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2024.04.29 06:00 Choice_Evidence1983 [New Update] - Am I wrong for ultimately wanting a divorce even after my wife has showed much more effort into our relationship?
I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/LimpCrazy1824
Originally posted to amiwrong
Previous BoRU
[New Update] - Am I wrong for ultimately wanting a divorce even after my wife has showed much more effort into our relationship?
NEW UPDATE MARKED WITH ----
Trigger Warnings: possible infidelity, emotional abuse and manipulation, mentions of addictions, emotional affair, mentions of invasions of privacy, verbal abuse
RECAP
Original Post: March 21, 2024
For context. Coming into the new year I had no idea my wife had been at the bare minimum having an emotional affair with a coworker.
On New Year’s Eve before I found out about this she came home and acted extremely cold toward me and our kids. She was angry.
Earlier on that evening she asked if she could go out to have 1 drink with a female coworker (whom I knew and trusted) I told her that was cool but that the kids were staying up for the ball drop so as long as she could be back to celebrate with them I was fine with it.
Well. She ended up getting off of work at 11:30 and barely had enough time to get home.
After the ball drop she cried and cried. I asked her what was wrong and she said she got invited to a her friends house to have drinks with them. (All 3 of them women, all married, I had no issue)
I said “look. I’m not sure what’s wrong and why you’re crying about this. That’s fine. You deserve a girls night out every once in a while I don’t mind watching the kids. Just go”
I put the kids to bed, she left and then about 3 hours later. So 3 a.m. I tried to contact her. No answer. I wait about 15 minutes. Call her again. No answer.
I call her friend who she’s supposed to be with. No answer.
She then texts me back 5 minutes later and says “yeah. I’m still coming home tonight. We’re still drinking”
Never in our 6 years of marriage had I felt a gut feeling that something else was going on but that night it all hit me. I went through our phone records and found another number I was unfamiliar with that she had been in contact with all night.
Ignoring my calls, texting that number in between. Etc.
She had also been texting this number for a 3 month period daily. I never suspected that she would be texting another dude while right beside me watching family movies either. As times had shown. How I didn’t see this I have no idea. Maybe she had this individual listed as mom in her phone. I don’t know. I had never gotten this vibe or feeling our entire marriage. I was blindsided by it.
Anyway. I confront her about it through text with the proof like an idiot. She speeds home, deletes everything on her phone. No way of getting the back ups restored. No way of ever knowing she did not meet up with this guy.
Upon finding this out I immediately told her i wanted a divorce. It was at this point she began getting violent with me. Talking shit about everything I had been doing to keep us financially stable. The 18 hour work days that kept a roof over our heads. She told me that I needed to leave even though I pay rent and both our kids are asleep.
I refused
We slept in separate rooms that night and the next day she tried to act like nothing even happened. Claiming that she remembered we’d fought but couldn’t remember what it was about. So I show her the phone records even though I’m positive she was just trying to pull some crap.
She confesses who the individual was and says they flirted a lot but never met up.
I told her if that was true she’d have no issues restoring the text messages she deleted at which point it was confirmed she deleted everything and deleted her last back up. She also saved a back up after they were deleted the night everything went to shit.
Since then she’s tried hard to convince me they never did anything and never saw eachother aside from work. I keep finding bits and pieces of things that don’t make since.
Chunks of texts deleted from her friends messages around that time. Pictures on her Google drive from that night (where she was with who she said she was) deleted from her phone for what reason?
The most damming evidence I have is for a 2 hour period on New Year’s Eve. They stopped texting each other then randomly started texting again at around 3 a.m. when I started calling and got that feeling.
My gut tells me she left her friends place, went to his place and went back. Or. She went straight to his place from our place then went to her friends when she found out I was calling them.
There are revealing pictures of herself she never sent me also on her Google drive taken on Snapchat.
She’s since given me her all her attention. She initiates intimacy 10 fold. The texting stopped. She shows me everything on her snap chat and even downloads her data to show me she’s not hitting other people up.
I’m seeing the side of her I haven’t seen since we were married all those years ago.
But I can’t help but trust my gut in demanding a divorce. I feel like she’s kept things from me. Not knowing for sure is killing me inside.
My parents know all of this and keep pressuring me to work it out and not dwell. My brothers are saying fuck that get a divorce. Am I wrong in getting a divorce?
Keep in mind the dates. It’s now been over four months since this occurred. I’m positive she cut the individual completely out. But I still can’t get over the not 100 percent knowing and my gut tells me she’s still lying.
Edit: if some of this is confusing ask and I will clarify. I will also give context where needed.
Also. Sorry for the way this was written. I’m aware there is some jumping back and forth. Etc. I’m just scatterbrained right now. It’s honestly getting to me more now than the night I found out. It just keeps building. I feel stupid.
Edit 2: Also. Forgot to add this the individual in question is an employee she manages. As in. She is his direct supervisor. I’ve heard there are greater legal consequences for this but I have no idea.
For clarification. The individual in question is actually morbidly obese. I’m by no means “fit” fit. But I’m not fat either.
Update 1: currently on morning break at work. Been reading through the comments. I have off tomorrow all day so I will be heavily weighing my options when I get some time to myself tomorrow. May not update tomorrow. But I’ll update ya’ll when I can. Thank you for all the input positive and negative. The best thing I can do right now is just get through the work week. Get my kids from daycare and be mentally present for them.
I’ve been ignoring her since last night and she’s been snapping and calling me all morning to see what’s wrong.
Relevant Comments
OOP on his wife lying to him and the family telling him to reconsider divorcing
Update #1: March 25, 2024
Those of you who saw https://www.reddit.com/amiwrong/s/HcnwYkadEt
My wife had an emotional affair at the bare minimum and may have cheated. (Probably did but will never admit it)
Here is the update:
I sit here typing this out on my morning break while listening Tuesday’s gone by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
After a long day of considering my options on Friday I sat my wife down on Friday evening when she got off work and I had out the kids to bed.
As soon as I brought up that my trust in her was completely gone she immediately became argumentative and essentially stated “I thought we had left this in the past. You never trusted me did you?.
I responded with: even if you didn’t do anything physical or met up with him outside of work, you’ll never let me see those text messages. You’ll never pull the snap chat data
She responded with: you’re right!! Marriage is based off trust and if you don’t trust me then maybe we ought to call it quits”
The irony in this is that I worked 18-19 hour days for the past few years barely being able to do anything I wanted to do in my life because I was supporting our children, getting them to bed, cleaning the house all the time, doing all the cooking, barely even getting enough sleep. Probably took years off my life just from the stress.
She on New Year’s Eve said fuck the kids, fuck you, and essentially went out to party with her friends all the while ignoring calls from me and our daughter asking where she was while also responding to her bare minimum emotional affair partner.
Not getting into all the details so as to not repeat myself between this and the update.
Long story short. In my state we have to be separated for a year before a divorce can be finalized.
When I agreed with her that we should start separating and that I had already been in contact with a lawyer she freaked the fuck out on me. She begged me not to go through with it. But alas.
Next Friday I will be dropping her off at her parents a few hours away. The kids will be staying with me for now with the help of one of my brothers.
I told her there was only one way I would put this off for now. That was pull the data, pull the texts. Prove your case.
She looked down at the ground. One more time. And told me that’s a violation of her privacy.
We haven’t spoken since.
For now For my kids
I godda keep on keeping on.
Update: trickle truth:
1st it was a guy in a different state. 2nd it was a coworker 3rd it was someone underneath her. that she supervises 4th and just now - Randomly got a text from her stating she may have told him she loves him. But instantly regretted it. And that’s it”
“Riiiiiiggght” - Dr. Evil.
Also let me reiterate: the process of separation starts this coming Friday. In my state you cannot divorce immediately. It takes a full year. (I say this because of all the people stating “just divorce and be done with it, and also those stating “stop giving second chances.”
Relevant Comments
Scruffersdad: Op, you do realize that your attorney can subpoena her phone records and texts, right? If you believe there was cheating have your lawyer get all those messages. Then you’ll know and she’ll be out of luck.
Last update: https://www.reddit.com/amiwrong/s/cN3wYuy7W0
Original post linked in previous update.
Long story short I found out my wife had been having an affair on New Year’s Eve as Ali sat at home with our children. After ignoring calls from not only me but our daughter asking where she was I went through our phone records to see that while she ignored our calls she was accepting calls and texting another number quite frequently.
(For the record it was the first time in over 12 years of being together that I’d ever gotten a gut feeling to do so) never checked them prior to that night.
Called the friends who she was supppsed to be with and they ignored my calls as well.
After confronting her through text at around 4 or 5 a.m. she was home within 5 minutes screaming at me and yelling at me as I tried to sleep. Got blamed for everything even though I’d been loyal and the financial bread winner our entire marriage.
She ended up gaslighting me and trickle truthing as I tried to keep things together for our children.
I’ll spare you all the details as they can be found in previous update and original post.
Fast forward to today: I filed for divorce against my families wishes. (Whole other story also answered in previous update)
We are seperated but the divorce can’t be finalized until next year. (1 year of being seperated is required) She begged and begged for me not to go through with it begged me to stay. Not to toss everything out over “1 little mistake”
Funny how she sees infidelity as “a mistake” that lasted 3 months…. Yeah…
Regardless. I’ve spent a lot of time with my kids. She sees them on weekends if she chooses. (Has only been a couple of times)
I’d love to say that I’m over it all. But I’m still healing. I really did love her and I wish things worked out different. But I can never trust her again.
She tried everything she could sexually to get me to stay. Hell, the day she finally confessed everything I came home to her dressed up like never before ready to go. I declined.
She went as far as offering me head every day for the rest of our lives if I stayed.
I’ve been working and taking care of the kids. It’s harder on them than it is me if i’m being honest. They still don’t understand. I’ve just been telling them mommy has some things she’s “working on” I don’t have the heart to tell them we won’t be a functional household anymore at this time.
Also. My parents haven’t one time talked to reached out to me since I told them I was filing for divorce. Not even to check on my kids or anything.
But I’ve been making this work with the help of my brother and a few good friends.
A few girlfriends from the past have hit me up to see if I want to catch up but. I need to focus on myself and my kids.
Thank you all for reaching out through dming and commenting. ✌️✌️✌️
Relevant Comment
OOP on if his wife has given an apology and if she helped with taking care of the kids
submitted by Choice_Evidence1983 to BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]
Originally posted to amiwrong
Previous BoRU
[New Update] - Am I wrong for ultimately wanting a divorce even after my wife has showed much more effort into our relationship?
NEW UPDATE MARKED WITH ----
Trigger Warnings: possible infidelity, emotional abuse and manipulation, mentions of addictions, emotional affair, mentions of invasions of privacy, verbal abuse
Original Post: March 21, 2024
For context. Coming into the new year I had no idea my wife had been at the bare minimum having an emotional affair with a coworker.
On New Year’s Eve before I found out about this she came home and acted extremely cold toward me and our kids. She was angry.
Earlier on that evening she asked if she could go out to have 1 drink with a female coworker (whom I knew and trusted) I told her that was cool but that the kids were staying up for the ball drop so as long as she could be back to celebrate with them I was fine with it.
Well. She ended up getting off of work at 11:30 and barely had enough time to get home.
After the ball drop she cried and cried. I asked her what was wrong and she said she got invited to a her friends house to have drinks with them. (All 3 of them women, all married, I had no issue)
I said “look. I’m not sure what’s wrong and why you’re crying about this. That’s fine. You deserve a girls night out every once in a while I don’t mind watching the kids. Just go”
I put the kids to bed, she left and then about 3 hours later. So 3 a.m. I tried to contact her. No answer. I wait about 15 minutes. Call her again. No answer.
I call her friend who she’s supposed to be with. No answer.
She then texts me back 5 minutes later and says “yeah. I’m still coming home tonight. We’re still drinking”
Never in our 6 years of marriage had I felt a gut feeling that something else was going on but that night it all hit me. I went through our phone records and found another number I was unfamiliar with that she had been in contact with all night.
Ignoring my calls, texting that number in between. Etc.
She had also been texting this number for a 3 month period daily. I never suspected that she would be texting another dude while right beside me watching family movies either. As times had shown. How I didn’t see this I have no idea. Maybe she had this individual listed as mom in her phone. I don’t know. I had never gotten this vibe or feeling our entire marriage. I was blindsided by it.
Anyway. I confront her about it through text with the proof like an idiot. She speeds home, deletes everything on her phone. No way of getting the back ups restored. No way of ever knowing she did not meet up with this guy.
Upon finding this out I immediately told her i wanted a divorce. It was at this point she began getting violent with me. Talking shit about everything I had been doing to keep us financially stable. The 18 hour work days that kept a roof over our heads. She told me that I needed to leave even though I pay rent and both our kids are asleep.
I refused
We slept in separate rooms that night and the next day she tried to act like nothing even happened. Claiming that she remembered we’d fought but couldn’t remember what it was about. So I show her the phone records even though I’m positive she was just trying to pull some crap.
She confesses who the individual was and says they flirted a lot but never met up.
I told her if that was true she’d have no issues restoring the text messages she deleted at which point it was confirmed she deleted everything and deleted her last back up. She also saved a back up after they were deleted the night everything went to shit.
Since then she’s tried hard to convince me they never did anything and never saw eachother aside from work. I keep finding bits and pieces of things that don’t make since.
Chunks of texts deleted from her friends messages around that time. Pictures on her Google drive from that night (where she was with who she said she was) deleted from her phone for what reason?
The most damming evidence I have is for a 2 hour period on New Year’s Eve. They stopped texting each other then randomly started texting again at around 3 a.m. when I started calling and got that feeling.
My gut tells me she left her friends place, went to his place and went back. Or. She went straight to his place from our place then went to her friends when she found out I was calling them.
There are revealing pictures of herself she never sent me also on her Google drive taken on Snapchat.
She’s since given me her all her attention. She initiates intimacy 10 fold. The texting stopped. She shows me everything on her snap chat and even downloads her data to show me she’s not hitting other people up.
I’m seeing the side of her I haven’t seen since we were married all those years ago.
But I can’t help but trust my gut in demanding a divorce. I feel like she’s kept things from me. Not knowing for sure is killing me inside.
My parents know all of this and keep pressuring me to work it out and not dwell. My brothers are saying fuck that get a divorce. Am I wrong in getting a divorce?
Keep in mind the dates. It’s now been over four months since this occurred. I’m positive she cut the individual completely out. But I still can’t get over the not 100 percent knowing and my gut tells me she’s still lying.
Edit: if some of this is confusing ask and I will clarify. I will also give context where needed.
Also. Sorry for the way this was written. I’m aware there is some jumping back and forth. Etc. I’m just scatterbrained right now. It’s honestly getting to me more now than the night I found out. It just keeps building. I feel stupid.
Edit 2: Also. Forgot to add this the individual in question is an employee she manages. As in. She is his direct supervisor. I’ve heard there are greater legal consequences for this but I have no idea.
For clarification. The individual in question is actually morbidly obese. I’m by no means “fit” fit. But I’m not fat either.
- went back and looked at the time stamps for the pictures that were deleted of her and her friends that night. (On Google drive) before that 2 hour period of no texting, during, and after there were several pictures taken with verified time stamps on them. As in they can not be changed on Google drive. Whether or not she has a friend that’s tech saavy and was able to do that within the 10 minutes it took her to get home upon confronting I don’t know. Is this possible?
Update 1: currently on morning break at work. Been reading through the comments. I have off tomorrow all day so I will be heavily weighing my options when I get some time to myself tomorrow. May not update tomorrow. But I’ll update ya’ll when I can. Thank you for all the input positive and negative. The best thing I can do right now is just get through the work week. Get my kids from daycare and be mentally present for them.
I’ve been ignoring her since last night and she’s been snapping and calling me all morning to see what’s wrong.
Relevant Comments
OOP on his wife lying to him and the family telling him to reconsider divorcing
OOP: I’ll be honest with you. The two main reasons I’ve tried to tuff it out are 1) the kids. Even though she pretty much said fuck all of us on New Year’s Eve.InevitableTrue7223: Did she come home acting extremely cold or did she work until 11?
And 2) for some reason my parents have really been pressuring me to stay. (It’s fucking with me and I don’t know why)
They keep reminding me that (no one in this family has ever gotten a divorce. Blah blah blah) they said I’ll most likely never end up seeing my children again even though in my state if a spouse is found to have cheated, this essentially gives up their rights to children if a divorce is filed
I really don’t understand how my own parents can sit there and feed me bull crap stories about people they know that went through it and came out a better couple. (Really feels like they’re taking her side in everything that happened while ignoring every truth)
OOP: Silence. Our daughter ran up to her for a hug and she started crying. She then got really irritated when our daughter asked her for a drink. Something that still doesn’t sit right with me. She started yelling at her saying “mommy needs some fucking space”
When I tell ya’ll there was literally no sign of all this crap until that. She hid everything extremely well.
Also. For everyone saying what they are about the 2 hour period. Yes. That was my thought. I went back through the Google drive at everything that was removed from her phone. There were pictures and selfies taken with her friends at the place she was “supposed to be” during that time period before it and after it. I doubt she’s tech Saavy enough to edit time stamps on Google drive once everything’s backed up. This isn’t to say they never met up. This isn’t to say she doesn’t know how to do that. And it still doesn’t make a difference with everything she did. Like I said. Weighing options tomorrow. Reaching out to a lawyer tomorrow.
Update #1: March 25, 2024
Those of you who saw https://www.reddit.com/amiwrong/s/HcnwYkadEt
My wife had an emotional affair at the bare minimum and may have cheated. (Probably did but will never admit it)
Here is the update:
I sit here typing this out on my morning break while listening Tuesday’s gone by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
After a long day of considering my options on Friday I sat my wife down on Friday evening when she got off work and I had out the kids to bed.
As soon as I brought up that my trust in her was completely gone she immediately became argumentative and essentially stated “I thought we had left this in the past. You never trusted me did you?.
I responded with: even if you didn’t do anything physical or met up with him outside of work, you’ll never let me see those text messages. You’ll never pull the snap chat data
She responded with: you’re right!! Marriage is based off trust and if you don’t trust me then maybe we ought to call it quits”
The irony in this is that I worked 18-19 hour days for the past few years barely being able to do anything I wanted to do in my life because I was supporting our children, getting them to bed, cleaning the house all the time, doing all the cooking, barely even getting enough sleep. Probably took years off my life just from the stress.
She on New Year’s Eve said fuck the kids, fuck you, and essentially went out to party with her friends all the while ignoring calls from me and our daughter asking where she was while also responding to her bare minimum emotional affair partner.
Not getting into all the details so as to not repeat myself between this and the update.
Long story short. In my state we have to be separated for a year before a divorce can be finalized.
When I agreed with her that we should start separating and that I had already been in contact with a lawyer she freaked the fuck out on me. She begged me not to go through with it. But alas.
Next Friday I will be dropping her off at her parents a few hours away. The kids will be staying with me for now with the help of one of my brothers.
I told her there was only one way I would put this off for now. That was pull the data, pull the texts. Prove your case.
She looked down at the ground. One more time. And told me that’s a violation of her privacy.
We haven’t spoken since.
For now For my kids
I godda keep on keeping on.
Update: trickle truth:
1st it was a guy in a different state. 2nd it was a coworker 3rd it was someone underneath her. that she supervises 4th and just now - Randomly got a text from her stating she may have told him she loves him. But instantly regretted it. And that’s it”
“Riiiiiiggght” - Dr. Evil.
Also let me reiterate: the process of separation starts this coming Friday. In my state you cannot divorce immediately. It takes a full year. (I say this because of all the people stating “just divorce and be done with it, and also those stating “stop giving second chances.”
Relevant Comments
Scruffersdad: Op, you do realize that your attorney can subpoena her phone records and texts, right? If you believe there was cheating have your lawyer get all those messages. Then you’ll know and she’ll be out of luck.
OOP: Definitely going to happen. I’ve already been in contact with one and in the state I live in if there was infidelity she essentially loses any choice in the matter of where the kids stay.tab1234566788: Oh gosh I'm so sorry. I've been in a similar situation, he wouldn't show me the texts. Spent about a half hour clearing then and then let me see his phone. Lol.
OOP: For me it’s pretty black and white. I’m 99.99999 percent sure she physically cheated. I’d love to just believe her and move on but I can’t.
Not only did she delete all texts between them. She deleted all texts from multiple friends and coworkers from that same time as well.
But left the ones from prior and after. As far as I’m concerned her friends were in on it and so was anyone else she deleted texts from.
----NEW UPDATE----
Update #2: April 22, 2024Last update: https://www.reddit.com/amiwrong/s/cN3wYuy7W0
Original post linked in previous update.
Long story short I found out my wife had been having an affair on New Year’s Eve as Ali sat at home with our children. After ignoring calls from not only me but our daughter asking where she was I went through our phone records to see that while she ignored our calls she was accepting calls and texting another number quite frequently.
(For the record it was the first time in over 12 years of being together that I’d ever gotten a gut feeling to do so) never checked them prior to that night.
Called the friends who she was supppsed to be with and they ignored my calls as well.
After confronting her through text at around 4 or 5 a.m. she was home within 5 minutes screaming at me and yelling at me as I tried to sleep. Got blamed for everything even though I’d been loyal and the financial bread winner our entire marriage.
She ended up gaslighting me and trickle truthing as I tried to keep things together for our children.
I’ll spare you all the details as they can be found in previous update and original post.
Fast forward to today: I filed for divorce against my families wishes. (Whole other story also answered in previous update)
We are seperated but the divorce can’t be finalized until next year. (1 year of being seperated is required) She begged and begged for me not to go through with it begged me to stay. Not to toss everything out over “1 little mistake”
Funny how she sees infidelity as “a mistake” that lasted 3 months…. Yeah…
Regardless. I’ve spent a lot of time with my kids. She sees them on weekends if she chooses. (Has only been a couple of times)
I’d love to say that I’m over it all. But I’m still healing. I really did love her and I wish things worked out different. But I can never trust her again.
She tried everything she could sexually to get me to stay. Hell, the day she finally confessed everything I came home to her dressed up like never before ready to go. I declined.
She went as far as offering me head every day for the rest of our lives if I stayed.
I’ve been working and taking care of the kids. It’s harder on them than it is me if i’m being honest. They still don’t understand. I’ve just been telling them mommy has some things she’s “working on” I don’t have the heart to tell them we won’t be a functional household anymore at this time.
Also. My parents haven’t one time talked to reached out to me since I told them I was filing for divorce. Not even to check on my kids or anything.
But I’ve been making this work with the help of my brother and a few good friends.
A few girlfriends from the past have hit me up to see if I want to catch up but. I need to focus on myself and my kids.
Thank you all for reaching out through dming and commenting. ✌️✌️✌️
Relevant Comment
OOP on if his wife has given an apology and if she helped with taking care of the kids
OOP: Ah. Sorry. Yes. She sent me a half assed confession while I was at work through snap chat one day. Bawling hysterically telling me she fucked up and kissed him “1 time” after he walked her to her car. I don’t believe that for one second. I said “if that’s all then prove it by providing me with the messages you deleted”
Once again I was met with “that’s an invasion of my privacy, plus if I was in your position I would just want to forgive, forget and move on”
Easy for the cheater to go ahead and say.
I pressed it a few more times and was met with “trust me you don’t want to read that shit!!!! Why would you want to read that!?!?!”
Case closed.
Edit: going to vent for a second. I’ll be honest with ya’ll. I tried to give her one final chance to talk things through. I told myself the minute she got hostile about it all I was done.
Within 5 minutes of “our final talk” I was being blamed for working too much. I quote “this isn’t a fucking trial. You weren’t perfect either. I was practically screaming for help and you let me drown”
I took the kids to daycare, cleaned the house all the time, picked them up after work, put them to bed, did all the cooking, did the dishes, took on a side hustle to give her a dream vacation which we went on just before her affair started. (Which is where a good few of ya’ll may know me from - the side hustle)
The real kicker I didn’t tell ya’ll about was when I went through her phone that first night I saw messages from her and her mom talking about how she felt a disconnect. That I wasn’t what she wanted anymore (months before her affair began) Her mom highly encouraged her to sit me down and explain the way she felt. She even told her mom that she did. (She never did)
Apparently sitting me down and having a talk was her going off and having an affair.
I gaurantee she’ll never find someone that will treat her the way I did. Breakfast in bed Saturday and Sunday. I woke up with the kids so she could sleep in for years. She gave it all up for someone who can’t even cover their own bills and still lives with mommy and daddy. The only thing he had that I didn’t was more time because of a part time job.
DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP
2024.04.29 04:49 god_tier_homo AITA For getting mad at my older brother for posting something embarrassing I said after I told him not to "because he didn't think I was serious"
So for context, I(15f) had my period not too long ago and bled through my favorite pair of shorts. Well my older brother(17transm) and I were hanging out and I jokingly said "I womanly stained my favorite shorts." He apparently found this funny, and said he was going to post it on his discord servers quote board. I told him I didn't want him to post the quote, which he countered with "its barely 5 people in the server, only my boyfriend reads it anyway." I laughed a little, but I still didn't want him to post it. I had assumed he would've left it there, but today while I was making dinner I got a notification about missed messages and I seen he posted it like a week ago. I do have mod privileges in the server and deleted it, but I was still very upset and told him it wasn't okay for him to post that. He told me he didn't think I was being serious and that I'm overreacting. AITA??
submitted by god_tier_homo to AITAH [link] [comments]
2024.04.29 03:29 Party-Equipment3178 Narcissistic In-laws
I need advice on how to deal with my situation appropriately and it’s been going on for awhile now. It seems to be getting worse each time.
I’m almost 22 and have been married since 2021. My Husband and I have a beautiful 2 year old Daughter. Back when I first met my husband I was 18 and had gotten kicked out of my house (my mom and I had a bad relationship at the time) Having nowhere to go my now husband asked his parents if I could stay with them. He was 19 at the time and had just came back from Army Basic Training. His Dad didn’t have a problem with it but his Mom didn’t want me there and I didn’t know it at that time but I never resented her for that especially now as a Mom myself. I wasn’t talking to my Mom or any of my family at the time. I really appreciated them taking me in. I was very shy and didn’t talk much. It was a new environment for me. He told his parents everything. They seemed to have a really close bond. We sat at the dinner table every night with them. It was all new for me and naturally I felt like a burden.
My Mom called out of the blue and my Husband convinced me to answer and talk things out. My mom apologized for everything and she seen that I went to the doctor from an email she had gotten and she knew I was pregnant. When my Husband and I found out we decided we wanted to move to Florida so he could start a career and become a cop eventually so he applied for correctional officer jobs in Fl. My mom knew and she had to take me to my appointments while we still lived in Nc because my husband worked and I didn’t have a car. My husband’s sister knew because he couldn’t keep it from her. His sister told their Grandpa and even told their Mom “I won’t say yes, but I won’t say no” when asked if I was pregnant. We didn’t tell his parents because almost everyday was a lecture about how we better not get pregnant and she would constantly ask if I was taking birth control. She said a few times that she’d “kick our ass” if she found out we were. I didn’t know them well enough to feel comfortable telling them and my Husband just didn’t want a lecture about something we wanted. We were 18 and 19. Yes, that’s super young but we talked about starting a family and moving away and starting a life together. He wanted to be a cop and I wanted to Stay home and raise babies.
So my family got together to throw us a going away party/gender reveal party and also that’s the day my husband proposed to me. His parents knew about the engagement (which btw I later found out his mom didn’t approve when he first told them he wanted to marry me) but they still didn’t know we were pregnant. At this point I felt like his parents liked me and I really liked them. We moved to Fl and his parents even volunteered to put a down payment on a house if we pay the mortgage and eventually buy it from them. We were incredibly grateful. I was actually shocked they offered. I wasn’t there when they talked it over but my Husband and I were planning to rent somewhere before they came up with this idea. His Mom did make comments to people that it was going to be their vacation home and also telling us that the spare room in the house would be their room when they come down Meanwhile, we knew the spare room would be our future child’s room and It did make me a little uncomfortable about it all but I was still trying to show respect and gratitude.
We were staying in an airbnb until the house closed and we got married at a courthouse shortly after and that’s when he called his parents and told them we were pregnant. Naturally they were upset and felt left out and I felt bad but they put some much pressure on us. After that we made the announcement publicly to all friends and family that we were expecting a baby and everything seemed fine. His Mom and Dad were happy, My parents were happy. My mom did later on. tell me that my Husband’s Mom called her telling her that she was going to be in charge of the baby shower since we left her out and that she was owed the right to be there for the first ultrasound for the next baby and she was making my mom feel like she couldn’t be involved in the baby shower, but it didn’t work out the way she wanted because I was the one that planned my own baby shower and my Mom stayed there all night making desserts and that I am sure made her mad when she could’ve went there and helped my mom that night and since then it felt like my Husband’s Mom didn’t like mine.
Slowly I started to realize that they didn’t respect us. For a few examples, lecturing us over and over about something, calling telling us to do things that didn’t concern them something as simple as sending an important paper in the mail, or fixing our car. if we didn’t agree with them, we just said OK to them we never talked back or argued. I told them that I didn’t want anyone at the house when we had our daughter and they came down to stay for a week and she was trying so hard to stay for me to go into labor when my own mom couldn’t make it down to be there. I just wanted it to be me and my Husband because by that point we found out that he was going to deploy two months after we were going to have our baby for a whole year and I wanted that time with just him. luckily, I went into labor the day after they got back home.
He deployed when our daughter was only a month and a half old and I went to live with his parents for a year because I couldn’t be by myself. I didn’t know anyone I had no family or friends down in Florida, so I just wanted some emotional support during that time two months postpartum with a newborn, and I had a fear of driving. sorry, I started regretting that decision because I felt judged and uncomfortable and unwelcome. They would say little out-of-the-way things to me and make me feel like what I was going through, wasn’t a reason to feel the way I did. I had no motivation I was depressed and I was homesick but I still got up every day and took care of my baby. I never needed their help taking care of her. I just wanted people to talk to when I was having anxiety or when my husband and I were going through problems. she never wanted to be comforting during our fights. She would always tell me or my husband that we weren’t gonna make it and we were gonna end up getting a divorce and she even told me one time that she would not let our daughter grow up around that meaning us arguing when we were going through a long-distance relationship and having a hard time. while living with her, she told me that I needed to get off my phone and pay more attention to our daughter even though it wasn’t like I was neglecting her, I would just do things to keep my mind busy when my daughter was content and didn’t need me. my husband was overseas so we had different time zone so I had to adjust to that while taking care of a baby. I constantly felt judged by them. I didn’t like driving so I would always DoorDash things I needed. I bought everything that my daughter needed. I bought breakfast and lunch for us. The only thing that they provided was dinner.
my mother-in-law’s aunt lived right next-door and she would asked me to go out and run errands with her all the time and it helped me get out of the house. We would go grocery shopping together and she took me anywhere i needed to go. we had good conversations and it was a way to bring us closer. she was really there for me when no one else was emotionally . multiple times while living with them. They would ignore me when I would ask for my daughter back tell me “no it’s okay” they got her or when she was screaming they thought that they could comfort her more than I could and they would not hand her back to me.
I’m sorry this is super freaking long but fast forward to May of last year.
my sister-in-law, and I have the same birthday and she lives in North Carolina and at this time his parents live in Tennessee they took off work to go down to North Carolina to spend time with their daughter on her birthday but she decided to go to the beach so they took the opportunity to come down to Florida for my birthday and I was already upset that my family couldn’t be there but I decided to try and enjoy it. we had been arguing with his parents a week before, and I didn’t want them to come down and continue to argue with us and ruin my birthday and that’s exactly what happened the day after my birthday they were outside washing our house because they said it was really dirty and we went next-door to swim for 20 minutes.
