getting through heartbreak one step at a time

I've just ended a relationship of sixteen years, and I'm putting things here-- ones that make me feel better, or seen. Maybe you'll feel seen too.

[ahedderick]

This was quite a read:

Labor Diggers: A Framework for Understanding Gendered Labor Exploitation in Modern Relationships

I previously published my theory of Labor Digging, a phrase I coined to describe a social phenomenon that I observed. Let's dig a little dee

"The term “labor digger” does not come from tradition or folklore. I coined it to describe a pattern I saw repeatedly in modern heterosexual relationships: men who bring little to the table except 8 hours of labor outside of the home and a paycheck, but expect full-course meals, clean dishes, warm beds, well-managed lives, and unending emotional support… in addition to their partners working the same 8 hours.

Where society has long recognized and demonized the figure of the “gold digger”, (a woman who allegedly leverages beauty or sex appeal to access a man’s finances), there has been no equivalent term for men who leverage pervasive gendered expectations, societal pressure, or passive resistance to access a woman’s labor. This imbalance is rampant. The labor digger is the man who does not necessarily want your money but wants the benefit of your labor without offering anything equitable in return."

[thememedaddy]

[allsadnshit]

Woke up from a weird nap and saw this reel and it's making me feel like I need to get up and walk for like an hour

[soul-from-another-era]

Unconditional love isn't a free pass to hurt me.

[crumblingshale]

you do not have the privilege of treating me like a sex object if you have not first demonstrated that you do not see me as a sex object.

[crumblingshale]

you have full permission to send this to someone who isnt treating you like youre a person with agency and autonomy and a life beyond the kinks you enjoy, and is instead trying to solicit sexual conversations and little else, and let them know theyre being an ass for doing so.

[crumblingshale]

REALLLLLLL

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

You're not actually a better friend for not articulating and respecting your own needs, limits and boundaries. Your lack of communication and boundaries is not some impressive sacrifice. You're not doing anyone any favors by acting like you're okay with things you aren't okay with. You're just building burnout and resentment that will eventually damage the relationship in question. And when you eventually snap and walk away because you silently overburdened yourself to be a "good friend", it won't be the other persons fault

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

All of this, plus:

Every time you pretend you're okay with things you're not okay with, every time you refuse to share your real feelings w a friend, you're building distance into that relationship. Working through disagreements or conflicting needs can itself be a bonding experience! Disagreements are necessary for learning to understand each other well enough to love each other well!

Having the courage to be honest isn't being mean, it's inviting people to more closeness than you currently share. You aren't being a better friend by refusing to offer that invitation, no matter what your justifications are for that refusal.

[omneco]

[shooting-stars-andsatellites]

Adult realization: you will make mistakes, you will act irrationally. You will commit some wrongs that cannot be fully righted. People will dislike you and misunderstand you for all sorts of reasons. None of these make you a bad person. All you can do is try your best to be kind and just to people, grow and learn.

[puppygirllaika]

in addition: Trying to avoid ever doing these things will cost you in ways you cannot comprehend until you stop and accept this.

[ariaste]

The obsessive avoidance thing is called “people pleasing.” A lot of folks think this is a good thing (like “[chirpy white girl voice] Guess I’m just a people-pleaser! <3”). It is not a good thing. As @puppygirllaika says, you cannot comprehend how it will cost you. Being a people-pleaser will ruin your fucking life.

Why? Because trying to avoid ever making a mistake or being disliked/misunderstood leads you to into a habit of sacrificing your boundaries, ignoring your own needs, anxiously trying to maintain control of everything and everyone around you, and not standing up for yourself – sometimes in big ways, but more often in really small ways which seem, individually, trivial and easy to shrug off: Not a big deal. Not worth getting into a fight about. Not worth the nagging. Not worth it. Enduring little discomfort is easier than the energy expenditure of making the discomfort stop.

But every drop of water erodes a rock, and every time you violate your own boundaries, you get eroded too. It will ruin your life. And it will ruin ALL your relationships – because you’re not truly pleasing people; you’re just appeasing them.

Speaking as someone who has been dealing with this shit in therapy for years, it’s literally like trying to break a drug or alcohol addiction. You know the way people say, “No, I didn’t just get rid of my alcoholism. I’m always going to be an alcoholic, but now I’m a recovering alcoholic and I’ve been sober for 5 years”? It’s like that. I am a recovering people-pleaser. I will always be a people-pleaser, that addiction is always going to be with me and it’s always going to be something I have to fight against.

