Posted by fxckfeelings on June 24, 2021
If, like your reader from earlier, you’re trying to stay positive about finding someone worthwhile after finding yourself with a string of assholes, moving forward can be tricky. Instead of trying to let go of the past, use it; mine it for lessons that can keep you from repeating your mistakes and becoming even more discouraged. So if you don’t want to let your bad experiences keep you from having the will to find something good, here are five ways of overcoming bitterness in relationships.
1) Forget Feelings of Betrayal
Having good times together, making promises of fidelity, and getting matching tattoos may make you feel as if you have a right to a good, long-lasting relationship, but you don’t. What controls a relationship, besides luck, is character, including how solid someone is and how well you work together when the times are pretty bad, the promises don’t come as easy and the tattoos get infected. Some people are deceivers—both of others and themselves—but it’s your job to look out for them, and now you know what to look for and when to run.
2) Work Past Feeling Weak
You can’t help feeling helpless when a relationship goes bad, and you’re certainly helpless when it comes to putting it back together or making yourself feel happy. In truth, however, you have a good way forward and you do know what to do, even if it doesn’t involve making your relationship, or your feelings better; you need to learn from the relationship, focus on doing everything else that makes your life meaningful, and ignore the pain until it goes away.
3) Ditch Further Discussions
Don’t expect talking about your post-breakup feelings to lead to any breakthroughs, mend any fences, or generally sort out what’s wrong. If a relationship has gone bad, you’ve already tried to express your feelings and it hasn’t worked. At a certain point, your feelings just keep getting more negative and the discussions more destructive. Shut up, restore your privacy, and communicate only what you feel is necessary and positive if you have ongoing matters together (e.g., work, kids, shared cat) that must continue.
4) Cut the Complaining
Yes, a little support from/venting to friends is helpful, but at a certain point, your friends will be sick of hearing about it and upset at how powerless they are to do anything. Plus the more you talk about it, the harder it gets for the wound to heal; your friends want to help you, but they’re not helping you if they let you keep going on about your ex and letting them live rent-free in your skull. Acknowledge your sorrow, but then invest in spending good time with your friends, not rehashing your misery fishing for good advice that doesn’t exist.
5) Get Back Out There, Whether Or Not You’ve Gotten Over It
At this point, you can’t trust your feelings, so it’s impossible to tell whether you’re still grieving or you’ve got the same dumb urges you always did. Instead, figure out what you should be looking for and go looking for it while exercising a much higher degree of caution and restraint. Use your pain as a reminder to slow down, be careful, and avoid emotional involvement until you’ve gotten to know someone and think they really check out. The best way to avoid becoming bitter about love is to keep moving; don’t dwell on past disappointment or let it define you, but do let it define the kind of person whom you think will be good for you so your next relationship will be less bitter, more sweet.
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 10, 2021
Since loneliness and a string of bad relationships can make you feel like a loser, it’s not surprising that most people assume finding someone new is the path to victory. And if you could order a perfect new partner through an app with free delivery, that would be fine. Instead, the search for someone new mostly requires luck—also not available to order—so making a good relationship your goal just makes you unfairly responsible for achieving the uncontrollable while pushing you to make bad compromises to avoid loserdom/loneliness. Instead, remind yourself that you’re never a loser if you do your best to be a good person and live independently with whatever loneliness is unavoidable. If you can do that, celebrate by ordering yourself something nice.
-Dr. Lastname
After a nightmare divorce and a shitty abusive relationship following that, I’ve been alone for three years now. I want a companion but I don’t know how to find one, or at least know how to find one that sucks less than the last two (I also don’t know how to change my attitude). By the way, I have three kids, which makes finding someone that much harder since single moms are, well, an acquired taste. My goal is to figure out how to overcome my past and, in some ways, my present in order to find a good partner.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 5, 2020
A conflict-free relationship that hasn’t gone through hard times is like a rare, expensive sports car; just having it and occasionally driving it around the block makes you feel good and special, but if you suddenly need it for regular use it becomes a tiresome burden. So if you’re in a feel-good, low-stress relationship that suddenly becomes somewhat feel-bad, it’s up to you to decide whether what you have is worth working on and keeping, flaws and all, or whether it’s time to let it go and find something more along the lines of a human minivan.