We came back and they were so mad and said that we needed to get rid of our dog, because it chewed the table they gave us, and before we had time to even react, she told us the table was destroyed, and we need to figure something out about the dog so we went in and saw that the leg of the table was chewed, and our dog was in a cage shaking with P all over the house. We were upset because they were demanding that we get rid of our dog before even trying to talk it out like adults and for us to actually feel sorry about what had happened we let it go for a little bit and I was in my room on the phone with my mom and that’s when I heard my husband and his dad getting into an argument. His dad was cussing him and my husband walked through our room to go outside because we were grilling out and his dad followed so I told my mom that I would have to call her back at that same moment my husbands mom open the door and demanded that I get outside and listen to what they had to say. I didn’t say anything I just walked outside and they bashed for everything, our financial struggles, the fact that I didn’t take Mother’s Day to go get cookies to my husband’s grandma in a nursing home
I was shaking so bad I was so upset that they were just yelling and screaming and bashing us, and I was just sitting there quiet not saying anything back. I finally had enough and I started standing up for myself, saying that I didn’t appreciate how they didn’t care about my feelings so they asked me to give them examples. I told them whenever I had my wedding, I also had a miscarriage and I didn’t feel comfortable with one of my sister-in-law‘s friends coming, and I was made out to be the bad guy, and they only thought about her and how I ended up giving in and letting her come because I didn’t want her sitting at a hotel by herself so I was still thinking about someone else’s feelings, but no one was thinking about mine and how I was going through a hard time and they of course shut that down and gave excuses.
I gave them another example about how Christmas of 2022 was going to be mine and my husband and daughter‘s first Christmas ever together because he was deployed for our daughter’s first Christmas my dad had also died December 5 of 2022 and I was also supposed to be pregnant by that time but I lost the baby. I didn’t even get to get anything out and explain my side. The only thing I could get out was “like Christmas-“ and she started waving her hands and screaming and sayin “my son was deployed for a year and I lost my dad”(he died in 2019) I was taken back, but I calmly said” my dad died too” and she fires back and yells. “Yeah, but mine was my life “ I shut down after that how dare she say that and try to one up me ? because my dad had just died a few weeks before that Christmas that we were talking about but she made it about her, which honestly proves my point when I told him they didn’t care about my feelings. She turns around and attacks me and makes it about her but I didn’t even have time to explain that I just wanted Christmas morning to be a tradition with my family. My daughter and my husband and I was going through a hard time anyways, so I was trying to say that it upset me that they made it out to people like we didn’t even want them there when they spent a week with us before Christmas. They live 7 hours away so we can’t have the normal grandparents come over Christmas afternoon like everyone else in my family can’t come over for Christmas morning so they shouldn’t be able to either and the point at the end of the day is that we were that’s what we wanted as a family of three to have Christmas mornings with our daughter.
she didn’t talk to me for the rest of that day and the next day they had left early to go see my husband’s grandma at the nursing home that they moved her to and my mother-in-law texted my husband and asked if we wanted to meet them for lunch so we did I said right across from her in a booth and she didn’t even look at me once or speak to me at all when my daughter‘s food came out it was hot so I put it closer to me to try to break up her food and let it cool down each time she would pull it away from me because my daughter was sitting next to her. I would pull it back and take out the bag of chips and then she would pull it back I would pull it back and dump out her green beans and she would take it back. She did it 3 times all while not looking at me and I still was the bigger person and didn’t say anything and continue to act like nothing happened
when we got back to our house, I went to my screen porch for the rest of the time that they were there. My husband and his parents were in our kitchen and when they were ready to leave my husband came and got me and told me that I should come say goodbye, so I stood in the driveway while my husband, my daughter and his parents all laughed, hugged and kissed and said goodbyes, and then she walks up to me and speaks like a robot in a way of not even wanting to come up to me, like it was bothering her that she even had to speak to me and she just said “bye. Love you” in a really rude way over something that she said to me and it’s funny too because in her hand was a homemade Mother’s Day gift that I made her but she’s going to talk to me like that, and ignore me and treat me like that over her yelling at me and putting me down about my pain with my dad. After they pulled out of the driveway , I went back to the screen porch and cried because that’s the first time I fully felt like I wasn’t part of their family and she showed her true colors once I tried to stand up for myself about her being disrespectful to me when for the three years that I’ve been with my husband at this point, I’ve never spoken back to her or disrespected her
for days they ignored us, and I just cried over my dad because he’s gone and it was like throwing my grief in my face and my husband finally told his mom that she needed to apologize to me. She called him and asked to speak to him alone, and I later found out that she was saying that I took everything the wrong way and she didn’t mean it like that. Finally she text me and basically tells me the same thing that she wasn’t saying anything about my relationship with my dad. She was simply saying why she needed Christmas morning with her family. I didn’t accept her apology because it was basically making excuses, but I decided not to hold her accountable and I just simply explain to her that Christmas has never been the same for me since my grandparents died and then I just wanted that special moment with my daughter especially now that my dad it was gone and I moved on from it I for gave her a few months after this happened she came down for my daughters birthday, and it was still awkward and I was still a little hurt by the way she treated me, but I was trying to MoveOn for it for my husband and daughter sake, and even my own.
After May 2023 it seemed like things were going good they would call and the conversations were nice they weren’t lecturing. We finally thought they learned their lesson after the big blowup in May but then fast forward to April 2024.
they came down suddenly in April after coming down a few weeks before just to visit because my husband’s grandma wasn’t doing too good she was in the hospital and they were preparing for her to pass away. I was taking ovulation medication because we were trying to have another baby. I felt very hung over sound out am I anxiety was the worst it has ever been I would cry almost every night because I would almost go into panic attacks so while they were here, I stopped taking the medicine and was still suffering side effects so I try to stay out of the way because I know they were grieving and everything was happening so suddenly for them and I wanted to be there to support my husband, his work schedule was so messed up that he only had a few hours after waking up to be able to go to the hospital before having to leave for work until 1 AM in the morning so I was never able to go with him to see his grandma, but he asked me if he thought she was about to die if I would go with her and I said of course. Well she passed away before we can make it to the hospital and I know everyone was devastated. This was a day after Easter. My husband had to work on Easter so before we even knew the condition of his grandma’s health, we plan to have our own Easter and egg hunt the day after Easter because my husband would be off work, and that is the day that she passed away so I told my husband that we could cancel our egg hunt and he said no because he wanted to be there with our daughter and enjoy that time. I also invited his parents because I thought it would be good for them to get their mind off of things, and I made a bunch of desserts, including homemade cookies that his mother had asked me to make weeks before this for the next time they came down we grilled out and there was gonna be plenty of food for them and I wanted that time with them as well, but I respected that they needed time to themselves after his dad had just lost his mother.
they had been staying in a hotel, the whole time they were here but the day after she passed away, they came over that morning, and our house was a mess because we had a cookout the night before, and my husband was grieving and upset and we were just too tired to clean and we were planning to get it the next morning They wanted to take our daughter to the park and Dairy Queen and we were going to stay back because we both weren’t feeling too well and we were going to clean the house but before they left my husband’s Dad told us “I wish I would come with us.” so my husband told him that we would get ready and meet him there and that’s exactly what we did. We had lunch with them and the little things like forcing her to eat a hamburger when I told him that she like chicken nuggets or taking her drink away and telling her she’s not feeling up on a drink that she’s going to eat always bothered me and there’s always done it but I knew that at this time it wasn’t my opportunity to stand up because he just lost his mom and I didn’t want to start anything not that I would’ve been rude about it but they never take it for what it is. It’s disrespect if we stand up or tell them we don’t like what they’re doing but I told my husband that what happened in May would never happen again.
we were driving my mom’s truck because my husband‘s truck was in the shop and we went to a thrift store while his parents took our daughter to the park at the thrift store. I found an angel that I wanted to gift his dad to show sympathy. I got a few little toys for my daughter to so when we left we were on our way to meet them at the park and that’s when the mechanic called my husband and said his truck was ready. He called his mom to ask if his dad would follow him and get the truck and if his mom will drive my mom’s truck back home because I was under the influence with the side effects of the medication. She then asked if I couldn’t just make it to the park and the mechanics is right behind the park so of course I could have, but I didn’t see the difference of them going to getting it when we were ready to leave the park together or us going and getting it so we went to the park instead so I could give my daughter her toys.
while I was in the truck getting the gifts out for my husband’s dad, my husband went over to explain that I would just feel more comfortable if they went and got the truck because I was under the influence and later on I found out that his mom said “no she’s not, and saying that I was lying” but when I got out of the truck, she was talking all nice to me and explaining that my husband and my father-in-law we’re going to go get his truck and she even told me to watch my daughter for a second while she went and grabbed her drink out of the car and hit my head. I thought that was crazy that she told me to watch my own daughter, but she those are the little things that I let go and let her say because there’s no point of talking back. It always will start something.
if you’re with me so far, this is the end in our current situation. We all got back home and they walked in and saw that our puppy Peed on the floor and they got mad. We tried to let it go because my father-in-law‘s mom just died and there’s no sense of getting into an argument. We went to our neighbors to give them desserts that I had made for a cookout because I didn’t want them to go to waste while we were there. His mom texted him asking if our daughter could spend the night with them in a hotel when we thought they were staying with us first I didn’t say no I just said where is she going to sleep and they said in the bed with us I didn’t like that. I wanted her to be in a crib so we said no but we even called the hotel to ask if they had cribs to rent because somebody in the hotel said no so we were trying to compromise. We got back to our house and they were so mad. They were ready to leave without saying bye his dad was already in the car and his mom was walking out the door and didn’t really wanna speak to us. We asked her what the issue was and they went off. He went to the car to talk to his dad. his dad screamed at him and drove off. I was so upset because there was no reason to treat us like that when we have boundaries with our daughter and they were supposed to stay with us, but they decided that they were too upset about the dog peeing, and that our house was a little messy from the night before that they wanted to stay in a hotel, and they wanted to take our daughter too.
The next day I had an eye doctors appointment that I scheduled months in advance, and my husband had a job interview and they did not communicate when they were coming over so my husband was already gone and I was about to walk out the door. My husband’s grandpa lives right next-door because we moved him down here a few months ago and they were out there talking to him so I let my daughter go say bye to them and they didn’t speak to me at all. again the same treatment like back in May how she didn’t even want to look in my direction or speak to me so I left and they then texted my husband how I just took off with my own daughter, so there was no reason to stick around blaming me, of course.
I understand that his dad was going through a hard time but my husband also just lost his grandma and that just so happen to be my dad‘s birthday. I wasn’t going to make it about me of course not but I still didn’t wanna get yelled at on my dad‘s birthday I wanted to remember him and have a good day. I texted his mom three days after the incident. Nothing about the text was rude. I just told her that I was blown way by the disrespect and I didn’t like how they treated us. I brought back up me and how it was unfair that she thinks she can continue to yell and scream at us and ignore us. she read it and instantly called my husband and tried to bash me and I tried to speak up and she shut me up telling me that she was talking to her son not me my husband told her not to speak to his wife that way and she tries to bash me and say that I didn’t even want to say sorry to my father-in-law for his loss when I tried to do little things like buy him that angel and make cookies for them and I made a grocery order the night they came down and I clean the house and I was expecting to cook dinner for them and host them but they stayed in a hotel the whole time
she bashed us saying that we didn’t even offer them a shower, or anything to drink or anything to eat when they came home but right when we walked in the door is when they started yelling and lecturing us about dog pee, and it went downhill from there so we didn’t even have time to offer anything that they wanted or needed but every time they come over they make themselves at home because their name is on the deed even though we pay for the home, they act like it’s their home and they do whatever they please, so there was no reason we felt like we needed to assist them to the shower or ask if they needed anything even though that morning they got there She asked if I had any Dr Pepper and I said no that I had Sprite and she didn’t want that so at this point she’s just trying to make us look bad like it was our fault and they didn’t feel welcome here so that’s why they went to a hotel that night.
she was so rude and making excuses and disrespecting me not wanting me to talk to her. She kept saying she wanted to talk to her son and not me and she even called me a little girl at that point I had enough I was finally standing up for myself after four years of my mother-in-law saying out-of-the-way things to me and putting me down and lecturing me, I finally had enough I never cussed once at her I never cussed on her because I respect her enough, but I finally had enough of shutting my mouth and letting her talk to me anyway she want it. I told her she was not gonna call me a little girl and that she was going to hear from me because she’s bashing me to my husband, I tried to explain my side, but she kept on and on accusing us and saying that we were the reason for all of this and that they did nothing wrong and keep in mind, we have never raised our voice to them. We have never cussed at them we have never told them. Hey you’re wrong we don’t agree we just let them have their way and we were done May 2023 was our breaking point even though then we still were respectful, this time we weren’t gonna let them have their way and feel like they were right
The next week my husband went to go pick up his grandma’s ashes because before the fight that was the arrangements because they had to go back home to Tennessee he called the funeral home and they said that the day before his mom called and told them that they were coming down for the weekend to get them but they said nothing about that to us and at this point he hasn’t spoken to his dad in a week. he told his mom that he didn’t even feel welcome at the funeral, and that it really upset him. His mom told him that I had nothing to do with the fight, and that his dad simply just wanted his mothers ashes and she made excuses of course later that day she calls and I heard everything she said even though she thought I wasn’t around and she continue to bash me over and over about how everything was my fault, and I never wanted them around our daughter or to have a relationship with her.
it was extremely hard for me to keep my mouth shut for an entire hour when someone’s making things up and bashing you she think those want to say that she’s sick and tired of me calling her a liar, which I’m never said hey you’re a liar I just said that her apology wasn’t sincere and she continued to say that I took it the wrong way when she was bashing me about my dad and tell her that’s calling her a liar because she continues to say she didn’t mean it like that but the reason I brought back up made her was to say she thinks she can continue to talk to me that way and get away with it and that I was tired of it. my husband try to stand up for me and tell her how it made me feel like she was comparing my pain to hers about my dad and then she makes the snarky remark” I actually had a relationship with Mine”. she was talking about her relationship with her dad and comparing it to mine so again she’s throwing up my pain and trying to one up me and again argue on why she should’ve been there Christmas morning and she even said” I was explaining what I needed Christmas morning with my son and his daughter” His daughter???!
after that phone call, everything seem to be fine with his parents and my husband but she was still ignoring me. She wouldn’t call or message me and apologize or even explain herself. She just wanted to bash me to my husband and now everything was cool with them and they came down for a weekend to get my husband’s grandma‘s ashes and they went to the park with my husband and daughter and I decided to stay home because I didn’t want anything to go down and I be blamed for ruining that hard time for his family. My husband said they didn’t even ask about me and I know that they were happy that I wasn’t around because she made a post about how she just needed that time with her son and granddaughter, and everything was worded perfectly but I know that that was a dig at me and every time I would post something about the way I was feeling just little quotes that I see she would always post something as if she was speaking to me. it didn’t matter if it was something to do with disrespect or my daughter, or supporting my husband she would always find a post to relate it about what I’m posting. stuff like “no one could love her children the way she does” when I would post about how I love my husband and that I am there to support him
ever since then she has been calling my husband to bash me and come up with a new reasons on why I am the bad guy and I’m sick of it so if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading my story because I don’t even know what to do at this point my husband wants to cut her off maybe not forever but he wants her to understand that she can’t keep treating me like this and even treating him like this because the last phone call was two days ago when we thought everything was at least cool with my husband and his parents even though I knew she still had a problem with me over things she said to me she calls him and bashes me and tells my husband that he’s not standing up for his parents and that that’s wrong and that that is his blood family and that he should be the hero and fix everything or she’s not gonna want to be around me
i’ve read a bunch of other stories about toxic in-laws, and there’s a lot that are way worse than my situation but I’ve had enough of her talking to me anyway she wants, putting me down, lecturing me, throwing my dad’s death in my face as if her relationship was greater and her pain is worse and I’m just sick of it because I can’t even look at pictures of my dad without crying and regretting and it’s really hard to stand up for myself when someone bashes me and makes themself the victim when I know for a fact, the last four years I’ve been nothing but kind to her. Yes, she has done things for me, but when she treats me bad, she uses that as a way to say “look at everything I’ve done for her and she wants to treat me like this?” just because I stand up for myself when she yells at me and I don’t know what to do so if you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading and I need help
submitted by Party-Equipment3178 to raisedbynarcissists [link] [comments]
I’m almost 22 and have been married since 2021. My Husband and I have a beautiful 2 year old Daughter. Back when I first met my husband I was 18 and had gotten kicked out of my house (my mom and I had a bad relationship at the time) Having nowhere to go my now husband asked his parents if I could stay with them. He was 19 at the time and had just came back from Army Basic Training. His Dad didn’t have a problem with it but his Mom didn’t want me there and I didn’t know it at that time but I never resented her for that especially now as a Mom myself. I wasn’t talking to my Mom or any of my family at the time. I really appreciated them taking me in. I was very shy and didn’t talk much. It was a new environment for me. He told his parents everything. They seemed to have a really close bond. We sat at the dinner table every night with them. It was all new for me and naturally I felt like a burden.
My Mom called out of the blue and my Husband convinced me to answer and talk things out. My mom apologized for everything and she seen that I went to the doctor from an email she had gotten and she knew I was pregnant. When my Husband and I found out we decided we wanted to move to Florida so he could start a career and become a cop eventually so he applied for correctional officer jobs in Fl. My mom knew and she had to take me to my appointments while we still lived in Nc because my husband worked and I didn’t have a car. My husband’s sister knew because he couldn’t keep it from her. His sister told their Grandpa and even told their Mom “I won’t say yes, but I won’t say no” when asked if I was pregnant. We didn’t tell his parents because almost everyday was a lecture about how we better not get pregnant and she would constantly ask if I was taking birth control. She said a few times that she’d “kick our ass” if she found out we were. I didn’t know them well enough to feel comfortable telling them and my Husband just didn’t want a lecture about something we wanted. We were 18 and 19. Yes, that’s super young but we talked about starting a family and moving away and starting a life together. He wanted to be a cop and I wanted to Stay home and raise babies.
So my family got together to throw us a going away party/gender reveal party and also that’s the day my husband proposed to me. His parents knew about the engagement (which btw I later found out his mom didn’t approve when he first told them he wanted to marry me) but they still didn’t know we were pregnant. At this point I felt like his parents liked me and I really liked them. We moved to Fl and his parents even volunteered to put a down payment on a house if we pay the mortgage and eventually buy it from them. We were incredibly grateful. I was actually shocked they offered. I wasn’t there when they talked it over but my Husband and I were planning to rent somewhere before they came up with this idea. His Mom did make comments to people that it was going to be their vacation home and also telling us that the spare room in the house would be their room when they come down Meanwhile, we knew the spare room would be our future child’s room and It did make me a little uncomfortable about it all but I was still trying to show respect and gratitude.
We were staying in an airbnb until the house closed and we got married at a courthouse shortly after and that’s when he called his parents and told them we were pregnant. Naturally they were upset and felt left out and I felt bad but they put some much pressure on us. After that we made the announcement publicly to all friends and family that we were expecting a baby and everything seemed fine. His Mom and Dad were happy, My parents were happy. My mom did later on. tell me that my Husband’s Mom called her telling her that she was going to be in charge of the baby shower since we left her out and that she was owed the right to be there for the first ultrasound for the next baby and she was making my mom feel like she couldn’t be involved in the baby shower, but it didn’t work out the way she wanted because I was the one that planned my own baby shower and my Mom stayed there all night making desserts and that I am sure made her mad when she could’ve went there and helped my mom that night and since then it felt like my Husband’s Mom didn’t like mine.
Slowly I started to realize that they didn’t respect us. For a few examples, lecturing us over and over about something, calling telling us to do things that didn’t concern them something as simple as sending an important paper in the mail, or fixing our car. if we didn’t agree with them, we just said OK to them we never talked back or argued. I told them that I didn’t want anyone at the house when we had our daughter and they came down to stay for a week and she was trying so hard to stay for me to go into labor when my own mom couldn’t make it down to be there. I just wanted it to be me and my Husband because by that point we found out that he was going to deploy two months after we were going to have our baby for a whole year and I wanted that time with just him. luckily, I went into labor the day after they got back home.
He deployed when our daughter was only a month and a half old and I went to live with his parents for a year because I couldn’t be by myself. I didn’t know anyone I had no family or friends down in Florida, so I just wanted some emotional support during that time two months postpartum with a newborn, and I had a fear of driving. sorry, I started regretting that decision because I felt judged and uncomfortable and unwelcome. They would say little out-of-the-way things to me and make me feel like what I was going through, wasn’t a reason to feel the way I did. I had no motivation I was depressed and I was homesick but I still got up every day and took care of my baby. I never needed their help taking care of her. I just wanted people to talk to when I was having anxiety or when my husband and I were going through problems. she never wanted to be comforting during our fights. She would always tell me or my husband that we weren’t gonna make it and we were gonna end up getting a divorce and she even told me one time that she would not let our daughter grow up around that meaning us arguing when we were going through a long-distance relationship and having a hard time. while living with her, she told me that I needed to get off my phone and pay more attention to our daughter even though it wasn’t like I was neglecting her, I would just do things to keep my mind busy when my daughter was content and didn’t need me. my husband was overseas so we had different time zone so I had to adjust to that while taking care of a baby. I constantly felt judged by them. I didn’t like driving so I would always DoorDash things I needed. I bought everything that my daughter needed. I bought breakfast and lunch for us. The only thing that they provided was dinner.
my mother-in-law’s aunt lived right next-door and she would asked me to go out and run errands with her all the time and it helped me get out of the house. We would go grocery shopping together and she took me anywhere i needed to go. we had good conversations and it was a way to bring us closer. she was really there for me when no one else was emotionally . multiple times while living with them. They would ignore me when I would ask for my daughter back tell me “no it’s okay” they got her or when she was screaming they thought that they could comfort her more than I could and they would not hand her back to me.
I’m sorry this is super freaking long but fast forward to May of last year.
my sister-in-law, and I have the same birthday and she lives in North Carolina and at this time his parents live in Tennessee they took off work to go down to North Carolina to spend time with their daughter on her birthday but she decided to go to the beach so they took the opportunity to come down to Florida for my birthday and I was already upset that my family couldn’t be there but I decided to try and enjoy it. we had been arguing with his parents a week before, and I didn’t want them to come down and continue to argue with us and ruin my birthday and that’s exactly what happened the day after my birthday they were outside washing our house because they said it was really dirty and we went next-door to swim for 20 minutes.
We came back and they were so mad and said that we needed to get rid of our dog, because it chewed the table they gave us, and before we had time to even react, she told us the table was destroyed, and we need to figure something out about the dog so we went in and saw that the leg of the table was chewed, and our dog was in a cage shaking with P all over the house. We were upset because they were demanding that we get rid of our dog before even trying to talk it out like adults and for us to actually feel sorry about what had happened we let it go for a little bit and I was in my room on the phone with my mom and that’s when I heard my husband and his dad getting into an argument. His dad was cussing him and my husband walked through our room to go outside because we were grilling out and his dad followed so I told my mom that I would have to call her back at that same moment my husbands mom open the door and demanded that I get outside and listen to what they had to say. I didn’t say anything I just walked outside and they bashed for everything, our financial struggles, the fact that I didn’t take Mother’s Day to go get cookies to my husband’s grandma in a nursing home
I was shaking so bad I was so upset that they were just yelling and screaming and bashing us, and I was just sitting there quiet not saying anything back. I finally had enough and I started standing up for myself, saying that I didn’t appreciate how they didn’t care about my feelings so they asked me to give them examples. I told them whenever I had my wedding, I also had a miscarriage and I didn’t feel comfortable with one of my sister-in-law‘s friends coming, and I was made out to be the bad guy, and they only thought about her and how I ended up giving in and letting her come because I didn’t want her sitting at a hotel by herself so I was still thinking about someone else’s feelings, but no one was thinking about mine and how I was going through a hard time and they of course shut that down and gave excuses.
I gave them another example about how Christmas of 2022 was going to be mine and my husband and daughter‘s first Christmas ever together because he was deployed for our daughter’s first Christmas my dad had also died December 5 of 2022 and I was also supposed to be pregnant by that time but I lost the baby. I didn’t even get to get anything out and explain my side. The only thing I could get out was “like Christmas-“ and she started waving her hands and screaming and sayin “my son was deployed for a year and I lost my dad”(he died in 2019) I was taken back, but I calmly said” my dad died too” and she fires back and yells. “Yeah, but mine was my life “ I shut down after that how dare she say that and try to one up me ? because my dad had just died a few weeks before that Christmas that we were talking about but she made it about her, which honestly proves my point when I told him they didn’t care about my feelings. She turns around and attacks me and makes it about her but I didn’t even have time to explain that I just wanted Christmas morning to be a tradition with my family. My daughter and my husband and I was going through a hard time anyways, so I was trying to say that it upset me that they made it out to people like we didn’t even want them there when they spent a week with us before Christmas. They live 7 hours away so we can’t have the normal grandparents come over Christmas afternoon like everyone else in my family can’t come over for Christmas morning so they shouldn’t be able to either and the point at the end of the day is that we were that’s what we wanted as a family of three to have Christmas mornings with our daughter.
she didn’t talk to me for the rest of that day and the next day they had left early to go see my husband’s grandma at the nursing home that they moved her to and my mother-in-law texted my husband and asked if we wanted to meet them for lunch so we did I said right across from her in a booth and she didn’t even look at me once or speak to me at all when my daughter‘s food came out it was hot so I put it closer to me to try to break up her food and let it cool down each time she would pull it away from me because my daughter was sitting next to her. I would pull it back and take out the bag of chips and then she would pull it back I would pull it back and dump out her green beans and she would take it back. She did it 3 times all while not looking at me and I still was the bigger person and didn’t say anything and continue to act like nothing happened
when we got back to our house, I went to my screen porch for the rest of the time that they were there. My husband and his parents were in our kitchen and when they were ready to leave my husband came and got me and told me that I should come say goodbye, so I stood in the driveway while my husband, my daughter and his parents all laughed, hugged and kissed and said goodbyes, and then she walks up to me and speaks like a robot in a way of not even wanting to come up to me, like it was bothering her that she even had to speak to me and she just said “bye. Love you” in a really rude way over something that she said to me and it’s funny too because in her hand was a homemade Mother’s Day gift that I made her but she’s going to talk to me like that, and ignore me and treat me like that over her yelling at me and putting me down about my pain with my dad. After they pulled out of the driveway , I went back to the screen porch and cried because that’s the first time I fully felt like I wasn’t part of their family and she showed her true colors once I tried to stand up for myself about her being disrespectful to me when for the three years that I’ve been with my husband at this point, I’ve never spoken back to her or disrespected her
for days they ignored us, and I just cried over my dad because he’s gone and it was like throwing my grief in my face and my husband finally told his mom that she needed to apologize to me. She called him and asked to speak to him alone, and I later found out that she was saying that I took everything the wrong way and she didn’t mean it like that. Finally she text me and basically tells me the same thing that she wasn’t saying anything about my relationship with my dad. She was simply saying why she needed Christmas morning with her family. I didn’t accept her apology because it was basically making excuses, but I decided not to hold her accountable and I just simply explain to her that Christmas has never been the same for me since my grandparents died and then I just wanted that special moment with my daughter especially now that my dad it was gone and I moved on from it I for gave her a few months after this happened she came down for my daughters birthday, and it was still awkward and I was still a little hurt by the way she treated me, but I was trying to MoveOn for it for my husband and daughter sake, and even my own.
After May 2023 it seemed like things were going good they would call and the conversations were nice they weren’t lecturing. We finally thought they learned their lesson after the big blowup in May but then fast forward to April 2024.
they came down suddenly in April after coming down a few weeks before just to visit because my husband’s grandma wasn’t doing too good she was in the hospital and they were preparing for her to pass away. I was taking ovulation medication because we were trying to have another baby. I felt very hung over sound out am I anxiety was the worst it has ever been I would cry almost every night because I would almost go into panic attacks so while they were here, I stopped taking the medicine and was still suffering side effects so I try to stay out of the way because I know they were grieving and everything was happening so suddenly for them and I wanted to be there to support my husband, his work schedule was so messed up that he only had a few hours after waking up to be able to go to the hospital before having to leave for work until 1 AM in the morning so I was never able to go with him to see his grandma, but he asked me if he thought she was about to die if I would go with her and I said of course. Well she passed away before we can make it to the hospital and I know everyone was devastated. This was a day after Easter. My husband had to work on Easter so before we even knew the condition of his grandma’s health, we plan to have our own Easter and egg hunt the day after Easter because my husband would be off work, and that is the day that she passed away so I told my husband that we could cancel our egg hunt and he said no because he wanted to be there with our daughter and enjoy that time. I also invited his parents because I thought it would be good for them to get their mind off of things, and I made a bunch of desserts, including homemade cookies that his mother had asked me to make weeks before this for the next time they came down we grilled out and there was gonna be plenty of food for them and I wanted that time with them as well, but I respected that they needed time to themselves after his dad had just lost his mother.
they had been staying in a hotel, the whole time they were here but the day after she passed away, they came over that morning, and our house was a mess because we had a cookout the night before, and my husband was grieving and upset and we were just too tired to clean and we were planning to get it the next morning They wanted to take our daughter to the park and Dairy Queen and we were going to stay back because we both weren’t feeling too well and we were going to clean the house but before they left my husband’s Dad told us “I wish I would come with us.” so my husband told him that we would get ready and meet him there and that’s exactly what we did. We had lunch with them and the little things like forcing her to eat a hamburger when I told him that she like chicken nuggets or taking her drink away and telling her she’s not feeling up on a drink that she’s going to eat always bothered me and there’s always done it but I knew that at this time it wasn’t my opportunity to stand up because he just lost his mom and I didn’t want to start anything not that I would’ve been rude about it but they never take it for what it is. It’s disrespect if we stand up or tell them we don’t like what they’re doing but I told my husband that what happened in May would never happen again.
we were driving my mom’s truck because my husband‘s truck was in the shop and we went to a thrift store while his parents took our daughter to the park at the thrift store. I found an angel that I wanted to gift his dad to show sympathy. I got a few little toys for my daughter to so when we left we were on our way to meet them at the park and that’s when the mechanic called my husband and said his truck was ready. He called his mom to ask if his dad would follow him and get the truck and if his mom will drive my mom’s truck back home because I was under the influence with the side effects of the medication. She then asked if I couldn’t just make it to the park and the mechanics is right behind the park so of course I could have, but I didn’t see the difference of them going to getting it when we were ready to leave the park together or us going and getting it so we went to the park instead so I could give my daughter her toys.
while I was in the truck getting the gifts out for my husband’s dad, my husband went over to explain that I would just feel more comfortable if they went and got the truck because I was under the influence and later on I found out that his mom said “no she’s not, and saying that I was lying” but when I got out of the truck, she was talking all nice to me and explaining that my husband and my father-in-law we’re going to go get his truck and she even told me to watch my daughter for a second while she went and grabbed her drink out of the car and hit my head. I thought that was crazy that she told me to watch my own daughter, but she those are the little things that I let go and let her say because there’s no point of talking back. It always will start something.
if you’re with me so far, this is the end in our current situation. We all got back home and they walked in and saw that our puppy Peed on the floor and they got mad. We tried to let it go because my father-in-law‘s mom just died and there’s no sense of getting into an argument. We went to our neighbors to give them desserts that I had made for a cookout because I didn’t want them to go to waste while we were there. His mom texted him asking if our daughter could spend the night with them in a hotel when we thought they were staying with us first I didn’t say no I just said where is she going to sleep and they said in the bed with us I didn’t like that. I wanted her to be in a crib so we said no but we even called the hotel to ask if they had cribs to rent because somebody in the hotel said no so we were trying to compromise. We got back to our house and they were so mad. They were ready to leave without saying bye his dad was already in the car and his mom was walking out the door and didn’t really wanna speak to us. We asked her what the issue was and they went off. He went to the car to talk to his dad. his dad screamed at him and drove off. I was so upset because there was no reason to treat us like that when we have boundaries with our daughter and they were supposed to stay with us, but they decided that they were too upset about the dog peeing, and that our house was a little messy from the night before that they wanted to stay in a hotel, and they wanted to take our daughter too.