(Piss-on-the-poor reading comprehension note: There is a difference between being kind/generous and addictive people-pleasing. My personal experience of the difference between the two is that the former generally makes me feel REALLY GOOD–I’m smiling and walking with a bounce in my step for the rest of the day. The latter generally makes me feel tense, anxious, guarded or, at best, faintly relieved that I avoided a confrontation… or at worst, numb and emotionless because I decided Not To Let This Bug Me and so I shut down all my feelings. Sometimes there is an opportunity to be kind/generous but something in my brain snags and I think, “I HAVE to do this or they’ll hate me” – that’s the people-pleasing voice. I do the kind thing because it’s the right thing to do, but the joy of it has been stolen from me, because I have stolen consent from myself. When you can’t say no, then a yes is meaningless.)

[our-queer-experience]

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

it’s totally normal and okay if the stages of grief overlap and you’re in more than one at a time

[puffinproof]

okay I have some very strong feelings about this so I'm going to try to be gentle

the "stages" of grief do not exist. the kindest thing you can do to yourself is to take that standard and throw it out the window, because the truth is they WILL overlap, you WILL experience them out of order, and you WILL be going through them in some capacity for the rest of your life. and that's okay.

so yes, it is normal if they overlap. it is normal if you don't experience a stage at all. it is normal if you ruminate in one stage and pass through another like its nothing. whatever your grieving process has been, whatever it has looked like ? I can 100% guarantee it is normal.

grief is not linear, it is cyclical. its not one-and-done, it is incredibly likely you will revisit stages later. this IS normal, do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

there is no timeline to grief, no timer. grief does not go away. it becomes an ache, a sore spot that gets bumped or poked sometimes, and maybe we forget its there most of the time but it is still there. my theory ? grief is just love. you still love whatever or whoever you lost, and you probably always will, so you have to make room for your grief. it WILL get easier, I promise.

I am 25 years old. I was 18 when my father passed away. I still find myself bargaining - if I do xyz right then I'll wake up tomorrow and he'll be leaving for work like he used to. I still get angry at him, at the circumstances. It happens less and less it seems, but I still experience these remnants of grief. You probably will too, and it doesn't mean you're broken or you screwed it up. It just means you're still full of love, and your heart needs to put it somewhere.

do not let anyone tell you how to grieve. do not let anyone police your grief. do not adhere to their time frames, to society's standards for what is "appropriate" in terms of grief, its all bullshit. it truly needs to be normalized that grief is something that is constant, it doesn't just go away after a year or 5 stages.

we all grieve in our own way, in our own time, and that is okay. that IS normal. the important part is not allowing your grief to control you or take over your life. you can learn to live with it, and you will, I promise.

which is also to say. there are healthy and unhealthy ways to approach and deal with grief, but I'm not going to talk about that, and just say that while you are grieving be aware of the people around you who care. don't let them tell you how to grieve, but don't shut them out either. stay open minded, and just know you absolutely have the right to advocate for your grief, but you can do that without shutting out/down the people who try to support you. this is NOT permission to just. stubbornly reside within your grieving. please take care of yourself.

[danikriatura]

[innerchildabortionclinic]

Your takes on RSD are dogshit and you’re contributing to the stigma against people who actually experience it, do better

my "take" that it's a trauma reaction and you can learn to deal with it properly in relationships? what's wrong with saying that? I literally can't figure out how this statement could make someone upset...

[innerchildabortionclinic]

[merps]

[ID: Screenshot of a reply from user bocceclub:

personally I feel "people who have faced social rejection their whole lives develop heightened sensitivity to social rejection" is less stigmatizing than "idk you're born like that. your emotions are broken. don't bother trying to improve"

/End ID]

[scenerwiththegreenery]

Learning to cope with my rejection sensitivity literally saved my life and my marriage. Taking it out on others perpetuates a cycle of dysfunction because they don't deserve it any more than you did. It was vital that I learned that transferring my pain just added more pain for everyone involved. I never got the result I was looking for—acceptance—by reacting strongly to perceived rejection. I got the result I wanted and needed by taking a minute and a few breaths and saying, "Hey, when you said X, I interpreted that as Y. Could you clarify what you meant?" Most people are not triggering your rejection sensitivity on purpose. They don't have any way to know what is specifically triggering to you, even if they know you well. The thing about rejection sensitivity is that your mind has learned to see rejection in ambiguity, but that's usually not what people actually meant.

Give people a chance to prove your past experience wrong, and set them up for success by doing the work to dismantle your reactions to ambiguity. Seek clarification when an ambiguous statement lands like rejection. Set boundaries if someone casually jokes about rejection—for example, if your partner/spouse jokes about breaking up or divorcing over small things, you might sit down and explain how that is upsetting and you would like them to stop making that joke. You can be fair to yourself and your previous experiences, and also be fair to the people in your life now and your future experiences.

You have to be the change you wish to see in your life.

