Posted by fxckfeelings on June 17, 2009
Elvis once sang, “I’m caught in a trap and I can’t back out ’cause I love you too much, baby.” For our first case, that sentiment rings true. Our second sides more with the Public Enemy school; that “Elvis was a hero to some but he never meant a goddamn thing to me,” so trap be-damned, I’m outta here. Here are two men reacting very differently to feeling stuck. Thank you, thank you very much, goodnight.
–Dr. Lastname
I lost my job last month, so my wife and I have had to move in with her parents until we get back on our feet. In a lot of ways, it could be worse—her parents have a huge old house, my kids love spending time with their grandparents and vice versa, my wife is a lot less stressed out—but, aside from the lack of privacy and pride, the biggest issue for me is my mother-in-law (a cliché, I know, but hey). This woman always has to be right, she has to have an opinion about everything, she has to know what everyone’s doing all the time…I feel like an angry teenager because I can’t go out to pick up a pizza without getting grilled for information with an additional load of condescending commentary (“Oh, I would NEVER order from that pizza place,” “You’re such a good daddy to get a treat for the little ones!”, etc, SHUT UP). My wife is used to it—she grew up with it!—but I’m not, and I can’t find a job, and I am losing my ability to resist telling her to FUCK OFF. Plus my wife doesn’t want to hear me complain about it, so she wants me to “talk to someone,” but without any insurance, I’m talking to you. And so, my goal is to find a way to get through this situation without going to jail for murder.
OK, let’s start with the positives; your goal in dealing with your obnoxious mother-in-law is a good one because you’re not trying to change her, get anyone else to change her, or find an escape where one doesn’t exist. You are admitting you’re fucked, and that’s the first step to a not-cure.
You’re also not implying that you’re a failure because you lost your job or can’t find a new one that would allow you to bid her adieu. You’re not saying “I shouldn’t have allowed this to happen” or “I shouldn’t let her get to me.” You haven’t let your seething irritation stop you from looking for work and being a father, so you don’t have to fight a false belief in your failure or the bad behaviors that follow that belief. Again, you’re on the right path, even if that path is paved with turds.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 14, 2009
Nobody enjoys the break-up process, but there are ways, as either the dumped or the dumpee, to make that process even worse. Between a woman who thinks she’s permaturely ending things to a man who can’t let go, these two cases show how breaking-up is not just hard to do, but easy to fuck up royally.
–Dr. Lastname
I just broke up with my boyfriend, and even though I thought I was doing the right thing in the long run, I think I’m now making a habit of ending relationships before they get too serious. This time I ended things because, after a year together, I had to face the fact that I wasn’t as excited about him as I should be, and certainly not as excited about him as he was about me (and never was—this wasn’t an issue of the spark being gone, but never really being there in the first place). I left the guy before him because he and his mother were very close—maybe too close, in that his mother seemed to boss him around—and that mother lived hundreds of miles away, which meant he’d want to move hundred miles away eventually, and I really didn’t (let alone raise a family there so close to his crazy mother). I’m not that old, but I’m definitely in the marriage window, and while I think I’m just being realistic when I make these decisions, I worry that I’m just panicking in the face of actually settling down. I hate how much I’ve hurt my exes by what I’ve done, my goal is, I don’t want to do it again.
It’s understandable to feel bad when you’ve made someone else feel bad, but feelings aren’t that important when you’re looking at the bottom line. Before you start criticizing yourself for the painful outcome of these two relationships, considering the obstacles that make it difficult to find a good partner.
Ultimately, your goal isn’t to avoid painful breakups; it’s to deal with prospective partners honestly while you try to find a good match, knowing that it’s entirely possible to begin a relationship with someone you like and respect and then discover problems that would doom a long-term future.
That’s what you can’t control here: the unsolvability of two of those problems and the need to break the relationship sooner rather than later, regardless of the pain you might cause.
We both know couples who broke up because one of them is over-responsive to another priority in their lives, like a mother or job or college basketball. So when you’re considering settling down with someone, you need to ask yourself how this guy is likely to respond if the demands of our family conflict with his other loyalties.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 3, 2009
It’s wedding season, which means we’ve got a couple of cases involving equal helpings of drama, family/friends, and bullshit. Indeed, fxckfeelings.com is the ideal place to speak now or forever hold your peace.
–Dr. Lastname
My best friend is marrying an asshole next month, and I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut, but now that the wedding is almost here, I really worry I’m letting her make the biggest mistake of her life. She and I have known each other since high school, and while this isn’t the first jerk she’s dated, he’s certainly one of the most manipulative and creepy, and, sadly, the first one to bring up marriage. I’m fairly certain that he’s cheated on her already, but I have no proof, and besides, I can tell that she’s too in love with him to listen to me. Is there anything I can say to her to make her see sense? Should I look hard for proof of his asshole-ishness? My goal is to speak now or forever hold my peace/have to avoid one of my oldest friends until the messy divorce.
You probably already know this since you’ve kept your mouth shut for so long, but just to state the obvious, opposing her feelings of love with your feelings of mistrust is a good way to end your friendship with your betrothed friend and strengthen her isolation. Doing that will make her more reliant on her fiancé. You will have vented your dislike and done your duty/more harm than good.
