my account is back(deleted it) he/him or anything idgaf. adult. main blog is @2bitedust if you're wondering why I'm interacting with you. she is a member of the same system as me 3
Wikipedia's official policy is to use they/them for everyone who uses neopronouns exclusively. Found this out after trying to correct an article that misgendered a nonbinary activist - the article literally contained the sentence "they use xe/xem pronouns". But it got reverted bc Wikipedia doesn't allow for neopronouns! I had to check their policies out of disbelief and yep!!! that's the rule!
we need regular porn back on this website. no no donât get the wrong idea, weâre still keeping the weird kinks and the people who want to fuck industrial machinery. get rid of the porn ban.
both 30 years old, born on the same day at precisely the same millisecond, but she was born in the state of Arizona which does not observe daylight savings time so one could possibly make the (weak) argument that she's an hour older. problematic age gap?
alright alright how about this other chick. she was born orbiting a black hole and due to relativistic effects currently unexplained by established models we are both 14 million years younger than eachother. help me with the ethics of this
(And a narc's perspective on the "Narcissistic Abuse Cycle")
Maintaining relationships, especially romantic or queerplatonic ones where closeness and emotional intimacy are expected of us, can be very difficult as a person with NPD. Lower empathy levels, unreasonable standards or entitlement, emotional impermanence, jealousy, relational dissociation and avoidance of vulnerability are among the aspects of NPD that can make being in relationships harder, but difficult doesnât mean impossible, and people with NPD can achieve healthy, loving relationships if they desire them. As I am not currently in a relationship, Iâm drawing from past experiences as well as the experiences other NPDers have shared with me.
I will also touch on some of the misinformation and stigma surrounding people with NPD in relationships.
Side note, if you or someone you're dating has NPD, here are some resources (not by me) that might be helpful to you:
[Advice for dating someone with NPD]
[Communicating intense/irrational emotions]
Now, letâs get into it!Â
Emotional intimacy with NPD is tough. Many of us have avoidant or anxious attachments, have experienced abuse and/or neglect, fear abandonment or rejection, and never learned how to have healthy connections with others. NPD itself is built upon a deep-rooted insecurity, self-hatred or lack of sense of self, and that impacts the way we relate to and interact with others as well. That does not mean that NPDers are going to be abusive in relationships. Dating with any serious mental health issues is always a challenge, but not inherently toxic.
What is it like to be in a relationship with NPD?
I asked some fellow NPDers about their experiences in relationships. Here are some things they shared with me:
âComforting [others] is difficult with low empathy...Iâm uncomfortable with strong emotions and even laugh when I or someone else is upset.â
"I really don't feel any empathy for partners & can't even pretend to care abt their feelings."
"Hyping up my gf is easier because she's equal to me, so I idolize her like I do myself."
âI struggle...bc I see vulnerability as below me. I also donât think anyone is worthy.â
"I find it hard when my ideals are not agreed with...if you don't agree with me, that means I'm wrong and I'm never wrong. We have to talk it out if things like that happen but it's still difficult."
âI struggle with extreme jealousy when it comes to my partner doing pretty much anything without me, especially when it comes to other people...I rarely voice this though, mainly because I want to conserve their view of me.â
For many people with NPD, we want to control the image we project of ourselves. We may want to come across as perfect as possible to ensure we are liked and admired. Because flaws and weaknesses feel like reason to hate or reject us, we are more resistant to being vulnerable or admitting to any struggles we are facing internally or within the relationship. This greatly limits the ability to emotionally connect to and feel safe with a partner. In the past, my relationships haven't lasted very long due to this.
Splitting and black-and-white thinking can also be an issue in NPD. Of course, it is unrealistic to expect our partner to have no flaws, never get upset with us and agree with us on everything, but any friction, any disagreements, or imperfections my partner may have, can feel like evidence that they arenât right for me and our relationship is never going to work. This is an example of black-and-white thinking that has been left unchallenged in the past: anything less than perfect isnât good enough.
