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 22, 2020
Too often, when it comes to choosing whether to be, stay, or break-up with someone, we let our hearts be our guides. But when it comes to a committed partnership, feelings are a false guide; there’s no way to share a house, family, life, savings account, and/or bathroom with someone for eternity and not feel some sort of bad a lot of the time. So, if like our reader from earlier, you can’t decide whether you can put up with your partner anymore, here are five ways to tell whether a flawed relationship is worth keeping.
1)Ask Yourself If You Were Better Off Before
Remember what your life was like back when you were single and how you hoped a relationship would make things better. Then assess whether this relationship does or doesn’t fulfill those needs, consulting friends if necessary to recall how you were living then and what your goals were. Don’t get distracted by how you wanted to feel, but on what you wanted to achieve; ask if your relationship helped you meet major life goals, like starting a family, getting an education, taking a job or living somewhere you couldn’t otherwise afford, etc. Make sure you include your need (if any) for a relationship that would offer you support and security in case of illness or possible unemployment. If your relationship hasn’t helped you achieve any those things or has even made reaching those goals harder, that’s important to know.
2) Ask If Acceptance Is Mutual
Determine how well you can accept your partner as he is and how well he accepts you. If, in spite of your best efforts to take him as he is, you find yourself cringing and criticizing, you should move on before you both become mean and awful. And, likewise, if you feel he can never really let go of wanting you to change and you often feel like you have to defend or explain yourself, you’re better off with your own company until you can find someone better. Remember, sometimes there are things about those close to us that make us nuts even if they don’t bother others, but figuring out why they’re annoying won’t make them more bearable or easier for your partner to change. If, despite your best efforts, the acceptance can’t come, then it’s time for you to go.
3) Do a Budget For Being Alone
Review your income, expenses, savings and debt and ask how breaking up would affect your finances. It’s possible that ending things, at least doing so immediately, would force you to make big sacrifices that would make it hard to connect with family and friends, live in your chosen neighborhood, create a nest-egg or just plain survive. If the immediate financial hit is too hard, you’re not trapped forever; you’ll just have to wait while you save up and create a financial plan that makes the separation financially feasible.
4) Review Possible Red Flags
Consider whether there are any “red flag” behaviors that make your or any relationship burdensome, unequal, or even dangerous. These behaviors include addictions, lying, overspending, impulsivity, and/or violent behavior. If there are no such flags, you should nevertheless ask yourself whether the relationship is too one-sided and you don’t get as much as you give. Then, if you do recognize red flags or inequality, ask a friend or therapist to help you find the strength to make a plan to move on. If you realize that you might be in danger, move quickly to get yourself and your children to safety.
5) When You Do Figure it Out, Keep Feelings Out of It
If you’re going to do a smart, factual assessment of the pros and cons of a relationship, you can do it when you’re still feeling angry, hurt, or generally upset. And in order to have a clear head, you have to figure things out when you’re calm, not moments after a fight or reconciliation. If you leave, you should believe that you’d be better off without him for objective reasons, regardless of heartbreak and the loss of whatever he added to your life. If you stay, it should be with the conviction that he makes your life better and doesn’t make it harder for you to be safe or be you. Whatever you decide, if you’ve done a good review of (over)due diligence, you’ll know you’re doing the right thing, even if it feels a little wrong.
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 April 18, 2019
When, like our recent reader, you know you’re trapped in a pattern of becoming the most attached to people who are the least interested or even worthy of your attention, it’s useful to strategize and make a plan for when the next would-be (but shouldn’t-be) object of obsession crosses your path. Here are five task-oriented techniques for overcoming obsession before it starts.
1) Accept Your Obsessiveness without Obsessing About It
You might think that you could avoid future fixations if you could just figure out why they happen, but plumbing the depths of your psyche to figure out which childhood trauma or lost toy caused you to be this way is, in fact, just another empty obsession that will lead you nowhere. As you’re already learned the hard way, there’s no better way to feed an obsession than to obsess about it, even if what you’re obsessing about is why you have it and how you can make it go away. In reality, no one knows why some people are prone to obsessive attachments and no one has a formula for ungluing you once you’re stuck, other than time and a constant effort to manage your unfortunate habit.