The next day I had an eye doctors appointment that I scheduled months in advance, and my husband had a job interview and they did not communicate when they were coming over so my husband was already gone and I was about to walk out the door. My husband’s grandpa lives right next-door because we moved him down here a few months ago and they were out there talking to him so I let my daughter go say bye to them and they didn’t speak to me at all. again the same treatment like back in May how she didn’t even want to look in my direction or speak to me so I left and they then texted my husband how I just took off with my own daughter, so there was no reason to stick around blaming me, of course.
I understand that his dad was going through a hard time but my husband also just lost his grandma and that just so happen to be my dad‘s birthday. I wasn’t going to make it about me of course not but I still didn’t wanna get yelled at on my dad‘s birthday I wanted to remember him and have a good day. I texted his mom three days after the incident. Nothing about the text was rude. I just told her that I was blown way by the disrespect and I didn’t like how they treated us. I brought back up me and how it was unfair that she thinks she can continue to yell and scream at us and ignore us. she read it and instantly called my husband and tried to bash me and I tried to speak up and she shut me up telling me that she was talking to her son not me my husband told her not to speak to his wife that way and she tries to bash me and say that I didn’t even want to say sorry to my father-in-law for his loss when I tried to do little things like buy him that angel and make cookies for them and I made a grocery order the night they came down and I clean the house and I was expecting to cook dinner for them and host them but they stayed in a hotel the whole time
she bashed us saying that we didn’t even offer them a shower, or anything to drink or anything to eat when they came home but right when we walked in the door is when they started yelling and lecturing us about dog pee, and it went downhill from there so we didn’t even have time to offer anything that they wanted or needed but every time they come over they make themselves at home because their name is on the deed even though we pay for the home, they act like it’s their home and they do whatever they please, so there was no reason we felt like we needed to assist them to the shower or ask if they needed anything even though that morning they got there She asked if I had any Dr Pepper and I said no that I had Sprite and she didn’t want that so at this point she’s just trying to make us look bad like it was our fault and they didn’t feel welcome here so that’s why they went to a hotel that night.
she was so rude and making excuses and disrespecting me not wanting me to talk to her. She kept saying she wanted to talk to her son and not me and she even called me a little girl at that point I had enough I was finally standing up for myself after four years of my mother-in-law saying out-of-the-way things to me and putting me down and lecturing me, I finally had enough I never cussed once at her I never cussed on her because I respect her enough, but I finally had enough of shutting my mouth and letting her talk to me anyway she want it. I told her she was not gonna call me a little girl and that she was going to hear from me because she’s bashing me to my husband, I tried to explain my side, but she kept on and on accusing us and saying that we were the reason for all of this and that they did nothing wrong and keep in mind, we have never raised our voice to them. We have never cussed at them we have never told them. Hey you’re wrong we don’t agree we just let them have their way and we were done May 2023 was our breaking point even though then we still were respectful, this time we weren’t gonna let them have their way and feel like they were right
The next week my husband went to go pick up his grandma’s ashes because before the fight that was the arrangements because they had to go back home to Tennessee he called the funeral home and they said that the day before his mom called and told them that they were coming down for the weekend to get them but they said nothing about that to us and at this point he hasn’t spoken to his dad in a week. he told his mom that he didn’t even feel welcome at the funeral, and that it really upset him. His mom told him that I had nothing to do with the fight, and that his dad simply just wanted his mothers ashes and she made excuses of course later that day she calls and I heard everything she said even though she thought I wasn’t around and she continue to bash me over and over about how everything was my fault, and I never wanted them around our daughter or to have a relationship with her.
it was extremely hard for me to keep my mouth shut for an entire hour when someone’s making things up and bashing you she think those want to say that she’s sick and tired of me calling her a liar, which I’m never said hey you’re a liar I just said that her apology wasn’t sincere and she continued to say that I took it the wrong way when she was bashing me about my dad and tell her that’s calling her a liar because she continues to say she didn’t mean it like that but the reason I brought back up made her was to say she thinks she can continue to talk to me that way and get away with it and that I was tired of it. my husband try to stand up for me and tell her how it made me feel like she was comparing my pain to hers about my dad and then she makes the snarky remark” I actually had a relationship with Mine”. she was talking about her relationship with her dad and comparing it to mine so again she’s throwing up my pain and trying to one up me and again argue on why she should’ve been there Christmas morning and she even said” I was explaining what I needed Christmas morning with my son and his daughter” His daughter???!
after that phone call, everything seem to be fine with his parents and my husband but she was still ignoring me. She wouldn’t call or message me and apologize or even explain herself. She just wanted to bash me to my husband and now everything was cool with them and they came down for a weekend to get my husband’s grandma‘s ashes and they went to the park with my husband and daughter and I decided to stay home because I didn’t want anything to go down and I be blamed for ruining that hard time for his family. My husband said they didn’t even ask about me and I know that they were happy that I wasn’t around because she made a post about how she just needed that time with her son and granddaughter, and everything was worded perfectly but I know that that was a dig at me and every time I would post something about the way I was feeling just little quotes that I see she would always post something as if she was speaking to me. it didn’t matter if it was something to do with disrespect or my daughter, or supporting my husband she would always find a post to relate it about what I’m posting. stuff like “no one could love her children the way she does” when I would post about how I love my husband and that I am there to support him
ever since then she has been calling my husband to bash me and come up with a new reasons on why I am the bad guy and I’m sick of it so if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading my story because I don’t even know what to do at this point my husband wants to cut her off maybe not forever but he wants her to understand that she can’t keep treating me like this and even treating him like this because the last phone call was two days ago when we thought everything was at least cool with my husband and his parents even though I knew she still had a problem with me over things she said to me she calls him and bashes me and tells my husband that he’s not standing up for his parents and that that’s wrong and that that is his blood family and that he should be the hero and fix everything or she’s not gonna want to be around me
i’ve read a bunch of other stories about toxic in-laws, and there’s a lot that are way worse than my situation but I’ve had enough of her talking to me anyway she wants, putting me down, lecturing me, throwing my dad’s death in my face as if her relationship was greater and her pain is worse and I’m just sick of it because I can’t even look at pictures of my dad without crying and regretting and it’s really hard to stand up for myself when someone bashes me and makes themself the victim when I know for a fact, the last four years I’ve been nothing but kind to her. Yes, she has done things for me, but when she treats me bad, she uses that as a way to say “look at everything I’ve done for her and she wants to treat me like this?” just because I stand up for myself when she yells at me and I don’t know what to do so if you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading and I need help
2024.04.29 03:23 emth5348 Weissbluth’s book persuaded us to try out extinction (with continued night feeds) at 3 months, and we’ve been extremely happy with the results
Originally, my wife and I had planned to wait until our child was 4 to 6 months of age to begin sleep training. However, as he approached his third month, we realized that we were often spending an hour or more each night on getting him to sleep. We would put him in his crib, return to him when he cried, and then try to console him. He always eventually fell asleep, but we knew that this time was cutting into the amount of rest he was getting each night.
Meanwhile, I had been reading through the 5th Edition of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (HSHHC) by Weissbluth. It seems that Weissbluth used to recommend waiting until 4 months to begin sleep training; however, this new edition makes it clear that he recommends that parents consider sleep training (including cry it out/extinction methods) as early as 2 months. (See the ‘Relevant Quotes’ heading below for more information.)
Developing our CIO plan:
After reviewing his discussion of various sleep training methods, I decided on a cry-it-out (CIO) approach, as I figured it would ultimately produce less crying and better-quality sleep than methods that could stretch on for weeks or months. For my wife and I, the benefits of allowing our child to learn self-soothing and giving him better-quality sleep right away outweighed any potential risks of CIO. (I know that many people would say that babies can’t begin self soothing until they’re older, but he has been sucking his thumb and fist pretty often in the past few weeks, so we figured that he could use this as a self-soothing method, especially since we were transitioning to an arms-out swaddle.) We did meet with our pediatrician to confirm that using CIO at his age would be OK, and she reassured us that he was at an appropriate developmental period for this method, even if not all babies are.
Because of his young age, we decided to implement a 2-hour cap. We’d wait 2 hours before going in to console or feed him, but if he cried after that, we’d go in and soothe him (and of course feed him if he appeared hungry). We realize that he will likely continue to need feeding once or twice overnight for a number of months, especially because he’s on the smaller side, so our goal was to help him get to and return to bed earlier, rather than to night wean him.
At HSSHC’s recommendation, we also shifted his bedtime to an earlier period (around 8 PM); made sure he was getting lots of naps during the day; and continued to use a white noise machine and blackout curtains to create a calmer sleep environment. We had been swaddling him arms-in since he was a newborn, but since he was now getting more active and gaining the ability to roll, we shifted to an arms-out swaddle. We knew this would make sleep training even harder, but at the advice of a Reddit thread on sleeptrain, we decided that implementing CIO at the same time that we switched to an arms-out swaddle would be the easiest option.
Implementing the plan:
So, shortly after he turned 3 months old, we began sleep training. After changing his diaper, feeding, and swaddling him and providing a little soothing, I laid him in his crib at 7:35 PM and left the room. He cried and fussed for around 42 minutes, then fell asleep. He then woke up 14 minutes later; cried/fussed for another 27 minutes; and fell asleep for good at 8:58 PM–after which he slept for around 4 and a half hours. He would sometimes show signs of the startle reflex (probably because he was getting used to the arms-out swaddle), but he was then able to calm himself back to sleep.
During the second night, he cried and fussed for 20 minutes before falling asleep; he woke up around 5 hours later. He’d sometimes move around in bed but then return to a resting position soon after.
On the third night (tonight), he only fussed for 7 minutes; I didn’t actually hear him cry at all. (This may have been because he was pretty drowsy at the end of his meal.) He’s sleeping great in his crib as I write this message.
In short, the time he needed to self-soothe and fall asleep decreased from 42 minutes the first night (or 69 if you count the second bout of fussing) to 20 minutes the second night, and then to 7 minutes the third night. This is huge for him! He can now use the early nighttime hours for sleep rather than for bouts of fussing, which should help with his development. He has continued to eat overnight, and that behavior will probably continue for quite a while, but we’re just thrilled that he now knows how to soothe himself to sleep.
His amount of crying also aligned pretty well with Weissbluth’s predictions for babies below 4 months of age (30-45 minutes on night 1; 10-30 on night 2; 0-10 on night 3; and none on night 4). Weissbluth actually predicts more crying than this for babies 4 months of age or older (see quotes below).
Final thoughts:
He was a happy, smiley baby before we implemented sleep training, and that has remained the case. I don’t see any signs that our attachment with him has been impaired by CIO. As he continues to get better rest, I expect that he’ll become even happier and more smiley in the coming months.
I’m sure he’ll have periods of worse sleep now and then, but overall, my wife and I are thrilled with how well the extinction method has gone. Every child’s needs and circumstances are different, so this method may only be ideal for a minority of children. However, at the very least, I think more parents should at least consider beginning CIO at an earlier age.
Relevant Quotes:
(If you’re considering this approach as well, I highly recommend that you read as much of HSSHC as you can. I added the quotes below to help explain why we didn’t wait until 4 months or later to begin CIO.)
“Because this process of sleep regulation is developing during the first 4 months, there is no reason for most parents to delay and begin to think about helping their child sleep better only at 4 months of age. Starting earlier is easier.” (p. 536)
“Parents who started helping their child sleep better at or before 4 months described better sleeping in their children than those parents who started after 4 months. This validates the notion that starting early is better than starting later” (p. 162) His research also indicates that extinction results in less crying for children below 4 months of age than it does for children aged 4 months and up (p. 536)
“For babies younger than 2 months of age, consider graduated extinction, extinction with a cap, or check and console. Extinction, even for extreme fussiness/colic, may also be considered and be successful at 2 months of age” (p. 451)
Although Weissbluth was our main resource on sleep training, I found Emily Oster’s section on this subject within Cribsheet to be helpful also. She notes that, while it’s impossible to prove that sleep training has no harmful effects, “you could easily argue the opposite: maybe sleep training is very good for some kids–they really need the uninterrupted sleep–and there is a risk of damaging your child by not sleep training. There isn’t anything in the data that shows this, but there is similarly nothing to show that sleep training is bad” (p. 181).
She also notes that “there is relatively little guidance on the appropriate age to start sleep training . . . generally, it will be easier to sleep train a six-month-old than a three-month-old [though Weissbluth would disagree with her here], and probably harder to train a two-year-old. But these methods seem to work on a variety of ages.”
submitted by emth5348 to beyondthebump [link] [comments]
Meanwhile, I had been reading through the 5th Edition of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (HSHHC) by Weissbluth. It seems that Weissbluth used to recommend waiting until 4 months to begin sleep training; however, this new edition makes it clear that he recommends that parents consider sleep training (including cry it out/extinction methods) as early as 2 months. (See the ‘Relevant Quotes’ heading below for more information.)
Developing our CIO plan:
After reviewing his discussion of various sleep training methods, I decided on a cry-it-out (CIO) approach, as I figured it would ultimately produce less crying and better-quality sleep than methods that could stretch on for weeks or months. For my wife and I, the benefits of allowing our child to learn self-soothing and giving him better-quality sleep right away outweighed any potential risks of CIO. (I know that many people would say that babies can’t begin self soothing until they’re older, but he has been sucking his thumb and fist pretty often in the past few weeks, so we figured that he could use this as a self-soothing method, especially since we were transitioning to an arms-out swaddle.) We did meet with our pediatrician to confirm that using CIO at his age would be OK, and she reassured us that he was at an appropriate developmental period for this method, even if not all babies are.
Because of his young age, we decided to implement a 2-hour cap. We’d wait 2 hours before going in to console or feed him, but if he cried after that, we’d go in and soothe him (and of course feed him if he appeared hungry). We realize that he will likely continue to need feeding once or twice overnight for a number of months, especially because he’s on the smaller side, so our goal was to help him get to and return to bed earlier, rather than to night wean him.
At HSSHC’s recommendation, we also shifted his bedtime to an earlier period (around 8 PM); made sure he was getting lots of naps during the day; and continued to use a white noise machine and blackout curtains to create a calmer sleep environment. We had been swaddling him arms-in since he was a newborn, but since he was now getting more active and gaining the ability to roll, we shifted to an arms-out swaddle. We knew this would make sleep training even harder, but at the advice of a Reddit thread on sleeptrain, we decided that implementing CIO at the same time that we switched to an arms-out swaddle would be the easiest option.
Implementing the plan:
So, shortly after he turned 3 months old, we began sleep training. After changing his diaper, feeding, and swaddling him and providing a little soothing, I laid him in his crib at 7:35 PM and left the room. He cried and fussed for around 42 minutes, then fell asleep. He then woke up 14 minutes later; cried/fussed for another 27 minutes; and fell asleep for good at 8:58 PM–after which he slept for around 4 and a half hours. He would sometimes show signs of the startle reflex (probably because he was getting used to the arms-out swaddle), but he was then able to calm himself back to sleep.
During the second night, he cried and fussed for 20 minutes before falling asleep; he woke up around 5 hours later. He’d sometimes move around in bed but then return to a resting position soon after.
On the third night (tonight), he only fussed for 7 minutes; I didn’t actually hear him cry at all. (This may have been because he was pretty drowsy at the end of his meal.) He’s sleeping great in his crib as I write this message.
In short, the time he needed to self-soothe and fall asleep decreased from 42 minutes the first night (or 69 if you count the second bout of fussing) to 20 minutes the second night, and then to 7 minutes the third night. This is huge for him! He can now use the early nighttime hours for sleep rather than for bouts of fussing, which should help with his development. He has continued to eat overnight, and that behavior will probably continue for quite a while, but we’re just thrilled that he now knows how to soothe himself to sleep.
His amount of crying also aligned pretty well with Weissbluth’s predictions for babies below 4 months of age (30-45 minutes on night 1; 10-30 on night 2; 0-10 on night 3; and none on night 4). Weissbluth actually predicts more crying than this for babies 4 months of age or older (see quotes below).
Final thoughts:
He was a happy, smiley baby before we implemented sleep training, and that has remained the case. I don’t see any signs that our attachment with him has been impaired by CIO. As he continues to get better rest, I expect that he’ll become even happier and more smiley in the coming months.
I’m sure he’ll have periods of worse sleep now and then, but overall, my wife and I are thrilled with how well the extinction method has gone. Every child’s needs and circumstances are different, so this method may only be ideal for a minority of children. However, at the very least, I think more parents should at least consider beginning CIO at an earlier age.
Relevant Quotes:
(If you’re considering this approach as well, I highly recommend that you read as much of HSSHC as you can. I added the quotes below to help explain why we didn’t wait until 4 months or later to begin CIO.)
“Because this process of sleep regulation is developing during the first 4 months, there is no reason for most parents to delay and begin to think about helping their child sleep better only at 4 months of age. Starting earlier is easier.” (p. 536)
“Parents who started helping their child sleep better at or before 4 months described better sleeping in their children than those parents who started after 4 months. This validates the notion that starting early is better than starting later” (p. 162) His research also indicates that extinction results in less crying for children below 4 months of age than it does for children aged 4 months and up (p. 536)
“For babies younger than 2 months of age, consider graduated extinction, extinction with a cap, or check and console. Extinction, even for extreme fussiness/colic, may also be considered and be successful at 2 months of age” (p. 451)
Although Weissbluth was our main resource on sleep training, I found Emily Oster’s section on this subject within Cribsheet to be helpful also. She notes that, while it’s impossible to prove that sleep training has no harmful effects, “you could easily argue the opposite: maybe sleep training is very good for some kids–they really need the uninterrupted sleep–and there is a risk of damaging your child by not sleep training. There isn’t anything in the data that shows this, but there is similarly nothing to show that sleep training is bad” (p. 181).
She also notes that “there is relatively little guidance on the appropriate age to start sleep training . . . generally, it will be easier to sleep train a six-month-old than a three-month-old [though Weissbluth would disagree with her here], and probably harder to train a two-year-old. But these methods seem to work on a variety of ages.”
2024.04.29 03:21 emth5348 We've been extremely happy with the outcome of implementing CIO at 3 months
Originally, my wife and I had planned to wait until our child was 4 to 6 months of age to begin sleep training. However, as he approached his third month, we realized that we were often spending an hour or more each night on getting him to sleep. We would put him in his crib, return to him when he cried, and then try to console him. He always eventually fell asleep, but we knew that this time was cutting into the amount of rest he was getting each night.
Meanwhile, I had been reading through the 5th Edition of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (HSHHC) by Weissbluth. It seems that Weissbluth used to recommend waiting until 4 months to begin sleep training; however, this new edition makes it clear that he recommends that parents consider sleep training (including cry it out/extinction methods) as early as 2 months. (See the ‘Relevant Quotes’ heading below for more information.)
Developing our CIO plan:
After reviewing his discussion of various sleep training methods, I decided on a cry-it-out (CIO) approach, as I figured it would ultimately produce less crying and better-quality sleep than methods that could stretch on for weeks or months. For my wife and I, the benefits of allowing our child to learn self-soothing and giving him better-quality sleep right away outweighed any potential risks of CIO. (I know that many people would say that babies can’t begin self soothing until they’re older, but he has been sucking his thumb and fist pretty often in the past few weeks, so we figured that he could use this as a self-soothing method, especially since we were transitioning to an arms-out swaddle.) We did meet with our pediatrician to confirm that using CIO at his age would be OK, and she reassured us that he was at an appropriate developmental period for this method, even if not all babies are.
Because of his young age, we decided to implement a 2-hour cap. We’d wait 2 hours before going in to console or feed him, but if he cried after that, we’d go in and soothe him (and of course feed him if he appeared hungry). We realize that he will likely continue to need feeding once or twice overnight for a number of months, especially because he’s on the smaller side, so our goal was to help him get to and return to bed earlier, rather than to night wean him.
At HSSHC’s recommendation, we also shifted his bedtime to an earlier period (around 8 PM); made sure he was getting lots of naps during the day; and continued to use a white noise machine and blackout curtains to create a calmer sleep environment. We had been swaddling him arms-in since he was a newborn, but since he was now getting more active and gaining the ability to roll, we shifted to an arms-out swaddle. We knew this would make sleep training even harder, but at the advice of a Reddit thread on sleeptrain, we decided that implementing CIO at the same time that we switched to an arms-out swaddle would be the easiest option.
Implementing the plan:
So, shortly after he turned 3 months old, we began sleep training. After changing his diaper, feeding, and swaddling him and providing a little soothing, I laid him in his crib at 7:35 PM and left the room. He cried and fussed for around 42 minutes, then fell asleep. He then woke up 14 minutes later; cried/fussed for another 27 minutes; and fell asleep for good at 8:58 PM–after which he slept for around 4 and a half hours. He would sometimes show signs of the startle reflex (probably because he was getting used to the arms-out swaddle), but he was then able to calm himself back to sleep.
During the second night, he cried and fussed for 20 minutes before falling asleep; he woke up around 5 hours later. He’d sometimes move around in bed but then return to a resting position soon after.
On the third night (tonight), he only fussed for 7 minutes; I didn’t actually hear him cry at all. (This may have been because he was pretty drowsy at the end of his meal.) He’s sleeping great in his crib as I write this message.
In short, the time he needed to self-soothe and fall asleep decreased from 42 minutes the first night (or 69 if you count the second bout of fussing) to 20 minutes the second night, and then to 7 minutes the third night. This is huge for him! He can now use the early nighttime hours for sleep rather than for bouts of fussing, which should help with his development. He has continued to eat overnight, and that behavior will probably continue for quite a while, but we’re just thrilled that he now knows how to soothe himself to sleep.
His amount of crying also aligned pretty well with Weissbluth’s predictions for babies below 4 months of age (30-45 minutes on night 1; 10-30 on night 2; 0-10 on night 3; and none on night 4). Weissbluth actually predicts more crying than this for babies 4 months of age or older (see quotes below).
Final thoughts:
He was a happy, smiley baby before we implemented sleep training, and that has remained the case. I don’t see any signs that our attachment with him has been impaired by CIO. As he continues to get better rest, I expect that he’ll become even happier and more smiley in the coming months.
I’m sure he’ll have periods of worse sleep now and then, but overall, my wife and I are thrilled with how well the extinction method has gone. Every child’s needs and circumstances are different, so this method may only be ideal for a minority of children. However, at the very least, I think more parents should at least consider beginning CIO at an earlier age.
Relevant Quotes:
(If you’re considering this approach as well, I highly recommend that you read as much of HSSHC as you can. I added the quotes below to help explain why we didn’t wait until 4 months or later to begin CIO.)
“Because this process of sleep regulation is developing during the first 4 months, there is no reason for most parents to delay and begin to think about helping their child sleep better only at 4 months of age. Starting earlier is easier.” (p. 536)
“Parents who started helping their child sleep better at or before 4 months described better sleeping in their children than those parents who started after 4 months. This validates the notion that starting early is better than starting later” (p. 162) His research also indicates that extinction results in less crying for children below 4 months of age than it does for children aged 4 months and up (p. 536)
“For babies younger than 2 months of age, consider graduated extinction, extinction with a cap, or check and console. Extinction, even for extreme fussiness/colic, may also be considered and be successful at 2 months of age” (p. 451)
Although Weissbluth was our main resource on sleep training, I found Emily Oster’s section on this subject within Cribsheet to be helpful also. She notes that, while it’s impossible to prove that sleep training has no harmful effects, “you could easily argue the opposite: maybe sleep training is very good for some kids–they really need the uninterrupted sleep–and there is a risk of damaging your child by not sleep training. There isn’t anything in the data that shows this, but there is similarly nothing to show that sleep training is bad” (p. 181).
She also notes that “there is relatively little guidance on the appropriate age to start sleep training . . . generally, it will be easier to sleep train a six-month-old than a three-month-old [though Weissbluth would disagree with her here], and probably harder to train a two-year-old. But these methods seem to work on a variety of ages.”
submitted by emth5348 to Parenting [link] [comments]
Meanwhile, I had been reading through the 5th Edition of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (HSHHC) by Weissbluth. It seems that Weissbluth used to recommend waiting until 4 months to begin sleep training; however, this new edition makes it clear that he recommends that parents consider sleep training (including cry it out/extinction methods) as early as 2 months. (See the ‘Relevant Quotes’ heading below for more information.)
Developing our CIO plan:
After reviewing his discussion of various sleep training methods, I decided on a cry-it-out (CIO) approach, as I figured it would ultimately produce less crying and better-quality sleep than methods that could stretch on for weeks or months. For my wife and I, the benefits of allowing our child to learn self-soothing and giving him better-quality sleep right away outweighed any potential risks of CIO. (I know that many people would say that babies can’t begin self soothing until they’re older, but he has been sucking his thumb and fist pretty often in the past few weeks, so we figured that he could use this as a self-soothing method, especially since we were transitioning to an arms-out swaddle.) We did meet with our pediatrician to confirm that using CIO at his age would be OK, and she reassured us that he was at an appropriate developmental period for this method, even if not all babies are.
Because of his young age, we decided to implement a 2-hour cap. We’d wait 2 hours before going in to console or feed him, but if he cried after that, we’d go in and soothe him (and of course feed him if he appeared hungry). We realize that he will likely continue to need feeding once or twice overnight for a number of months, especially because he’s on the smaller side, so our goal was to help him get to and return to bed earlier, rather than to night wean him.
At HSSHC’s recommendation, we also shifted his bedtime to an earlier period (around 8 PM); made sure he was getting lots of naps during the day; and continued to use a white noise machine and blackout curtains to create a calmer sleep environment. We had been swaddling him arms-in since he was a newborn, but since he was now getting more active and gaining the ability to roll, we shifted to an arms-out swaddle. We knew this would make sleep training even harder, but at the advice of a Reddit thread on sleeptrain, we decided that implementing CIO at the same time that we switched to an arms-out swaddle would be the easiest option.
Implementing the plan:
So, shortly after he turned 3 months old, we began sleep training. After changing his diaper, feeding, and swaddling him and providing a little soothing, I laid him in his crib at 7:35 PM and left the room. He cried and fussed for around 42 minutes, then fell asleep. He then woke up 14 minutes later; cried/fussed for another 27 minutes; and fell asleep for good at 8:58 PM–after which he slept for around 4 and a half hours. He would sometimes show signs of the startle reflex (probably because he was getting used to the arms-out swaddle), but he was then able to calm himself back to sleep.
During the second night, he cried and fussed for 20 minutes before falling asleep; he woke up around 5 hours later. He’d sometimes move around in bed but then return to a resting position soon after.
On the third night (tonight), he only fussed for 7 minutes; I didn’t actually hear him cry at all. (This may have been because he was pretty drowsy at the end of his meal.) He’s sleeping great in his crib as I write this message.
In short, the time he needed to self-soothe and fall asleep decreased from 42 minutes the first night (or 69 if you count the second bout of fussing) to 20 minutes the second night, and then to 7 minutes the third night. This is huge for him! He can now use the early nighttime hours for sleep rather than for bouts of fussing, which should help with his development. He has continued to eat overnight, and that behavior will probably continue for quite a while, but we’re just thrilled that he now knows how to soothe himself to sleep.
His amount of crying also aligned pretty well with Weissbluth’s predictions for babies below 4 months of age (30-45 minutes on night 1; 10-30 on night 2; 0-10 on night 3; and none on night 4). Weissbluth actually predicts more crying than this for babies 4 months of age or older (see quotes below).
Final thoughts:
He was a happy, smiley baby before we implemented sleep training, and that has remained the case. I don’t see any signs that our attachment with him has been impaired by CIO. As he continues to get better rest, I expect that he’ll become even happier and more smiley in the coming months.
I’m sure he’ll have periods of worse sleep now and then, but overall, my wife and I are thrilled with how well the extinction method has gone. Every child’s needs and circumstances are different, so this method may only be ideal for a minority of children. However, at the very least, I think more parents should at least consider beginning CIO at an earlier age.
Relevant Quotes:
(If you’re considering this approach as well, I highly recommend that you read as much of HSSHC as you can. I added the quotes below to help explain why we didn’t wait until 4 months or later to begin CIO.)
“Because this process of sleep regulation is developing during the first 4 months, there is no reason for most parents to delay and begin to think about helping their child sleep better only at 4 months of age. Starting earlier is easier.” (p. 536)
“Parents who started helping their child sleep better at or before 4 months described better sleeping in their children than those parents who started after 4 months. This validates the notion that starting early is better than starting later” (p. 162) His research also indicates that extinction results in less crying for children below 4 months of age than it does for children aged 4 months and up (p. 536)
“For babies younger than 2 months of age, consider graduated extinction, extinction with a cap, or check and console. Extinction, even for extreme fussiness/colic, may also be considered and be successful at 2 months of age” (p. 451)
Although Weissbluth was our main resource on sleep training, I found Emily Oster’s section on this subject within Cribsheet to be helpful also. She notes that, while it’s impossible to prove that sleep training has no harmful effects, “you could easily argue the opposite: maybe sleep training is very good for some kids–they really need the uninterrupted sleep–and there is a risk of damaging your child by not sleep training. There isn’t anything in the data that shows this, but there is similarly nothing to show that sleep training is bad” (p. 181).
She also notes that “there is relatively little guidance on the appropriate age to start sleep training . . . generally, it will be easier to sleep train a six-month-old than a three-month-old [though Weissbluth would disagree with her here], and probably harder to train a two-year-old. But these methods seem to work on a variety of ages.”
2024.04.29 02:48 teddfuck I legitimately feel like I am fighting for my life
(Self-harm TW for just this paragraph, very mild suicide and addiction mentions here and there): I'll say off the top that I used to be very suicidal and attempted a few years ago, but I was eventually prescribed lithium which worked like magic to erase the suicidality. I don't take it anymore but I generally still don't feel like ending my life though I often have intrusive thoughts of self-harm that I'm not too worried about acting on, but it's obviously a bit upsetting to fantasize about slicing your arm open or stabbing yourself in the stomach.
I am particularly frustrated because I feel like I am trying so, so hard to get better and it isn't working. I hit a very low point during the winter, basically ghosted my therapist and psychiatrist and went on multiple drug and alcohol binges, exacerbated by the fact I'm a student who had final exams, and flew home for Christmas with my family (who I get along with but don't feel particularly close to).
Since January, with the help of a friend who means the world to me, I've been putting as much effort as I can muster into getting better. I started seeing a new therapist who is great. I found a new prescriber for my medications and have an appointment with a psychiatrist in a few days. I've been to student groups, addiction groups, crisis counseling, etc. I know that I love myself at least enough to keep trying. I feel like I do almost everything that one would recommend a depressed person do:
None of it is enough. None of it fills me up inside or gives me the Big Happiness. I feel horrible all the time. I am anxious and depressed constantly. I find the Joker movie to be pretty cheesy, but unfortunately do resonate with that line where he says "all I have are negative thoughts." My dream in life is just to wake up in the morning and just feel ok, like just be content and feel glad to be alive. I am terribly insecure due to a lot of prior mistakes which cost me many friendships, and I am legitimately worried I am fundamentally unloveable, or at least unable to engage in healthy, bi-directional love. I have FOMO and am a blabber mouth and after most social engagements I spend hours going over everything I said and worrying that I've offended or hurt someone or been annoying or bothersome or problematic. I am impossibly hard on myself, and if anything I'm involved with ever goes south I place all the blame on myself. I have periods where I am terrified of death and experience a lot of nihilistic thoughts due to humanity's cosmic insignificance. I haven't found meaning in life and eschew religion because I just don't genuinely believe in any of it, like I actually think all of this is just random and the meaning of life is to just kinda vibe and do what makes you happy.