None of these issues are things that canât be worked on or accommodated. With therapy, good communication with our partner, a support system, and simply practice, people with NPD can learn how to open up, seek reassurance, and trust their partner. Cognitive empathy can be learned, but empathy is not essential to be a supportive and compassionate partner.Â
This brings me to talk about ânarc abuseâ...
I have discussed before why narcissistic abuse is not a helpful or legitimate term for the abuse someone has experienced. âNarc abuse expertsâ often have a misconstrued or totally false concept of what a narcissist, i.e. person with NPD, is, and ascribe general toxic and abusive behaviours (lying, cheating, verbal abuse, financial abuse, gaslighting etc.) to NPD, even though none of these things are unique to any mental health condition, nor mentioned in any current or proposed diagnostic criteria for NPD.Â
There are many stigmatising beliefs about people with NPD. For example, that we cannot change, that we cannot love, that we wonât seek help, and that we seek out kind-hearted individuals to exploit and abuse for âsupplyâ (attention and validation).Â
I want to point out that our behaviour in NPD tends to be subconscious and emotionally driven. Weâre reacting out of our emotional states, our egos and our trauma wounds. It is not typical of NPD to have a conscious desire to exploit and harm, nor to deliberately seek out and ensnare vulnerable individuals in order to abuse them.
Brains with NPD have neuroplasticity like all other brains, and NPDers absolutely can change, learn and grow. NPDers do seek help from within our community and from professionals all the time. Remission is real and possible. Healing is real and possible. Yes, it can be difficult with NPD to recognise or acknowledge mistakes or weaknesses, but that doesnât make it impossible.
Love is an ambiguous term that means different things to different people. Whether a person with NPD feels they love in a typical way, in their own way, or not at all, is very personal and individual. It can be helpful to consider that love is not necessarily a feeling, but a choice: to choose a person, to have them in our lives, to care for them and let them care for us, regardless of whether or not we can feel connection, empathy, attraction, or anything else.
Some people use emotional impermanence in NPD as proof that people with NPD cannot love, which is ableist. Emotional permanence can be impaired in NPD as well as other neurodivergences, which can lead to a person requiring a lot of reassurance, insecurity, and having more easily fluctuating emotions. If an emotion is not being felt or shown in that specific moment, it can feel as though it never existed. For example, if someone is angry at us, we may believe they donât love us because we cannot perceive the love they expressed in the past as permanent. It is not currently being expressed, and thus doesnât seem to exist.Â
As a result, people with NPD can seem to lose or gain feelings for someone very quickly. We might seem to move on more easily after a break-up. This does not mean that love we expressed in the past was false or a lie. NPDers with impaired emotional permanence did not choose to have this trait and it does not undermine the validity of anything we do feel.Â
...and the "narcissistic abuse cycle"
The effects of emotional impermanence and avoidant attachment behaviours in NPD are not a ânarcissistic abuse cycle.â
Abusive relationships absolutely can be (but arenât always) cyclical. A perpetrator of domestic violence or abuse may follow a pattern of love-bombing, a phase of calm or growing tension, an incident of violence and abuse, followed by reconciliation, in a repeating cycle. I am not suggesting abuse cycles don't exist, because they definitely do. However abuse is not inherent to NPD, and is not the same as what I am describing below.
In my personal experience, relationships will start off being desirable and exciting, before something leads them to feel unsafe and uncomfortable. This could be being pressured to open up or a disagreement. The fear of being abandoned can be a motivator to put more effort in and be what my partner wants, only for the avoidant behaviours to creep back in again. This can lead to a âhot and coldâ, âpush and pullâ dynamic.
Phases of enthusiasm for the relationship are not love-bombing, and phases of emotional distance are not meant as manipulation. Instead, it is often a constant internal battle between the desire for love and connection, and the fear of vulnerability and rejection, which can lead to inconsistent behaviours externally and within the relationship. The intent is not to control my partner; it is me trying to navigate the hurricane of conflicting feelings and needs as both a traumatised person and a human being who desires connection.
I do not think this dynamic is healthy or fair. I can only imagine how unsettling and distressing the periods of pulling away can be. But I donât think it is necessarily always abusive, and it isnât coersion or ill-intended.
