Posted by fxckfeelings on January 12, 2012
People say that the most important factor in relationships is timing or chemistry, but you can’t have a relationship to begin with without luck, and you can’t be a loser in love if you don’t take your bad luck personally. A good match is hard to find and a not-good-enough match is hard to leave, but as long as you do a good job searching and, when necessary, leaving, you’ll never be a loser, regardless of whether you get “lucky.”
-Dr. Lastname
I am in the fourth year of a partnership with a great guy—smart, athletic, caring, fair, trustworthy, all of it—but I am bored out of my mind. Although he loves outdoor activities like biking and skiing by day, his only hobby in the evenings is watching TV. I am a musician, artist, craftsperson, not an outdoor whiz, and I feel like I am completely uninspired in this situation. I have talked with him about at least not watching TV every night, and we try for a while, but it always ends up back where we started, with him watching TV, and me in another room reading or doing something somewhat productive, or just giving in and watching with him (I hate TV, wish we didn’t have one). I want to do things together but he is not interested in any of the things that I am interested in. Maybe this is just the most a person can hope for in life and I’m spoiled for wanting more than loyalty and love from someone, but I feel guilty all the time for hiding these thoughts from him. Maybe he would be better off without me, too, you know? Maybe I should let him go so he can find a girl who is really IN LOVE with him.
How much you love someone depends, in part, on the effect of partnership on the necessities of your life, as well as your interests. In your case, however, you don’t seem to see partnership as necessary for the necessities, so the difference between what you two want may be be more than television.
If you’ve been struggling to make ends meet and/or raise kids and someone enters your life who’s decent and willing to share the load, you’re probably going to wind up loving him, even if you don’t love everything you do together.
On the other hand, if you’re a fairly self-sufficient person who doesn’t need a partner in order to have a decent standard of living and raise kids, then there’s no reason to live with anyone who doesn’t ring your bells or leave the couch. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 22, 2011
No matter how many times we say that no love is so powerful that it should render one powerless, we keep getting emails about broken hearts, broken promises, and the resulting broken lives. When love pushes you to fuck up your life and/or someone else’s, it’s your choice to either fight to stay in control or say, well, love is all you want, so whatever happens must be worthwhile. You might be in love, but you’re not without choices. And if/when you make the wrong choice, you can always choose to write us.
-Dr. Lastname
When my son was born 30 years ago, I met two other moms and we became friends. Although with partners, we shared the same interests and our kids got along well, and we spent the next years as very good friends doing lots of things together and with the children-one of those friends even married my brother (one son and three years later, they divorced). At the same time, I met a new partner (I was now separated from my son’s father), and we spent the next 27 years having a very on-off relationship. It’s difficult to sum up all those years but I think I can say that I probably cried through most of it! I should have left, I didn’t, he wasn’t committed, I was, I wanted a family life, he didn’t. I’m not perfect and I didn’t always behave well. Five years ago he had a son by another, not partner, woman and when that didn’t work out he and I got together again. Then last year, I invited my friend/ex sister-in-law to lunch with us, and they got together. The shock was immense … and it’s not so much the loss of either but this terrible feeling that I have been used as a sort of dating service by my friend and I just can’t get rid of this feeling of betrayal. It’s now a year on and I haven’t seen them since, and the emotional hurt is a lot less– I have done lots of new things, made new friends, and life is rosier, but I have this constant anxiety that this friend is going to take someone else from me – my sister? my other brother? and, worst of all, I have this strange fear that it will be my son. I would like to be happy for my ex and my friend, but I can’t. I protect myself by staying away but I have this huge sense of loss that I have lost this whole part of my life. I need to let go of this underlying anxiety that I am going to lose someone to her again.
When it comes to kids, we expect parents not to expose them to unnecessary rejections and losses from adults they’ll get attached to, who will then go away. When it comes to how parents protect their own hearts, however, the same standards don’t seem to apply, even though, as your experience shows, they really should.
Yes, I understand, you’ve loved a guy for 27 years, but it was always off-and-on, causing you intermittent heartache and wasting your opportunity for something better. You wouldn’t have needed a shrink, psychic, or your average plumber to predict a sad end to all you invested in him and his family.