– Dr. Lastname
My partner of some years has mild Aspergers and an anxiety disorder, and we’ve been in a long-distance relationship for most of those years (seeing each other every other weekend or so). We share the same values and enjoy doing most of the same things. Although he’s a good learner and he’s gotten better in these years, he has a lot of quirks that make me have to do more work (like saying “ok” instead of helping me to continue a conversation or accidentally teasing me in a way that hurts my feelings). Still, when I bring them up, which generally happens when I visit him, it often ends up with him not talking and shutting down, rolled in a ball, saying he’s a monster, and then I get upset because he’s not talking to me and I hate that I caused conflict. Still, when I don’t bring them up I feel resentful. It’s gotten to a point that we feel somewhat anxious around each other (though at the same time we enjoy being together). My goal is to find a way to bring up issues with him that’s constructive without being upsetting.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 1, 2019
In the give and take of marriage, it’s common for one partner to suck up having to cook and pick up the dirty socks because their spouse grits his or her teeth through doing the dishes and take out the garbage. But if one partner ends up with the cooking, the socks, the dishes, and the garbage, the give and take, and the marriage, can give way entirely. So here are five ways to hold your subpar parter accountable for doing his or her share.
1) Fairly Consider His Contributions
If you’re frustrated by the fact you do everything in your marriage while your spouse does nothing/God knows what, take a pause to consider whether you’re being fair or just fed up and frustrated. After all, as we always say, the point of getting married is always having someone to blame; if you’re dealing with stress, depression, or separate marital issues, it’s easy to see your spouse’s actions, words, and/or stupid face as the source of your problems. So begin by making a thoughtful, thorough list of all the things you do and all the things he does. And if your list is still lopsided, despite being objective, you know that you’re right to address the issue.
2) Tackle Your Terms
Draw up a revised, fair marital job description for your partner that takes into account what you want as well as the ways he is wanting, i.e., his obliviousness and lack of motivation. You don’t necessarily want to divvy everything up 50/50, not just because you can’t change his weaknesses, but also because you want to take advantage of his strengths as well as your own. A good job description then includes tasks he’s good at, puts more emphasis on effort and commitment than results, and leaves you with confidence that you’re better off with his contributions as a whole rather than with not having to take care of him.
3) Navigate Negotiations
Bring up your new terms in a positive context that implies no blame, regardless of how you really feel. Present your reasons for re-evaluating his family-related activities as a way of improving his level of function, maximizing his positive impact on the family, and relieving you of any additional responsibilities you’ve picked up when he was unable to do them or unaware they existed in the first place. Of course, you may describe problems, such as your overwork or the kids’ dysfunction, as reasons for this negotiation, but not as evidence of his personal or moral failure (even though that’s what you may feel). Condemnation, however deserved, is rarely constructive.
4) Pin Point Problem Behaviors
Again, without implying that he’s lazy or purposefully negligent, specify any behaviors that you’ve observed that tend to undermine his productivity. For instance, if he spends too much time hanging out with his buddies, drinking, or playing video games, show respect for his right to relax before discussing the impact of his behaviors on the time he spends doing his share around the house, hanging out with the kids or having private time with you. Or if he doesn’t stick to a budget, describe the negative impact on everyone’s choices, including his.
5) Conclude Confidently
Aside from remaining positive, the key to getting your point across is conveying confidence; if you know that what you’re asking for is well thought out and reasonable, there’s no reason to be defensive or timid. With conviction, state your belief that he and the rest of the family will be better off if events prove you right, and that argument is unnecessary; if he disagrees, the only way he can convince you you’re wrong is if he can’t meet your terms despite his best efforts. In the meantime, you will continue to wish for his success with your plan, especially since continuing to endure your partnership in its present form will force you to reassess your future plans entirely.
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 17, 2019
Unless you’re a hairstylist, surgeon, or murderer, changing other people is basically impossible. Just because the flaws in your partner’s character are never going to change, however, doesn’t mean that you’re stuck with the bad behavior they cause. Shame and condemnation certainly won’t get him to improve. But if you can learn to keep personal criticism and angry feelings to yourself and describe bad behavior in terms of its dysfunction, rather than as evidence of purposeful malice, you can motivate a partner to improve his act while avoiding nasty struggles and intense argument. Then he might be motivated to work on those flaws before you become a murderer yourself.