My heart is just so full of love and pain. I lost my best friend during high school to suicide almost 9 years ago and I still don't think I've found a way to forgive myself yet. He was smarter and kinder than me, and I wish it had been me instead because he had so much to offer the world. Ever since that, I think I generally believe myself to be deserving of bad things, and my heart hurts so much for others because I wish I could just take all of their pain away and put it on myself. I am endlessly forgiving and understanding of others because I never want anyone to have to feel the way I do or how my friend must've felt, and I trust people and assume the best of them. I love making people laugh and, if I'm being honest, think I am extremely funny and put a lot of energy into being pleasant to be around. I try to be a good friend, but I put so much energy into just keeping myself going that I likely could do better there.
I am so scared. I have been to such low places and I am afraid that I will find myself somewhere even lower. Every single day feels like a battle where I'm trying to trick myself into just making it through that day. I feel worn out and broken. I feel completely isolated and trapped in my head, and so so lonely that I don't think I could share a genuine hug with someone without just sobbing, yet it's been months since I've had a good cry. I feel like I'm in a straitjacket and am suffocating. I am so emotionally volatile, like I can have the best day and then one little thing goes wrong and it wrecks me. I feel like my life is winding down.
This is longer than it has any business being. I just needed to lay it all out in a relatively organized fashion. It was a beautiful sunny day, it's finals season and I am poised to do totally fine in all my classes, and more or less all of my affairs are in order. Somewhere inside of me is enough hope to keep me going, but I don't know how much is left. I'll end with a quote I recently heard that has been slightly helpful: "If you're trying to love yourself, you already do. Where do you think the 'trying' comes from?"
submitted by teddfuck to depression [link] [comments]
I am particularly frustrated because I feel like I am trying so, so hard to get better and it isn't working. I hit a very low point during the winter, basically ghosted my therapist and psychiatrist and went on multiple drug and alcohol binges, exacerbated by the fact I'm a student who had final exams, and flew home for Christmas with my family (who I get along with but don't feel particularly close to).
Since January, with the help of a friend who means the world to me, I've been putting as much effort as I can muster into getting better. I started seeing a new therapist who is great. I found a new prescriber for my medications and have an appointment with a psychiatrist in a few days. I've been to student groups, addiction groups, crisis counseling, etc. I know that I love myself at least enough to keep trying. I feel like I do almost everything that one would recommend a depressed person do:
- I have amazing friends who support me and who I can talk to about my problems.
- I am at an amazing school that I genuinely love and am so happy to be at. I am proud of my achievements and despite some really bad issues with focusing, feel like I am doing the best I can.
- I have a job lined up somewhere that I am super excited about and that pays more money than I've ever seen in my life, literally the starting salary is more than my family's income.
- I eat decently well though I have some body image issues and so calorie count more than I should. I take a few vitamins most days and find comfort in things like making tea or having an ice cold seltzer.
- I play tennis and volleyball with friends which provides good exercise and social interactions. I go on walks through different neighborhoods and am averaging over 11,000 steps per day over the last few months.
- I listen to music and watch TV/movies and go out to bars and parties and shows. I go on trips and do potlucks with friends, and feel connected to the city I live in. I live in a vibrant area across the street from a lovely park.
- I take interesting classes and got to work for a government agency in an area I care about.
- I am active on the dating apps and don't have too much trouble getting dates, though I've yet to really connect with anyone since breaking up with my girlfriend last September.
- I maintain a relatively clean house, do my cooking and cleaning and general chores, and even when I'm depressed I force myself to get up and leave the house at least at some point. I shower every single day, wear sunscreen and hair gel that makes my hair nice and soft, and wear well-fitting clothes in a style I feel good in.
- I maintain decent hobbies given busy student life, including doing NYT games most days, playing GeoGuessr, and following baseball, basketball, and football. I browse Reddit and Twitter where I've spent years curating my algorithms so I am largely entertained.
- I stay up to date on the news and care about what's happening globally. I apply critical and independent thinking and feel confident in the ideologies I believe in, but I am very open to growth and change and responding to new information. I follow a few YouTubers who provide insight and commentary, and are a soothing background presence while I'm working or studying.
None of it is enough. None of it fills me up inside or gives me the Big Happiness. I feel horrible all the time. I am anxious and depressed constantly. I find the Joker movie to be pretty cheesy, but unfortunately do resonate with that line where he says "all I have are negative thoughts." My dream in life is just to wake up in the morning and just feel ok, like just be content and feel glad to be alive. I am terribly insecure due to a lot of prior mistakes which cost me many friendships, and I am legitimately worried I am fundamentally unloveable, or at least unable to engage in healthy, bi-directional love. I have FOMO and am a blabber mouth and after most social engagements I spend hours going over everything I said and worrying that I've offended or hurt someone or been annoying or bothersome or problematic. I am impossibly hard on myself, and if anything I'm involved with ever goes south I place all the blame on myself. I have periods where I am terrified of death and experience a lot of nihilistic thoughts due to humanity's cosmic insignificance. I haven't found meaning in life and eschew religion because I just don't genuinely believe in any of it, like I actually think all of this is just random and the meaning of life is to just kinda vibe and do what makes you happy.
My heart is just so full of love and pain. I lost my best friend during high school to suicide almost 9 years ago and I still don't think I've found a way to forgive myself yet. He was smarter and kinder than me, and I wish it had been me instead because he had so much to offer the world. Ever since that, I think I generally believe myself to be deserving of bad things, and my heart hurts so much for others because I wish I could just take all of their pain away and put it on myself. I am endlessly forgiving and understanding of others because I never want anyone to have to feel the way I do or how my friend must've felt, and I trust people and assume the best of them. I love making people laugh and, if I'm being honest, think I am extremely funny and put a lot of energy into being pleasant to be around. I try to be a good friend, but I put so much energy into just keeping myself going that I likely could do better there.
I am so scared. I have been to such low places and I am afraid that I will find myself somewhere even lower. Every single day feels like a battle where I'm trying to trick myself into just making it through that day. I feel worn out and broken. I feel completely isolated and trapped in my head, and so so lonely that I don't think I could share a genuine hug with someone without just sobbing, yet it's been months since I've had a good cry. I feel like I'm in a straitjacket and am suffocating. I am so emotionally volatile, like I can have the best day and then one little thing goes wrong and it wrecks me. I feel like my life is winding down.
This is longer than it has any business being. I just needed to lay it all out in a relatively organized fashion. It was a beautiful sunny day, it's finals season and I am poised to do totally fine in all my classes, and more or less all of my affairs are in order. Somewhere inside of me is enough hope to keep me going, but I don't know how much is left. I'll end with a quote I recently heard that has been slightly helpful: "If you're trying to love yourself, you already do. Where do you think the 'trying' comes from?"
2024.04.29 00:12 hoolu123 [Thank You] Sunday Funday
Thank you for all the beautiful mail!
~
u/Boomer1717 I love this empire state building construction postcard! Reminds me of that classic photo of construction workers eating their lunch on a high beam. Thank you also for the silly dog story! 🐶
u/a5k2h5 I will DO MY BEST, haha! Thank you for the encouraging postcard and inspiring quote. ✍️
u/hispanglotexan Thank you for the earth day card. I appreciated the coral reef fact! 🪸
u/EntireInevitable26 Thank you for this butterfly card! The poem you shared is so special. I love seeing handwritten poetry. 🦋
u/princecowboy Congrats on reaching 100! Isn't RAoC such a wonderful community?? 💌
u/Anxietys_Playground Thank you for the handmade "Persephone" card. I had forgotten about her connection to pomegranates! PS. You are my 200th RAoC card received! 🌷
u/banishment_thisworld I loved this little envelope inside an envelope! Glad to hear you're enjoying my very random mailing list. Extra thanks for the stickers! 🐰
u/cheeneebobeanie_ I can't believe this is a scratch-off card! I would have thought it was just a beautiful silver design. Thank you! 🌈
u/Keqani Thank you for this sunset postcard. I love all the stickers. I'll have to check out IU's music. 🌅
u/snerdboff I love this random happy mail! So pretty how you turns the used stamp into a new card. I had never heard of Planet Word, so I should definitely check it out! Thank you also for the extra stickers. 💟
u/melhen16 Thank you for the butterfly postcard with WV facts! I always enjoy the vintage stamps that you use. 🇺🇸
u/Mediocre_Radish_7216 I feel so fortunate to benefit from your decluttering efforts! The "Happy Friends Day" message actually made my day. I love this RAoC community! Thanks for all the delightful stickers and washi tape. 🤗
u/Rand_ston Wow, you picked the perfect destash for me! This weird geometry insect art is right up my alley! Thank you! 🐛
u/thecaledonianrose Such a distinguished cat! Thank you for this cool card. 😻
u/ArmadaKristy Thanks for sharing your delightful wedding TY postcard! The quote you included was so lovely too. 👰
u/chiquita61 x2 Thank you for the waterfall postcard! I love that the walkway is literally called "Mist Trail." 💧 Also, I love this handmaid mermaids card! Thank you for all the stickers. I highly recommend the Netflix documentary called Merpeople. 🧜
u/feellikebeingajerk Thanks for this card with the Ryan Lochte quote! You're so generous with stickers. Funny to hear about your Olympic mittens too. 🧤
submitted by hoolu123 to RandomActsofCards [link] [comments]
~
u/Boomer1717 I love this empire state building construction postcard! Reminds me of that classic photo of construction workers eating their lunch on a high beam. Thank you also for the silly dog story! 🐶
u/a5k2h5 I will DO MY BEST, haha! Thank you for the encouraging postcard and inspiring quote. ✍️
u/hispanglotexan Thank you for the earth day card. I appreciated the coral reef fact! 🪸
u/EntireInevitable26 Thank you for this butterfly card! The poem you shared is so special. I love seeing handwritten poetry. 🦋
u/princecowboy Congrats on reaching 100! Isn't RAoC such a wonderful community?? 💌
u/Anxietys_Playground Thank you for the handmade "Persephone" card. I had forgotten about her connection to pomegranates! PS. You are my 200th RAoC card received! 🌷
u/banishment_thisworld I loved this little envelope inside an envelope! Glad to hear you're enjoying my very random mailing list. Extra thanks for the stickers! 🐰
u/cheeneebobeanie_ I can't believe this is a scratch-off card! I would have thought it was just a beautiful silver design. Thank you! 🌈
u/Keqani Thank you for this sunset postcard. I love all the stickers. I'll have to check out IU's music. 🌅
u/snerdboff I love this random happy mail! So pretty how you turns the used stamp into a new card. I had never heard of Planet Word, so I should definitely check it out! Thank you also for the extra stickers. 💟
u/melhen16 Thank you for the butterfly postcard with WV facts! I always enjoy the vintage stamps that you use. 🇺🇸
u/Mediocre_Radish_7216 I feel so fortunate to benefit from your decluttering efforts! The "Happy Friends Day" message actually made my day. I love this RAoC community! Thanks for all the delightful stickers and washi tape. 🤗
u/Rand_ston Wow, you picked the perfect destash for me! This weird geometry insect art is right up my alley! Thank you! 🐛
u/thecaledonianrose Such a distinguished cat! Thank you for this cool card. 😻
u/ArmadaKristy Thanks for sharing your delightful wedding TY postcard! The quote you included was so lovely too. 👰
u/chiquita61 x2 Thank you for the waterfall postcard! I love that the walkway is literally called "Mist Trail." 💧 Also, I love this handmaid mermaids card! Thank you for all the stickers. I highly recommend the Netflix documentary called Merpeople. 🧜
u/feellikebeingajerk Thanks for this card with the Ryan Lochte quote! You're so generous with stickers. Funny to hear about your Olympic mittens too. 🧤
2024.04.29 00:00 Shimmering-Sky [Rewatch] Mahou Shoujo Madoka☆Magica Episode 9 Discussion
Episode 9 - I'd Never Allow That to Happen
← Previous Episode Index Next Episode →Show Information:
MAL AniList ANN Kitsu AniDB(First-timers might want to stay out of show information, though.)
Legal Streams:
Crunchyroll Hulu(RIP Funimation.)
A Reminder to Rewatchers:
Rewatchers, please please please remember to be mindful of all the first-timers in this. [Spoiler warning specifically for you guys]Please be aware that as part of the above strict spoiler rules, this means absolutely no memes/jokes/references/subtle words about {the usual suspects} before the relevant episodes. Please do not spoil the first-timers by trying to be smart about it, it's not as subtle as you think.Make sure you use spoiler tags if there’s ever something from future events you just have to comment on. And don’t be the idiot who quotes a specific part of a first-timer’s comment, then comments something under a spoiler tag in direct response to it! You might as well have spoiled them by implying there’s something super important about that specific part of their comment.
And a Reminder to First-Timers too:
As previously noted, first-timers wanting to avoid spoilers are strongly recommended to use either the desktop version of the site or the iOS app (which appears to be unaffected), lest you chance running into this bug regarding replying to a post or comment that has spoiler tags in it.Daily Community Participation!
Visuals of the Day:Episode 8 album
Theory of the Day:
Today's Theory of the Day goes to u/_Pyxyty for going into fully unhinged crack theory territory and unintentionally reinventing a common fan theory from when this show was airing as a result:
Screw it, let's get straight to the theory: Homura is Madoka from a different timeline. I'm going full crazy conspiracy theorist on this one. If Madoka turns into some wildly powerful being that can do things even Kyubey can't do, like revert magical girls back to normal, I assume she'd also be able to manipulate time and space, jump between timelines, and alter her look.Analysis of the Day:
I just genuinely can't think of who Homura might be though, if not Madoka herself. I thought it might be her mother, but given Kyubey only seems to target young girls, that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe Hitomi? If it was her though, I'd be shocked but also a tiny bit disappointed. I can't imagine it'd be some other character that we just haven't met in this timeline yet. Who could Homura be other than Madoka herself that would make sense narratively and physically speaking?
Even if it was some magical girl we havent met before, time magic seems really powerful, and that ability kind of seems like it'd be unattainable unless you had the potential Madoka has, right?
For Analysis of the Day, we have a winner and an honorable mention. Let's start with the winner, consisting of u/Specs64z's thoughts on the train scene:
In a work with so much visual and musical flair, the train scene stands out a lot in Madoka Magica.And for the honorable mention, that would be u/Hattakiri's note about English dubs:
There’s no color in the scene, everything is painted in shadow. No music plays. The only sound we hear is the ambient noise of the train: the engine roaring, the wheels clicking, the straps clanking. That, and the conversation between the 2 men.
Hey… is this world even worth protecting?And what a wretched conversation it is. Their words are full of self-importance and contempt for others, it’s corrosive to the soul even to listen to. Inhuman. Sayaka confronts them, nothing left to lose, as darkness seeps forth from her soul gem. We know this is no mere visual trick as the men react fearfully to the haunting visage.
C’mon, tell me. Or else.The black and white visuals on the train harken back to the witch's labyrinth from earlier. This world is not as it should be… so what must be done to make it right? And who will do it?
If there are people out there who’re worse than witches, then I’m gonna fight ‘em.Color has returned to the world as we cut to a shot of a branching railway; the “labyrinth” is no more. The train barrels into frame and down one of the paths, its destination pre-determined and its course irreversible.
I’ve always thought Sayaka killed them.
"You are Sailor Moon and you must fight evil when it confronts you!" - a lucky choice by Sailor Moon's old DiC writers for Luna's first appearance. These words nailed the plot point perfectly, and due to the writing and performance they had to become an iconic signature phrase of the old Sailor Moon dub, despite maybe interpreting the Japanese original "rather freely".Wallpaper of the Day:
The one phrase whose "loss" due to the new ViZ interpretation actually was "bemoaned" by some lol
Often dubs lead to debates and controversies due to the "free interpretation" of the translators. But sometimes the translators manage to create something iconic.
But DiC's Sailor Moon was rather from the funny category. Sayaka's "I was stupid, so stupid!" is from the serious category and it marks one of the signature plot twists of PMMM.
Kyouko Sakura and Sayaka Miki
Check out Shimmering-Sky's main comment for her bonus Wallpaper Corner containing works from previous years!
Songs of the Day:
Symposium magarum
Bonus song - and I'm home
Check out u/Nazenn’s comment from the 2019 rewatch for an in-depth analysis of these two songs, as well as timestamps for what songs played when in today's episode!
Venari Strigas
Umbra Nigra
Incertus
Terror Adhaerens
Also check out Tarhalindur's Kajiura Corner from the 2023 rewatch for even more analysis on music this episode!
and I'm home Cover of the Day:
/anime Sings and I'm home
(We would just link the YouTube release here instead of rehosting it on Catbox, but the YouTube release is only a teaser because of copyright. Also, fun fact, u/Shimmering-Sky is the one who provided the "I was stupid... So stupid..." at the beginning. )
Question(s) of the Day:
1) Thoughts on our BD additional special ED for this episode, and I'm home?
2) Now that Kyubey has given us his reasons for why the magical girl system exists, what do you think of them and of him?
3) First-Timers: Did you think for a moment that Kyouko had a chance of actually rescuing Sayaka?
4) First-Timers: So… now what?
5) [Rewatchers] Ready to do the time loop again?
2024.04.28 18:50 OkThought6335 Dante Rua Son of Hebe
You are the worst kind of good 'cause you're not even greatDante Armando Rua: General information
| FULL NAME: Dante Armando Rua | ORIENTATION: Hetero, demi-aro, demi-ace | HOMETOWN: Ortona Italy |
|---|---|---|
| AGE: 14 | GENDER AND PRONOUNS: Cisgender Male He/Him | LANGUAGES: English, Italian |
| GODRENT: Hebe | ETHNICITY: Italian | DEMIGOD CONUNDRUMS: ADHD, Dyslexia |
- First Name meaning: Enduring
- Middle name meaning: Soldier
- Last name meaning: Street
-----
Family:
| NAME: | RELATION: | THOUGHTS: |
|---|---|---|
| Amadeo Rua | Father | Amadeo and Dante share a close father-son relationship. Amadeo loves his son deeply and is very protective of him, which is why he decided to send him to Camp Half-Blood to keep him safe from the dangers of the demigod world. Despite his protective nature, Amadeo also wishes he could keep Dante with him forever. Yes, Dante is spoiled by him. |
| Hebe | Mother | Deadbeat. Is she too chicken to show herself or what? |
Personality:
Being the son of youth, Dante can be a bit naive at some points. He's optimistic about the best outcome happening and believes it's his methods that will get him there. He is very prideful and his mood can instantly turn from good to bad if he's challenged. He is, overall, friendly but perhaps a little too confident in his ability to make friends.
- Meyers-Briggs: ESFP
- Fatal flaw: Naivety
- Deadly sin: Pride
- Heavenly virtue: Chastity
Description:
Dante has hazel eyes and short, dark brown hair. He is short for his age (which can make him look younger). He has a slightly pudgy physique.
Clothes: Dante's clothing style is a mix of casual and comfortable but with a touch of uniqueness. He likes to wear bright colors, like red, yellow, and orange. He often wears T-shirts paired with comfortable jeans or shorts. He also likes to accessorize with bracelets. He has red glasses.
Voice: He speaks with an Italian accent and tends to speak quickly, as he has a lot to say. His voice sounds younger than his actual age, a gift inherited from his mother.
-----
Powers:
Domain:
Magic Vision: The ability to perceive magic and enchantments.
"Yeah, you're not getting away with your harry potter stuff today!"
Summon Familiar: The ability to summon and control a (locally available) familiar. Beginners can summon up to 1 individual at a time; intermediate users can summon 3; masters can summon 5.
"Pretty fun, actually. I can control birds! I think it's fun to scare people using this. Have a problem with someone? Send a chicken after them."
Close-up Magic Proficiency A trait where one is naturally adept at close-up magic (sleight of hand, parlor trick-magic).
"Cool magic I guess. It already impresses most of my friends. Now that I think about it, I could make money off of this..."
Minor:
Toxin removal: The ability to cleanse toxins from consumables. (This does not mean you can just eat raw food. This does not cover divine poisons.)
"Food Lysol. Need I say more?"
Culinary Proficiency: A trait where one is naturally adept with the skills and knowledge involved in cooking.
"I can make food and not burn it... which believe it or not is pretty impressive for me."
Youthful Aura: The ability to have an area of effect that makes others feel mischievous and creative (emotional power). By default, the area of effect reaches 15 feet, up to 30 feet with concentration or increased effort. (AOE)
"If my charm wasn't enough to affect people's emotions already, I have a power for it too!"
Major:
Godly Food Conjuration: The ability to conjure ambrosia or nectar once an hour (once a post).
"So like, I'm pretty much a walking first aid kit. And uh that sums it up for my cool abilities. If you need any of my powers call 1-800-[REDACTED]-[REDACTED]"
-----
Other:
- Ambrosia tastes like blood orange sorbet to him.
- Favorite Color: Orange
- Favorite Sport: American football
- Favorite Animal: Cheetas
History (A summary):
With his magic vision, he was able to witness sights from the demigod world at a young age. His father had no choice but to reveal to him his true parentage, and he began discovering his powers. With youthful eagerness, he used these abilities to impress and show off, unaware of the dangers that his recklessness could attract. Monsters would follow him everywhere, waiting for the perfect chance.
The attack was overdue, really. Perhaps it was because children of minor gods don't matter as much, who knows? But on one particularly bad day, a week before his 13th birthday, Dante thought it would be funny to send chickens after his bullies. His use of his powers became a beacon for a hellhound that day. On his walk home, he noticed it following him, but it was too late. Fortunately, his father saw it all unfold from the house window and ran outside to fight. The two were able to defeat it, but not without some serious injuries. During the whole ordeal, Dante was claimed as well.
This was the final push Amadeo needed to send Dante to camp half-blood. He didn't want his son to be in danger and the hellhound certainly was dangerous. So, Dante and his dad boarded a plane headed to New York City. Before going to camp half-blood, Amadeo and Dante spent a few days bonding before he left to camp. They saw the sights of New York. They saw monsters a few times but none actually attacked. And on the actual day of Dante's birthday, Amadeo got Dante a pet bearded lizard who he named Crouton. The fun had to end somewhere, and 2 days after Dante's birthday they got on a taxi and rode to camp half-blood.
-----
A Greek who reeks of false righteousness, that's what I hateNow:
Dante felt his heart racing as he sat in the back seat of the taxi, waiting for his adventure to begin. His dad, Amadeo, turned around with a worried expression on his face. "Stai attento, my son," he said, his voice filled with concern. (OOC Translation: "Be safe,")
Dante gave his dad an encouraging smile. "Certo, papà. Questo è lo scopo di questo campo, essere al sicuro." (OOC Translation: "Of course, Dad. That is the purpose of this camp, to be safe.")
Sighing, Amadeo rubbed his temples. "Okay... ti amo. Promettimi che scriverai." (OOC Translation: "Okay... I love you. Promise me you'll write.")
"I promise, Dad... anch'io ti amo," Dante replied, grinning from excitement. (OOC Translation: "I love you too,")
Amadeo nodded and stepped out of the cab. He walked over and hugged Dante goodbye before stepping back into the taxi and riding away. He watched it leave and then started into the forest. His bearded dragon, Crouton, was safely tucked away in a carrier that Dante held close to him.
Amadeo nodded and stepped out of the cab. After a quick goodbye hug, Dante was left holding his bearded dragon, Crouton, safe in a carrier.
Dante was feeling ecstatic. He was in the forest and close to the camp where he would train his powers and miss school. Of course, the young boy was excited. As he got over the hill, he paused to look around and take a deep breath. Where to start...? he wondered.
-----
OOC: Quote credits and links: Quotes are from Jorge Rivera-Herrans' EPIC: The Musical song called Ruthlessness.
2024.04.28 18:00 Dioduo I was wrong, but... The potential of the concept of devils in the Chainsaw Man for understanding the politics and identity of different countries. [Spoilers]
To begin with, the devils in the Chainsaw Man embody any concept that could potentially inspire fear in a certain number of people. The number of people characterizes the fundamental nature of fear, as well as the power of the devil embodying it (don't worry, I'm not interested in powerscaling in this post).
One of the main antagonists in the manga is Gun Devil, the devil embodying the fear of any kind of firearms. But the most curious characteristic of this Devil for me was its place of birth - the USA. At some point, we become aware that Gun Devil appeared after the emergence of mass fear in connection with a terrorist attack using guns.
Due to the fact that the story develops in 1997, 9/11 has not yet happened (or will not happen since this is another timeline in which the Soviet Union still exists), this incident is considered the worst terrorist attack in the United States. Nevertheless, considering that the debate on guns in the United States is one of the most important and broad topics of political discussion from the point of view of the audience. And the concept of Gun Devil is an interesting metaphor expressing the neurosis of American society about the availability of guns, which has become a significant part of American identity.
The fact is that before reading the manga, I first watched the anime series, and in an attempt to get information from which chapter to continue reading, I accidentally came across a comment that spoiled me the true identity of Makima - Control Devil. I thought that this would spoil my impression of the story in the manga, but the opposite happened, it fueled my interest in her character as we gradually discovered the lore of Devils. I was curious about what and how many semantic layers Fujimoto would pull on the Control Devil. Will the place of its birth, as in the cases of Gun Devil, say something about Fujimoto's views on modern politics or history?
Following this logic, when reading the manga, I assumed that most likely Makima's birthplace could be the Soviet Union. That was before we even got any information about Makima's past in the manga. After reading the manga, I found out that Makima appeared in Japan, but nevertheless, I still find the symbolic potential of Makima's birth in the USSR during the period of mass repression and denunciations interesting.
The USSR was the first totalitarian state in the modern sense. The state is not just an authoritarian dictatorship, but a country with a historically unprecedented system of control over all aspects of its citizens' lives, down to the smallest villages through a system of collective farms. Later, communist dictatorial regimes appeared that imitated the USSR to varying degrees.
A curious fact here is also the culture of whistleblowing transmitted to the dictatorships of the early 20th century.
What I said above was already enough, but I have not once mentioned the KGB, with their method of 'low-visibility harassment' in order to control the population, and repress politically incorrect people and dissidents. This could involve causing unemployment, social isolation, and inducing mental and emotional health problems. Such methods formed the basis of the Stasi's use of Zersetzung (trans. decomposition) which has been considered to be a perfected version. It reminds me of Makima's plan to secretly drive Denji to despair in order to break the contract with Pochita.
To sum up, it would be interesting to assume that the current incarnation of Control Devil was born in the midst of the first modern totalitarian state. Also, considering Makima through the prism I have indicated, the dynamics between her and Gun Devil looks interesting, especially against the background of not only the military-political but also the ideological confrontation between the United States and the USSR.
In the interpretations of the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution, in addition to natural protection from foreign invasion, protection against usurpation of power and the onset of dictatorship also appears, and in this sense it is funny that Gun Devil is the last resort against the global gigemony of Control Devil.
It is also interesting to consider this dynamic from the point of view of the metaphor of the urban and field mouse proposed in the manga, where a US citizen (urban mouse) is potentially waiting for a more eventful life, but they are more likely to be shot on the street, and a citizen of the USSR (field mouse) is more significant less saturated, but safer.
Unfortunately or fortunately, my assumptions did not come true by the end of the manga, but I was still interested in thinking about the concept of Devils embodying mass fears from a political point of view, using the example of a small plot detail about the birthplace of Gun Devil.
P.S. Having thought about it again and this does not apply to the main topic of my post, it would be strange after two antagonists in a row from the USSR (Reza and the main body of Santa Claus) to present another such antagonist.
submitted by Dioduo to CharacterRant [link] [comments]
One of the main antagonists in the manga is Gun Devil, the devil embodying the fear of any kind of firearms. But the most curious characteristic of this Devil for me was its place of birth - the USA. At some point, we become aware that Gun Devil appeared after the emergence of mass fear in connection with a terrorist attack using guns.
Due to the fact that the story develops in 1997, 9/11 has not yet happened (or will not happen since this is another timeline in which the Soviet Union still exists), this incident is considered the worst terrorist attack in the United States. Nevertheless, considering that the debate on guns in the United States is one of the most important and broad topics of political discussion from the point of view of the audience. And the concept of Gun Devil is an interesting metaphor expressing the neurosis of American society about the availability of guns, which has become a significant part of American identity.
The fact is that before reading the manga, I first watched the anime series, and in an attempt to get information from which chapter to continue reading, I accidentally came across a comment that spoiled me the true identity of Makima - Control Devil. I thought that this would spoil my impression of the story in the manga, but the opposite happened, it fueled my interest in her character as we gradually discovered the lore of Devils. I was curious about what and how many semantic layers Fujimoto would pull on the Control Devil. Will the place of its birth, as in the cases of Gun Devil, say something about Fujimoto's views on modern politics or history?
Following this logic, when reading the manga, I assumed that most likely Makima's birthplace could be the Soviet Union. That was before we even got any information about Makima's past in the manga. After reading the manga, I found out that Makima appeared in Japan, but nevertheless, I still find the symbolic potential of Makima's birth in the USSR during the period of mass repression and denunciations interesting.
The USSR was the first totalitarian state in the modern sense. The state is not just an authoritarian dictatorship, but a country with a historically unprecedented system of control over all aspects of its citizens' lives, down to the smallest villages through a system of collective farms. Later, communist dictatorial regimes appeared that imitated the USSR to varying degrees.
A curious fact here is also the culture of whistleblowing transmitted to the dictatorships of the early 20th century.
"We curse Comrade Stalin endlessly, and, of course, for the cause. And yet I want to ask — who wrote four million denunciations?" — this quote by the writer and publicist Sergei Dovlatov is often remembered when it comes to the phenomenon of denunciation, which became widespread in the 1930s. This phenomenon has acquired huge proportions: citizens wrote denunciations of their colleagues and neighbors, husbands — against their wives (and vice versa), children — against their parents. Trouble was threatened not only by an ill-timed political anecdote or a "moral and domestic decomposition" noticed by detractors. In fact, it is impossible to determine even the approximate number of denunciations written in the Stalinist USSR. One of the reasons is that some of the NKVD archives are still classified. At the same time, we can certainly say that this phenomenon was really massive — many examples of whistleblowing have come down to our days.In other words, in the Stalinist USSR, paranoia and fear about the surveillance of not only the secret police but also residents of each other were spread among the population. Thus, the power of the party reached almost every person individually. I immediately remember the paranoia of the characters from CSM about "Makima is listening."
What I said above was already enough, but I have not once mentioned the KGB, with their method of 'low-visibility harassment' in order to control the population, and repress politically incorrect people and dissidents. This could involve causing unemployment, social isolation, and inducing mental and emotional health problems. Such methods formed the basis of the Stasi's use of Zersetzung (trans. decomposition) which has been considered to be a perfected version. It reminds me of Makima's plan to secretly drive Denji to despair in order to break the contract with Pochita.
To sum up, it would be interesting to assume that the current incarnation of Control Devil was born in the midst of the first modern totalitarian state. Also, considering Makima through the prism I have indicated, the dynamics between her and Gun Devil looks interesting, especially against the background of not only the military-political but also the ideological confrontation between the United States and the USSR.