I know rejection fucking hurts. My rejection sensitivity was primarily set by my parents, who themselves were very rejection sensitive and took it out on me. They were hurting, but they never figured out how to ask for the validation they needed, how to seek reassurance in fair and appropriate ways, how to question their perception and interpretation of my words and actions. I have been on the receiving end of someone's rejection sensitivity, and it's not fair and it fucking sucks.

So when my spouse brought it to me that I was doing the same thing, it took a while for me to figure out what was going wrong. I did some soul-searching. I listened. I talked to my therapist. I figured out that in ambiguous or uncertain situations, I was projecting my fears onto them. It wasn't fair. They did nothing to deserve that.

So I asked myself how I could be fair to both of us. My solution was simple: I changed my phrasing. Instead of accusations, I made value-neutral statements: "You're going to leave!" became "I'm scared that you might leave. Would you clarify, is that your intention?" I get a direct response and it allows space for reassurance, which is what I really want in that situation. I wasn't safe at previous times in my life. I need to know I'm safe now.

It's hard at first! It feels clumsy and vulnerable. My anxiety increased significantly the first few times I tried this, but it got the results I wanted. Situations that would have escalated into fights, and triggered my rejection sensitivity much more, became conversations where I ended up getting way more reassurance than expected because my spouse explained what they really meant and I was able to see their perspective and truly know they didn't mean to communicate rejection. I just got scared because it was ambiguous and my brain jumped to the worst possible conclusion.

That's value-neutral, to feel scared based on past experience. We learn to see the dangers we've faced in the past. How you feel isn't always in your control. What you do is. You are not helpless to your emotions. You can manage your emotions, and to form healthy relationships and heal the wounds of your past, it is imperative that you do so. You have to separate how you feel from how you act. Focus on the results. Are your actions having the results you want? If not, how can you get the results you want? How can you communicate your pain and fear in a way that is fair to everyone?

Managing your emotions doesn't invalidate them. It just means you're not beholden to react to them. Many of us were not taught emotional regulation when we were young, and our parents never learned it. But you can still learn, and you will be happier and more satisfied with your relationships and interactions when you do.

[my-breakup-playlist]

I've mentioned before that I had to mark a calendar every time we had sex, because if I didn't then he'd start making loud dramatic sighs and start finding ways to incorporate time sent on the sexless marriage subreddit into all of our conversations.

I had to mark instances when I was out of town or working conventions on the same calendar, because when I didn't he would cite the gaps as evidence of emotional neglect.

There was no such thing as "no", just "not right now", with the understanding that it would happen tomorrow, or the next day.

There was a near constant arithmetic in the back of my head, trying to judge how capable I was of having sex on a given day vs how capable I would be tomorrow or the next day, or calculating whether sex was a better or worse way to spend the evening than helping him cope with the misery of not having it. Always there was the constant deadline looming over me: if it didn't happen at least twice per week, then I was being emotionally abusive.

Having boundaries was an act of profound cruelty, and one that demanded immediate apology and comfort in order to mitigate the harm I'd done.

In my attempts at dating since the divorce, I've noticed that my partner even dropping hints at wanting sex is one of the fastest ways of making me shut down and end our conversations. More than a few times I've wondered if I should just suck it up, match with whoever will have me and have sex until it's familiar enough not to trigger that flight/freeze response.

Which doesn't seem like a particularly effective or healthy solution to any of this.

And that's a bit fucked up, I think.

[closet-keys]

What I Learned From Dating Women Who Have Been Raped

I don’t know how I expected a rape victim to act, but I didn’t expect her to be so funny.

“We talk a lot now about affirmative consent and whatnot, but unfortunately we can’t legislate the actual change that needs to be made. Men need to care when they are making women suffer.”

“The fact that it’s not unusual doesn’t mean it’s not wrong.“ 

[navyasarchive-deactivated201905]

This article is really good because it’s written by a bi woman and it enumerates how bi women face specific forms of sexual violence that are created by how men view female bisexuality as “available” to them. I encourage everyone to read it! 

[my-breakup-playlist]

"There is a whole pretense that goes on around these sort of toxic sexual exchanges. A man wants gratification at my expense, but he tries to convince me that he cares about me so I won’t bail. He sees that I am suffering, I know he sees that I am suffering, but if we talk about it he will pretend he didn’t know. He will keep up the pretense that I matter to him so I will not cut off his access to my body."

That bit really stood out to me-- and the part about a partner reacting to being flat out told that coerced sex was unwanted and painful by crying so you have to swallow your own feelings to comfort them.

[remanence-of-love]

[my-breakup-playlist]

There's something very telling about the fact that every dream I have of my ex is a nightmare-- and one intense enough that I can't go back to sleep afterward and I'm fucked up for the rest of my day.

The thing is, they're always mundane dreams. I'm not being hurt or threatened or shouted at. But every single time, the overarching vibe is intense enough that it wakes me up in a cold sweat.

[shamebats]

This paints such a beautiful picture