That doesn’t mean your love was meaningless or less than real. It was powerful, at least for you. Like a good mother, however, your job is to protect yourself from real attachments that can’t work, and you haven’t done that. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 19, 2011
The purpose of life is not to be found in human connectedness, or at least not the kind that arises from the instant sharing of feelings, food, and/or bodily fluids. RomComs, pop songs and almost every advice source might tell you otherwise, but there’s no reason for people who don’t connect easily to feel or be excluded from the human race. Whether you’re attachment-impaired or dealing with someone who doesn’t know a relationship from a turnip, your job is to build relationships according to your own standards, in your own way. Even if you don’t share, you can still care.
-Dr. Lastname
Even in my 40s, I carry a lot of baggage/resentment from my upbringing. I was born in a foreign country and adopted by an older couple who had already raised two of their own kids before deciding to adopt. They were worn out, emotionally distant–my Mother suffered severe depression—so it was a quiet, lonely, and undirected childhood. I’ve since created what most days feels like a good life but working in a very competitive field, I feel like it can all be taken away from me in a flash (and, like most people since the economy collapsed, I’ve been laid off a number of times). I’ve always managed to find work, but I can’t help but think my shy and quiet demeanor has a lot to do with ending up on the chopping block; slipping through the cracks has been the recurring theme of my life. On some level I know I suffer from attachment disorder–connecting with others has always been a challenge and making idle chit-chat with co-workers and “bragging” about my accomplishments takes extreme effort—but moving forward I’d like to feel more connected to people I work with and form stronger relationships and friendships in my life. I think it would be good for my career and my overall being. How do I make that happen?
Before plumbing your personal history for the cause of your isolation, examining its impact on your resume, or trying to increase your degree of connectedness to other people, there’s a much simpler first step—asking yourself why you’re doing all this in the first place.
You’re not saying you’re lonely or that you wish to be closer to a particular friend or family member, just that, if you were more connected to others in a general, categorical way, you would be less disposable and less easily fired. That may be true.
On the other hand, you’re also saying that your lack of connectedness, like your mother’s lack of connection with you, represents a kind of failure that makes life less meaningful. That’s just plain false. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 18, 2011
People who need people aren’t necessarily the luckiest people in the world (although therapists can count themselves lucky for the business they provide). Just because you need someone or something s/he represents doesn’t mean you wish them well or have the chemistry to be good friends, especially if you’ve latched onto a jerk. Sure, crushes can sometimes be satisfied, but only if you get very good at keeping them from controlling you or influencing the way you make decisions about the important people in your life. After all, one isn’t the loneliest number, and it doesn’t always take two, so sometimes people who think they need people are perfectly fine all alone.
-Dr. Lastname
I have been in therapy for 8 years, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly or less, depending on life events and finances. My goal has always been to find some peace or grace in being me. I told this psychiatrist the first time I met with her that I “pattern like a duck,” meaning that I form strong and sometimes obsessive attachments. My attachment to her started that day and, this many years later, is still fierce and often painful. She is appropriately nonjudgmental and vacillates between thinking that the work for us is in this attachment and suspecting it’s a form of resistance. I can’t seem to focus on anything else for more than a couple sessions. I have read (obsessively) about attachments in therapy..,either to luxuriate in my own, or to get some understanding of what it is that has a hold of me and what it would take to get past it. Am I supposed to “work through it”? What does that look like? Am I supposed to ignore it? The only positive thing about this unspecified longing for her is that I have attached less to other “marks” during this time. Otherwise, I feel stuck. I think about just leaving therapy to get some distance from her and this dynamic, but I would rather just get over it. HELP (and thank you).
If you approach therapy with the goal of finding “some peace or grace in being me,” you’re in for a long, dependent journey with your therapist, mainly because, with a goal as loose as that, your journey has no real end.
This is the point, of course, where we say your goal is actually a wish, an ambiguous feeling not necessarily connected with your priorities or values. It’s a nice notion, but it’s not necessarily something you can control, and not something tangible enough for your therapist–or this therapist—to help you figure out. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 30, 2011
Needs, like the opposite sex, politicians, and DVRs, fall in the category of “can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.” If someone who once met your needs does so no longer, it’s hard not to feel jilted (even if you never really checked their reliability in the first place), and if someone claims you haven’t met their needs, it’s hard not to feel guilty and/or unjustly accused (even if you never considered the possibility that they’re simply needy to a fault). When the feelings of met or unmet needs threaten to carry you away, rely on the facts and reasonable expectations to counter the helplessness of needing something you’ll probably have to learn to live without.