In the interpretations of the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution, in addition to natural protection from foreign invasion, protection against usurpation of power and the onset of dictatorship also appears, and in this sense it is funny that Gun Devil is the last resort against the global gigemony of Control Devil.
It is also interesting to consider this dynamic from the point of view of the metaphor of the urban and field mouse proposed in the manga, where a US citizen (urban mouse) is potentially waiting for a more eventful life, but they are more likely to be shot on the street, and a citizen of the USSR (field mouse) is more significant less saturated, but safer.
Unfortunately or fortunately, my assumptions did not come true by the end of the manga, but I was still interested in thinking about the concept of Devils embodying mass fears from a political point of view, using the example of a small plot detail about the birthplace of Gun Devil.
P.S. Having thought about it again and this does not apply to the main topic of my post, it would be strange after two antagonists in a row from the USSR (Reza and the main body of Santa Claus) to present another such antagonist.
2024.04.28 17:53 Fireoa- This couple makes $150k/year (Net) with reinvented cotton candy
Edit: A commenter has made accusations about this product and I want to clear the air. This product is NOT a health food nor is he claiming it is. He uses superior ingredients which give his cotton candy a much better taste/texture. In his own words:
Probably 95%+ cotton candy is going to be made using the cheapest sugar you can buy, such as beet sugar or your basic great value walmart bag of sugar. Its sugar, mixed with a tablespoon or two of gold medal "flossine" which has next to no discernable taste.
Here's what makes ours different:
We have worked on sourcing the best tasting flavor extracts, powders, and concentrates for each of our flavors. We source our ingredients from about a dozen different companies.
Lastly we use a proprietary process when we make our sugar that actually changes the texture from the typical gritty feeling of cotton candy, to a silky soft cotton candy that retains its shape, and is overall more pleasant to consume.
Several weeks ago I introduced you to Clark, the entrepreneur making $1Mill/year by selling cell phone service to the Amish (you can read that story here: (https://www.reddit.com/Entrepreneucomments/1bevev5/this_guy_makes_over_1million_a_year_by_selling/utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
If you enjoyed that interview, I think you’ll dig this story about Chris, the entrepreneur making boatloads of money with his own cotton candy recipe.
Basically, Chris always had the entrepreneurial itch but like many people, he lacked the confidence to create his own business.
He shares how he created that confidence and how he found validation in his idea when he sold $25,000 in product in just over a week.
A few takeaways in this interview:
When we came back, the business was in tons of debt and was pretty much on the verge of failing. I worked out a compensation plan with the owner that scaled with the growth of the business. I was the 'marketing director' but I ended up taking on many different roles. I became the IT, marketing, sales, project manager, customer service, graphic designer and office admin. It really pushed me to expand and fully utilize my skill set.
I helped them essentially rebuild everything from the ground up. New marketing funnels, new CRM, follow up protocols, introducing new products etc. The numbers really speak for themselves. They were a student enrollment based business.
The start of 2021 we started at like 90-100 active students, by the end of the year I had gotten them to 1100 active students. Pre covid rev numbers were abt 300 k annually and In 2021 I had helped them hit 1.3 million.I even initiated and led an expansion to add a 2nd location. 2022 rev was like 1.6 mil. By the time I left I looked at the reports and essentially I had helped them attain 30 months of month after month growth.
So after that experience, it really helped give me the proof that I truly knew what I was doing. And from there I basically asked myself " hey if I can help this business make a million, maybe I can do that for myself"
submitted by Fireoa- to Entrepreneur [link] [comments]
Probably 95%+ cotton candy is going to be made using the cheapest sugar you can buy, such as beet sugar or your basic great value walmart bag of sugar. Its sugar, mixed with a tablespoon or two of gold medal "flossine" which has next to no discernable taste.
Here's what makes ours different:
We have worked on sourcing the best tasting flavor extracts, powders, and concentrates for each of our flavors. We source our ingredients from about a dozen different companies.
Lastly we use a proprietary process when we make our sugar that actually changes the texture from the typical gritty feeling of cotton candy, to a silky soft cotton candy that retains its shape, and is overall more pleasant to consume.
Several weeks ago I introduced you to Clark, the entrepreneur making $1Mill/year by selling cell phone service to the Amish (you can read that story here: (https://www.reddit.com/Entrepreneucomments/1bevev5/this_guy_makes_over_1million_a_year_by_selling/utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
If you enjoyed that interview, I think you’ll dig this story about Chris, the entrepreneur making boatloads of money with his own cotton candy recipe.
Basically, Chris always had the entrepreneurial itch but like many people, he lacked the confidence to create his own business.
He shares how he created that confidence and how he found validation in his idea when he sold $25,000 in product in just over a week.
A few takeaways in this interview:
- How to find confidence to start a business (even if you’ve failed in the past)
- Even a product that’s been around for decades can be reinvented.
- And a horror story and a worst case scenario about opening a brick and mortar store.
Please, introduce yourself and your business.
My name is Chris, and my business name is Cloud Candy Co! I'm out to 'disrupt' the concessions industry as it were, and turn cotton candy from a pink/blue flavorless garbage sweet for kids, into a decadent dessert enjoyed by all ages! Most cotton candy is made using the cheapest ingredients possible or from premade cartons. We have come up with our own unique recipe that drastically changes the texture and flavor of cotton candy. Instead of gritty/sticky, our cotton candy is silky, light, and not overly sweet. I really believe we have the most superior product on the market! Eventually I'd like to replace regular cotton candy at large venues (looking at you Moda Center.)How did you start your business?
At age 17 I jumped into sales and for the next 10 years I helped both startups and small businesses exponentially grow. Taking some businesses from 4 to 6 figures, and other businesses from 5 to 7 figures annually. Quite frankly, with each of these businesses I worked for, I noticed the same pattern of owners essentially taking advantage of me. Reneging on things like financial compensation, or sometimes just making plain bad decisions. Often it felt like I was just following a trail of business owners constantly choosing to do things the hardest way possible and when it didn't work out for them, they would find someone to blame (mostly me). After helping others for so long I decided to start my own thing. Cotton candy on the outside seems like a weird choice and sometimes I get funny looks. On the inside though, this is a product that has tremendous margins, allows me to express my creativity with our flavors, has relatively low competition, and allows me to provide decent paying jobs to people I care about.How much revenue was your best year? (include margin if possible)
Within 12 months from our first event we made just shy of $100,000 at around $97,000 in revenue. Our profit margins are pretty hefty, usually at 85%+ for retail depending on if we are selling fresh spun or prepackaged. Although I have reinvested most of our profits back into the company for various revenue channels and to pay off accrued debt. This year we are on track for $175,000~ and I think we will exponentially grow as we become more solidified in our area as a catering option as well as grow our ecommerce channels.When did you notice traction when building your business? The “Oh S**t!” moment, what did that feel like?
We managed to luck out, our very first event we joined as a vendor was a county fair and we generated $26,000 in revenue within 10-11 days. This was with us doing all this for the very first time. I had to hire 9 people to operate the event, and the fair themselves took a 25% gross sales cut (This sounds very ew, but it pales in comparison to what we would pay if we could get into the local stadiums, who take 50% of gross sales up front) So right from the start, I realized this had big potential. People were responding really well to our product and our branding. I think our type of product is endemic to social media right now and so far we have already seen decent conversion rates and reorder rates in ecommerce.How many attempts at building something did you make before you found what you’re working on now? Did you always have an entrepreneurial drive?
I tried building my own company probably 5-6 times. I co-owned a branding agency, I tried dropshipping back in 2014-15 and a few other ventures. I have certainly always had the entrepreneurial drive, although I lacked a lot of confidence in myself before 2021 basically. You mention a lack of self confidence.What event or action did you take to get that confidence to build your business?
So, here's the main thing that really gave me the confidence to start my own thing. I was hired to do the marketing for a small business at the end of 2019. I didn't really get to do much because come 2020 covid hit and shut the business down till about Feb of 2021.When we came back, the business was in tons of debt and was pretty much on the verge of failing. I worked out a compensation plan with the owner that scaled with the growth of the business. I was the 'marketing director' but I ended up taking on many different roles. I became the IT, marketing, sales, project manager, customer service, graphic designer and office admin. It really pushed me to expand and fully utilize my skill set.
I helped them essentially rebuild everything from the ground up. New marketing funnels, new CRM, follow up protocols, introducing new products etc. The numbers really speak for themselves. They were a student enrollment based business.
The start of 2021 we started at like 90-100 active students, by the end of the year I had gotten them to 1100 active students. Pre covid rev numbers were abt 300 k annually and In 2021 I had helped them hit 1.3 million.I even initiated and led an expansion to add a 2nd location. 2022 rev was like 1.6 mil. By the time I left I looked at the reports and essentially I had helped them attain 30 months of month after month growth.
So after that experience, it really helped give me the proof that I truly knew what I was doing. And from there I basically asked myself " hey if I can help this business make a million, maybe I can do that for myself"
What’s a big problem you’ve faced as a business owner and what were the emotions behind it?
Oh man, well to be honest we encountered a problem that maybe a lot of other businesses haven't? When we first opened our brick and mortar, it was at the local mall. We were excited to be planting our roots down. The back of our unit had a space that doubled as a commercial kitchen space, so the plan was to get that space certified, get the proper licensing to be able to sell online, and grow both the front facing space in the local community. The first few months we were even in the black! Unfortunately a cascading chain of bad interactions with another business owner in front of our shop led to a dangerous and insane situation where my employees (2 of which were my sister and fiance, the other which was a 18 yr old girl) were being stopped and harassed by this other business owner. Tragically, I had to watch people I cared about be violently threatened and verbally abused/harassed by another business owner. Eventually after about 2 months of trying to work with mall management to rectify this situation (they were not very helpful) we had to escalate this legally. That began another month or two of court cases trying to get protection orders. I watched as the other person's attorney tried to drag my family's names and reputation through the mud, I had to watch people I loved and cared about go through a tremendous amount of suffering. Then I had to make a decision between them and the business. It wasn't like I could just hire new people and make them go through the same level of harassment. I made a difficult decision to take the financial hit and cancel our lease. We won the protection orders, and I took on an incredible amount of debt. The emotions behind that? Fear for my sister and fiancés life, disbelief at the situation I was in, regret that I had ever got into the B&M in the first place, anger at the people who stood by and took advantage of the situation, self-doubt that I was making the right decision by closing. To me, a business wasn't worth that amount of suffering, and Ironically a business that I had started because I thought it was fun and inoffensive, turned into a bittersweet nightmare briefly. We shut our location down, and for another 6 months or so we did basically nothing with the business as we took time to heal. In those 6 months I really debated on continuing on with this or not. Eventually I decided to get back into it and go for it full time. Honestly, I'm really happy I did. The past 2 years since that awful situation have been full of really good moments, and I really believe in my business. We are still working through the debt we accrued, but I am very hopeful for the future.What is your best advice for someone who feels completely stuck?
My biggest pieces of advice: -Be confident in your actions and decisions, even if they end up being bad ones. It's impossible to be perfect, you are going to make mistakes. Self-doubt is a killer. If you start doubting your actions, that's when you'll sink. -Eventually at some point you have to make the jump, and sink or swim. Having a business plan is great and all, unfortunately a lot of plans don't survive contact with reality. Take your ego out of it, and be ready to pivot. -If you can, find someone like minded to talk to. Whether it's a mentor type figure, another business owner, or even going to some local networking events. You can get validation for your idea, guidance on how to start in your market, a lot of people love to help others. Lastly there's a quote that I think about often I feel is somewhat apt for people building a business. 'There are years where nothing happens; and there are weeks where years happen.' Sometimes you grind and grind, yet still feel stuck. You feel like nothing is happening, and then suddenly, you hit a breakthrough and a cascade of success happens. You see that all the effort you put in actually DID payoff. Use that high as momentum to propel yourself forward. In those slow moments, just trust yourself and keep doing the work.2024.04.28 17:06 sispuellamagica2011 My (25F) depressed husband (46M) is citing my grief as to why we’re falling apart
tl;dr: My husband has been distant from and annoyed with me, and I’m worried my response to past trauma is part of the reason why.
Throwaway since my husband knows and follows my main account.
So I’ve known my husband (let’s call him Elliot) for over 3 years now, and we just got married and moved in together about 2-4 months ago. He actually had a job as an accountant near to the college I went to, and one day he asked me out; saying that he’s noticed and lowkey tailed me a couple of times and that he’d really like to get to know me better. I (as you can probably tell) accepted the offer and went to go to Olive Garden with him, and ever since then we’ve been falling deeper and love day by day. I’ve always had somewhat of a liking for older men (don’t judge me lolol), and Elliot was extremely compassionate and caring as I struggled through and continue to go through college to get my Bachelor’s in Psychology.
Overall, my husband has been a light in my life, and that extends to helping me deal with my mental illness. I’ve struggled with depression and DPDR ever since I was teen post-the passing of my parents in a plane accident, and I’ve never meet someone who was so willing to stick it out with me and ground me like Elliot was. Not even my grandparents who adopted me after the incident helped me nearly as much as this man did.
But recently, it’s like things have changed a little. After an incident at his job last month (I don’t know all the details since Elliot said it was “traumatic” and won’t open up more, but apparently it involved a coworker and him being wrongly accused of “possible battery”), my husband was fired and has since remained unemployed. He used to do literally everything around the house, even refusing to let me clean dishes or make the bed, but now he’s the exact opposite: he doesn’t do anything, always speaking of a mysterious ache or a pain everytime I ask for help. He said his doctors didn’t find anything, but the pain persists and that it might be psychosomatic, which makes me feel so sad for him. He also has gotten snippier with me and acts very aloof and avoidant; no longer having intercourse with me or taking me out on dates. He sometimes says during fights I “want him to be someone he never was”, even though he practically idolized me at the start of our relationship. He even had a picture of me framed in his house when I first moved in.
But this is where the reason for making this post comes in. About 3 weeks ago was the anniversary of my parents passing, and even though I have put myself through extensive therapy and grief counseling in order to regulate my emotions, the trauma of losing them forever still weighs heavy on me to this day. The day after the anniversary, I was sitting with Elliot in the living room and reflecting silently on the loss while scrolling on my phone, when suddenly my husband starts laughing at something on his phone. Trying to maybe see what’s funny and lift my spirits, I gently ask him what he’s looking at.
What he shows me makes my heart drop: he’s laughing at a news report; an articles of a guy who went skydiving but accidentally grabbed a Jansport instead of a parachute. As soon as I see the image of a plane attached to the article, I feel somewhat queasy, and I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I’m in the bathroom, sitting on the floor with the door locked for up to an hour, as Elliot proceeds to turn the TV on and watch a show in the living room downstairs. All I remember is my chest feeling very tight, and my nausea getting worse by the second. Thinking back that hour of the day didn’t feel real, and I think I disassociated hard then.
Eventually, I collect myself enough and return, and apologize for suddenly leaving, but also try and tell Elliot I didn’t appreciate him showing something triggering like that to me so suddenly (he knows of my past). In response, he tells me he didn’t appreciate how I emotionally abandoned him for no reason when he was trying to share a laugh with me, and tells me that I’ve been pretty distant and emotionally dysfunctional for the past day or so, and that he’s been considering taking a break in our marriage because of how I’m quote “letting my problems push him away.” I try to apologize again, but he remained silent. Later on, he got up, get himself dolled up rather nicely (put on some cologne!), packed some bags and told me he’s going to spend some time at his stepsisters house - he didn’t even tell me until that day that his mother got remarried.
I don’t really know what to do at this point. Elliot has just returned back here this week, but things haven’t changed much. I love my husband so much, and I don’t want to be too broken and overly emotional to love him. But at the same time, I feel like I can’t reach him, and it feels like he doesn’t want to be reached. Any advice for how to mend my marriage and make him choose me again?
submitted by sispuellamagica2011 to relationships [link] [comments]
Throwaway since my husband knows and follows my main account.
So I’ve known my husband (let’s call him Elliot) for over 3 years now, and we just got married and moved in together about 2-4 months ago. He actually had a job as an accountant near to the college I went to, and one day he asked me out; saying that he’s noticed and lowkey tailed me a couple of times and that he’d really like to get to know me better. I (as you can probably tell) accepted the offer and went to go to Olive Garden with him, and ever since then we’ve been falling deeper and love day by day. I’ve always had somewhat of a liking for older men (don’t judge me lolol), and Elliot was extremely compassionate and caring as I struggled through and continue to go through college to get my Bachelor’s in Psychology.
Overall, my husband has been a light in my life, and that extends to helping me deal with my mental illness. I’ve struggled with depression and DPDR ever since I was teen post-the passing of my parents in a plane accident, and I’ve never meet someone who was so willing to stick it out with me and ground me like Elliot was. Not even my grandparents who adopted me after the incident helped me nearly as much as this man did.
But recently, it’s like things have changed a little. After an incident at his job last month (I don’t know all the details since Elliot said it was “traumatic” and won’t open up more, but apparently it involved a coworker and him being wrongly accused of “possible battery”), my husband was fired and has since remained unemployed. He used to do literally everything around the house, even refusing to let me clean dishes or make the bed, but now he’s the exact opposite: he doesn’t do anything, always speaking of a mysterious ache or a pain everytime I ask for help. He said his doctors didn’t find anything, but the pain persists and that it might be psychosomatic, which makes me feel so sad for him. He also has gotten snippier with me and acts very aloof and avoidant; no longer having intercourse with me or taking me out on dates. He sometimes says during fights I “want him to be someone he never was”, even though he practically idolized me at the start of our relationship. He even had a picture of me framed in his house when I first moved in.
But this is where the reason for making this post comes in. About 3 weeks ago was the anniversary of my parents passing, and even though I have put myself through extensive therapy and grief counseling in order to regulate my emotions, the trauma of losing them forever still weighs heavy on me to this day. The day after the anniversary, I was sitting with Elliot in the living room and reflecting silently on the loss while scrolling on my phone, when suddenly my husband starts laughing at something on his phone. Trying to maybe see what’s funny and lift my spirits, I gently ask him what he’s looking at.
What he shows me makes my heart drop: he’s laughing at a news report; an articles of a guy who went skydiving but accidentally grabbed a Jansport instead of a parachute. As soon as I see the image of a plane attached to the article, I feel somewhat queasy, and I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I’m in the bathroom, sitting on the floor with the door locked for up to an hour, as Elliot proceeds to turn the TV on and watch a show in the living room downstairs. All I remember is my chest feeling very tight, and my nausea getting worse by the second. Thinking back that hour of the day didn’t feel real, and I think I disassociated hard then.
Eventually, I collect myself enough and return, and apologize for suddenly leaving, but also try and tell Elliot I didn’t appreciate him showing something triggering like that to me so suddenly (he knows of my past). In response, he tells me he didn’t appreciate how I emotionally abandoned him for no reason when he was trying to share a laugh with me, and tells me that I’ve been pretty distant and emotionally dysfunctional for the past day or so, and that he’s been considering taking a break in our marriage because of how I’m quote “letting my problems push him away.” I try to apologize again, but he remained silent. Later on, he got up, get himself dolled up rather nicely (put on some cologne!), packed some bags and told me he’s going to spend some time at his stepsisters house - he didn’t even tell me until that day that his mother got remarried.
I don’t really know what to do at this point. Elliot has just returned back here this week, but things haven’t changed much. I love my husband so much, and I don’t want to be too broken and overly emotional to love him. But at the same time, I feel like I can’t reach him, and it feels like he doesn’t want to be reached. Any advice for how to mend my marriage and make him choose me again?
2024.04.28 16:15 Regnisyak1 The Amazing Race 19 - A Review!
Hi everyone! In my effort to procrastinate from my senior year of college (TWO WEEKS LEFT!), I managed to watch TAR 19 for the entire day yesterday! But, here is my previous review from TAR 18.
And, POLLS <3. Here is TAR 19, the masterlist with the links to the polls, and the leaderboard. I still love seeing your takes go through and excited to keep dating!
TAR 19 was a very solid season! I wouldn't call it great per se, definitely not the same highs as the earlier TAR, but it was a serviceable season, with some strong stories (Ernie and Cindy, the twins, the siblings, etc), and also some likable teams that made the season much lighter (like Amani and Marcus), which created a very solid cast, and a general good time toward the season that made me happier watching. The show seems to be in its stride, at least slightly at this point, and it has been creating some fun moments. I think the ultimate issue with TAR 19 was that I don't think much of it was memorable, but I know I enjoyed what I watched, so even though I can't remember specific roadblocks or challenges or locations, the characters carried enough to create an aura of fun.
Speaking of routes and legs, I think TAR 19 was all alright, but there were definite negativities with the route this season. Malawi was interesting just because it was a new country and led to inherent conflict with the people. But otherwise, I think it was lackluster on all other cylinders, lol. There were a lot of short-term memory tasks and too many bicycles, and I felt like every clue was some sort of riddle. Also, the product placement seemed especially heinous this season. I haven't talked about it that much, but it felt like almost every episode was just a long advertisement for Ford Vehicles. I get it, it's not a stretch because you need cars to travel, but it was like every five seconds! Not as bad as the Snapple ad last season, but still.
It also felt like this season had some peculiar twists that made the first few episodes of the season more questionable than anything else. The double elimination sucked for obvious reasons, mainly because we lost Ethan and Jenna for it (hi, I am a big Survivor fan!) and it was just not a good idea overall. The hazard was fine but took time away from the show was kind of lackluster overall, and was a glorified speed bump that didn't really have any reason to exist (please TAR, get rid of the opening tasks!). Also that little stipulation in the orphanage task was just silly and goofy, if you ask me, and really screwed over the last two teams. That kind of tanked at the beginning, but the season picked up speed after and was pretty good after that.
Anyway, those are my main criticisms of TAR 19, but the cast itself was pretty solid besides some duds. Let's get talking about it, shall we?
Onto TAR 20, and three episodes in, I can confidently say I hate Art & JJ and Rachel & Dave, but I will ALWAYS stan Brenchel.
Season Ranking
submitted by Regnisyak1 to TheAmazingRace [link] [comments]
And, POLLS <3. Here is TAR 19, the masterlist with the links to the polls, and the leaderboard. I still love seeing your takes go through and excited to keep dating!
TAR 19 was a very solid season! I wouldn't call it great per se, definitely not the same highs as the earlier TAR, but it was a serviceable season, with some strong stories (Ernie and Cindy, the twins, the siblings, etc), and also some likable teams that made the season much lighter (like Amani and Marcus), which created a very solid cast, and a general good time toward the season that made me happier watching. The show seems to be in its stride, at least slightly at this point, and it has been creating some fun moments. I think the ultimate issue with TAR 19 was that I don't think much of it was memorable, but I know I enjoyed what I watched, so even though I can't remember specific roadblocks or challenges or locations, the characters carried enough to create an aura of fun.
Speaking of routes and legs, I think TAR 19 was all alright, but there were definite negativities with the route this season. Malawi was interesting just because it was a new country and led to inherent conflict with the people. But otherwise, I think it was lackluster on all other cylinders, lol. There were a lot of short-term memory tasks and too many bicycles, and I felt like every clue was some sort of riddle. Also, the product placement seemed especially heinous this season. I haven't talked about it that much, but it felt like almost every episode was just a long advertisement for Ford Vehicles. I get it, it's not a stretch because you need cars to travel, but it was like every five seconds! Not as bad as the Snapple ad last season, but still.
It also felt like this season had some peculiar twists that made the first few episodes of the season more questionable than anything else. The double elimination sucked for obvious reasons, mainly because we lost Ethan and Jenna for it (hi, I am a big Survivor fan!) and it was just not a good idea overall. The hazard was fine but took time away from the show was kind of lackluster overall, and was a glorified speed bump that didn't really have any reason to exist (please TAR, get rid of the opening tasks!). Also that little stipulation in the orphanage task was just silly and goofy, if you ask me, and really screwed over the last two teams. That kind of tanked at the beginning, but the season picked up speed after and was pretty good after that.
Anyway, those are my main criticisms of TAR 19, but the cast itself was pretty solid besides some duds. Let's get talking about it, shall we?
- Laurence and Zac (1/10) - someone in my group I was live chatting with mentioned that they were the "evil Michael and Kevin Wu" and yeah, I think that sums them up very well. It was pretty obvious that Zac did not want to be there at all and Laurence was just constantly criticizing his son. It seemed very stressful, and on top of that, Laurence was vaguely sexist during that challenge in Malawi. Overall they were not very relevant to the season, and I groaned more often than not when they were on screen.
- Andy and Tommy (1/10) - So many personal red flags with Andy and Tommy. First, I didn't care for their comments at the Buddhist temple. If y'all know Leslie Nease from Survivor, I'd like to compare them here because they were both quite critical of the Buddhist Temple they had to go to in both series. With Leslie, she was not necessarily judging their religion, but it seemed more that she was deeply uncomfortable, and felt she had to remove herself from the situation. With Andy and Tommy, it seemed like they were really judgmental, and them mentioning that there was only one God, and it was there really put a poor taste in my mouth. Especially with the juxtaposition of the other team (I think Joseph and Jennifer), who stated that it wasn't their religion, but they still had to be respectful. Also, the whole Mercedes thing with Andy whining he couldn't do a detour, and then saying Jesus forgave him after acting like an ass all day, and then STILL winning the Mercedes made me roll my eyes. Even besides that, they had some other moments that I was more negative on. The main one I can think of is them dominating the race. I, in general, am lower on characters in TV that destroy challenges because I think it can just get stagnant over a while. Andy and Tommy accidentally got half of their wins anyway, so they weren't that good. Like on another season with people who could read clues, they wouldn't be that good. Also, I don't really think their downfall was that good. Not necessarily because thematically it isn't - their luck runs out, and then their cab driver beefs with other people, but moreso because the race was bowing down to them at all moments. Phil said they were the best racers ever on the mat, and the heroic music took away from their sweet downfall. Tommy and Andy definitely should have been more villainous this season, and I think this is one of the few times where TAR tells a story that doesn't really make sense in the context of the story. There's nothing I hate more when a character who should be a villain, gets portrayed as a hero, and Andy and Tommy exemplify that to a T.
- Ron and Bill (2/10) - I cannot list a single detail about these two besides being twist fucked.
- Ethan and Jenna (4/10) - I love Ethan. Watching him come back to Winners at War on Survivor was a deep relief because we knew about his cancer, but we didn't know how he was doing. But I think this version on TAR made me respect him more on WaW, but unfortunately, he still got screwed on this version with the stupid double elimination, and that was just beyond sucky. Jenna was also great, we got some "Jenna being sarcastic" moments. It was also good to see her back after the way she left Survivor: All-Stars. But yeah fuck the Double Elimination.
- Kaylani and Lisa (4/10) - The only scene I really remember from them was the whole passport debacle, which just seemed awkwardly edited on the series. Granted, I don't think there is any way where you can coherently edit that on the show due to how lucky and random it was (also cast the dude who found the passport on race, please). But yeah, it was a mess, and this team in general was a mess, which wasn't bad, but they felt overshadowed.
- Jeremy and Sandy (6/10) - Jeremy and Sandy weren't good per se, but I found them to be generally likable, and we at least understood their story of learning how to communicate with each other was the main reason being on the race. They struggled throughout, and while I would certainly not call them the most interesting couple, they weren't terrible.
- Justin and Jennifer (7/10) - I really liked sibling teams on the race, and I felt that these two delivered because they were really funny and argued constantly, trying to find a communication style with each other, without feeling overtly toxic like other relationships on the show. The whole bicycle debacle was also really funny and I felt bad for Jennifer in that moment. They weren't great by any means, but I just found them to be really solid in general.
- Liz and Marie (7/10) - I ranked them this high just because of how happy they were to clean elephant poop during their speed bump. These two had a messy time, whether it was failing to repeat a Confucius proverb, running out of money and almost having to walk 5 hours to the Koi Fish pond, or in general just getting so far behind that there was no hope to get back up front. Plus, the context of them racing for their dead father was a nice character moment for both of them and overall, I just really enjoyed their time on the race!
- Bill and Cathi (8/10) - We love the oldies, right? These two were so clearly madly in love which was cute, and they never argued on the race, even when they got u-turned or had some frustrating legs. They proved themselves as being fit and athletic constantly and proved themselves against the initial perceptions of them early in the race. I do wish we got more fallout with the U-Turn thing with Cindy and Ernie (which spoiler, is my only criticism of Ernie and Cindy), but overall they were a pleasant team and added some levity to the season!
- Amani and Marcus (8/10) - I like these two for similar reasons as Bill and Cathi, being that they were an incredibly likable team, who used their weaknesses to their strengths. For Marcus, he was worried that he would be caught as a football player, but he used that "weakness" (I put that in quotes because it really wasn't one LOL), and then used his coaching abilities to get through the race. My favorite moment of that was the silly rabbit challenge where he was hyping his money up and getting into the moment. Also, them constantly fighting back to get in, only to lose to the flight simulator was really sad especially with them in Atlanta. Overall, a really fun team.
- Ernie and Cindy (9/10) - Ernie and Cindy had a strong interpersonal story of Cindy trying to prove herself to her parents by showing that she did pick a man that she really loved, which I found to be really sweet. They were able to balance each other out on the race well, with Cindy being a self-described control freak and Ernie being the B-Student. Their abilities combined in a way where they were able to win the race and a million dollars. I do find Cindy's slow breakdown of not being able to get first place to be interesting, but I did wish she got a little bit of karma for U-Turning Bill and Cathi, but that story was mainly dropped. But, they beat Andy and Tommy which was neat! I also found her comments in Malawi to be questionable, but I learned that they gave their money to start a donation fund for kids and needs after going, so I warmed up on them since.
Onto TAR 20, and three episodes in, I can confidently say I hate Art & JJ and Rachel & Dave, but I will ALWAYS stan Brenchel.
Season Ranking
- TAR 14 (10/10)
- TAR 5 (10/10)
- TAR 2 (10/10)
- TAR 3 (10/10)
- TAR 1 (9/10)
- TAR 11 (9/10)
- TAR 10 (8/10)
- TAR 7 (8/10)
- TAR 12 (8/10)
- TAR 19 (7/10)
- TAR 17 (7/10)
- TAR 18 (6/10)
- TAR 13 (5/10)
- TAR 16 (3/10)
- TAR 15 (2/10)
- TAR 4 (2/10)
- TAR 9 (1/10)
- TAR 8 (1/10)
- TAR 6 (0/10)
2024.04.28 10:16 SimpleCraving I accepted God two days ago. Catholic husband rejects my conversion.
There are a number of questions I am grappling with, but I have reaffirmed my faith in Christianity after nearly a decade of being an atheist. I was hesitant to tell my husband because I am still grappling with certain questions, but I know he has been praying for my conversion. So, I thought it would be a good idea to tell him when we were talking about his church activities.
He asked if I really had. I answered yes. Then he continued the original thread of his conversation casually. I participated. At the end of that conversation (about 15 minutes), I told him I was somewhat surprised that he didn't have much of a reaction. He said that he doesn't believe me because of things I had said before as an atheist.
In particular, some time ago, I had said before that "It's funny how the law protects religious beliefs, but not atheistic beliefs. Maybe I'll convert to Christianity for the protection the law affords." (For important context, I am soon to graduate law school and have studied religious protections under the 1st Amendment.)
Anyway, I have been reevaluating my belief systems for some time after my husband became more devout due to a health scare. I have also reevaluated why I left Christianity in the first place and found my prior reasoning lacking. After some soul searching (pun intended), I rediscovered faith in God.
His rejection was surprising, but fortunately my reasons stand on their own merit and do not depend on his approval. However, this has put me in an awkward situation. I do not wish to share in the joy of God with him at all or share my spiritual journey. How can I when he believes me a fraud?
