well with the people who happened to be around them. If you can pursue your own path until you finally meet a person or group that is a good match for you, and then enjoy, then you won’t need to fear loneliness while finding your own kind of fulfillment.
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 10, 2017
When you’ve searched high and low for companionship with no results, it’s easy to conclude that, as you’re the only constant factor in your search, you must be the problem/cause of your own loneliness and misery. And of course, trying harder, especially when you aren’t actually doing anything wrong, will only wind up making you feel more unlikeable and hate yourself more. In reality, of course, much of friendship depends on factors you don’t control, like chemistry, the kind of personality you got at birth, and the way you mesh with your local pool of friend candidates. So if love and friendship don’t come easily to you, despite good strong efforts, never assume you’ve failed. You may have found something in life that won’t come easily, but a weakness in relationships need never stop you from finding ways to leading a full and independent life until you discover the right person or people or share it with.
-Dr. Lastname
I’m a (maybe over-)educated female in my late 30s who just broke up with what seemed like an emotional/verbal abuser after a very rocky three year relationship. My major issue is that the past many years (20 in total with bursts of good-ish relationships) I’ve been very lonely, mostly because I move around a lot for work and making friends is very hard in new cities. I keep bumping into deadbeats and weirdos, and at my age, most people (especially good people) are too busy with their lives to be looking for friends. So I’m busting my ass to be social, going on hikes with lots of depressing divorcees, to eco-festivals, to any group activities I’m interested in…progress is very slow and shaky. And I’m making a go at dating again (yet once again in my life), this time with more courage than my previous/difficult breakup with the same guy. I quit therapy because it was too expensive and slow, and besides, what I’ve been sorely lacking these past years are FRIENDS. Instead, despite all my efforts, I’m dealing with empty weekends, sending messages (text, FB, etc.) to people who said let’s have a coffee and never respond. I am getting a few replies but with people busy things often get cancelled, especially by the most interesting folks, and I wind up hanging out with the outsiders and deadbeats I should probably avoid. It’s hard, but I’m trying to hang in there and keep pushing. And BOY do I drop everything if I get a chance to see people that I consider worthwhile. My goal is to figure out if there’s something, *anything* I can do—from trying a new way to expand my search to moving to a whole new country—to find the kind of relationships that will make my life feel whole.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 27, 2017
If, like our reader from earlier, you can’t get over a crush, even if you could prevent yourself from acting on it, it’s important to remind yourself why your brain told you it wasn’t worth it, even as your heart tries to convince you otherwise. As such, here are five soothing questions to consider when you’re consumed with longing you can’t get over.
1) Does your current partnership suffice when it comes to survival?
Unless you’ve got a big trust fund, invented an app of the gods, or have any in with the Russian government, financial survival isn’t something to take for granted in this world, particularly after starting a family. That’s why, as a good way to counter reveries about missed intimacy, it’s worth considering what your current partner has contributed to the important stuff, i.e., not to your emotional satisfaction, but to your shared ability to stay solvent. Think about total income, yearly savings, and having enough funds to safely support your family in terms of childcare and when someone’s out of work or sick. Knowing that your partner contributes financially may not make you feel fuzzy about him again, but it will make clear how important he is in your life, and how valuable your partnership is in your family’s life overall.
2) How does your current partnership help you reach higher goals?
As corny as it sounds, and no matter how many people tell you true meaning is found in being rich, thin, and/or YouTube famous, doing good in the world is the best way to make life meaningful, so finding a partnership that helps you to be a better person and parent is a major goal. Ask yourself then whether you have a partner who helps keep your dark side in check, encourages your better side, and gives you the freedom to realize your most significant ideals. Intimacy is nice, but feeling you’re making an important, positive difference matters a lot more overall.
3) Are you particularly vulnerable to falling for faulty partners?
Whenever you find yourself really enjoying someone’s company, it’s worthwhile doing a mental inventory and asking yourself what you really enjoy about this person and whether you tend to like spending time with/fall for people who aren’t good for you. It’s a common problem because the people who are best at connecting are often filterless; that means they can draw you in by saying everything, from the most revealing, kind things to the nastiest, empassioned words that you’re thinking but would be too embarrassed to ever say outloud. And while someone like that can be exciting to be around at first, they can also prove to be unreliable and hurtful in the long run. So go over prior relationships to see if this person reminds you of anyone you felt close to in the past, why you felt close to them, how long those relationships lasted, and whether you’d want to put yourself through something similar again.
4) How would changing partners at this stage change your life?
The most obvious way to talk yourself off the ledge of longing is to add up everything you’ve built together with your current partner, like the kids’ confidence in your ability to work as a team, your joint friendships, your shared memories, and positive connections with one another’s families. This is not an exercise in taking pride in what you’ve accomplished in your marriage, though it’s fine if you do; rather, it’s a way to prevent yourself from taking your partnership for granted by remembering the good things you’ve created and that you’d miss if you gave them up by giving into your longing for someone else.
5) Is your crush even up to snuff?
If your new prospect is still worth thinking about, then give him the full due diligence exam that you would apply to any possible partner, especially in terms of the standards your current partner has set. As such, begin by thinking through the present partnership job description, including all responsibilities that your current partner does well, as well as those that could use improvement. Then ask yourself how your possible partner meets these same standards and compare his score to your husband’s. Remember, this is not about the intensity of your feelings but about his ability to work with you, be financially responsible, reliable, disciplined, and a good parent. Then you’re ready to make decisions that aren’t based on longing but on what’s good for you and your family in the long term.
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 13, 2017
Yearning is the bastard child of love and frustrated need; both emotions promise happiness if only you can spend more time with whomever or whatever it is you yearn for, but their emotional spawn is less a miracle than something that’s usually shameful, illegitimate, and not discussed in mixed company. That’s because most people you yearn for are out of reach for good reason; if a love is forbidden, then getting what you yearn for is rarely good for you, better than what you’ve got, or likely to make you a better person. So persistent yearning isn’t a sign of true love; it’s a sign that you’ve got the beginnings of an addiction and should use all your experience, wisdom, and proven techniques to evaluate whether it’s worth trying to satisfy or avoid in order to escape shame, social or otherwise.
-Dr. Lastname
I have a good life, especially from the outside. I have the most beautiful children and a husband, who, despite his incredibly high levels of anxiety and his sometimes ridiculous temper, loves me and cares for us. The problem is that after almost 20 years of marriage I met a man whom I fell into a meaningful relationship with (although nothing physical ever happened because I knew that was a slippery slope and I made sure not to go there). It’s now been a few years since I told this man that I wasn’t leaving my husband, and while we have occasional contact because of work requirements, we’ve remained professional. The issue is that I cannot truly get over it— I believe he is my soulmate and that this is all just a cruel joke that the world is playing on me. I was fine with never knowing what that kind of love felt like because it was better that way. My goal is to get over this man and to stop feeling sad and sorry for myself.
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