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 May 3, 2018
ADHD, like any cognitive disability, can be misdiagnosed as a personality flaw; seeing your problems as due to your character, not a disorder, can make you self-critical and vulnerable to the criticism of others at a time when you should be self-motivated and eager to find outside encouragement. Blaming yourself for everything you can’t achieve will just make you depressed, which just makes it harder to do well, which of course makes you feel even worse and more responsible, further impairing your ability to perform. So before you let your depression and/or critical audience bring you down entirely, push yourself to recognize that you aren’t a bad or worthless person, just a good person with the bad luck to have a quirky brain. Then develop standards that are realistic and respectful of good efforts rather than competitive results so you’ll be able to give yourself, and demand from others, the respect you deserve.
-Dr. Lastname
So my husband and I have had a very bad run over the last few years of our marriage, after we had our first child and made the mistake of getting into business together. We do things VERY differently; he’s always on time, organized and knows his mind, and I’m the opposite on all fronts. The cash flow and our available time kept dwindling while our family grew. And I caused a lot of damage—in our relationship and in our business—so that we had to shut the business down. He kept telling me what I needed to do to change my ways, buying me books and sending me links to articles, all along believing that I would and wanted to change, until at some point he realized that I was uninterested in the work. He also concluded that I am the most selfish person he’s known, and that I have been lying, thieving, and not investing in our relationship a fraction of what he has. He stopped helping around the house and with the child. I now had baby, house AND work to do up to his standards in order to redeem myself. So from here it goes like this; I’m constantly in a frame of mind that I don’t have enough time so I don’t do anything significant to address things, then wait ’till the last minute and then throw up my hands saying that, well, I did not have enough time to do it (when in truth, I had a lot). He then turns into a nag, waiting to catch my every slip-up and make a mountain out of it. Now the house and the child also start getting short shrift, up until the point where EVERYTHING lies around incomplete or half done and I have no motivation to do even the things I loved doing. I don’t groom myself anymore. He’s so nasty with me that he’s recently become short with our child and physically abusive to me. My goal is to understand why I don’t do things I know I should be doing so I can overcome both my inertia to change and this hellish situation.
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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 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.
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 15, 2018
Usually, when you’re talking about anything from cakes to windows and printers, smashing something apart is a lot easier than putting it together, but the opposite is true when it comes to marriage. It’s not only difficult and painful to divide your shared resources and responsibilities, be they finances or kids, but it’s also hard to face the humiliation, conflict, and loss that comes with giving up on a massive commitment. That’s why, as bad as your marriage may be, you may still look for any reason to avoid splitting your marriage—and life, and possibly sanity—apart. Regardless of habit, commitment, and belief, however, you must be ready to ask yourself, in an objective way, whether your partner is really as married to you as you are to them and whether there’s anything positive you can do about an imbalance, if it exists. Never doubt that there is a way to be objective about this issue and that, even if the answer to both questions is no, there’s a positive way forward through the very negative separation process.
-Dr. Lastname
My marriage has been pretty shitty over the past few years— sex has pretty much stopped and my wife’s been either hostile towards me or withdrawn. She went travelling on her own in January, so I decided to take dance lessons when she was gone (I’ve danced for a while, but decided to get better at it). When my wife returned, she demanded I quit the lessons immediately. I said no, as I had signed up for the month, so she then moved out of our bedroom, stopped eating or socializing with me. A couple of months later she separated her finances, than went away three more times for a total of three months. Early September she told me she wanted to sell our house, and if I didn’t sign to sell she would sic her lawyer on me, so I signed and the house sold right away. We then saw a couples’ counselor (she had been seeing her own therapist) who told us to live apart and date with no sex between us, so we bought separate places and move in another month. I’m willing to go along with it and try to make things work for financial reasons, but our recent past has been so filled with arguing, recriminations, etc. that I’m not sure it’s worth it. My goal is to figure out whether I should give up on this marriage (after over 40 years) or go along with the couples’ counselor’s advice and try to save it.
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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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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 4, 2017
Sometimes our brains act like our parents, tricking us with white lies so we’ll do what’s best for us. Unfortunately, unlike our parents, our brains sometimes get the wrong idea about what the right is for us in the long run. Parents reason that it’s OK to bribe kids into eating broccoli or coax them out of inappropriate behavior with empty threats of brain damage or blindness (or both) if the benefit outweighs the crime, but brains often do the opposite, convincing us that we should do what feels best in the short term, consequences be damned. So, if like our reader from earlier this week, your heart is broken and your brain is giving you any of the following seemingly legitimate reasons to reach out the person who did the breaking (with the secret hope of putting everything back together again), push your brain to think twice.