I noted to him that he has been praying for my conversion, and I asked him whether that brings him joy that God has answered his prayer. He said, "I'll believe it when I see it." Well, one of my favorite quotes in the Bible has always been Matthew 6:5-8 (do not be a showy, religious hypocrite so you may be seen by others). I'm not inclined to prove my faith to him. There is only one gatekeeper to heaven, and it sure ain't him.
The only conflict I feel is in sequestering a deeply personal, integral aspect of my life from my husband. It bothers me that he criticizes those in his church for their lack of piety, but accepts their faith but not mine. While his approval isn't necessary for my faith, I admit his rejection was somewhat hurtful. Bottom line: I don't want to share my faith with him.
(Note: I have not decided on a denomination. He is Catholic.)
submitted by SimpleCraving to Catholicism [link] [comments]
He asked if I really had. I answered yes. Then he continued the original thread of his conversation casually. I participated. At the end of that conversation (about 15 minutes), I told him I was somewhat surprised that he didn't have much of a reaction. He said that he doesn't believe me because of things I had said before as an atheist.
In particular, some time ago, I had said before that "It's funny how the law protects religious beliefs, but not atheistic beliefs. Maybe I'll convert to Christianity for the protection the law affords." (For important context, I am soon to graduate law school and have studied religious protections under the 1st Amendment.)
Anyway, I have been reevaluating my belief systems for some time after my husband became more devout due to a health scare. I have also reevaluated why I left Christianity in the first place and found my prior reasoning lacking. After some soul searching (pun intended), I rediscovered faith in God.
His rejection was surprising, but fortunately my reasons stand on their own merit and do not depend on his approval. However, this has put me in an awkward situation. I do not wish to share in the joy of God with him at all or share my spiritual journey. How can I when he believes me a fraud?
I noted to him that he has been praying for my conversion, and I asked him whether that brings him joy that God has answered his prayer. He said, "I'll believe it when I see it." Well, one of my favorite quotes in the Bible has always been Matthew 6:5-8 (do not be a showy, religious hypocrite so you may be seen by others). I'm not inclined to prove my faith to him. There is only one gatekeeper to heaven, and it sure ain't him.
The only conflict I feel is in sequestering a deeply personal, integral aspect of my life from my husband. It bothers me that he criticizes those in his church for their lack of piety, but accepts their faith but not mine. While his approval isn't necessary for my faith, I admit his rejection was somewhat hurtful. Bottom line: I don't want to share my faith with him.
(Note: I have not decided on a denomination. He is Catholic.)
2024.04.28 09:06 Lotuswellnessrehab How You Can Improve Your Mental Health With Positive Thinking Lotus Wellness Rehab Blog Lotus - India’s Finest Holistic Rehab
A more positive outlook on life is beneficial to your mental health. You can reduce your risk of depression, manage stress, and be happier by focusing on the positive.
Use affirmations, practice gratitude, meditate, and learn to recognize, stop, and change your negative thoughts. Daily practice will make this a life-changing habit.
WHAT IS POSITIVE THINKING?
Positive thinking is pretty much what it sounds like: approaching life with a positive outlook. This doesn’t mean ignoring the negative—it’s about your attitude. You can choose whether to react to everyday situations in a productive and positive way.
OPTIMISTIC ATTITUDE
When your thoughts and attitude are optimistic, you have a healthy outlook on yourself, your life, and life events. You take credit for the good things in your life and recognize that outside forces control negative outcomes.
As an optimistic, positive thinker, you also realize that bad things are temporary.
PESSIMISTIC ATTITUDE
The opposite is a pessimistic-negative- attitude. Negative thinking means seeing the worst in a situation or expecting the worst to happen. With a negative outlook, you don’t recognize bad situations as temporary.
Many people direct their negative thoughts inward and blame themselves when bad things happen. You blame yourself even when things are outside your control and see them as a persistent, inevitable part of life.
WHAT DOES THINKING POSITIVELY LOOK LIKE ?
Positive thinking can take many forms:
Identifying and stopping negative thoughts, then approaching them with a more positive outlook
Focusing on gratitude and the good things in life
Positive affirmations—short, optimistic statements used daily to challenge negative thoughts
Spending more time with positive people
Embracing humor and laughing more
Practicing positive self-talk
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM TOXIC POSITIVITY ?
Positive thinking is generally more helpful and healthful than negative thinking. However, there can be a wrong way to go about it.
Toxic positivity came to the forefront of popular culture during the pandemic. As mental health issues rose, some people combatted their fear and anxiety by overdoing positivity.
Positive thinking becomes toxic when you feel forced to adopt a positive attitude that isn’t natural or helpful. This tends to minimize your feelings. It’s often valid and healthy to feel sad. You don’t have to stay positive all of the time.
A study found that people who tend to completely avoid difficult emotions, like sadness or anger, often feel worse in the end.
Sometimes, other people force toxic positivity onto you. It can be upsetting if you’re going through a difficult time and someone tells you to be positive or to look on the bright side.
In this case, try politely explaining why their advice isn’t sensitive to your situation and what they can do to help you feel better.
HOW A POSITIVE OUTLOOK AND AFFIRMATIONS SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH
It’s important to balance positive thinking and minimize difficult thoughts and situations. Reasonable doses of positive thinking can help you shift your attitude and improve your mental health.
A study of nurses with significant job stress found that wellness apps helped boost positive thinking. They reported a significantly improved work-life quality and less stress and were better able to cope with difficult situations on the job.
These are more of the many benefits of a positive mental attitude on emotional well-being:
REDUCE STRESS
The biggest benefit of positivity for your mental health is stress management. People who have a positive outlook and attitude face stress more effectively. They don’t necessarily have less stressful lives, but they cope with stress better.
Instead of dwelling on a stressful situation, a positive thinker makes a plan, takes action, or asks others for help. Someone who is more negative ruminates and feels defeated. They believe the situation is out of their control and don’t take steps to make it better.
IMPROVE RESILIENCE
The ability to face stress by taking action is an example of resilience. More positive people tend also to be more resilient. This means they cope better with all kinds of challenges. They overcome adversity and bounce back better.
LESS DEPRESSION
It is no surprise that positive thinkers tend to be less depressed. Negative thinking leads to rumination, a major characteristic of depression in which you get lost in a spiral of bad thoughts.
A positive attitude isn’t a cure for depression but can reduce symptoms and help lift you out of the spiral. The belief that you have the power to change your situation is a powerful antidote to depression.
INCREASE CREATIVITY
A positive attitude supports creative thinking, which is good for mental health. Negative thinking is a defeatist attitude. It represents giving up. Positive thinking is all about coming up with solutions. By focusing on positive thoughts, you can become a more creative and better problem solver.
POSITIVE THINKING IS GOOD FOR PHYSICAL HEALTH TOO
You can’t separate mental from physical health. They impact each other, so it follows that positivity improves your physical health as well:
Most people can benefit from increasing their positive thoughts. It seems part of human nature to be too hard on ourselves. A concerted effort to think more positively can improve your mental and physical well-being in many ways. Here are some tips to help you make a change.
Recognize and Stop Negative Self Talk Boosting positivity is about much more than simply adding positive thoughts. You also have to stop the negative ones.
The first step is to pay more attention to how you think. Many people let thoughts race through their heads without much awareness.
Practice noticing a negative thought as it passes through your mind. This can be difficult at first. Try paying attention to all your thoughts for five minutes and notice all the negative ones.
When you do notice a negative thought, stop it and reframe it. For instance, if you think, “I was so stupid to make that mistake at work today,” change it to, “I will learn from that mistake I made today.”
Continue to check in with yourself throughout the day. When you catch yourself in an unnecessarily negative thought, recognize it and then reframe it. You don’t have to be relentlessly positive or deny all bad thoughts, but try to shift your perspective or frame of reference.
KEEP A GRATITUDE JOURNAL
Once you begin training your brain to limit negative thoughts or to shift your perspective on them, build more positive thinking with other tools.
One way to build a more positive mindset is with gratitude. Gratitude doesn’t mean ignoring bad things that happen to you or what’s wrong in your life. It means putting more focus on what’s good.
When you focus on good things in your life, you’ll naturally begin to think more positively.
An easy way to practice gratitude is to keep a daily journal. Before you go to bed each night, write down a few things you are grateful for from the day.
Studies back up the efficacy of actively practicing gratitude. It makes you happier and improves overall health and well-being.
FOCUS ON YOUR STRENGTHS
A big part of positive thinking is recognizing your control over your life and situation. Things don’t just happen to you. You have the power to make positive changes.
To boost this kind of positive thinking, make an effort to focus on your personal strengths. Maybe you are a good friend or partner. You’re good at your job or a sport. It doesn’t have to be a skill or anything bit. Maybe your greatest strength is that you are kind to people.
Take time to list your strengths, especially when you feel yourself getting into a downward spiral of negative thoughts.
SMILE AND LAUGH MORE
This might sound obvious, but the more you laugh and smile, the happier you will be. Boosting happiness automatically boosts your positive thinking.
Spend more time with friends who make you laugh. Watch funny movies instead of dramas. Watch clips online of your favorite comedians.
Even faking a smile can instantly boost your mood, according to research. Studies show that smiling during a difficult or stressful situation reduces heart rate and blood pressure. It helps people cope better with that situation. So, even when you feel negative about life, smile and see how it affects your mood.
CHANGE YOUR SOCIAL GROUP
Take a critical look at the people you spend most of your time with. Are they unnecessarily pessimistic? Do they face adversity well and laugh a lot?
If you spend time with more negative people, it will impact your thinking. Choose who you spend your time with because it affects your mindset, mood, and overall health.
VISUALISE A BETTER FUTURE
The power of your imagination can make you a more positive thinker. When you’re in a bad situation or unhappy with your life, picture yourself in a better place.
Visualization is a great tool for manifesting what you want. By picturing it, you can make it happen. The first step is changing your negative outlook on the situation. Think about what’s possible, and then make a plan to get to that better place.
STAY HEALTHY
When you feel good, your thoughts will be more positive. A healthy lifestyle makes it easier to think positively. Get enough sleep, eat well, and exercise regularly. Spend time outside and hang out with friends. See your doctor regularly and stay on top of your health.
USING MEDITATION TO BOOST POSITIVE THINKING
Meditation is a practice that improves awareness and focused attention. It is not a single thing but multiple practices with similar goals. It creates a deep state of mind and body relaxation and, like positive thinking, boosts mental health.
Meditation is an ancient practice rooted in spirituality. Today it is a diverse practice that encompasses many cultures and styles. You can meditate with a blank mind, focus on your breathing, or repeat a positive mantra.
HOW MEDITATION BOOSTS POSITIVITY
Regular meditation practice benefits mental and physical health in many ways. One thing it can do is give you greater control over your thoughts. Meditation helps you build greater awareness about your interior monologue and your ongoing conversation with yourself.
Awareness is the first step to changing unhelpful, negative thoughts. Consider meditation a type of brain training. The more you practice it, the more aware you become of your thoughts and the easier it is to jump outside and see them from a new perspective. Once you can do that, you can begin to change them too.
A study of meditation and positive thinking compared non-meditators to a group of people using Meditation.
The researchers found that the meditators considered themselves much happier than the non-meditators. The study determined that meditation helped people improve positive thinking, leading to greater self-satisfaction and happiness.
TRY POSITIVE MEDITATIONS ON BETTER SLEEP
You can create or alter any meditation to focus on positive thoughts, or you can find guided meditations that emphasize positivity.
DROPPING INTO THE PRESENT MOMENT
This mindfulness meditation is all about focusing your awareness on the present moment, which is a great antidote to negative thoughts. Negativity tends to arise when you dwell on the past or worry about the future. Use this meditation to turn your thoughts away from negativity and focus on what you can feel and sense right now.
GRATITUDE BOOSTER
Use a short, six-minute gratitude meditation for a quick infusion of positive thoughts.
GRATITUDE FOR STRESSFUL TIMES
Gratitude is a great counterbalance to negative thinking. When the stress and bad things in your life threaten to overwhelm you, focus on what you are grateful for.
POSITIVE VIBRATIONS
This meditation will help you manifest more happiness and positivity in your daily life.
5 NIGHTS OF GRATITUDE
For more extended practice, use this series of five meditations all focused on finding gratitude in your life.
POSITIVE DREAMING
Your dreams are an extension of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Use this short meditation to help condition your mind to have more positive dreams.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In addition to meditations, you can find other tools at lotus that help you boost your positivity while improving sleep. Try bedtime stories to take your mind out of a negative cycle of rumination. These easy, soothing stories are light, positive, and just what you need when feeling down.
Practice positive thinking by using daily affirmations, catching negative thoughts and self-talk, and turning them around. Then use meditations to support your mental health and cement those affirmations. You’ll start feeling better about yourself and your life before you know.
ABOUT LOTUS WELLNESS REHAB
Lotus is India’s Finest luxury rehab offering the best treatment programs for Detox, Addiction Rehabilitation, Mental health and overall wellness.
LOTUS WELLNESS AND REHABILITATION CENTER Pollachi, Coimbatore , Tamilnadu , India Reach us at [info@lotuswellness.life](mailto:info@lotuswellness.life) To know more about us visit our website www.lotuswellness.life
submitted by Lotuswellnessrehab to u/Lotuswellnessrehab [link] [comments]
Use affirmations, practice gratitude, meditate, and learn to recognize, stop, and change your negative thoughts. Daily practice will make this a life-changing habit.
WHAT IS POSITIVE THINKING?
Positive thinking is pretty much what it sounds like: approaching life with a positive outlook. This doesn’t mean ignoring the negative—it’s about your attitude. You can choose whether to react to everyday situations in a productive and positive way.
OPTIMISTIC ATTITUDE
When your thoughts and attitude are optimistic, you have a healthy outlook on yourself, your life, and life events. You take credit for the good things in your life and recognize that outside forces control negative outcomes.
As an optimistic, positive thinker, you also realize that bad things are temporary.
PESSIMISTIC ATTITUDE
The opposite is a pessimistic-negative- attitude. Negative thinking means seeing the worst in a situation or expecting the worst to happen. With a negative outlook, you don’t recognize bad situations as temporary.
Many people direct their negative thoughts inward and blame themselves when bad things happen. You blame yourself even when things are outside your control and see them as a persistent, inevitable part of life.
WHAT DOES THINKING POSITIVELY LOOK LIKE ?
Positive thinking can take many forms:
Identifying and stopping negative thoughts, then approaching them with a more positive outlook
Focusing on gratitude and the good things in life
Positive affirmations—short, optimistic statements used daily to challenge negative thoughts
Spending more time with positive people
Embracing humor and laughing more
Practicing positive self-talk
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT FROM TOXIC POSITIVITY ?
Positive thinking is generally more helpful and healthful than negative thinking. However, there can be a wrong way to go about it.
Toxic positivity came to the forefront of popular culture during the pandemic. As mental health issues rose, some people combatted their fear and anxiety by overdoing positivity.
Positive thinking becomes toxic when you feel forced to adopt a positive attitude that isn’t natural or helpful. This tends to minimize your feelings. It’s often valid and healthy to feel sad. You don’t have to stay positive all of the time.
A study found that people who tend to completely avoid difficult emotions, like sadness or anger, often feel worse in the end.
Sometimes, other people force toxic positivity onto you. It can be upsetting if you’re going through a difficult time and someone tells you to be positive or to look on the bright side.
In this case, try politely explaining why their advice isn’t sensitive to your situation and what they can do to help you feel better.
HOW A POSITIVE OUTLOOK AND AFFIRMATIONS SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH
It’s important to balance positive thinking and minimize difficult thoughts and situations. Reasonable doses of positive thinking can help you shift your attitude and improve your mental health.
A study of nurses with significant job stress found that wellness apps helped boost positive thinking. They reported a significantly improved work-life quality and less stress and were better able to cope with difficult situations on the job.
These are more of the many benefits of a positive mental attitude on emotional well-being:
REDUCE STRESS
The biggest benefit of positivity for your mental health is stress management. People who have a positive outlook and attitude face stress more effectively. They don’t necessarily have less stressful lives, but they cope with stress better.
Instead of dwelling on a stressful situation, a positive thinker makes a plan, takes action, or asks others for help. Someone who is more negative ruminates and feels defeated. They believe the situation is out of their control and don’t take steps to make it better.
IMPROVE RESILIENCE
The ability to face stress by taking action is an example of resilience. More positive people tend also to be more resilient. This means they cope better with all kinds of challenges. They overcome adversity and bounce back better.
LESS DEPRESSION
It is no surprise that positive thinkers tend to be less depressed. Negative thinking leads to rumination, a major characteristic of depression in which you get lost in a spiral of bad thoughts.
A positive attitude isn’t a cure for depression but can reduce symptoms and help lift you out of the spiral. The belief that you have the power to change your situation is a powerful antidote to depression.
INCREASE CREATIVITY
A positive attitude supports creative thinking, which is good for mental health. Negative thinking is a defeatist attitude. It represents giving up. Positive thinking is all about coming up with solutions. By focusing on positive thoughts, you can become a more creative and better problem solver.
POSITIVE THINKING IS GOOD FOR PHYSICAL HEALTH TOO
You can’t separate mental from physical health. They impact each other, so it follows that positivity improves your physical health as well:
- Improved cardiovascular health
- Lower blood pressure
- Boosted immunity and fewer infections
- Less pain or improved pain tolerance
- Reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and infections
Most people can benefit from increasing their positive thoughts. It seems part of human nature to be too hard on ourselves. A concerted effort to think more positively can improve your mental and physical well-being in many ways. Here are some tips to help you make a change.
Recognize and Stop Negative Self Talk Boosting positivity is about much more than simply adding positive thoughts. You also have to stop the negative ones.
The first step is to pay more attention to how you think. Many people let thoughts race through their heads without much awareness.
Practice noticing a negative thought as it passes through your mind. This can be difficult at first. Try paying attention to all your thoughts for five minutes and notice all the negative ones.
When you do notice a negative thought, stop it and reframe it. For instance, if you think, “I was so stupid to make that mistake at work today,” change it to, “I will learn from that mistake I made today.”
Continue to check in with yourself throughout the day. When you catch yourself in an unnecessarily negative thought, recognize it and then reframe it. You don’t have to be relentlessly positive or deny all bad thoughts, but try to shift your perspective or frame of reference.
KEEP A GRATITUDE JOURNAL
Once you begin training your brain to limit negative thoughts or to shift your perspective on them, build more positive thinking with other tools.
One way to build a more positive mindset is with gratitude. Gratitude doesn’t mean ignoring bad things that happen to you or what’s wrong in your life. It means putting more focus on what’s good.
When you focus on good things in your life, you’ll naturally begin to think more positively.
An easy way to practice gratitude is to keep a daily journal. Before you go to bed each night, write down a few things you are grateful for from the day.
Studies back up the efficacy of actively practicing gratitude. It makes you happier and improves overall health and well-being.
FOCUS ON YOUR STRENGTHS
A big part of positive thinking is recognizing your control over your life and situation. Things don’t just happen to you. You have the power to make positive changes.
To boost this kind of positive thinking, make an effort to focus on your personal strengths. Maybe you are a good friend or partner. You’re good at your job or a sport. It doesn’t have to be a skill or anything bit. Maybe your greatest strength is that you are kind to people.
Take time to list your strengths, especially when you feel yourself getting into a downward spiral of negative thoughts.
SMILE AND LAUGH MORE
This might sound obvious, but the more you laugh and smile, the happier you will be. Boosting happiness automatically boosts your positive thinking.
Spend more time with friends who make you laugh. Watch funny movies instead of dramas. Watch clips online of your favorite comedians.
Even faking a smile can instantly boost your mood, according to research. Studies show that smiling during a difficult or stressful situation reduces heart rate and blood pressure. It helps people cope better with that situation. So, even when you feel negative about life, smile and see how it affects your mood.
CHANGE YOUR SOCIAL GROUP
Take a critical look at the people you spend most of your time with. Are they unnecessarily pessimistic? Do they face adversity well and laugh a lot?
If you spend time with more negative people, it will impact your thinking. Choose who you spend your time with because it affects your mindset, mood, and overall health.
VISUALISE A BETTER FUTURE
The power of your imagination can make you a more positive thinker. When you’re in a bad situation or unhappy with your life, picture yourself in a better place.
Visualization is a great tool for manifesting what you want. By picturing it, you can make it happen. The first step is changing your negative outlook on the situation. Think about what’s possible, and then make a plan to get to that better place.
STAY HEALTHY
When you feel good, your thoughts will be more positive. A healthy lifestyle makes it easier to think positively. Get enough sleep, eat well, and exercise regularly. Spend time outside and hang out with friends. See your doctor regularly and stay on top of your health.
USING MEDITATION TO BOOST POSITIVE THINKING
Meditation is a practice that improves awareness and focused attention. It is not a single thing but multiple practices with similar goals. It creates a deep state of mind and body relaxation and, like positive thinking, boosts mental health.
Meditation is an ancient practice rooted in spirituality. Today it is a diverse practice that encompasses many cultures and styles. You can meditate with a blank mind, focus on your breathing, or repeat a positive mantra.
HOW MEDITATION BOOSTS POSITIVITY
Regular meditation practice benefits mental and physical health in many ways. One thing it can do is give you greater control over your thoughts. Meditation helps you build greater awareness about your interior monologue and your ongoing conversation with yourself.
Awareness is the first step to changing unhelpful, negative thoughts. Consider meditation a type of brain training. The more you practice it, the more aware you become of your thoughts and the easier it is to jump outside and see them from a new perspective. Once you can do that, you can begin to change them too.
A study of meditation and positive thinking compared non-meditators to a group of people using Meditation.
The researchers found that the meditators considered themselves much happier than the non-meditators. The study determined that meditation helped people improve positive thinking, leading to greater self-satisfaction and happiness.
TRY POSITIVE MEDITATIONS ON BETTER SLEEP
You can create or alter any meditation to focus on positive thoughts, or you can find guided meditations that emphasize positivity.
DROPPING INTO THE PRESENT MOMENT
This mindfulness meditation is all about focusing your awareness on the present moment, which is a great antidote to negative thoughts. Negativity tends to arise when you dwell on the past or worry about the future. Use this meditation to turn your thoughts away from negativity and focus on what you can feel and sense right now.
GRATITUDE BOOSTER
Use a short, six-minute gratitude meditation for a quick infusion of positive thoughts.
GRATITUDE FOR STRESSFUL TIMES
Gratitude is a great counterbalance to negative thinking. When the stress and bad things in your life threaten to overwhelm you, focus on what you are grateful for.
POSITIVE VIBRATIONS
This meditation will help you manifest more happiness and positivity in your daily life.
5 NIGHTS OF GRATITUDE
For more extended practice, use this series of five meditations all focused on finding gratitude in your life.
POSITIVE DREAMING
Your dreams are an extension of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Use this short meditation to help condition your mind to have more positive dreams.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In addition to meditations, you can find other tools at lotus that help you boost your positivity while improving sleep. Try bedtime stories to take your mind out of a negative cycle of rumination. These easy, soothing stories are light, positive, and just what you need when feeling down.
Practice positive thinking by using daily affirmations, catching negative thoughts and self-talk, and turning them around. Then use meditations to support your mental health and cement those affirmations. You’ll start feeling better about yourself and your life before you know.
ABOUT LOTUS WELLNESS REHAB
Lotus is India’s Finest luxury rehab offering the best treatment programs for Detox, Addiction Rehabilitation, Mental health and overall wellness.
LOTUS WELLNESS AND REHABILITATION CENTER Pollachi, Coimbatore , Tamilnadu , India Reach us at [info@lotuswellness.life](mailto:info@lotuswellness.life) To know more about us visit our website www.lotuswellness.life
2024.04.28 06:59 Fuzzy-Peaches46 Distraction
It’s been over 2 months since my brothers suicide. I am in a suicide support group that lasts for 10 weeks and they talk a lot about distractions. They warn us to not distract ourselves to the point that we avoid grieving because the grief will come back stronger and harder. So… how much distraction is too much? I think naturally I try and distract myself although it doesn’t always work. My brothers death is for the most part, always in the back of my head. But how do I know if I’m distracting myself too much?
My life is just starting to pick up again in terms of busyness - doing a gradual return to work, trying to be more social and not isolate myself (even though I hate it) but then I overthink and feel like I’m distracting myself too much.
I’m not sure if this makes any sense at all but I am looking for other peoples experiences or insights about this. For example, in the evening at bedtime that time is the hardest for me so I will scroll on TikTok and find funny videos to distract myself from the pain I feel that is amplified at night
submitted by Fuzzy-Peaches46 to SuicideBereavement [link] [comments]
My life is just starting to pick up again in terms of busyness - doing a gradual return to work, trying to be more social and not isolate myself (even though I hate it) but then I overthink and feel like I’m distracting myself too much.
I’m not sure if this makes any sense at all but I am looking for other peoples experiences or insights about this. For example, in the evening at bedtime that time is the hardest for me so I will scroll on TikTok and find funny videos to distract myself from the pain I feel that is amplified at night
2024.04.28 06:00 Choice_Evidence1983 [New Updates] - I accidentally caused a war between my family and my brothers wifes family with one innocent text message.
I am NOT OOP. OOP is u/Charming_Educator612
Originally posted to TrueOffMyChest
Previous BoRUs:
BoRU #1 originally posted by u/SJDude13
BoRU #2 originally posted by u/Shelly_895
[New Updates] - I accidentally caused a war between my family and my brothers wifes family with one innocent text message.
Trigger Warnings: homophobia, harassment, verbal abuse, mentions of physical violence
Mood Spoilers: positive for OOP
RECAP
Original Post: May 31, 2023
So my brothers wedding happened two days ago. And it turned into a complete chaos which I know even though I don't were there. You might wonder why I didn't attend the wedding if its my brother's. Well its because of his wife's family. He did sent me an invitation to the wedding because he wanted me there but his fiance told him I couldn't attend because I had a boyfriend. You might be confused. But I'm a man. A bisexual man to be exact and I have a boyfriend who I wanted to bring to the wedding. She said even though she doesn't have a problem with that and he doesn't have a problem with that her extremely religious parents who already forced her to do the wedding in a church would most likely banish us from the wedding and cause trouble between our families.
After she told him that my brother told me I couldn't attend and told me why. You might think I was angry. The truth is I was relieved. I hate going to big events with lots of people because of my social anxiety and I already was used to not being able to attend certain events because of my sexuality so it was nothing I haven't heard before. So at the day of the wedding I stayed at home with my boyfriend. Its worth mentioning my parents apparently didn't knew I wasn't attending the wedding. I was chillin at home cuddling with my boyfriend when I suddenly got a text message from my parents asking me where I was because they couldn't find me at the wedding party. I told them I wasn't attending the wedding and if my brother hasn't told them anything. They said no and asked me what happened.
I didn't saw any reason to lie so I sent them a text message telling them exactly why. Now I have to admit I don't exactly know what happened after I sent them this message because they read it but didn't reply. And why do they care in the first place? They didn't notice I wasn't there before until the wedding was already over. They only noticed when the wedding party started.
However. Apparently my parents talked to my brother about it and all of a sudden my abscence was the main topic of the wedding party. From what i heard, two fronts formed. on the one hand my parents and the rest of my family against the family of my brother's wife and apparently he as a husband now felt compelled to take her side and tried to argue in her favor. Its crazy to think that I was just sitting at home living my best life with my boyfriend while all of that shit went down on his wedding. The wedding party was ruined and my brother appeared on my door angrily screaming at me why I felt the need to ruin his wedding.
I was confused and asked him what happened and he told me everything. I told him it wasn't my intention. I just told our parents what happened because they didn't know and wanted to know where I was and I thought he told them beforehand. He screamed at me that I ruined his wedding. I told him its not my fault he wasn't honest with them. I just respected their wish to not attend the wedding. I couldn't know it would go down like this because like I said I couldn't attend several events before because of my sexuality and my parents never said anything about it so I thought it would be the same thing here.
But I gotta admit its kinda sweet that my parents and the rest of my family stood up for me. They haven't done it before. Thats a more than welcome change. But I still feel kinda bad because apparently I really ruined the wedding party.
Update #1: June 2, 2023 (2 days later)
Didn't thought I'd give an update but many interesting things happened.
So after my brothers visit his wife and him went to honeymoon. And the way the wedding party went might have been even worse than I imagined. What happens now is incredible. When I said in the main post that two fronts had formed, I only meant that metaphorically, of course, but it's no longer that. While nothing much interesting happened in the first two days afterwards the terror started as soon as my brother and his wife went on their honeymoon.
My mom and my dad visited me and told me how the wedding party escalated and they were so close to physical violence. I thought it was funny at first but this truly bothers me. I also wanna point that you did a great job at convincing me its not my fault but hearing my parents side still gave me a bad feeling in my stomach.
However like I said the terror started shortly after they went to their honeymoon. And when I say terror I mean that my SIL's family found both my facebook and instagram account and started spamming me with hateful messages. I received insults and hateful messages from various different accounts who all had one thing in common. They all had somewhat of a christian theme and all of them had the same last name. So it wasn't hard to find out whose accounts it was. Mainly because I don't know my SIL's family at all. I only know her and I know her parents were homophobic christians.
But whatever. They not only started attacking me they also found the account of my boyfriend over my account because we're linked as a couple and started to send him the same messages. the messages contained on one side typical bigot stuff like: "you're burning in hell for your sins". One even called me and my boyfriend "two devils in disguise". The other side were just blatant insults. You get the idea. I called my parents and told them what they are doing. Then I sent a text message to my brother with screenshots of the messages his wifes family sent me to which he replied that I "shouldn't disturb him with that during his honeymoon as I already destroyed his wedding party".
I couldn't believe it. He was just like them. He did sent me an apology AFTER my mom told me she called him. But none of this is the main reason I'm giving you this update this early.
Because I got a call this morning from an unknown number. I hesitated because I thought it was one of them. And I was right but it was none of the people who insulted me. I heard a womans voice who introduced herself as the half sister of my brothers wife. She said it didn't went unnoticed what her family was doing and she wanted to apologize for them.
I told her I'm not going to tell anyone in her family about this and that I don't blame her for her families actions. She thanked me and hung up. I don't know why but I have this feeling she only did this to protect her family from being reported. My mother wrote to me earlier that she wants to report the insults and the harrassment of these people and that she demands for my brother to divorce his wife or she will disinherit him from her will because "thats not how she raised him". A little radical in my opinion but I understand where she's coming from.
This entire thing escalated so much its unbelievable. Thank y'all for your support on my first post.
Why am i so casual about this entire situation?: June 3, 2023 (1 day later)
Some of you were wondering why I seem so calm and casual in the update when I'm discriminated against. The truth is that I am in a relationship with my boyfriend for three years now and the things that happen now are nothing compared to what I've been through. I receive hateful messages almost daily. Not only from their accounts but in general. And I learnt to ignore that.
There have been way worse situations. Such as when my boyfriend went to visit his family and I couldn't go with him. We kissed each other goodbye on the trainstation and when the train left and no one saw it a group of guys attacked me. I was sent to hospital because of severe injuries. Just to give you an idea what I had to deal with in the past.
And don't get me wrong we will report my SIL's family but what they are doing is nothing I haven't seen a thousand times before.
Update #2: June 12, 2023 (9 days later)
Its been a few days. First of all. Me and my boyfriend are fine. Luckily for us they didn't go any further than their text messages.
My mom filed a report against them. I don't know the current situation about that as I haven't filed the report myself. The reason I update you is a different one. First of all. One person in my SIL's family is actually going to testify in my favor and against her family. It really takes courage to do so. Its the same person that called me in the last update.