-Dr. Lastname
Please Note: There will be no new post on Monday due to the American firework festivities. We’ll return to posting on Thursday, assuming we don’t blow our fingers off.
I never feel as though I ultimately have any power in a relationship beyond what’s given to me by the woman I’m with. The early stages always evolve easily, organically, the two of us meeting each other’s needs. I give a lot of myself and feel very happy and safe and good as she reciprocates. At some point, however, an imbalance always arises, and I find myself doubling-down on staying patient and compassionate while she’s acting less committed to meeting my needs. It leaves me feeling confused and betrayed, like I’m serving at her pleasure, and if I complain, then that’s it, it’s over. This happens again and again and I sense I’m missing a transitional skill set. I’m not going to stop being the type who invests a lot emotionally in a woman I want to be with. The question is, how do I transition out of that early, romantic stage into something that allows me to stay compassionate but preserves my self-respect as things invariably start to get complicated?
Questions like this are tricky, because at best they’re vague, and at worst, they’re a tad creepy, because they refer to girlfriends entirely in terms of their impact on your feelings, rather than the details of who they are and what they do in life.
Since we’re all about giving our readers the benefit of the doubt, we’ll assume that just pointing out that girlfriends are people doesn’t solve your problem. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 20, 2011
Common wisdom says to react to disrespect by “standing up for yourself,” but the phrase “common wisdom” itself is usually an oxymoron. After all, no matter how personal it feels to be slighted, most victims of disrespect aren’t chosen for personal reasons, but because they happen to be the closest person to someone who’s wired to act like a jerk. If you push for an apology, bouquet, animal sacrifice, whatever, the problem that caused it won’t go away. Take time to know what you want from a relationship and why you’re there, and disrespect will matter less. What will matter more is the value of your own conduct, which, while not putting a premium on whether you stand up for yourself, does mean holding your head high.
-Dr. Lastname
Well, I’ve been with my boyfriend for 5 years, and during our third year I got into his Facebook account and saw that he’d cheated on me by talking online with girls saying he loved them. I walked away for about 4 months. He tried everything to get me back and after he showed me he changed I thought I should give it one last chance since he is my first everything. I’m trying to move past this but I feel there is something inside me that wants to explode every time I am with him. What advice can you give me to forget this incident or should I not forget?
You’ve given this guy one more chance because he’s your “first everything,” which is understandable. At this point, however, he’s also your first lesson in how character, unlike love, is forever.
He didn’t do this to hurt or disrespect you, because that would imply he thought his actions through before taking them. Instead, he acted on his very flawed set of instincts, which is what brings his character into question. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 2, 2011
As feelings go, love isn’t so problematic—you feel good, you act nicer to others, and if all goes well, it is truly “all you need.” Unfortunately, if you’re not careful, love can easily triggers negative thoughts and actions that lead to a whole heap of trouble and turn love from something fuzzy into “a battlefield.” If you can remember who you are and what you believe in, however, you can take risks on love without losing your sanity, and find something more compatible with reality than pop songs.
-Dr. Lastname
You’ve probably had a disgusting amount of questions like the ones I’m about to put towards you, and that’s another thing that annoys me—I’m a cliché. 17 months ago my boyfriend broke up with me, explaining that he was too young to be in a serious relationship. I know this is perfectly logical but I have never been able to get over it, even though I do understand his point of view. I am still very much in love with him. I know perfectly well that realistically no one really marries their first love, that realistically it wasn’t even a proper adult relationship but I feel as raw today as I did the day it happened. I’ve been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I have regular nightmares about him. Last Easter I attempted suicide yet it failed. I’ve been sent to counseling, but I didn’t like it. I dropped out of university as I was too distracted and there is nothing I can throw myself into to make me forget it. The idea of him with someone else would kill me. I keep thinking to myself, I’m only 21 and I shouldn’t take this so personally and seriously but I do and I have no idea why. I know I need to wise up but I can’t.
Some say love’s like a drug, but we think it’s more like a (sometimes) innocuous mental illness; it doesn’t make you “crazy”—at least not necessarily—but it does give you weird thoughts, sometimes long after the relationship is over.
While those thoughts are hard to stop and easy to believe in, at least they’re not true. Like anxiety and depression, love has a weird way of keeping itself alive by changing the way you think and act, until it changes your beliefs. That’s when you’re in trouble.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 21, 2011
Love without trust is always a painful, combustible combination. If your partner does something to lose your trust, s/he’s got to get lost, no matter how much love remains, and you’ve got to learn your lesson and move on. If you can’t trust someone whose behavior is OK because your trusting feelings just won’t come, then maybe the pain is worse, because there’s nothing to learn and nothing to do. In either case, when the trust goes, acknowledge that you’re not going to get what you want and need to settle for the best possible disaster before everything blows up in your face.