With NPD, the constant need for validation can come at odds to the aversion to intimacy or vulnerability. We want to be loved and cared about, to have our emotional needs met, to be validated and enjoy the company of our partner, but it can also be exceedingly difficult to communicate any fears or doubts that may arise, and we might then find ourselves shutting down, defensive, distancing ourselves and sabotaging the relationship. When we realise what weâre doing, we might try to make amends, only for it to happen again further down the line. Recognising this cycle is the first step to breaking it.
Healthy love takes work
If one or more members of the relationship aren't willing to put the effort in, it may be better not to have that relationship. It's best to leave someone if they're unwilling to work with you, or if you know you aren't willing to work with them.
Any of us who desire relationships deserve to have relationships that are healthy and loving, where our differences are accommodated, we work together to make sure everyone's needs are met, and we are safe. It may not be easy, but people with NPD are just as deserving and just as capable of having this as anyone else.
Adding onto previous reblog, this one's really good for looking at relationships with NPD as well. Goes a little more into the hardships and emotional distance that happens for anyone curious on that front for real life relationships and not just how they should be portrayed.
be normal about people who wear diapers. be normal about people who need colostomy/catheter bags. be normal about people who need to wear pads or pad their mattress. be normal about incontinence. itâs not funny or weird or gross, it can happen to anyone of any age, and itâs frankly embarrassing that some of yâall canât be normal about the aspects of disability that ick you out
Sorry for us politics posting, but we have until May 22, 2026 to submit public comment to the FCC:
More info from GLAAD:
https://glaad.org/fcc/
They have some good tips about writing a comment and protecting your privacy which, fuck it, I'll just paste here:
Providing an email address is optional. If you have concerns about privacy, you may use your initials or public address in your local area, such as City Hall. Do not use a joke name. It diminishes the commentâs credibility.
Your submission does not need to be long. A single, well-reasoned paragraph is sufficient.
Do not copy/paste a template comment. The FCC values unique perspectives, and an original comment carries significantly more weight in the public record. You can explain why this matters to you without revealing private or sensitive personal information.
Here's what I said:
âFree speech is a fundamental American freedom. I do not need a warning about seeing queer people, much like I do not need a warning about women, veterans, or any other group of people.â
"the only difference between a cult and a religion is the scale"
NO. NO IT ISN'T. THIS IS WHAT THE CULTS WANT YOU TO THINK IT IS NOT TRUE. THERE ARE RELIGIONS THAT ARE NOT CULTS AND CULTS THAT ARE NOT RELIGIOUS AND YOU MUST LEARN THE DIFFERENCE
Open a bank account or get a credit card without signed permission from her father or hr husband.
Serve on a jury - because it might inconvenience the family not to have the woman at home being her husbandâs helpmate.
Obtain any form of birth control without her husbandâs permission. You had to be married, and your hub and had to agree to postpone having children.
Get an Ivy League education. Ivy League schools were menâs colleges ntil the 70â˛s and 80â˛s. When they opened their doors to women it was agree that women went there for their MRS. Degee.
Experience equality in the workplace: Kennedyâs Commission on the Status of Women produced a report in 1963 that revealed, among other things, that women earned 59 cents for every dollar that men earned and were kept out of the more lucrative professional positions.
Keep her job if she was pregnant.Until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, women were regularly fired from their workplace for being pregnant.
Refuse to have sex with her husband.The mid 70s saw most states recognize marital rape and in 1993 it became criminalized in all 50 states. Nevertheless, marital rape is still often treated differently to other forms of rape in some states even today.
Get a divorce with some degree of ease.Before the No Fault Divorce law in 1969, spouses had to show the faults of the other party, such as adultery, and could easily be overturned by recrimination.
Have a legal abortion in most states.The Roe v. Wade case in 1973 protected a womanâs right to abortion until viability.
Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. According to The Week, the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for legal action was in 1977.
Play college sports Title IX of the  Education Amendments of protects people from discrimination  based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial  assistance It was nt until this statute that colleges had teams for womenâs sports
Apply for menâs Jobs  The EEOC rules that sex-segregated help wanted ads in newspapers are illegal.  This ruling is upheld in 1973 by the Supreme Court, opening the way for women to apply for higher-paying jobs hitherto open only to men.