A better goal is to see if you can get your friend to be more careful in terms of making such an important life decision, without suggesting in any way that your negative feelings for her fiancé are the reason for your advice. You can tell her to look before she leaps without indicating that there’s a specific pile of shit to avoid.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 24, 2009
Love is at its most dangerous not when its bonds are most intense, but when its status between two people is muddled and ambiguous. Here are two cases where the feelings are unclear but the stakes remain high.
-Dr. Lastname
I don’t know if my husband is cheating on me, but I admit that I’m convinced enough that I’m wondering what to say to him. He’s always looking for an excuse to get out of the house—suddenly every single game, no matter what sport, deserves a trip to the bar with his buddies. It may just be that he doesn’t like to hang out with the kids, or that I annoy him, but that seems to extreme. We’ve never had a screaming fight about the whole thing, mostly because we’re both too tired from work and life and whatever. When I do joke about it, he just swears up and down he’s not cheating, and that he’s going alone out because I hate going out with him, and that I’m letting my insecurities get the best of me. And I guess he’s right in some ways, because I am kind of shy and, when I’m busy, I forget about going out. But he knows how much it drives me crazy, and that I need help with our kids, so you’d think he’d cut back out of consideration for my needs. I’m tired and lonely, too, so now I wonder where I’m supposed to turn. So that’s it. My goal is to keep anyone from cheating on anyone.
Just the fact that confrontations over infidelity are the climax of choice for most tabloid TV programs should tell you that they seldom work out positively. Instead, they lead to mutual accusations, just-stop-attacking-me apologies, ineffective denials, and/or resolutions to do better followed by the same old behavior.
The problem is that, if he tends to lie or fool around, then that’s the way he is. As much as it feels personal, it usually isn’t, and if you looked at his past under a fidelity microscope, you’d probably find microbes of secret flings everywhere, and those microbes will keep chugging along until the Cialis stops working.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 17, 2009
When everything in life seems to be going wrong, somebody’s bound to assure you, “at least you’ve got your health.” The problem is, no matter how much yoga we do and kale we choke down, we can never really control how healthy we are. Here are two cases of people who, in one way or another, are worrying themselves sick.
–Dr. Lastname
My husband and I just got pregnant, and while our parents are overjoyed, husband and his family keep ribbing me about my birth plan, and it’s starting to piss me off. Mainly, they think I’m stupid or something because I want a homebirth, and while my husband supports my decision—which I came to after reading some books, talking to friends, etc.—he’s made it clear that he thinks a conventional delivery would be smarter (and his mother now calls me “flower child” to my face, which isn’t funny, just weird). Conventional medicine isn’t always right, especially when it comes to taking into account the psychic scars that come from delivering a child in a sterile environment where s/he isn’t allowed to bond with his/her mother immediately, etc, etc. I just want to make sure that I have that our child is healthy and happy from his/her first second, and I hate that my husband thinks that this is a joke. My goal is to get him on board to put our baby’s health first and his stupid preconceptions second.
The scary thing about getting pregnant is knowing how much of your future happiness depends on having a healthy baby, and how powerless you are to guarantee that future. Of course, you do the usual—good nutrition, medical screening, no alcohol—but, in the end, there’s a natural process at work that goes wrong a certain percentage of the time regardless of prayer, diligence, organic this or holistic that. That’s life in its rawest form.
Our usual human reaction to such mortal helplessness is to invent and believe in various methods of control–some of which are incompatible with others–and then wage war with those who got it wrong, all of which splits the family and intensifies blame when something goes wrong. Welcome to why parenting is so hard.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 3, 2009
To most, freedom from fear seems like a reasonable goal; after all, ridding yourself of all anxiety would reduce your blood pressure, whiten your teeth, get rid of your gut, etc. Never mind that the possibility of a fear-free existence is sold to us by everyone from alarm companies to boutique medical practices. The problem is that fear, like happiness or anger, is, you guessed it, out of our control. Here are a couple cases where wanting to control fear clouds the real goal at hand; living in the face of ever present danger.
–Dr. Lastname
I didn’t used to be an anxious person, but I haven’t felt right since I got mugged a few months ago (I was jumped, robbed, and beaten pretty bad, and yes, amazingly, they caught the guys). I’m afraid to go out after dark and I wake up with nightmares, which is bad, but somewhat manageable and at least makes sense. What I’m really having trouble with are the less-than-occasional anxiety attacks with dizziness, shortness of breath, nausea, the works, and they’re completely incapacitating. It’s not just unhealthy, it’s making my life impossible. I should be able to stop them if I can get to the bottom of this trauma, right? I’ve lost my peace of mind and I want to get it back.
You don’t recover from trauma by recovering your peace of mind because, first, it’s often impossible and, second, it may be undesirable, at least if you define peace of mind as the absence of fear and anxiety. Simply put, life is dangerous. While you might not see your brain’s fearful reaction to your trauma as positive, it’s just adjusting by putting you on permanent alert for the next attack.
In doing so, it’s preserving you and passing on your genes to the next generation, which is more likely to have the same guard-against-attack thermostat. So don’t feel it’s wrong to be post-traumatically anxious; the anxiety may tire you out, but it’s also there to make you hyper-alert to the next threat, whether it comes by day or night.
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