-Dr. Lastname
My partner cheated on me while I was pregnant with our baby, and kept ME the secret. He told lies about me and told people that we were no longer together so that he could openly date the other woman. I’m struggling to stop thinking about it all, and the whole ordeal has triggered a particularly intense bout of depression and self-harm. I have hundreds of questions I feel I need answers to, but my partner is 100% unwilling to discuss the matter, seeing it as “dragging up the past”. My goal is to be able to get through the day without memories of the betrayal and the gossip that surrounded it intruding on my life.
When a guy hides his relationship with you when you’re pregnant, you don’t have hundreds of questions that need answers; you’ve got a few simple, sad, unpleasant answers that need to be accepted.
After all, you’re not doing a PhD in trying to understand him. That’s a waste of time and, like most inquiries into the sad “whys” of this universe, a sneaky way of avoiding acceptance.
You could see it as him not being that into you, but the reality is that he’s not into anyone, at all, except for himself. At this point, the only important question is one you have to ask yourself, and it’s figuring out what’s the right thing for you to do, regardless of what your should-be-ex might think.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 6, 2011
When love goes sour but doesn’t go away, of course you want to find an answer that will set things straight, even if that means indicting yourself for crimes against your relationship that didn’t take place. As eager as you may be to plead guilty, don’t ever accept an indictment for love-crimes until you’ve given yourself a fair trial. More often than not, you’ll find your only crime is robbing yourself of your ability to move on.
-Dr. Lastname
For years (e.g. 9 years or more) our marriage has been almost completely sexless. Within the past few years, affection has largely gone out of the window too. Our relating is often bitter, and this happens in front of our poor 8-year-old son, too. I don’t think I can feel attracted to my husband again, even though I think we could be friends if he hated me less and trusted me more. My goal is to have a relationship with my husband that does not f*ck up our son, or a “healthy” separation from him which causes the minimum of damage to him (our son).
When affection and sex seem to have worn out of a marriage, you might immediately wonder whether or not the marriage is over. That, however, would be jumping the gun—a premature evaluation, as it were.
Before you go deciding a sexless marriage means no marriage at all, consider whether you’ve done all you should to fight marital fatigue.
That’s the fatigue that sets in from feeling like you’re carrying more weight than your spouse, letting him know, finding out he feels the same way, kindly offering to take over his job, and arguing to a standstill until things blow up again. It’s unavoidable in most marriages, at least those that do heavy lifting; after all, the main reason for marrying is to have someone to blame.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 10, 2011
Families are forever, just like diamonds and herpes, so it’s natural to want to change family relationships when they’re excruciating or failing apart. Everyone assumes that our best tools are communication and understanding; for some reason, we hold to this belief, even as repeated efforts to communicate and understand have made relationships worse. Whether a relationship is supposed to last for years or not, learn to accept it as it is. Then your plans will become more effective, but, like diamonds and herpes still, that relationship will remain hard, and there will be flare-ups.
-Dr. Lastname
My father asked me to write this letter for both of us. I was forced to move into my father’s one-room apartment and live with him after I lost my job and ran out of money (I’m 40). I’m grateful he took me in, and I’m trying to make enough money to get out on my own again. In the meantime, we’re stuck with one another, and we can’t stop fighting. I want him to understand the fact that I can’t help having a terrible temper, being very distractible, and not having the energy to clean things up because I’ve been diagnosed with depression and ADD. He wants me to understand that it’s hard to put up with my being a slob and never cleaning up and that he can’t help getting furious. We both want to put an end to the hostility.
Asking for understanding from your father is a really bad way to try to reduce hostilities, and a really good way to increase them. And no, it’s not opposite day.
Sure, he’s your dad, but let’s dispose of the notion that parent-child relationships are always supposed to be perfect, and can and must be fixed if they’re broken. Just because you share blood doesn’t mean you should share an apartment or that you can expect to get along, if you do.
As for “fixing” your relationship…well, if your father was fixed, you wouldn’t be here, and that would be the best solution to your conflict. Otherwise, you’re his son, but that doesn’t mean you should be able to get along.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