1) “I’m genuinely concerned about her wellbeing.”
Unselfish love is a wonderful feeling and seems above approach reproach, but once you’ve learned that a specific love will likely lead to misery/not-wonderful feelings, you’re supposed to protect yourself and keep your own wellbeing in mind. You may genuinely believe that the act of checking in on your ex is truly altruistic and that no harm can come from wanting good things for another human being, but if that were true, then martyrs wouldn’t exist. Your job isn’t to sacrifice yourself to save your ex but to keep yourself out of troubled relationships, exhaustion, and pain. Your brain may tell you that you’re doing the right thing by making sure she’s OK, but experience tells you that the buzz you get from seeing and helping her is like that from any other heavy drug; short-lived with a nasty hangover and a high risk for longterm damage.
2) “I don’t want to get back together, I just want to get some closure.”
Closure, like true love or perfect New York apartments, is another of those good feelings we see Nora Ephron movies for (RIP) because real life seldom provides it. As long as you’re honest and fearless in sharing your true feelings, TV and movies generally tell you that you can end a relationship with both parties (or more) accepting that it’s over and that, regardless of sadness and loss, with no resentment, unfinished business or unanswered questions, or self-doubt. Unfortunately, experience and Woody Allen movies (his career and integrity, RIP) tell you otherwise. Yes, you should try to be honest and accepting, but when closure doesn’t happen, remind yourself that the irreparable conflict is why the relationship didn’t work in the first place; if you were able to feel closure, you probably wouldn’t have broken up. In real life, closure isn’t a possibility, just an excuse to see your ex for a momentary respite from the pain of being closed out of his life.
3) “We were friends before we dated so we should be able to be friends now.”
Most people weren’t really friends before dating, just friendly; most people go through a platonic, getting-to-know-you period before dating begins in earnest (unless they’re in an arranged marriage or lost a bet in Las Vegas).
As such, they don’t actually have a pre-existing relationship to fall back on if romance fails, because real friendship requires a kind of comfort and trust that no one controls or manufactures at will, even with the best of intentions. That’s why even good people can’t necessarily be friends with the people they used to date or even love, even if they wish them well and have the strength to apologize, forgive, and get over past grievances. So, if your feelings and chemistry permitit, friendship is great, but if it’s not working, don’t try to pretend the uncomfortable or negative feelings aren’t there or you’ll make them worse. Being friendly non-friends is better than trying to force a friendship you just can’t have, especially since you’ll probably ruin any possible friendship in the process.
4) “I just want to let her know I forgive her.”
We may watch Nora Ephron movies to experience things that rarely happen in real life, but we watch Larry David to see someone suffer the same humiliations that we do, mostly from trying to do the right thing, at a safe distance. Trying to offer forgiveness is one of those good deeds that usually backfires and makes for good comedy on TV but tragedy in real life. After all, if your ex did something wrong but doesn’t see things that way, then forgiveness feels like condescension or re-accusation and will just stir up her old resentments. If she acknowledges responsibility, then forgiveness may be acceptable but won’t change the fact that most kinds of bad behavior happen again unless someone really, really wants to change, and even then they can’t always do it. In other words, you’re forgiving something your ex may not be able to prevent herself from doing again. No matter how strong the urge to give your ex the gift of forgiveness, do the more difficult work of finding acceptance instead, both of her unfixable flaws and your own covert desire to reconnect. Then decide whether further contact will give you the protection you need from whatever you’re forgiving her for.
5) “I just want to tell him this story I know he’d find really funny—it’s not like I want to get back together again or anything.”
Next to the aforementioned “I just want to ask him for my favorite T-shirt/mug/broken umbrella” excuse, “I just want to tell him (X unimportant fun thing)” is one of the flimsiest pretenses there is. As innocuous as it may seem to share stories that you used to enjoy together, it’s risky to share anything together until the not-enjoyable negative feelings left over from most normal breakups have truly cooled. Yes, you might like to see him again and remember the good times (and to possibly remind him or you of your friendship—see #3), but doing so won’t really help you and your ex move on to the next stage of life. Again, most of the painful feelings caused by breakups can’t be smoothed away by good talks, conjoint crying, or wacky anecdotes. It’s best not to reach out to your ex until you can be sure you’re truly over each other, but paradoxically, being over it means that you can hear a funny story (or do almost anything) without thinking of your ex or wanting to reach out to him at all.
