Posted by fxckfeelings on March 11, 2010
Virtually all mammals resent being told what to do (don’t think your cat doesn’t understand you, he just doesn’t care what you think). Unfortunately, most of us with opposable thumbs have to earn a living and/or share a roof, which means learning to live with authority. You might not like your given overlord’s opinion, but, while both parents and bosses are often full of shit, your role remains the same; be respectful, mind your boundaries, and take their words just seriously enough so you don’t get fired. And, like any good, domesticated mammal, don’t pee on the floor.
-Dr. Lastname
My father’s always been a heavy drinker (if he is an alcoholic, he’s “high functioning”), but I love him, and I’ve always tried to make him proud. When he’s really sloshed, however, he tends to go on a lot about how much he loves my older brother, who’s a lawyer, and how impressed he is with him, and how great that brother is, and on and on until everyone else around him feels awkward (and any siblings that are around are pissed). It really gets under my skin, particularly when we’ve been matching one another drink for drink, but then I just feel guilty for being angry at my father when, after all, I’m a grown up who should be too old for this kind of thing, and, really, he’s a nice guy. My goal is to get myself to be less sensitive to the fact that I’m not Dad’s favorite.
There’s good news and bad news here; you’re right not to let fly with your resentment, but you’re wrong to expect your hurt feelings to go away.
If you’re a sensitive person, then you can’t stop the hurt, but you can stop it from hurting yourself or others. The trick is to shut your mouth, because, that way, you don’t let anger out, or alcohol in.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 4, 2010
We all have different standards for bad behavior; some people hate themselves for eating more than 1000 calories a day, while others don’t understand why you think it’s such a big deal that they drive drunk. While the opinions of those close to you are worth considering, the only true judge for what’s right and wrong is, surprise, you. Just as long as you weigh all the risks and benefits (and eat a cookie and/or call a taxi).
-Dr. Lastname
Do you think sex addiction is a real disease that needs therapy, or is it a way to make a big deal out of nothing that helps cheaters and the people they cheat on feel better while people in your business get paid? I love my wife—we’ve been together for almost 20 years—but I don’t think anyone would say I have an disease because I grab a little extra action if the opportunity comes along. I don’t think she knows I’m not faithful, it doesn’t happen that often, and I don’t think it hurts our marriage at all. It’s not like I have a steady mistress; I just end up going home with women I meet when I’m traveling sometimes, because it’s nice to feel young and like I haven’t lost it, whatever it is. As far as I can tell, everyone wins, because I feel better and my wife is less annoyed by my constant begging for sex. So my goal is to figure out if the way I live my life, which seems to be A-OK, is actually reason to go into rehab.
To rehab, or not to rehab. That is the question.
You’re raising the timeless question, and obviously, we’re not going to tell you to let your feelings be your guide, or, for that matter, your daddy, your minister, your rehab counselor, or your parakeet, Ray.
As to the validity of sex addiction, it either doesn’t matter, or it depends on your definition of illness. I define illness as something wrong with your body that’s personal, important, and out-of-control, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s cellular or behavioral, neurological or psychiatric. Or kinky.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on February 15, 2010
As Valentine’s weekend comes to a close and the Holiday Death Triangle of Christmas-New Year’s-Valentine’s once again completes its cycle of horror, it’s time to reassess what makes relationships last. Sometimes Mr. Right doesn’t have a connection with you that makes you see fireworks, while a connection with Mrs. Wrong does make you see fireworks, but only after her left hook connects with your face (and your family disconnects from your life). Valentine’s Day might be about love, but there’s a reason why good relationships last for years and Valentine’s haunts our lives but once a year.
-Dr. Lastname
I’m in my mid-30s, about to have my first child with my husband of about a year. My husband is a solid guy—he’s steady, and very caring—but deep down, I know a big reason I married him is because I wasn’t getting any younger and wanted to start a family. I dated a guy in law school that I was really in love with, but he was a lot older, made it clear he never wanted kids, and was your basic passionate, unavailable nightmare. I admit, I’m hormonal, which means my husband’s been getting on my nerves a lot lately, which just makes me obsess more and more about how I’ve settled for a life without love. My goal is to figure out how to get through the next stage of my life and live with my decision.
Don’t get superficial and compare the Valentine’s Day smiles at the next bistro table to your current mood and nostalgic memories of past lovers. In my experience, finding the love of your life isn’t too difficult, but finding a good partner is a real pain in the ass.
By “good partner,” I don’t mean someone you’re crazy about, under any and all circumstances, forever and ever, amen. I mean someone who is strong, easy to live and work with, accepts you during your weaker and less likeable moments, communicates on your wavelength, and picks up the load when you can’t. As well as someone whom you can put up with most of the time.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on February 1, 2010
Nobody likes to see their partner suffer (well, some people do, but that’s their own perversion), especially when that suffering isn’t just out of your control, but their control, as well. We all want the people we care the most about to be happy, but, as we’ve said many times, ensuring happiness of any kind is impossible, no matter where you live, how likeable you are, or where you went to college. In the almost-words of another (recently departed) Harvard alum, “love means never having to say I’m sorry (that you feel like shit, leave it to me to fix it).”