Somehow they found out that she is into women. No reason to hide it anymore. However she said she's fine and is going to stay at a friends house. I have so much respect for what she does. Imagine the strength you need to testify against your own family. I now feel bad for assuming she only called me to safe her family from being reported.
More importantly. What is the current situation with my brother? Well my mom talked to him and told him to leave his wife or she will disinherit him from her will. He decided to stay with his wife and my mom made her threat come true. He's no longer in her will. My father did the same. When I visited them I also told them that I wish that this entire situation went different. They assured me its not my fault but I feel like if it wasn't for me then my family wouldn't be ripped apart like this.
Haven't talked to my brother since then. My boyfriend feels similiar. He also told me he kinda feels responsible for all this chaos. I assured him its not his fault. But honestly I wasn't even sure if I could say this in my position. On the other hand it was my SIL's families bigotry that ruined everything and everything would've been fine if I could've just attended.
But now its time for me to grow distant to this situation. We see what the report will do. I followed your advice to document everything. The insulting and harrassing messages continued until two days ago. So I have much to say about them.
Unfortunately homophobia is still very much normalized in our society. I already said it in a post in my profile but the reason I'm so calm and casual about the situation is the simple fact that I'm used to situations like this. They don't get to me anymore. If I let any insult get to me I wouldn't make it for a long time. Its a coping mechanism. I've been into situations where I was sent into hospital because I kissed my boyfriend in public. So insults and harrassment like theirs is nothing I haven't seen before.
I want to say thank you for all your support on my first two posts.
Update #3: August 22, 2023 (2 months later)
I think some of y'all are waiting for an update so here I am. Keep in mind that this update will probably be the last one.
So last time I told you my mother was pressing charges against them and to my surprise we won. They weren't going to jail or anything but they had to pay for their actions. LITERALLY. There was one incident where my SIL dad was actually trying to find out where I lived and asked my brother who told him. Only god knows what he would've done to us if we still had lived there. But in the time span of the last two months me and my boyfriend moved to a different place which my brother didn't know anything off. Also their social media accounts were deleted. However I don't know if this was part of their punishment or if they did it themselves.
My mom has also carried out the threat towards my brother and disinherited him from her will. After he came back from his honeymoon he begged her to put him in again. She said only if he apologized to me. She invited me and my boyfriend over and my brother sat in the living room with this mad look on his face. She made him apologize but I didn't accept this apology because I could tell it wasn't sincere. He did it because he had to and not because he was actually sorry. I told my brother that I am disappointed in him for who he became.
Before that we had this huge bond usually never judged each other for stuff like this and all of a sudden he has such a problem with me having a boyfriend. I just don't get it. I told him that I miss the old him. He didn't respond to anything. He just sat their quietly staring at the bottom. After I finished he just got up and left. This was the last time I spoke with him and its already been a few weeks since this happened. My parents paid much more attention to the discrimination I face since this incident.
They wanted to learn more about the problems I face as a queer person. I really love them. My dad even got a bisexual pride flag for me and asked if he could hang it in our bedroom. I love that I have such great parents. I just wished for my brother to become the person he once was. Btw. since the case with my SIL's family is over I didn't heard anything about their lesbian daughter. She supported us during the process but we lost contact afterwards and I just hope she's fine.
The final update of my story happened six months ago and I figured some of you might be interested in how things currently doing. So i'm back at least for this post right now.
There have been some things that happened. First of all I wanna give you an update about the sister of my brothers wife. Around two months after my update she texted us and asked if she could come over. We talked a while and I was relieved to find out that she is fine. She said that she moved in with her girlfriend when the case was over. Simply because her parents and the rest of her family had disowned her and threatened her with physical violence if she dares to return.
However the relationship with her girlfriend ended after a while and she asked us if she could stay for a few days until she found something. She stayed with us for two weeks. During that time my parents had visited us and offered her to stay with them because they had a big house with some free space. She stays there currently because she wanted to study and my parents had no problem with letting her stay a little longer. Me and my boyfriend also support her financially a little bit.
We included her into several different celebrations such as christmas and new years eve and I feel like she is like the sister I never had. Whats probably more interesting for you is how my brother is currently doing. The truth is: I don't know exactly. We haven't talked since the "apology" however he actually tried to attend our christmas celebration party but the moment he appeared my dad kicked him out and said that, and i quote "this homophobic rubbish is no longer allowed in my house". I love him. Oh btw of course both went through with disowning him.
My boyfriend and I are still together and I feel like he might be the one I wanna marry. This entire situation made our bond so much stronger. I plan on proposing to him but there are so many ideas floating around in my head for the proposal that I can't really decide which one. Also the social media accounts of my SIL's family had disappeared entirely. All of them but I assume the already made new ones under a new name.
I'm just glad all of this is finally over. I don't have any compassion left for my brother. I just wish he had never developed this way. Everything that happend to him he brought it on himself. If you guys want I can update you when I'm engaged.
Thanks for reading. Wish you all the best! <3
Relevant Comment
ValuablePace1904: Be sure to also hire security at your future wedding in case your brother, his wife, and his in laws try to boycott it in any shape or form if they somehow find out where it'll take place.
I proposed and he said yes!: April 14, 2024 (2 months later)
Do you remember when I told you in my last update two months ago that I will propose to my boyfriend? Well I did it today. I brought up so many ideas that it was really hard to decide so I gave him some subtle hints. Not too obvious. Just enough to see how he reacts and then decide based on his reaction.
In the end I made a photo album of us featuring the most important events in our relationship. Each of them had a thought of mine in a caption below them. Some of them were meaningful but some of them were just random. Like one photo of us eating at his favorite restaurant at his birthday and the caption just says something like: "damn that pizza was good!". That made him laugh. We walked to his favorite spot in town which is a wonderful lake.
That is where I gave him the album and told him its a present and to look through it. He was focused and didn't notice what I was doing behind him as I just told him I was getting something I forgot. I positioned myself behind him and that is when the last page came into play.
That page had a photo of me holding the ring in the same way I positioned myself behind him looking straight at the camera. And the caption says: "Hopefully he says yes!". He turned around in disbelief and started crying almost immediately when he saw me. I couldn't even finish the question and he already said yes. It was exactly how I hoped it would go. I always dreamt of making my proposal like out of a romance novel and I was successful. So yeah thats it. I'm gonna marry him.
I already told my entire family exact for my brother of course. They were so happy about it especially my mom and new sister shrieked out of excitement on the phone. I assume my "brother" knows anyway considering I shared it on facebook. You guys probably aren't wrong that he might plan something but if he does it won't stop us.
Do you guys want me to update you when I'm married to tell you about the wedding and everything?
My boyfriend and I will have a rather unconventional wedding! - April 21, 2024 (1 week later)
I just HAVE to tell you guys this. We're currently planning our wedding and instead of a regular wedding dance we decided we wanna have a lightsaber battle against each other. Of course its not just a random lightsaber battle. Its like a choreography that we have to learn. We're both HUGE Star Wars fans.
My dad who also loves Star Wars said he wants to join and he had an idea how to do that. He said to add like a story to it that he wants to have a lightsaber battle against my fiance where my fiance has to fight for the right to marry me where my dad would eventually lose and then I would step in to test my fiances strength myself and there would be a light saber battle between us and then i'd acknowledge his force as worthy enough! I know some might think its childish but I'm so excited for it.
Our wedding will be a day for people to remember!
submitted by Choice_Evidence1983 to BestofRedditorUpdates [link] [comments]
Originally posted to TrueOffMyChest
Previous BoRUs:
BoRU #1 originally posted by u/SJDude13
BoRU #2 originally posted by u/Shelly_895
[New Updates] - I accidentally caused a war between my family and my brothers wifes family with one innocent text message.
Trigger Warnings: homophobia, harassment, verbal abuse, mentions of physical violence
Mood Spoilers: positive for OOP
Original Post: May 31, 2023
So my brothers wedding happened two days ago. And it turned into a complete chaos which I know even though I don't were there. You might wonder why I didn't attend the wedding if its my brother's. Well its because of his wife's family. He did sent me an invitation to the wedding because he wanted me there but his fiance told him I couldn't attend because I had a boyfriend. You might be confused. But I'm a man. A bisexual man to be exact and I have a boyfriend who I wanted to bring to the wedding. She said even though she doesn't have a problem with that and he doesn't have a problem with that her extremely religious parents who already forced her to do the wedding in a church would most likely banish us from the wedding and cause trouble between our families.
After she told him that my brother told me I couldn't attend and told me why. You might think I was angry. The truth is I was relieved. I hate going to big events with lots of people because of my social anxiety and I already was used to not being able to attend certain events because of my sexuality so it was nothing I haven't heard before. So at the day of the wedding I stayed at home with my boyfriend. Its worth mentioning my parents apparently didn't knew I wasn't attending the wedding. I was chillin at home cuddling with my boyfriend when I suddenly got a text message from my parents asking me where I was because they couldn't find me at the wedding party. I told them I wasn't attending the wedding and if my brother hasn't told them anything. They said no and asked me what happened.
I didn't saw any reason to lie so I sent them a text message telling them exactly why. Now I have to admit I don't exactly know what happened after I sent them this message because they read it but didn't reply. And why do they care in the first place? They didn't notice I wasn't there before until the wedding was already over. They only noticed when the wedding party started.
However. Apparently my parents talked to my brother about it and all of a sudden my abscence was the main topic of the wedding party. From what i heard, two fronts formed. on the one hand my parents and the rest of my family against the family of my brother's wife and apparently he as a husband now felt compelled to take her side and tried to argue in her favor. Its crazy to think that I was just sitting at home living my best life with my boyfriend while all of that shit went down on his wedding. The wedding party was ruined and my brother appeared on my door angrily screaming at me why I felt the need to ruin his wedding.
I was confused and asked him what happened and he told me everything. I told him it wasn't my intention. I just told our parents what happened because they didn't know and wanted to know where I was and I thought he told them beforehand. He screamed at me that I ruined his wedding. I told him its not my fault he wasn't honest with them. I just respected their wish to not attend the wedding. I couldn't know it would go down like this because like I said I couldn't attend several events before because of my sexuality and my parents never said anything about it so I thought it would be the same thing here.
But I gotta admit its kinda sweet that my parents and the rest of my family stood up for me. They haven't done it before. Thats a more than welcome change. But I still feel kinda bad because apparently I really ruined the wedding party.
Update #1: June 2, 2023 (2 days later)
Didn't thought I'd give an update but many interesting things happened.
So after my brothers visit his wife and him went to honeymoon. And the way the wedding party went might have been even worse than I imagined. What happens now is incredible. When I said in the main post that two fronts had formed, I only meant that metaphorically, of course, but it's no longer that. While nothing much interesting happened in the first two days afterwards the terror started as soon as my brother and his wife went on their honeymoon.
My mom and my dad visited me and told me how the wedding party escalated and they were so close to physical violence. I thought it was funny at first but this truly bothers me. I also wanna point that you did a great job at convincing me its not my fault but hearing my parents side still gave me a bad feeling in my stomach.
However like I said the terror started shortly after they went to their honeymoon. And when I say terror I mean that my SIL's family found both my facebook and instagram account and started spamming me with hateful messages. I received insults and hateful messages from various different accounts who all had one thing in common. They all had somewhat of a christian theme and all of them had the same last name. So it wasn't hard to find out whose accounts it was. Mainly because I don't know my SIL's family at all. I only know her and I know her parents were homophobic christians.
But whatever. They not only started attacking me they also found the account of my boyfriend over my account because we're linked as a couple and started to send him the same messages. the messages contained on one side typical bigot stuff like: "you're burning in hell for your sins". One even called me and my boyfriend "two devils in disguise". The other side were just blatant insults. You get the idea. I called my parents and told them what they are doing. Then I sent a text message to my brother with screenshots of the messages his wifes family sent me to which he replied that I "shouldn't disturb him with that during his honeymoon as I already destroyed his wedding party".
I couldn't believe it. He was just like them. He did sent me an apology AFTER my mom told me she called him. But none of this is the main reason I'm giving you this update this early.
Because I got a call this morning from an unknown number. I hesitated because I thought it was one of them. And I was right but it was none of the people who insulted me. I heard a womans voice who introduced herself as the half sister of my brothers wife. She said it didn't went unnoticed what her family was doing and she wanted to apologize for them.
I told her I'm not going to tell anyone in her family about this and that I don't blame her for her families actions. She thanked me and hung up. I don't know why but I have this feeling she only did this to protect her family from being reported. My mother wrote to me earlier that she wants to report the insults and the harrassment of these people and that she demands for my brother to divorce his wife or she will disinherit him from her will because "thats not how she raised him". A little radical in my opinion but I understand where she's coming from.
This entire thing escalated so much its unbelievable. Thank y'all for your support on my first post.
Why am i so casual about this entire situation?: June 3, 2023 (1 day later)
Some of you were wondering why I seem so calm and casual in the update when I'm discriminated against. The truth is that I am in a relationship with my boyfriend for three years now and the things that happen now are nothing compared to what I've been through. I receive hateful messages almost daily. Not only from their accounts but in general. And I learnt to ignore that.
There have been way worse situations. Such as when my boyfriend went to visit his family and I couldn't go with him. We kissed each other goodbye on the trainstation and when the train left and no one saw it a group of guys attacked me. I was sent to hospital because of severe injuries. Just to give you an idea what I had to deal with in the past.
And don't get me wrong we will report my SIL's family but what they are doing is nothing I haven't seen a thousand times before.
Update #2: June 12, 2023 (9 days later)
Its been a few days. First of all. Me and my boyfriend are fine. Luckily for us they didn't go any further than their text messages.
My mom filed a report against them. I don't know the current situation about that as I haven't filed the report myself. The reason I update you is a different one. First of all. One person in my SIL's family is actually going to testify in my favor and against her family. It really takes courage to do so. Its the same person that called me in the last update.
Somehow they found out that she is into women. No reason to hide it anymore. However she said she's fine and is going to stay at a friends house. I have so much respect for what she does. Imagine the strength you need to testify against your own family. I now feel bad for assuming she only called me to safe her family from being reported.
More importantly. What is the current situation with my brother? Well my mom talked to him and told him to leave his wife or she will disinherit him from her will. He decided to stay with his wife and my mom made her threat come true. He's no longer in her will. My father did the same. When I visited them I also told them that I wish that this entire situation went different. They assured me its not my fault but I feel like if it wasn't for me then my family wouldn't be ripped apart like this.
Haven't talked to my brother since then. My boyfriend feels similiar. He also told me he kinda feels responsible for all this chaos. I assured him its not his fault. But honestly I wasn't even sure if I could say this in my position. On the other hand it was my SIL's families bigotry that ruined everything and everything would've been fine if I could've just attended.
But now its time for me to grow distant to this situation. We see what the report will do. I followed your advice to document everything. The insulting and harrassing messages continued until two days ago. So I have much to say about them.
Unfortunately homophobia is still very much normalized in our society. I already said it in a post in my profile but the reason I'm so calm and casual about the situation is the simple fact that I'm used to situations like this. They don't get to me anymore. If I let any insult get to me I wouldn't make it for a long time. Its a coping mechanism. I've been into situations where I was sent into hospital because I kissed my boyfriend in public. So insults and harrassment like theirs is nothing I haven't seen before.
I want to say thank you for all your support on my first two posts.
Update #3: August 22, 2023 (2 months later)
I think some of y'all are waiting for an update so here I am. Keep in mind that this update will probably be the last one.
So last time I told you my mother was pressing charges against them and to my surprise we won. They weren't going to jail or anything but they had to pay for their actions. LITERALLY. There was one incident where my SIL dad was actually trying to find out where I lived and asked my brother who told him. Only god knows what he would've done to us if we still had lived there. But in the time span of the last two months me and my boyfriend moved to a different place which my brother didn't know anything off. Also their social media accounts were deleted. However I don't know if this was part of their punishment or if they did it themselves.
My mom has also carried out the threat towards my brother and disinherited him from her will. After he came back from his honeymoon he begged her to put him in again. She said only if he apologized to me. She invited me and my boyfriend over and my brother sat in the living room with this mad look on his face. She made him apologize but I didn't accept this apology because I could tell it wasn't sincere. He did it because he had to and not because he was actually sorry. I told my brother that I am disappointed in him for who he became.
Before that we had this huge bond usually never judged each other for stuff like this and all of a sudden he has such a problem with me having a boyfriend. I just don't get it. I told him that I miss the old him. He didn't respond to anything. He just sat their quietly staring at the bottom. After I finished he just got up and left. This was the last time I spoke with him and its already been a few weeks since this happened. My parents paid much more attention to the discrimination I face since this incident.
They wanted to learn more about the problems I face as a queer person. I really love them. My dad even got a bisexual pride flag for me and asked if he could hang it in our bedroom. I love that I have such great parents. I just wished for my brother to become the person he once was. Btw. since the case with my SIL's family is over I didn't heard anything about their lesbian daughter. She supported us during the process but we lost contact afterwards and I just hope she's fine.
----NEW UPDATES----
Update #4: February 16, 2024 (6 months later)The final update of my story happened six months ago and I figured some of you might be interested in how things currently doing. So i'm back at least for this post right now.
There have been some things that happened. First of all I wanna give you an update about the sister of my brothers wife. Around two months after my update she texted us and asked if she could come over. We talked a while and I was relieved to find out that she is fine. She said that she moved in with her girlfriend when the case was over. Simply because her parents and the rest of her family had disowned her and threatened her with physical violence if she dares to return.
However the relationship with her girlfriend ended after a while and she asked us if she could stay for a few days until she found something. She stayed with us for two weeks. During that time my parents had visited us and offered her to stay with them because they had a big house with some free space. She stays there currently because she wanted to study and my parents had no problem with letting her stay a little longer. Me and my boyfriend also support her financially a little bit.
We included her into several different celebrations such as christmas and new years eve and I feel like she is like the sister I never had. Whats probably more interesting for you is how my brother is currently doing. The truth is: I don't know exactly. We haven't talked since the "apology" however he actually tried to attend our christmas celebration party but the moment he appeared my dad kicked him out and said that, and i quote "this homophobic rubbish is no longer allowed in my house". I love him. Oh btw of course both went through with disowning him.
My boyfriend and I are still together and I feel like he might be the one I wanna marry. This entire situation made our bond so much stronger. I plan on proposing to him but there are so many ideas floating around in my head for the proposal that I can't really decide which one. Also the social media accounts of my SIL's family had disappeared entirely. All of them but I assume the already made new ones under a new name.
I'm just glad all of this is finally over. I don't have any compassion left for my brother. I just wish he had never developed this way. Everything that happend to him he brought it on himself. If you guys want I can update you when I'm engaged.
Thanks for reading. Wish you all the best! <3
Relevant Comment
ValuablePace1904: Be sure to also hire security at your future wedding in case your brother, his wife, and his in laws try to boycott it in any shape or form if they somehow find out where it'll take place.
OOP: I never thought about that but true. If someones would try to do something like this as a revenge its them. I keep this in mind.
I proposed and he said yes!: April 14, 2024 (2 months later)
Do you remember when I told you in my last update two months ago that I will propose to my boyfriend? Well I did it today. I brought up so many ideas that it was really hard to decide so I gave him some subtle hints. Not too obvious. Just enough to see how he reacts and then decide based on his reaction.
In the end I made a photo album of us featuring the most important events in our relationship. Each of them had a thought of mine in a caption below them. Some of them were meaningful but some of them were just random. Like one photo of us eating at his favorite restaurant at his birthday and the caption just says something like: "damn that pizza was good!". That made him laugh. We walked to his favorite spot in town which is a wonderful lake.
That is where I gave him the album and told him its a present and to look through it. He was focused and didn't notice what I was doing behind him as I just told him I was getting something I forgot. I positioned myself behind him and that is when the last page came into play.
That page had a photo of me holding the ring in the same way I positioned myself behind him looking straight at the camera. And the caption says: "Hopefully he says yes!". He turned around in disbelief and started crying almost immediately when he saw me. I couldn't even finish the question and he already said yes. It was exactly how I hoped it would go. I always dreamt of making my proposal like out of a romance novel and I was successful. So yeah thats it. I'm gonna marry him.
I already told my entire family exact for my brother of course. They were so happy about it especially my mom and new sister shrieked out of excitement on the phone. I assume my "brother" knows anyway considering I shared it on facebook. You guys probably aren't wrong that he might plan something but if he does it won't stop us.
Do you guys want me to update you when I'm married to tell you about the wedding and everything?
My boyfriend and I will have a rather unconventional wedding! - April 21, 2024 (1 week later)
I just HAVE to tell you guys this. We're currently planning our wedding and instead of a regular wedding dance we decided we wanna have a lightsaber battle against each other. Of course its not just a random lightsaber battle. Its like a choreography that we have to learn. We're both HUGE Star Wars fans.
My dad who also loves Star Wars said he wants to join and he had an idea how to do that. He said to add like a story to it that he wants to have a lightsaber battle against my fiance where my fiance has to fight for the right to marry me where my dad would eventually lose and then I would step in to test my fiances strength myself and there would be a light saber battle between us and then i'd acknowledge his force as worthy enough! I know some might think its childish but I'm so excited for it.
Our wedding will be a day for people to remember!
DO NOT COMMENT IN LINKED POSTS OR MESSAGE OOPs – BoRU Rule #7
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT OOP
2024.04.28 05:15 Ayosuhdude Space Status: Explored
 | https://preview.redd.it/vpo0tahxo4xc1.png?width=3839&format=png&auto=webp&s=1adde0acdfc8cdcee80d58349a682512f0a92e16 submitted by Ayosuhdude to factorio [link] [comments] And in under 400 hours! Not bad for a solo blind playthrough. Some screenshots and my thoughts below for anyone interested. Victory Ship Nauvis NOrbit - I didn't intend for to but the whole base came out looking kinda like a spaceship... Space Elevator + Starter Base - The starter base produced all red, green, blue, and military science all the way through to the end game. Space Elevator in orbit + load/unload station - I went with a phat train to carry most resources up to orbit where they were loaded into space trains. The top third and fourth rails and both roundabouts are all two-way, which helped since trains could pick one of 4 ways to enter or exit this station. I'm quite proud of how well this train spaghetti turned out. Some more train spaghetti - Most of the rails you see here are two-way besides the main lines. Thermofluid + Streams - I decided on going with a \"liquid main bus\" type of setup that had all streams run up the center of my base and the thermofluids ran along the sides. This allowed all of my thermofluid to be in the same pipe networks which prevented making way more than what's needed, since putting it in trains results in a huge excess. Calidus Orbit - Used two 25 GW glaive beams to clear out Nauvis and my Vita planet from biters. Never used the plague rocket or any other big military items, just set them all on fire! Smelting + Core Mining - My base pretty much solely ran on core mining for the last 200 hours of this mod. Highly recommend setting up 8+ core miners on Nauvis whenever you are able. My thoughts - Well, first off, it's incredible. It's everything that I wanted and some stuff I didn't even know I wanted. The challenges this mod provides are unlike any other mod can offer, you really need to approach this differently than other overhauls. Cargo rockets, space ships, delivery cannons, meteors, CMUs, the freaking simulated galaxy with distances/unique planetary features, there's SO many impressive features that this mod offers that consistently blew me away. That being said, there were a few things I didn't like as well. Things I enjoyed: Challenge Variety - It can be difficult to innovate with Factorio since when it comes down to it all you really ever do in this game is put an item into one machine, then it spits something out that you put into another machine and so on...SE introduces several challenges that are not just input in and output out. On top of things like stack size becoming very, very relevant, the multi-surface logistics as well as individual features (such as space ships) are completely unique in how they must be handled. This is the #1 strength of the mod in my opinion. Atmosphere - Probably the thing that took me most by surprise was how immersive SE is. My holminite planet looks and feels different than my vitamelange planet, which looks and feels very different than my cryonite planet. You fly around in space with zero gravity and no friction to hold you in place. The first time I went to a deep space asteroid field for naquium, I was genuinely a little scared at how dark and far away I was. It actually felt cold and lonely compared to my buzzing bases. The...surprises you find across surfaces, the anomoly, secret space ships and mysterious missions from long ago, SE absolutely is dripping in atmosphere. The space buildings all look very "spacey" as well, and while it's kinda annoying that there's about 50 space buildings, it does leave a very neat and futuristic looking base. NOrbit feels very different than Nauvis thanks to this. Complexity - SE is definitely complex, but typically not in an annoying way. While I didn't love things like most production chains producing an annoying amount of random stone that you shove in a box with no other good way to deal with, I did like that most of the chains are very visually appealing due to all of the movement. Since most chains involve looping output back around as input, it results in a very satisfying amount of items being moved around belts. I probably could've finished 20 hours sooner if I didn't stare at my builds so much. The unique challenges (space ships, cargo rockets, etc.) are especially complex in a fun way. Things I didn't enjoy: Burner Phase? - While I didn't necessarily enjoy the extended burner phase...I think it's probably good that it's there. It's common for first time players to want to jump into SE after beating vanilla for the first time (I did, or at least tried), and I think the burner phase does a good job of filtering out players who are going to get overwhelmed and not enjoy the space parts. It's better to quit due to being overwhelmed at 2 hours instead of 40. Stone - As mentioned above and a common complaint...why so much random stone byproduct? At least give me a way to actually void it some way. Space Sciences, sort of - The "data driven" sciences have a cool flavor to them: you run experiments are record the data, then you can clean insights from what you've found out. They were generally in flavor and a few of them were pretty funny, such as the impact shielding data where you basically just crash a train into a wall and record the results. However...there's just so...so many of them. 4 data cards per tier, with 4 tiers, and 5 different sciences makes for a whopping eighty different data cards. I was kinda over it by tier two of each, and then you get space elevator and have to redo half of the ones you've already done. Also why does bio have such a huge up-front cost with the biosludge processing loop? It makes it really hard to justify going bio before getting space elevator, where as the other three parallel sciences are pretty up to the player on which order they want to do them. Cool flavor, but I'd like to see it a little more spread out I guess. Some techs come too late - Like I noted in the Calidus Orbit screenshot, I never wound up using a bulk of the cool things you get in this game. Plague rocket, weapons delivery cannon, energy beaming (for power), spidertrons, biter breeding, and advanced weapons like the Biogun were either never used or used just for fun because I could. There was no need for them because by the time I unlocked them I already had a better way of dealing with the issue. There were also a few that feel a little needless to come so late, notably I think kovarex and logistics network could stand to move to space science from utility/production, and I think space elevator should be a bit sooner since you really need to completely restructure your space base around it once you get it. To quote Dosh: "In SE, fun is optional and very inefficient". The mod is masochistic enough without withholding necessary techs for longer than needed. Despite the negatives, definitely a worthwhile mod. It deserves its popularity, and I'm thrilled to see where it goes with Space Age content. I'm confident that SE 1.0 will be the best automation game experience you can have, and that will be true for a very long time. If you've got any questions for me or want to see other parts of my base, feel free to ask. Also a genuine thank you to Earendel for all of the effort put into making the mod, I'm excited to see where you go with it in the future! |
2024.04.28 00:00 KabobberJabobber What's your guilty pleasure episode?
To those wondering what a "guilty pleasure" is, it's basically that piece of media (or anything in general) that you know isn't that good, but at the same time you really enjoy it a ton.
For me, I think "Magic" (Season 3, Episode 10) would be my guilty pleasure episode of the series. While I think it kinda flunked at its lesson about teaching kids on why their parents can't always play with them whenever they want, I also think it has some of the most underrated funny moments in Season 3. From Bandit & Pat's tango dance, to Bluey & Chilli having probably the greatest anime battle of all time, to even quotes like "We'll ring ALL THE PIZZA BOYS!!!" and "I AM NOT AN OBJECT!", I was just surprised with how many times I laughed while rewatching this episode. Plus, I do think this has one of the more underrated scores from Joff Bush. It has that classic John Williams-era Harry Potter vibe going for it, which I love. Other than that though, I honestly kinda compare it to "Asparagus" (from Season 1) and "Featherwand" (Season 2). Two other magic-based episodes where I enjoy them more for the humor and cursed meme potential, rather than the lessons they teach.
So I don't know. What do you guys think? What'd be you guilty pleasure episode of the series?
submitted by KabobberJabobber to bluey [link] [comments]
For me, I think "Magic" (Season 3, Episode 10) would be my guilty pleasure episode of the series. While I think it kinda flunked at its lesson about teaching kids on why their parents can't always play with them whenever they want, I also think it has some of the most underrated funny moments in Season 3. From Bandit & Pat's tango dance, to Bluey & Chilli having probably the greatest anime battle of all time, to even quotes like "We'll ring ALL THE PIZZA BOYS!!!" and "I AM NOT AN OBJECT!", I was just surprised with how many times I laughed while rewatching this episode. Plus, I do think this has one of the more underrated scores from Joff Bush. It has that classic John Williams-era Harry Potter vibe going for it, which I love. Other than that though, I honestly kinda compare it to "Asparagus" (from Season 1) and "Featherwand" (Season 2). Two other magic-based episodes where I enjoy them more for the humor and cursed meme potential, rather than the lessons they teach.
So I don't know. What do you guys think? What'd be you guilty pleasure episode of the series?
2024.04.27 23:55 SaltyAndSober Made it 6 months. Here’s what I wish I knew when I started.
I have reached 6 months now and thought I would put together some random suggestions I would have found helpful when I started. I hope one person gets something from them. Much love to my fellow sobernauts. You can do the hard thing❤️
Read quit-lit from the start\ I found the book Alcohol Explained by William Porter and its accompanying workbook to be invaluable. It opened my eyes to the fact that my drinking wasn’t a weakness in me; it was merely alcohol doing what alcohol will do to anyone given enough time and quantity.
The chapters are short. I did one a day and journaled the workbook. I would suggest starting it BEFORE you stop drinking because the first exercise is for you to get drunk and describe how you’re feeling.
You may not get a pink cloud\ I’ve never had the fabled pink cloud. Lord, how I wish I did. I have been a realist from the beginning, accepting that this is how my life has to be.
Sometimes there is no getting around white knuckling it\ For me, the first six weeks were nothing but white-knuckling it. During that time, I had surgery (which gave me a reason not to drink for a week-lol), my dog drowned, I went on holiday with drinking buddies, and I attended a weekly happy hour with people I did not know (always a trigger, as I need that social lubrication). It was a bit of trial by fire. I survived by holding on tight and just getting through that day. I didn’t worry about what came after today.
Find a mantra\ I got through those early weeks by repeatedly saying in my head “I cannot have just one because I cannot have just one.” I suggest finding one that speaks to you and saying it in your head, put it on post it notes around the house, put it on your phone’s lock screen - whatever works for you.
Find substitutes, but know they will not be the same\ It was so hard when 5:00 came. Every day, I counted the minutes until that socially acceptable time for my drinking to begin. I loved my bubbles while cooking, eating, watching the sunset, watching TV... from 5:00 until bedtime. I had to find liquid substitutes.
My substitutes: For cooking, I keep either sparkling water or a lemonade on hand.
For sundowners, I bought a slow juicer and make us a mixed fruit/vegetable juice. Only problem is I allow us 1 glass and it is gone very quickly. No lingering over it while we watch the sunset. Still coming to terms with that one.
For our nightly treat, we have a chai masala (spiced tea). We really weren’t tea drinkers before, so this was new for us.
When back home in the US, I tried every non-alcoholic bubbles I could find. None of them tasted like Prosecco. In the end, I couldn’t justify spending the same amount on non-alcoholic Prosecco vs the real thing and have it taste like a flavored sparkling water, but with more calories. Now that I’m back in Greece, you can’t find it anyway. Every once in a while though, I have a non-alcoholic beer.
Having these replacement drinks helped, but I’m not going to say they are like the real thing. I drank for the drunk. None of these can give me that. For me though, it was vital to have some little ritual to look forward to at the end of day.