– Dr. Lastname
I accept that there are things that are unchangeable in my marriage of three decades. I love my husband and want to stay married, but I am increasingly irritated by being the breadwinner, planner, homemaker, gift buyer, family relationship keeper, cheerleader, etc., etc., while my husband seems to slide through life without much effort. He is in therapy for depression related to a shitty childhood and current career issues, and I am mostly understanding; however, I have recently begun to blow up at stupid, careless (but not intentional) actions on his part, the most recent being his ruining my expensive kitchen shears during one of his typical, fruitless home improvement projects. It makes me feel guilty to make him unhappy, but I can’t seem to stop myself in the moment. I suspect I am also realizing that he may always be dependent on me, which is also frustrating. My goal is to figure out how to change the way I react before I kill him, our marriage, or both.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 30, 2019
When you’re frightened, dealing with trauma, or just generally vulnerable, you’re often forced to make big choices despite being in the worst possible state to do so. Feelings take over, so you may choose to do whatever feels good or just makes the fear or pain go away. Then you’re more vulnerable to being seduced into another abusive or traumatic situation, and that situation will create more strong feelings that make you doubt yourself, and on and on it goes. To avoid becoming a prisoner of self-doubt and helplessness, learn to see your real abilities and opportunities for what they are, regardless of what your feelings are telling you. If you can see beyond your feelings, strong as they may be, you’ll find your way to a safer, saner future.
-Dr. Lastname
I left my narcissistic, emotionally abusive ex-husband a year or so ago after almost 20 years together. We have two young kids, and he was so emotionally abusive that I left believing that he was the better parent, so I chose to have the girls live with him primarily and have joint custody. Since then, he has alienated me and my parents from my children. He is hurtful and mean during every interaction we have, but never in front of anyone or the girls. My girls do not want to come see me when it is my turn. I have no proof but I believe he is making the girls feel guilty about being around me. When I told the asshole he was damaging the girls for the rest of their lives with his behavior and feelings toward me, he said “I don’t care,” and has said multiple times that wants me out of my girls lives. I am tired of trying to see my girls and them crying because they don’t want to see me. I’m also tired of dealing with the asshole. On top of that, I have a wonderful new boyfriend who wants me to move across the country with him when he starts his new job, but I know that if I do that I probably won’t see my girls again. My goal is to decide if letting the ex have his way and staying away from my girls won’t only help them (by saving them from feeling so torn and guilty), but help me by allowing me to take back my life.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 24, 2019
No matter how many good reasons you may have for getting over a relationship and moving
on—he was never worth it, it was never going to work, you were catfished by a Russian bot,
etc.—heartbreak has a way of holding on to you, and holding you down, for far too long. Instead
of helplessly and hopelessly suffering through it, here are five steps you can take to get over
someone, even, or especially, if he was never worth getting under in the first place.
1) Busy Your Brain
Instead of wasting your time focusing on someone you can’t have (who probably isn’t worth having in the first place), distract yourself with more worthy pursuits like work, dinners with friends, hot yoga sessions, or any positive activity that prevents you from getting into trouble while also distracting you from your pain. These activities will also help to remind you that you have a life of your own, friends who care, and promises to keep. Your ex-addicted brain will look for ways to think about him and devise ways to change his mind, but the more you live your own life, the harder it will be for your thoughts to wander in his direction.
2) Mark Your Progress by Your Actions, Not Your Emotions
Your inability to completely forget him or feel as good as you did when he was around may tell you that your attempts to move on are futile. But remember, the feelings of happiness he once gave you were what convinced you he was worth being with in the first place, despite many more tangible red flags to the contrary. That’s why a better barometer for your progress isn’t how you feel but how much you’re doing despite those feelings of emptiness and withdrawal. Because the work you do and the attention you give to others despite being under the influence of heartache are a remarkable achievement and a sign that you’re on the road to recovery, no matter how rejected you still feel.
3) Relate But Don’t Ruminate
It’s good to share your sorrows with a sympathetic ear, like friends or a shrink, but only up to a point; an overly-sympathetic ear will encourage more rumination that healing, encouraging you to mope rather than move on. So yes, it’s good to know that friends care, your feelings are understandable, and other good people have made the same mistake and learned the same tough lesson. But it’s not good to wallow, whine, or waste time feeling sorry for yourself that could be better spent moving forward. So try to limit your complaints and choose only confidants who remember your strength and believe in your future, not those who magnify your helplessness and victimhood.