-Dr. Lastname
About 10 years into our marriage, my husband and I got inspired by a trip down the Snake River in Idaho and decided we should move there as soon as we could afford it. Something about the wilderness eased our hearts and made us feel safer and more grounded than we ever did in the city. Well, now it’s 15 years later, and we made the move to a beautiful house with a breath-taking view and no visible neighbors, and I found a way to telecommute to a job, but my husband still has to fly back and forth every couple weeks and spend at least half his time in our old city. The problem is that I can tell my husband’s not doing so well; he complains about feeling lonely when he’s on his own, and he’s restless when he’s with us, and then he blames me and claims the marriage lacks “spark,” and I can see the wheels going in his head, wondering whether he’s ever going to be happy. My goal is to get my husband to enjoy our new life as much as the rest of the family does.
The danger of any moment of happiness or inspiration is feeling responsible for making it happen again.
You got inspired by going to Idaho, so you think it’s yours to recapture whenever you want, forgetting about all the usual shit that you don’t control. So you plan for years and finally make the big move, and your husband’s “inspired” to wonder what happened to the big pay-off.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on December 14, 2009
As Christmas gets even closer, we have to help our readers with even more holiday-inspired, toxic self-reflection. The holidays have the unfortunate tendency to push people to examine and confront their hurt feelings, when really, the best gift they could give themselves is to ignore their feelings and just enjoy their friends, family, and seasonal baked goods.
-Dr. Lastname
I consider myself to be a pretty thoughtful gift-giver—I pay attention to what other people need, things they don’t even know they need, their birthdays, their anniversaries, and I usually get it right. My husband, on the other hand, isn’t sentimental at all about birthdays or anniversaries and doesn’t remember them, so he’s a lousy gift-giver and, I can’t help it, it really gets to me. After I knock myself out to get him a good birthday present, he either forgets mine, or gets flowers at the last moment, or thinks of getting me something and then doesn’t follow through. We have a wonderful marriage but every year around Christmas, his lazy, lousy gifting really gets on my nerves (particularly since I can’t help doing a good job with his gifts). It’s humiliating. My goal is to find a good way to address this problem so I won’t resent him this Christmas.
There’s not one, but two good reasons why it’s a bad idea to address the problem of unequal gift giving with your husband, and the first, it’s a safe bet, is that you’ve done it before and it turned out badly. I’m right, am I not? (It’s important for me to be right, given my Harvard background).
You reproach your husband for neglecting your Christmas needs, he gets defensive, tells you how he knocks himself out for you, maybe goes further and remembers the time you didn’t do your share, and then you have to tell him how he got the facts wrong.
Meanwhile, both of you are drifting further away from any spirit of Christmas giving, other than that old staple of gift-giving everywhere, the Christmas Earful.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on December 3, 2009
No matter how much someone loves us, there’s usually one thing about us they can’t stand. As we’ve said many times here, short of a new hair color or weight gain, changing who you are is virtually impossible. So accepting what you don’t like about someone is a necessity if you want to avoid relationship hell, and accepting that someone else’s non-acceptance is something you can’t accept.
-Dr. Lastname
My big sister, whom I live with, is always on my case about my spending habits—I’m no good at budgets, and she knows I’ve always been that way—but the more she nags me , the more I want to spend. I’ve been feeling really down for the past year or so, which also doesn’t really help me get motivated to do much of anything, including taking care of my kids, which just makes her even angrier, because she says that I basically spend money and she does all the work, including cleaning and childcare. So when I told her I needed money to visit a sick friend, she said she’d give it to me, but then there’d be no money for Christmas presents. So now it’s a few days from Christmas and she’s blaming me for spending the Christmas money and I’m tired of listening to her lecturing. My goal is to get her to find the money, which I’m sure she can, and get her off my case.
You’re pushing for money you don’t control from a sister who may not have it, and you want her to change feelings that aren’t going to change in a living situation that you can’t afford to escape. While you’re at it, you should attempt to eat a mouthful of pure cinnamon and cure cancer.
As you might have gathered, you can’t have what you want, any of it, and going after it will make your happy home into a hellhole that will make your kids yearn for the day they can escape for their lives and sanity.
You’ve got a right to your wishes—they’re human and understandable—but watch what trouble you create by making it your goal to express them. You’re not just farting into a phone booth, but laying down a shit as well.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 30, 2009
Seeing someone through a long illness makes saying goodbye a little easier, but that’s like saying that lifting weights makes it easier to lift a truck; losing someone you love is an impossible, painful task, no matter what the circumstances. You don’t protect them from death by protecting them from death, but by bearing the sorrow of their memories.
-Dr. Lastname
My father, a Holocaust survivor, is dying of cancer. I’m his only child, and while my mother is doing the best she can, I feel overwhelmed with responsibility and grief. I don’t know how to stop feeling so helpless, not just because I love him and can’t save him, but because he overcame so much to make life possible for me, and now all I can do is watch him die. My goal is to figure out what I can do for him since he’s done so much for me.
Don’t fall for the common misconception that you fulfill your duty to your parents by taking care of them and keeping them safe when they’re old. As a genuine geezer, Dr. Lastname can tell you with authority: you can’t, and it’s not your duty anyway.
