If only

Yeah, I think that’s the right interpretation. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll look it up!

My wife came to realize she needed to date women. That, and she had very bad anxiety that she began to refuse to treat. She had multiple screaming and crying breakdowns over simple social situations with my family. She couldn’t leave the house for months. I was working two jobs, taking care of our animals, and doing all the housework. She would lay on the couch and doomscroll all day.

I spent 40 hours on the phone with Kaiser Permanente trying to get her a therapist. When we finally did get her a therapist, the therapist told her that she was autistic, that the anxiety she experienced was just who she was, and that other people should just accept it.

We were going to couples counseling, too, and I said in one session that her anxiety was something she needed to work on with the goal of ultimately fixing it, because it was maladaptive and making both our lives really hard. The therapist cautiously agreed with me. Afterwards, she demanded to fire the therapist and moved out of the house. She stayed with my aunt and uncle for a month. I think she would have continued to drag it out, for a year or more, but I had no faith in the relationship anymore. When she sent me an email reiterating the same unactionable, generic criticisms she had always raised in couples counseling, I told her we should just get divorced.

The actual divorce was amicable. We had no kids and few possessions. I bought her out of most of it and we split the rest. No lawyer needed. She moved into a house with a group of lesbians and started over.

I struggled with feelings of failure and inadequacy for a few years after that: why couldn’t I help her? Why couldn’t I make her happy? It’s taken a decent amount of therapy, but I have come to understand that sometimes things end without a conclusive reason, and we don’t have full control over the outcome of our lives. I could have done everything right, and it still would have ended.

There were many good years prior to things unraveling. A blooming flower is no less pretty because it will wilt.

I don’t eat either of them

Did anyone else really struggle to figure out what the hell the thumbnail on this was?

Escapes are pretty bad cars. My ex had one with just over 100k miles, engine cracked and started leaking coolant into one of the cylinders. Totaled the car with no accident.

What do lemmings live in. …holes? Warrens? Hives?

Come to Washington. But make sure you make it West of the Cascades!

I wonder if this is the app, or the age group? As a late 30s guy on Hinge, I don’t have a ton of trouble finding at least a few people to have a decent chat with every week, and it’s led to a decent number of dates and even a few long term relationships.

The part that’s bothering people is the “traumatized people can’t be responsible for other people’s comfort.” It sounds too much like “I’m sorry if my reaction made you uncomfortable, but I have trauma and so I’m not responsible.”

I think there are two ways of reading the claim that a traumatized person can’t be responsible for other peoples’ comfort. The first is reasonable: nobody is really responsible for anyone else’s comfort. We have to take care of ourselves at the end of the day, so mentally healthy people especially shouldn’t rely on traumatized people to make them comfortable.

The second is unreasonable: traumatized people, more than anyone, have no obligation to do the basic things that make other people comfortable, in virtue of their trauma.

I think the post just makes it sound a little too much like the second interpretation, because otherwise why focus on traumatized people in the first place? I think that’s what’s getting under most peoples’ skin.

I mean, the point of therapy is to work through your trauma in a way that allows you to avoid maladaptive behaviors, which might include being overly sensitive in situations where it isn’t appropriate and doesn’t help you. We can make some changes to accommodate the bad things that have happened to people, but having trauma doesn’t give you license to go around the world inflicting your emotions on everyone around you. Your mental illness is not your fault, but it is your responsibility, and all that.

Muffins are cake. I don’t eat cake except on special occasions. I think this is a pretty good rule.

Are there any good ones nowadays that don’t sound like a robot?

Are we sure he’s not just defending the hopelessly corrupt Clarence Thomas?

Didn’t expect the deep state to be the national park rangers.🎶

Even cats will fuck you up if they really intend to.

This is my dog. It took so damned long, and so much careful training, to get her to accept that sometimes I have to go to work but that I always come back.

Sorry to tell you but I’m a millennial in law school right now and all my classmates are zoomers. 😬

I guess this is supposed to be funny but it reads as sad and abusive to me.