2) Delve Into Distraction
When you start to feel obsessive thoughts creeping in, try to keep your brain busy with more important activities instead. A new object of fixation can be hard to resist—especially at first, when they seem so exciting and promising—but your attachments to other people, work, family, and your long term interests will always be much stronger and more meaningful, in the end, than any obsession. So immerse yourself in whatever usually matters to you, fighting as hard as you can until your shiny source of fixation fades away.
3) Don’t Think You Can Turn A Fixation Into A Friendship
As much as you’d be willing to settle for any relationship with an object of obsession, even a platonic one, it’s too much to think you can immediately force yourself into a benign friendship with someone you were once fanatical about. These attempts at casual connection usually just make the obsession worse, since you’ll now be analyzing and obsessing over every conversation hoping to find evidence of something more. Then you won’t be able to control your sensitivity to being treated as a casual friend and you will hate yourself if your vulnerability shows, which will then cause you to obsess over your pain and foolishness until you’re in full fixation meltdown. Accept the fact that your obsession limits your options and there’s to be no contact until you’ve recovered.
4) Process Patterns
Obsessive tendencies are a lot like weather; you can’t control them, but with enough experience you can learn to predict when they’re coming and prepare for the storm accordingly. Look back at the kind of person you get obsessed with and identify what drew you to them. Unfortunately, the things you like about obsessive objects probably double as red flags, which means those are the qualities you should look out for and avoid in the future. Then list the character qualities that might guarantee you a more positive and reliable response so you can seek them out instead. Recall how quickly you latched onto people in the past and examine whether you could have improved your safety by slowing things down, determining new mandatory procedures for pumping the breaks in the future. You may not be able to make your brain stop obsessing, but you can teach yourself ways to stop those obsessions from taking over.
5) Consider Treatment
If the symptoms of your obsessive tendencies are extraordinarily painful or interfere with work or important friendships and you can’t find a way to break out of the cycle on your own, don’t be afraid to find a therapist who can help you manage the issue. Consider first non-medical treatments, which include everything from exercise to cognitive behavioral therapy (techniques to manage unwanted thoughts) to hypnosis. If those prove ineffective, you should consider medical treatments, namely medication that is low risk yet frequently effective, like a high dose of an SSRI. Either way, don’t assume that you’re doomed to an endless cycle of empty obsession and heartbreak. With some work and even a little help, you can learn ways to manage obsessive tendencies so your obsessions no longer manage you.
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 7, 2019
Kids hate to see their parents fight, and while you’d think that the feeling would lessen as they grow into adults, the opposite is often true; the older they get, the more they feel like having an adult’s power should give them the ability to set things right and ease their family’s pain. Of course, no human, no matter what their age, emotional investment, or relationship to others, has much power to change or ameliorate the chemistry of a longstanding partnership, so making the best of a bad parental relationship doesn’t require a determination to do good or make sacrifices. All you really need is the ability to judge the actual benefit of bearing witness to a brawl versus exercising the adult’s most wonderful superpower— the ability to leave the room and focus on your own, independent, more peaceful life.
-Dr. Lastname
My parents kept fighting nonstop throughout my childhood and teenage years and it was a painful, helpless experience for me. Even now that I’m in my late 20s and out of the house, they still fight constantly when I’m around and it still makes me cry uncontrollably and feel depressed. All through these years I’ve tried my best to solve and fix things, or just ask them not to fight so regularly in front of me, but nothing’s ever worked. My mother’s negativity, tendency to throw blame around and create chaos… I hate it all. My goal is to find ways to deal with this problem, because it’s been sucking away at my happiness and sanity for far too long.
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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.