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 13, 2016
People who aren’t drinking are technically sober, but, like our reader’s ex-husband described in a post earlier this week, many have not developed or just lost the ability to put aside selfish needs for the sake of long-term goals, values, and making relationships work. They’re often good at pleasing you in the short run, which makes you feel things are going well, but you must look closely at how they handle frustration and painful emotions before you know whether they’ve overcome the negative impact of alcohol on character. Here are five ways to evaluate the dry drunk before you get too close and find out the hard way that his sobriety is only booze-deep.
1) See How He Handles Hurt
Because drunks are blind slaves to their needs and impulses, a dry drunk still feels entitled to get back at you when he’s hurt or, at least, to find immediate relief the way he once did from booze. What you hope is that, instead of pouting or sulking, he’ll assume that hurt feelings are sometimes unavoidable, suck up his pain, let the bad feelings pass, and continue to act like a decent human being. If he instead acts petulant and feels entitled to have a good time with his buddies or new girlfriend because you’ve let him down, then he still has a drunk’s habits, just without the bar tab.
2) Mind the Money
Thanks to the same impulse control issues, a dry drunk can also have problems saving money; he means to be financially responsible but winds up spending more than he intended on various virgin ways to feel good and stop feeling bad. Ask yourself whether he really can stick to a budget and save money or whether he can’t stop himself from getting you a flashy present when he worries that you’re mad at him or losing interest. If he can’t, then he’s likely to act twice as bad when he’s the one losing interest in you.
3) Assess Kill-building
Since learning new skills or taking on a new challenge is often a frustrating process, it’s one dry drunks often lack the self-discipline and pain threshold to deal with. Note whether he can make himself take on difficult projects, stick to unpleasant routines involving errands or exercise, and do other boring activities for the sake of a good cause. If he has values of his own, he’ll stay busy even when you’re not there. If his motivation is to make you happy, he’ll look busy when you’re around, but not do much more. That speaks poorly for his ability to learn (or relearn) the skills needed to stay sober, like patience and acceptance.
4) Look for Lies
Of the average drunk’s propensity for dishonesty, Stephen King once said that, “Ask an active alcoholic what time it is, and 9 times out of 10 he’ll lie to you.” Similarly, a dry drunk will also lie with ease, usually to avoid conflict, regardless of whether the lie is easily discovered and the consequences are much worse than if he told the truth. Don’t avoid checking on the facts because you want to show him you trust him and build up his confidence; look for honesty as a sign of real sobriety.
5) Track the True Source of Blame
In the absence of morals or values, the main belief held by any addict, aside from the importance of getting high, is the absolute importance of quid pro quo. As such, a dry drunk also feels you should make him feel good if he made a good effort to make you feel good, and any unwillingness to hold up your end of the bargain is the ultimate betrayal. So, whether he’s bored, angry, or hurt (see above), he’ll find reasons to blame you for his bad feelings. Don’t think that expressing such blame will improve your relationship; instead, recognize it as a sign that a good relationship may be impossible, at least until he realizes that he’s got a lot more work to do on his sobriety beyond staying sober.
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 27, 2016
There are many ways to be hurt by an alcoholic partner, even if he’s in recovery, but figuring out who’s responsible for that hurt can be a lot more complicated. That’s because alcoholics, be they sober for ages or still steadily soused, are well-practiced in victimhood, which makes them very good at explaining hurt in terms of what you’re doing to make them unhappy and very bad at taking responsibility for their actions. So if you consort with addicts and want to avoid undeserved blame, you’d better know how to tolerate hurt, tell right from wrong, and stand up for your own convictions. Otherwise, you’ll also end up with a lot of unnecessary heartache.
-Dr. Lastname
I married my recovering alcoholic ex after he’d been sober for three years. We went through hell and back together and I stuck by his side through it all, but our marriage only lasted six months— it took that long for him to tell me he isn’t attracted to me anymore and kick me out. Of course, I smelled the booze on him as he said it, because he’d actually relapsed. I’ve moved on somehow, but still feel angry, especially since I just got off all my anti-depressants. My goal is to figure out how to get over this massive, mind-blowing disappointment.
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