While your brain heals, you might have uncharacteristic emotions\ In the beginning, I had bouts of major irritability out of nowhere. For you women out there, it was like when you have PMS, hear your husband chewing, and silently plot his murder. Only this was happening all the time.
It was so bad that I honestly contemplated whether being sober was worth it. I am happy to report that this irritability dissipated somewhere between 60-80 days.
From what I’ve read, it can take a year for your brain to heal and some anecdotal evidence says maybe even longer. I like to picture a goblin in my head, knitting needles in hand, slowly stitching the pieces of my brain back together. It takes time.
Keep expectations real for how your life will change\ I read stories here of people whose lives have completely changed since quitting. I am full of admiration for them, but my journey doesn’t include big changes. Maybe I am an anomaly, but I bet there are others like me.
I had a really good life while drinking and was high functioning. I was a happy, funny drunk. Nothing terrible happened that caused me to stop. I stopped because the blackouts were happening on almost a nightly basis. I never did anything bad or out of character during them, but I was tired of hearing “I already told you this. Don’t you remember?”
So I decided I had enough fun. I knew I was incapable of moderating (which, after reading quit lit, I know now this is exactly how alcohol works. It’s unavoidable). It was time to say goodbye.
Nothing major has changed; it’s been a bit more of little tweaks. I sleep better. I am less bloated. My face is less red. My resting heart rate is down a few beats. I was hoping weight would just drop off of me. Surely, it should because I was consuming so many empty calories when drinking! Sorry to say that it is has not - boo.
Of course, these are all good things, but nothing like some of the stories of redemption I’ve read here. Sometimes that can be a little deflating, but I have mostly made my peace with it. In the end, I am healthier not drinking. That’s good enough.
Accept that you will never be able to moderate\ I’m sure are people out there that will say they have gone from problem drinking to moderation, but I don’t think this is the norm. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. It will not let you go from problem drinking back to moderation. If by some miracle you do, I bet it is with constant self-control, vigilance, and misery.
Alcoholism is like driving a car towards a terrible destination. When you first start, you don’t know the road. You go slowly and cautiously. If you quit and then decide to start back up, you start at the beginning again - only this time you know the road and can drive much, much faster. The drinking that took you years to build up to can now be reached in let’s say a month.
It is just not worth starting the car.
I am so appreciative of those who’ve done the field research in moderation for me and post their stories. I love reading them and reminding me of what I do not want.
It’s okay to mourn the passing of the drinking times\ This is one I’m working on now. There are times when I am sad that I can’t share a bottle of wine with my husband. I have a little guilt because my husband says he feels this way too. He doesn’t have a problem with alcohol, but he says it’s not fun to drink without me and so he doesn’t. I am sorry that I am the reason we can’t have nice things.
I think it’s okay to acknowledge and mourn what is lost, but I always counter it with knowing being healthier matters more than a buzz. There was only one direction I was going while drinking and it wasn’t to a good destination.
submitted by SaltyAndSober to stopdrinking [link] [comments]
Read quit-lit from the start\ I found the book Alcohol Explained by William Porter and its accompanying workbook to be invaluable. It opened my eyes to the fact that my drinking wasn’t a weakness in me; it was merely alcohol doing what alcohol will do to anyone given enough time and quantity.
The chapters are short. I did one a day and journaled the workbook. I would suggest starting it BEFORE you stop drinking because the first exercise is for you to get drunk and describe how you’re feeling.
You may not get a pink cloud\ I’ve never had the fabled pink cloud. Lord, how I wish I did. I have been a realist from the beginning, accepting that this is how my life has to be.
Sometimes there is no getting around white knuckling it\ For me, the first six weeks were nothing but white-knuckling it. During that time, I had surgery (which gave me a reason not to drink for a week-lol), my dog drowned, I went on holiday with drinking buddies, and I attended a weekly happy hour with people I did not know (always a trigger, as I need that social lubrication). It was a bit of trial by fire. I survived by holding on tight and just getting through that day. I didn’t worry about what came after today.
Find a mantra\ I got through those early weeks by repeatedly saying in my head “I cannot have just one because I cannot have just one.” I suggest finding one that speaks to you and saying it in your head, put it on post it notes around the house, put it on your phone’s lock screen - whatever works for you.
Find substitutes, but know they will not be the same\ It was so hard when 5:00 came. Every day, I counted the minutes until that socially acceptable time for my drinking to begin. I loved my bubbles while cooking, eating, watching the sunset, watching TV... from 5:00 until bedtime. I had to find liquid substitutes.
My substitutes: For cooking, I keep either sparkling water or a lemonade on hand.
For sundowners, I bought a slow juicer and make us a mixed fruit/vegetable juice. Only problem is I allow us 1 glass and it is gone very quickly. No lingering over it while we watch the sunset. Still coming to terms with that one.
For our nightly treat, we have a chai masala (spiced tea). We really weren’t tea drinkers before, so this was new for us.
When back home in the US, I tried every non-alcoholic bubbles I could find. None of them tasted like Prosecco. In the end, I couldn’t justify spending the same amount on non-alcoholic Prosecco vs the real thing and have it taste like a flavored sparkling water, but with more calories. Now that I’m back in Greece, you can’t find it anyway. Every once in a while though, I have a non-alcoholic beer.
Having these replacement drinks helped, but I’m not going to say they are like the real thing. I drank for the drunk. None of these can give me that. For me though, it was vital to have some little ritual to look forward to at the end of day.
While your brain heals, you might have uncharacteristic emotions\ In the beginning, I had bouts of major irritability out of nowhere. For you women out there, it was like when you have PMS, hear your husband chewing, and silently plot his murder. Only this was happening all the time.
It was so bad that I honestly contemplated whether being sober was worth it. I am happy to report that this irritability dissipated somewhere between 60-80 days.
From what I’ve read, it can take a year for your brain to heal and some anecdotal evidence says maybe even longer. I like to picture a goblin in my head, knitting needles in hand, slowly stitching the pieces of my brain back together. It takes time.
Keep expectations real for how your life will change\ I read stories here of people whose lives have completely changed since quitting. I am full of admiration for them, but my journey doesn’t include big changes. Maybe I am an anomaly, but I bet there are others like me.
I had a really good life while drinking and was high functioning. I was a happy, funny drunk. Nothing terrible happened that caused me to stop. I stopped because the blackouts were happening on almost a nightly basis. I never did anything bad or out of character during them, but I was tired of hearing “I already told you this. Don’t you remember?”
So I decided I had enough fun. I knew I was incapable of moderating (which, after reading quit lit, I know now this is exactly how alcohol works. It’s unavoidable). It was time to say goodbye.
Nothing major has changed; it’s been a bit more of little tweaks. I sleep better. I am less bloated. My face is less red. My resting heart rate is down a few beats. I was hoping weight would just drop off of me. Surely, it should because I was consuming so many empty calories when drinking! Sorry to say that it is has not - boo.
Of course, these are all good things, but nothing like some of the stories of redemption I’ve read here. Sometimes that can be a little deflating, but I have mostly made my peace with it. In the end, I am healthier not drinking. That’s good enough.
Accept that you will never be able to moderate\ I’m sure are people out there that will say they have gone from problem drinking to moderation, but I don’t think this is the norm. Alcoholism is a progressive disease. It will not let you go from problem drinking back to moderation. If by some miracle you do, I bet it is with constant self-control, vigilance, and misery.
Alcoholism is like driving a car towards a terrible destination. When you first start, you don’t know the road. You go slowly and cautiously. If you quit and then decide to start back up, you start at the beginning again - only this time you know the road and can drive much, much faster. The drinking that took you years to build up to can now be reached in let’s say a month.
It is just not worth starting the car.
I am so appreciative of those who’ve done the field research in moderation for me and post their stories. I love reading them and reminding me of what I do not want.
It’s okay to mourn the passing of the drinking times\ This is one I’m working on now. There are times when I am sad that I can’t share a bottle of wine with my husband. I have a little guilt because my husband says he feels this way too. He doesn’t have a problem with alcohol, but he says it’s not fun to drink without me and so he doesn’t. I am sorry that I am the reason we can’t have nice things.
I think it’s okay to acknowledge and mourn what is lost, but I always counter it with knowing being healthier matters more than a buzz. There was only one direction I was going while drinking and it wasn’t to a good destination.
2024.04.27 22:59 Jazzlike-Fortune8311 Navigating match in the Swipe Right Era"
Unveiling My Path A Personal Tale
Matched with a guy on Bumble today! We chatted for a couple of hours, and let me tell you, this one was different. There was this cool, mysterious vibe kinda brooding, but definitely intelligent and attractive. We knew the basics: location, hometown, and our professions.Things were going well, and then he suggested a dinner date.
Here's the thing: I'm usually pretty cautious about moving things off the app. Bumble feels safe, you know? But this guy... there was something about him. So, I took a leap and suggested switching platforms. Maybe a little forward, I don't know. I shared my Instagram handle and asked him to follow back.
Awkward silence. Ugh, did I mess things up? Finally, he messaged back, apologizing for forgetting. Phew! Followed me right away. Two hours of chatting, some basic info exchanged, and bam! I just invited this complete stranger into my little corner of the internet. Was it too soon?
Is there an unwritten rule about when to switch platforms? Maybe I should've waited a bit longer... what do you guys think?
We struck up a conversation, easy and breezy, and somehow, we ended up at a local dhaba. The worn wooden khatiyas, a stark contrast to the 👠 heels pinching my feet, beckoned comfort. I kicked off my heels with a sigh, the relief a melody compared to the city's constant din."Paneer and paratha?" he asked, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. "Absolutely," I replied, the spicy aroma already whetting my appetite. As we devoured the delicious meal, the conversation flowed effortlessly.
I perhaps a little too eager to please, spilled my life story – my work, my past, my dreams – like an overfilled piñata. He listened patiently, offering snippets of his own life in between.
"You talk a lot," he chuckled, his eyes twinkling. A blush crept up my cheeks. "I know, I can't help it." Our bellies full and laughter echoing in the cool night air, we decided on a walk.My feet, though grateful for their freedom, ached slightly.
"Here, he said, stopping abruptly, "my flat's nearby. You can change into something more comfortable."
Hesitation flickered within me, but the thought of ditching the heels was too tempting. His apartment was a bachelor's haven – slightly messy but with a lived-in charm. As I changed, a glint of gold on the table caught my eye. A hairpin. An odd location for a man claiming to be recently out of a relationship. I brushed the unease aside, attributing it to my overactive imagination.
Back on the streets, our conversation meandered through college memories and shared experiences. He was undeniably charming, and a warmth bloomed in my chest, a feeling I hadn't known I craved for so long. We ended up back at his place, opting for a movie instead of venturing out again. He settled me in with his laptop, suggesting a horror film. I, a self-proclaimed scaredy-cat, pretended to be a horror aficionado, secretly relieved when we ended up lost in conversation instead.
The night flowed by in a blur of laughter, shared secrets, and a growing sense of connection. The touch of his hand, accidental at first, sent a shiver down my spine. By morning, a blissful kiss and a steaming cup of chai had me completely smitten. But amidst the afterglow, the image of the hairpin flickered in my mind. Was it a harmless oversight, or a glaring red flag I'd chosen to ignore? My heart ached with a newfound uncertainty
After waiting and keeping all cautions that I’ll not expect anything this too early to think in mind we connect over chat after returned from some hill station. So after bringing that hairpin Mistry with me I met him very next day coz he was about to out for weekends to that hill station. I went I was happy we chit chat for somtime and touchy at the same time. I remember we were talking some nonsense joke, and I asked what’s your subscription validity, he said life time and I took that casual and continued the joke as what services you’ll provide he said you really wanna know services he suggested some crazy stuff and slept.
He is having cute bed time habits brushing and keeping water and asking are you okay and comfortable cute right . We woke up late and he cuddled and bell rang for cook didi he ran to open door. Till his made was cooking we slept again and got late again. I rash and booked my auto and left. He kissed on forehead which is quite protective respectful feelom for girls. Andway I feel that way. I remember I discussed about forehead kiss with my girl she just said no don’t go on that now guys knows this emotional weakness nowadays it’s not a big deal . I was not convinced but okay I’ll be prepared. Nowadays how funny now t feeling has After waiting and being cautious not to expect too much, I connected with him over chat after returning from a hill station. The next day, I met him because he was going to the same hill station for the weekend. I was happy, and we chatted and joked around.
I asked him about his subscription validity, and he said it's lifetime. I joked about what services he'd provide, and he suggested some crazy stuff before falling asleep. He has cute bedtime habits like brushing his teeth, keeping water nearby, and making sure I'm comfortable before sleeping. When we woke up late, he cuddled with me until the cook arrived, then he rushed to open the door.
We fell asleep again while waiting for breakfast, making us late once more. I hurriedly booked an auto and left. Before I left, he kissed my forehead, which felt protective and respectful. I remember discussing forehead kisses with my friend, and she said it's not a big deal anymore because guys know about this emotional weakness. I wasn't convinced, but I decided to be prepared. Nowadays, it's funny how feelings have turned into tricks. What's the true action then? to tricks. What’s d true action then ?
After waiting and being cautious not to expect too much, I connected with him over chat . The next day, I met him because he was going to the same hill station for the weekend. I was happy, and we chatted and joked around. I asked him about his subscription validity, and he said it's lifetime. I joked about what services he'd provide, and he suggested some crazy stuff before falling asleep. He has cute bedtime habits like brushing his teeth, keeping water nearby, and making sure I'm comfortable before sleeping. When we woke up late, he cuddled with me until the cook arrived, then he rushed to open the door. We fell asleep again while waiting for breakfast, making us late once more. I hurriedly booked an auto and left. Before I left, he kissed my forehead, which felt protective and respectful. I remember discussing forehead kisses with my friend, and she said it's not a big deal anymore because guys know about this emotional weakness. I wasn't convinced, but I decided to be prepared. Nowadays, it's funny how feelings have turned into tricks. What's the true action then?
I met him again, and he asked what I want between us. I replied, saying I want something long-term, going with the flow, because casual dating isn't for me at this stage. He agreed, saying he wanted the same thing but needed some time to figure out if he could balance a relationship with his startup work, which made sense. I agreed and thought it made sense for me too, as I also need time to figure out my career.
After meeting him and getting to know him a bit, I felt butterflies in my stomach for the first time in a long while. He seemed too good for any girl. When you start liking someone but don't get attention from them, you feel uncomfortable, and negative thoughts bother you continuously. I felt the same way—I got irritated and sad, and lost all focus on my work.
After waiting the whole week for his comeback, I texted him, putting my ego aside, 'Hi, are you seeing someone?' Seeing his reply, I was shattered. He said yes, he went on a date after meeting me. After a pause, I replied that I'm not comfortable being an option. I will not meet you again. Was this step wrong?
At the same time, I was expecting a response, but he replied, stating he will text in some time. The same day, I was supposed to attend my friend's wedding, but as my mood was messed up, I decided not to go. But then why didn't he bother to explain to me then and there why I should cancel my plan I thought and started getting ready.
I got ready, and as soon as I reached there, I got a WhatsApp pop-up. I saw him typing something, so I decided to call him and check because I wasn't ready to wait any longer. He explained to me that he didn't know we couldn't go on another date. He said he wouldn't go until we decided anything for us. Then he said, "Give me a week's time, I'll let you know. And if you think getting physical is making you uncomfortable, we'll just meet and hang out." Tears dropped from my eyes as I said okay. The weight of my feelings was heavier than my ego and self-respect, so I said yes. I wanted him not to see anyone and to spend more time with me. I didn't want to lose him. Was liking someone at first sight wrong? Was expecting the same feeling from him wrong? Why can't I be old school and say this is more than just liking?
What will you call me? A clingy girl or a psycho? Why can't we develop this feeling after meeting three times? Don't we do the same in arranged marriages sometimes?
Coming back to the story, I got drunk and decided to block him while also wanting to meet him one last time. I texted him directly that I wanted to meet right now, but he ignored my text and started asking about the wedding. I replied that it was fine, I was going home, and then kept the phone aside. But out of curiosity, I checked again and saw his reply, "Yes, please come, waiting." He said he thought I might find it creepy to ask to meet again so soon after our discussion a few hours before. I replied, saying I was on the way.
With one hand holding onto my saree and the other on my heels, I began to climb the stairs to his third-floor apartment, my mind filled with ten different thoughts: Is it right to go back? Should I just return home? As soon as I thought I shouldn't go back, I felt I should turn around. But upon seeing him, I lost all sense of myself and went inside. We shared some awkward eye contact, but setting that aside, he offered me some comfortable clothes and helped me remove my makeup. I didn't even realize how close we had become. Later, feeling hungry, I never imagined someone would be willing to cook for me in the middle of the night. Why was he doing all this? He kept asking me what I wanted to eat, offering to make tea, coffee, or anything I liked. Meanwhile, my mind was only thinking, "Why are you doing this? I'll fall in love, bro, don't do this." We ended up eating mangoes, and later he fed me with his hand, which was quite touching at that time . I had never been treated like this before.
Later, we had lots of conversations on the same topic. He said it was too early to talk about these things, which I understood. But how do I say, "Duffer, I like you so much, I don't want to share you. But my ego came in between, and I just said, "Okay, I don't want you to go on dates and don't ignore my texts." He justified or you can say explained that he wasn't ignoring me, just busy. He said "What should I reply to your last text, 'okay'?" Conversation is completed right I said, "You should at least say good night." Don't you think sometimes a small good night text from the person you like completes your day? Am I overthinking?
After our conversation, he fell asleep as it was 4 am in the morning, and I was still struggling to sleep. Seeing him asleep, I wished for some magic to happen, pleading with a higher power not to take him away from me. Early in the morning, I got ready to leave. As I was leaving, my heart cried out from within, begging that he not be taken away from me. Did I behave like I was too needy? Can't I develop feelings for someone after just 2-3 meetings?
The very next day, I deleted his number, and then I got a text saying, "Did you block me seriously?" Like a fool, I said, "Not yet, just updating my profile." I decided not to talk because it was painful to know that I was into someone who wasn't into me, maybe? Or is there any bigger shock than breaking your own heart?
Soon, I realized I was into him because I wasn't getting any response from his side which was killing me. I tried to control my feelings, focusing like crazy on my work, working day and night. I went out, tried to forget him, but why I was feeling this way was bothering me. Then I realized I forgot to return his pair of clothes he gave me last time. I took them with me, intending to Dunzo them later, but after trying to find a delivery guy, my friend said, "I think you should go and give them yourself if you really want to see him." Maybe I just wanted someone to say that. I drove there and returned them by calling him down to his building. He didn't invite me up, and I didn't want to go up either.
I said goodbye, and as I saw him walk away, my heart cried out. I drove fast and reached my place, where I just hugged my cousin and said, "I guess I lost him.
I I tried to focus on my work and not think about him. I deleted his number, but how do you delete it when it's already stuck in your mind? After 3-4 days, when I got irritated and felt like there was no one to understand me, because today's trend is to move on quickly. It's impossible to like someone so soon, they say, but I wasn't ready to accept that.
I made a mistake and texted him, saying, "You are bad, you don't deserve anything." I vomited out everything, and it was all so blurry that he was clueless about what I was talking about. I kept repeating, "I don't want you in my life." Maybe I wanted to indirectly tell him, "Just don't go." At this time I wanted to say him
Mainu pata nahi hunda sukoon ki, Tainu mile taan pata lageya, Mit gayi meri sab tanhai, Jee tere kol aa lageya.
But I ended up saying, "I will not block you. Maybe we can be friends." I just didn't want to lose him. Will this friendship work? Was it the right decision?
Every story has it own way of ending and this small short one got its end too. If I would have any chance to rewind me usse kehti
Were my reactions correct? Is it wrong to like someone after the first meeting? Would you call me a creepy, clingy girl? What should I do?
Will I get him back? Am I overthinkirng?
submitted by Jazzlike-Fortune8311 to KeepWriting [link] [comments]
Matched with a guy on Bumble today! We chatted for a couple of hours, and let me tell you, this one was different. There was this cool, mysterious vibe kinda brooding, but definitely intelligent and attractive. We knew the basics: location, hometown, and our professions.Things were going well, and then he suggested a dinner date.
Here's the thing: I'm usually pretty cautious about moving things off the app. Bumble feels safe, you know? But this guy... there was something about him. So, I took a leap and suggested switching platforms. Maybe a little forward, I don't know. I shared my Instagram handle and asked him to follow back.
Awkward silence. Ugh, did I mess things up? Finally, he messaged back, apologizing for forgetting. Phew! Followed me right away. Two hours of chatting, some basic info exchanged, and bam! I just invited this complete stranger into my little corner of the internet. Was it too soon?
Is there an unwritten rule about when to switch platforms? Maybe I should've waited a bit longer... what do you guys think?
We struck up a conversation, easy and breezy, and somehow, we ended up at a local dhaba. The worn wooden khatiyas, a stark contrast to the 👠 heels pinching my feet, beckoned comfort. I kicked off my heels with a sigh, the relief a melody compared to the city's constant din."Paneer and paratha?" he asked, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. "Absolutely," I replied, the spicy aroma already whetting my appetite. As we devoured the delicious meal, the conversation flowed effortlessly.
I perhaps a little too eager to please, spilled my life story – my work, my past, my dreams – like an overfilled piñata. He listened patiently, offering snippets of his own life in between.
"You talk a lot," he chuckled, his eyes twinkling. A blush crept up my cheeks. "I know, I can't help it." Our bellies full and laughter echoing in the cool night air, we decided on a walk.My feet, though grateful for their freedom, ached slightly.
"Here, he said, stopping abruptly, "my flat's nearby. You can change into something more comfortable."
Hesitation flickered within me, but the thought of ditching the heels was too tempting. His apartment was a bachelor's haven – slightly messy but with a lived-in charm. As I changed, a glint of gold on the table caught my eye. A hairpin. An odd location for a man claiming to be recently out of a relationship. I brushed the unease aside, attributing it to my overactive imagination.
Back on the streets, our conversation meandered through college memories and shared experiences. He was undeniably charming, and a warmth bloomed in my chest, a feeling I hadn't known I craved for so long. We ended up back at his place, opting for a movie instead of venturing out again. He settled me in with his laptop, suggesting a horror film. I, a self-proclaimed scaredy-cat, pretended to be a horror aficionado, secretly relieved when we ended up lost in conversation instead.
The night flowed by in a blur of laughter, shared secrets, and a growing sense of connection. The touch of his hand, accidental at first, sent a shiver down my spine. By morning, a blissful kiss and a steaming cup of chai had me completely smitten. But amidst the afterglow, the image of the hairpin flickered in my mind. Was it a harmless oversight, or a glaring red flag I'd chosen to ignore? My heart ached with a newfound uncertainty
After waiting and keeping all cautions that I’ll not expect anything this too early to think in mind we connect over chat after returned from some hill station. So after bringing that hairpin Mistry with me I met him very next day coz he was about to out for weekends to that hill station. I went I was happy we chit chat for somtime and touchy at the same time. I remember we were talking some nonsense joke, and I asked what’s your subscription validity, he said life time and I took that casual and continued the joke as what services you’ll provide he said you really wanna know services he suggested some crazy stuff and slept.
He is having cute bed time habits brushing and keeping water and asking are you okay and comfortable cute right . We woke up late and he cuddled and bell rang for cook didi he ran to open door. Till his made was cooking we slept again and got late again. I rash and booked my auto and left. He kissed on forehead which is quite protective respectful feelom for girls. Andway I feel that way. I remember I discussed about forehead kiss with my girl she just said no don’t go on that now guys knows this emotional weakness nowadays it’s not a big deal . I was not convinced but okay I’ll be prepared. Nowadays how funny now t feeling has After waiting and being cautious not to expect too much, I connected with him over chat after returning from a hill station. The next day, I met him because he was going to the same hill station for the weekend. I was happy, and we chatted and joked around.
I asked him about his subscription validity, and he said it's lifetime. I joked about what services he'd provide, and he suggested some crazy stuff before falling asleep. He has cute bedtime habits like brushing his teeth, keeping water nearby, and making sure I'm comfortable before sleeping. When we woke up late, he cuddled with me until the cook arrived, then he rushed to open the door.
We fell asleep again while waiting for breakfast, making us late once more. I hurriedly booked an auto and left. Before I left, he kissed my forehead, which felt protective and respectful. I remember discussing forehead kisses with my friend, and she said it's not a big deal anymore because guys know about this emotional weakness. I wasn't convinced, but I decided to be prepared. Nowadays, it's funny how feelings have turned into tricks. What's the true action then? to tricks. What’s d true action then ?
After waiting and being cautious not to expect too much, I connected with him over chat . The next day, I met him because he was going to the same hill station for the weekend. I was happy, and we chatted and joked around. I asked him about his subscription validity, and he said it's lifetime. I joked about what services he'd provide, and he suggested some crazy stuff before falling asleep. He has cute bedtime habits like brushing his teeth, keeping water nearby, and making sure I'm comfortable before sleeping. When we woke up late, he cuddled with me until the cook arrived, then he rushed to open the door. We fell asleep again while waiting for breakfast, making us late once more. I hurriedly booked an auto and left. Before I left, he kissed my forehead, which felt protective and respectful. I remember discussing forehead kisses with my friend, and she said it's not a big deal anymore because guys know about this emotional weakness. I wasn't convinced, but I decided to be prepared. Nowadays, it's funny how feelings have turned into tricks. What's the true action then?
I met him again, and he asked what I want between us. I replied, saying I want something long-term, going with the flow, because casual dating isn't for me at this stage. He agreed, saying he wanted the same thing but needed some time to figure out if he could balance a relationship with his startup work, which made sense. I agreed and thought it made sense for me too, as I also need time to figure out my career.
After meeting him and getting to know him a bit, I felt butterflies in my stomach for the first time in a long while. He seemed too good for any girl. When you start liking someone but don't get attention from them, you feel uncomfortable, and negative thoughts bother you continuously. I felt the same way—I got irritated and sad, and lost all focus on my work.
After waiting the whole week for his comeback, I texted him, putting my ego aside, 'Hi, are you seeing someone?' Seeing his reply, I was shattered. He said yes, he went on a date after meeting me. After a pause, I replied that I'm not comfortable being an option. I will not meet you again. Was this step wrong?
At the same time, I was expecting a response, but he replied, stating he will text in some time. The same day, I was supposed to attend my friend's wedding, but as my mood was messed up, I decided not to go. But then why didn't he bother to explain to me then and there why I should cancel my plan I thought and started getting ready.
I got ready, and as soon as I reached there, I got a WhatsApp pop-up. I saw him typing something, so I decided to call him and check because I wasn't ready to wait any longer. He explained to me that he didn't know we couldn't go on another date. He said he wouldn't go until we decided anything for us. Then he said, "Give me a week's time, I'll let you know. And if you think getting physical is making you uncomfortable, we'll just meet and hang out." Tears dropped from my eyes as I said okay. The weight of my feelings was heavier than my ego and self-respect, so I said yes. I wanted him not to see anyone and to spend more time with me. I didn't want to lose him. Was liking someone at first sight wrong? Was expecting the same feeling from him wrong? Why can't I be old school and say this is more than just liking?
What will you call me? A clingy girl or a psycho? Why can't we develop this feeling after meeting three times? Don't we do the same in arranged marriages sometimes?
Coming back to the story, I got drunk and decided to block him while also wanting to meet him one last time. I texted him directly that I wanted to meet right now, but he ignored my text and started asking about the wedding. I replied that it was fine, I was going home, and then kept the phone aside. But out of curiosity, I checked again and saw his reply, "Yes, please come, waiting." He said he thought I might find it creepy to ask to meet again so soon after our discussion a few hours before. I replied, saying I was on the way.
With one hand holding onto my saree and the other on my heels, I began to climb the stairs to his third-floor apartment, my mind filled with ten different thoughts: Is it right to go back? Should I just return home? As soon as I thought I shouldn't go back, I felt I should turn around. But upon seeing him, I lost all sense of myself and went inside. We shared some awkward eye contact, but setting that aside, he offered me some comfortable clothes and helped me remove my makeup. I didn't even realize how close we had become. Later, feeling hungry, I never imagined someone would be willing to cook for me in the middle of the night. Why was he doing all this? He kept asking me what I wanted to eat, offering to make tea, coffee, or anything I liked. Meanwhile, my mind was only thinking, "Why are you doing this? I'll fall in love, bro, don't do this." We ended up eating mangoes, and later he fed me with his hand, which was quite touching at that time . I had never been treated like this before.
Later, we had lots of conversations on the same topic. He said it was too early to talk about these things, which I understood. But how do I say, "Duffer, I like you so much, I don't want to share you. But my ego came in between, and I just said, "Okay, I don't want you to go on dates and don't ignore my texts." He justified or you can say explained that he wasn't ignoring me, just busy. He said "What should I reply to your last text, 'okay'?" Conversation is completed right I said, "You should at least say good night." Don't you think sometimes a small good night text from the person you like completes your day? Am I overthinking?
After our conversation, he fell asleep as it was 4 am in the morning, and I was still struggling to sleep. Seeing him asleep, I wished for some magic to happen, pleading with a higher power not to take him away from me. Early in the morning, I got ready to leave. As I was leaving, my heart cried out from within, begging that he not be taken away from me. Did I behave like I was too needy? Can't I develop feelings for someone after just 2-3 meetings?
The very next day, I deleted his number, and then I got a text saying, "Did you block me seriously?" Like a fool, I said, "Not yet, just updating my profile." I decided not to talk because it was painful to know that I was into someone who wasn't into me, maybe? Or is there any bigger shock than breaking your own heart?
Soon, I realized I was into him because I wasn't getting any response from his side which was killing me. I tried to control my feelings, focusing like crazy on my work, working day and night. I went out, tried to forget him, but why I was feeling this way was bothering me. Then I realized I forgot to return his pair of clothes he gave me last time. I took them with me, intending to Dunzo them later, but after trying to find a delivery guy, my friend said, "I think you should go and give them yourself if you really want to see him." Maybe I just wanted someone to say that. I drove there and returned them by calling him down to his building. He didn't invite me up, and I didn't want to go up either.
I said goodbye, and as I saw him walk away, my heart cried out. I drove fast and reached my place, where I just hugged my cousin and said, "I guess I lost him.
I I tried to focus on my work and not think about him. I deleted his number, but how do you delete it when it's already stuck in your mind? After 3-4 days, when I got irritated and felt like there was no one to understand me, because today's trend is to move on quickly. It's impossible to like someone so soon, they say, but I wasn't ready to accept that.
I made a mistake and texted him, saying, "You are bad, you don't deserve anything." I vomited out everything, and it was all so blurry that he was clueless about what I was talking about. I kept repeating, "I don't want you in my life." Maybe I wanted to indirectly tell him, "Just don't go." At this time I wanted to say him
Mainu pata nahi hunda sukoon ki, Tainu mile taan pata lageya, Mit gayi meri sab tanhai, Jee tere kol aa lageya.
But I ended up saying, "I will not block you. Maybe we can be friends." I just didn't want to lose him. Will this friendship work? Was it the right decision?
Every story has it own way of ending and this small short one got its end too. If I would have any chance to rewind me usse kehti
Were my reactions correct? Is it wrong to like someone after the first meeting? Would you call me a creepy, clingy girl? What should I do?
Will I get him back? Am I overthinkirng?
2024.04.27 22:50 HONEYNUTSOUP MSM Text Meme Numero Ocho Pentumbra and Its Shadow Don't put requests in the comments of this one I have other ones to work on after this
 | submitted by HONEYNUTSOUP to MySingingMonsters [link] [comments] |