This is why we needed feminism - this is why we know that feminism works
I just want to reiterate this stuff, because I legit get the feeling there are a lot of younger women for whom it hasnât really sunk in what it is todayâs GOP is actively trying to return to.
Did you go to a good college? Shame on you, you took a college placement that could have gone to a man who deserves and needs it to support or prepare for his wife & children. But if you really must attend college, well, some men like that, you can still get married if you focus on finding the right man.
Got a job? Why? A man could be doing that job. You should be at home caring for a family. You shouldnât be taking that job away from a man who needs it (see college, above). You definitely donât have a career â youâll be pregnant and raising children soon, so no need to worry about promoting you.
This shit was within living memory. IâM A MILLENIAL and my mother was in the second class that allowed women at an Ivy League school. Men who are alive today either personally remember shit like this or have parents/family who have raised them into thinking this was the way America functioned back in the blissful Good Old Days. There are literally dudes in the GOP old enough to remember when it was like this and yearn for those days to return.
When people talk about resisting conservativism and the GOP, weâre not just talking about whether the wage gap is a myth or not. Weâre talking about whether women even have the fundamental right to exist as individuals, to run their own households and compete for jobs and be considered on an equal footing with men in any arena at all in the first place.
I was a child in the 1960s, a teenager in the 1970s, a young adult in the 1980s.
This is what it was like:
When I was growing up, it was considered unfortunate if a girl was good at sports. Girls were not allowed in Little League. Girlsâ teams didnât exist in high school, except at all-girlsâ high schools. Boys played sports, and girls were the cheerleaders.
People used to ask me as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to be a brain surgeon or the first woman justice on the Supreme Court. Everyone told me it was impossibleâthose just werenât realistic goals for a girlâthe latter, especially, because you couldnât trust women to judge fairly and rationally, after all.
In the 1960s and 1970s, all women were identified by their marital status, even in arrest reports and obituaries. In elementary school, my science teacher referred to Pierre Curie as DOCTOR Curie and Marie Curie as MRS. CurieâŚbecause, as he put it, âshe was just his wife.â (Both had doctorates and both were Nobel prize winners, so you would think that both would be accorded respect.)
Companies could and did require women to wear dresses and skirts. Failure to do could and did get women fired. And it was legal. It was also legal to fire women for getting married or getting pregnant. The rationale was that a woman who was married or who had a child had no business working; that was what her husband was for. Aetna Insurance, the biggest insurance company in America, fired women for all of the above.
A man could rape his wife. Legally. I can remember being twelve years old and reading about legal experts actually debating whether or not a man could actually be said to coerce his wife into having sex. This was a serious debate in 1974.
The debate about marital rape came up in my law school, too, in 1984. Could a woman be raped by her husband? The guys all said noâa woman got married, so she was consenting to sex at all times. So I turned it around. I asked them if, since a man had gotten married, that meant that his wife could shove a dildo or a stick or something up his ass any time she wanted to for HER sexual pleasure.
(Hey, I thought it was reasonable. If one gender was legally entitled to force sex on the other, then obviously the reverse should also be true.)
The male law students didnât like the idea. Interestingly, they commented that being treated like that would make them feel like a woman.
My reaction was, âThank you for proving my pointâŚâ
The concept of date rape, when first proposed, was considered laughable. If a woman went out on a date, the argument of legal experts ran, sexual consent was implied. Even more sickening was the fact that in some statesâeven in the early 1980sâa man could rape his daughterâŚand it was no worse than a misdemeanor.
Women taking self-defense classes in the 1970s and 1980s were frequently described in books and on TV as âcute.â The implication was that it was absurd for a woman to attempt to defend herself, but wasnât it just adorable for her to try?
I was expressly forbidden to take computer classes in junior and senior years of high schoolâ1978-79 and 1979-80âbecause, as the principal told me, âOnly boys have to know that kind of thing. You girls are going to get married, and you wonât use it.â
When I was in collegeâfrom 1980 to 1984âthere were no womensâ studies. The idea hadnât occurred in many places because the presumption was that there was nothing TO study. My history professorâa man who had a doctorate in historyâinformed me quite seriously that women had never produced a noted painter, sculptor, composer, architect or scientist becauseâŚwait for itâŚwomensâ brains were too small.