No, I’m not telling you to push your dad out on an ice flow or forget about him, not for a moment. I am telling you to think about two things: what your goal will be for your kids when you get old and need their help, and how little you can do for anyone when they’re suffering from old age.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 23, 2009
The one gift everybody can expect to get around the holiday season is a surplus of emotions (which, as I’ve said before, turns into a surplus of business for me—ho ho ho!). The ghost of Christmas (and Thanksgiving and New Years) past visits most of us, but for those with rough pasts, said ghost can be a real bitch. If you keep your emotional swamp in check and focus on the positive in the present, you can keep your festivities from being too haunted (and keep yourself out of my office).
-Dr. Lastname
You said before that everybody hates the holidays, and I think most people hate seeing their families. Well, I hate the holidays, but it’s because I don’t have a family; my parents still drink too much, one brother is in jail and the other I don’t trust around my kids, and so every time the holidays roll around I get depressed that I don’t have anyone because the people I should be happy to see are the ones who made me the crazy mess I am today (honestly—I’m bipolar, but on medication). I’m sick of basically being guaranteed to hate myself and life all winter just because of what my family did. My goal is to find a way to feel better no matter what time of year it is.
There’s a simple answer to why it’s a bad idea to expect to get over the sorrow of a bad, abusive family; because usually, it simply can’t be done.
Focusing on your pain and waiting for it to go away will spoil your holidays even more than they’re already spoiled. Talk about a turd in the cranberry sauce.
Maybe you think it’s a holiday right and tradition to vent/celebrate your sad feelings with a shrink. Well, this shrink says forget it. I’m not interested, and neither should you be.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 16, 2009
Despite the fact that every human medical oddity on basic cable has a spouse, from the “Half-Ton Dad” to the man with a leg coming out of his abdomen, there’s no gaurantee in life that we’re going to end up with somebody, let alone with someone who meets all of our needs, be they mental, physical, or otherwise. Missing out on an intense physical connection isn’t a sign of failure or even necessarily great loss, especially when you’ve been lucky to have any connection at all…and weigh less than 800 lbs.
-Dr. Lastname
My husband and I divorced two years ago after twenty-five years of marriage. Believe it or not, the divorce was amicable; I’ve never been truly happy in my marriage, and the second our youngest left for college, I told him I felt trapped and finally needed a chance to find myself. See, my husband was the first and only man I ever dated after a very sheltered, lonely childhood, and I’m haunted by the feeling that my life is missing something because there’s so much about life I feel like I’ve missed out on. Now that I’m on my own and have a chance to find my bliss—to be in a true, loving relationship—I wonder if my unhappiness from my husband stems from the fact that I might actually be happier with women. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s not something I ever even had the chance to consider before, and all I do know for sure is that life with my husband, especially sexually, was never really gratifying. My goal is to find someone, anyone, whom I truly connect with before it’s too late.
It’s nice if finding and making the right sexual connection gives you a greater feeling of connection to life and relationships in general, a realization of who you are, an acceptance of your place in the universe, etc., etc., whatever. That’s what certain of the early 20th century novelists were trying to argue, and maybe the whole sexual liberation movement of the 60s and 70s was driven by that hope.
In reality, however, sexual identity is just one factor in what makes human connections meaningful, and you can’t be sure that your feeling of disconnectedness is a matter of sexual identity or, in a broader sense, that it’s within your control.
If it isn’t, your goal of finding a better connection can become self-destructive, because then you believe that you’ve failed to find meaning in your life, which is worse than the pain of feeling lonely and disconnected.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 12, 2009
Boundary issues are always a fun topic for us at fxckfeelings.com; from those who want to get too close to those who push others too far away, people are always clashing over personal territory while assuming the other guy is violating the rules. But what if we’re wired to see our territories differently and talking about it just gets everyone more annoyed? That’s when your goal gets more interesting.
-Dr. Lastname
My next door neighbor is your typical Mrs. Kravitz…always in my business asking me personal questions. Lately, she’s taken to walking into my driveway while I am working to get more dirt. My proposed solution to remedy the uninvited driveway visits is to add on to the existing fence, cutting down the easy access. I don’t want to have a conversation about “why” I am putting up the fence, so I am just going to do it without letting her know. My only fear is that there will be some kind of future confrontation because this neighbor gets insulted at the drop of a hat. My goal is to protect my boundaries, one way or the other, without having an angry neighbor to deal with for the next 30 years.
Using a fence to block out your neighbor’s intrusive curiosity may work…unless it actually does the opposite.
After all, it may just serve to whet her appetite, and pretty soon, she’ll have you under 24 hour surveillance with Predator overflights and under-eaves webcams. You’ll look like Wile E. Coyote writing away to Acme (or the German Democratic Republic) for ever-more-advanced fencing.
In other words, your goal isn’t to stop her, but to try. If your goal is to stop someone from prying when you can’t, you’ll go nuts, and your helplessness will draw her like a magnet (and your misery will draw you to me like a magnet, trust me).
If you begin by admitting you might well be fucked, then you’ll probably try cheaper options first (unless you already have).
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