4) Learn and Live
Now that you’ve milked your heartache for every possible valuable lesson, don’t hesitate to put your new knowledge to work in the search for a new, more worthwhile partner. Yes, you may still be vulnerable, but you’re also smarter with the freshest possible memory of what the wrong partner looks like. Besides, the goal is to get right back to searching, not to get right back into a relationship; take your time during the process to review each candidate and develop a new, improved list of character criteria for a potential mate. Getting back into the search quickly isn’t about finding someone right away, but figuring out how to best utilize and develop your new knowledge, thus decreasing your chances of finding yourself as heartbroken in the
future.
5) Build Independence
While heartache is always a learning opportunity, it isn’t just there to teach us who to avoid or how to find the right person. As your heart heals, it should become stronger, not just smarter, and a strong heart is one that doesn’t necessarily need another person to feel whole. That means you shouldn’t license yourself to look for a partner until you’ve built up your independence by finding activities and friends that you can enjoy on your own. Recent experience should teach you many things, but one of the fundamental lessons should be that there are much worse things than being alone.
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 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 March 1, 2018
If your unhappy marriage is on life support, it can still be hard to pull the plug, especially when, like our reader who recently wrote in, you and your spouse have spent most of your lives together. That’s when you have to ask yourself what you expect from a spouse, and from yourself, to make a marriage worthwhile. Here are five major ways partners can contribute to each other’s lives and the life they share. If you find that you’re doing much less than your partner, you had better reinvest in the marriage or prepare for its end; if it’s the other way around, it’s time to let your marriage end and the rest of your life begin.
1) Financial Function
Money isn’t everything, but it counts for a lot, particularly if you find yourself paying more than your share of essential family expenses, like food, shelter, or, God forbid, bail. Of course, you may substitute childcare and household management as your contribution instead of earnings. But whether you’re investigating a marriage, the Baltimore drug trade, or a presidential election, the key is always to follow the money; that will give you a good measure of whether you or your spouse has paid a full share.
2) Putting in Parenting Time
Never equate sporadic “helping out” with the kids to taking primary responsibility for their feeding, homework, rides to soccer practice, etc. Yes, you should give yourself credit for the time you put into playing with your children, but make sure to give more credit to whoever worries about what’s in the fridge, when the dentist appointments are, and how to drop everything when school is cancelled or your child is ill. If you or your spouse can’t be relied upon to contribute more than occasional participation in your kids’ lives, then you can cross their importance as a parent off your value-added checklist.
3) Relationship Reminders
By their nature, long term partnerships get worn down by fatigue and our tendency to put out everyday fires, resent our spouses for whatever help we wanted and didn’t get, and then, exhausted by both the fires and the resentment, fall asleep. So a big part of the partnership job description is to invest, periodically, in a good relationship by making time to be together and find activities you both enjoy. If one or both of you can’t make that investment, you’ll become so overwhelmed with resentment that you’ll forget what you ever liked about each other in the first place. So if your partner can’t or won’t agree to make that investment, then your marriage may no longer have the strength to survive.
4) Intermittent Intimacy
While sex often becomes less important over the course of a marriage (or just over the course of one’s life), it’s not unusual for one partner to have stronger needs and then to feel ignored and unattractive if his or her spouse starts to avoid intimacy or doesn’t try to make something happen. So, for the one who is not that interested in sex anymore and has a partner who still is, making an effort to give pleasure is an important contribution, even if it means lying back and thinking of England. Not being willing to make a small physical sacrifice or to ask your partner to make one on your behalf, is a sign that caring and commitment are lacking. If you can’t change your feelings or your partner’s willingness to take one for the team, then it may be time to call the game.
5) Consider Complaints
As we always say, the real reason for getting married is always having someone to blame. An important part of any job, not just that of a spouse, is to be responsive to complaints. And while that doesn’t mean you have to agree with them or take responsibility for causing them, you do have to pay attention to them, examine their validity, and decide what, if anything, you can do to take remedial action. If you care about your spouse, you think hard about their grievances and determine whether you can improve what you do. In any case, try to negotiate differences without avoiding them or allowing them to trigger anger or avoidance. If, on the other hand, one of you doesn’t care enough to respond to complaints or manage them diplomatically, then that person isn’t doing the work required to manage basic marriage problems, and now those problems, and the future of your marriage, are beyond your control.