(He was very surprised when I came up with a list of fifty women gifted in the arts and science, most of whom he had never heard of before.)
When Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate in 1984, the press hailed it as a disaster. What would happen, they asked fearfully, if Mondale died and Ferraro became president? What if an international crisis arose and she was menstruating? She could push the nuclear button in a fit of PMS! It would be the end of the WORLD!!
âŚNo, they WERENâT kidding.
On the surface, things are very different now than they were when I was a child, a teen and a young adult. But Iâm afraid that people now do not realize what it was like then. Iâve read a lot of posts from young women who say that they are not feminists. If the only exposure to feminism they have is the work of extremists, I cannot blame them overmuch.
I wish that I could tell them what feminism was like when it was newâwhen the dream of legal equality was just a dream, and hadnât even begun to come true. When âwomanâs workâ was a sneerâand an overt putdown. When people tut-tutted over bright and athletic girls with the words, âReally, itâs a shame sheâs not a boy.â That lack of feminism wasnât all men opening doors and picking up checks. A lot of it was an attitude of patronizing contempt that hasnât entirely died out, but which has become less publicly acceptable.
I wish I could make them feel what it was likeâŚwhen grown men were called âmenâ and grown women were âgirls.â
I am 70. I remember all those things. I was a student nurse from 64 to 67 and we were not permitted to âfinishâ a bed bath on a male or insert a catheter in a male. Seeing male genitals might cause us âharmâ or upset our delicate sensibilities. Imagine when we graduated and were âthrownâ to the wolves. Imagine if you were a male patient who had to be the first to be âpracticedâ on by a graduate nurse. (Ha!) At the school I attended no student nurse could be married. Only one school in my city (Atlanta) would even admit married women and Male Nurses werenât even thought of. What man would want to be a nurse when he could be a Doctor. In all my training I only remember 3 or 4 Women who were Doctorâs and a very few, (less than 5 or 6) female interns or residents (and this was a teaching hospital) and most of those were OB/Gyns and one was a pediatrician.
When I graduated and was going to get married I wanted to go on birth control pills. You needed to be on them for a least one cycle before they were effective. I wonât go into what hoops I had to jump through to get a prescription from my Dr. (a man, natch) but when i went to the drug store to get the prescription filled I ended up having to get my future husband to âaccompanyâ me so the pharmacist âinterviewâ him and see if it was okay with him for me to be on the pill.
Even when we went to get a marriage license I had to get my Fatherâs signature and we had to go before a Judge because I was not yet 21 (I was 20 and 9 months).
I could go on and on, getting a credit card in MY name, etc., but I will tell you that WE MUST RESIST.
The number of people I know who romanticize gender inequality is frankly terrifying. A world never existed in which the lives of women were simplified by benevolent men who saw to her every want and need. That was not a thing. A world never existed in which women were all ladies, men were all gentlemen, & everything was some great big cishet fairytale. Feminists arenât a bunch of upstarts who want to destroy a perfectly wholesome and non-harmful system. JustâŚlook at history. Look at the posts above. We. Must. Resist..
This is what they mean, when they say âOld-fashioned valuesâ
When conservatives start waxing lyrical about the âgood old daysâ, this is what they mean. They are fully aware how much things blew for women, and they would like to return to that.Â
At first I re-blogged this with no commentary added because itâs already so thorough and good.
But then I realized I actually do want to add something. This was written nine years ago. In the 9 years that have come to pass the white nationalist Christian fascism ultra right agenda of misogyny has had many victories.
In the United States just off the top of my head a very few examples: thereâs no longer a legally protected right to abortion. Countless laws across our country police, how woman you must look or be to enter a public bathroom. We know with certainty the president and countless people around him are pedophiles and rapists. Womenâs participation in the workforce has been rolled back to 1980s levels. The pressure to be thin is higher now than 10 years ago.
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
prguitarman
turnnoffyourmind
