The difference between "wow, that's true love" when you're a teen and don't really understand the full weight of the things happening vs "wow, that's such a shitty thing to do" when you're in your 30s? And those are reactions to the same actions? Yeah.
Shipping, jokes, and fantasies aside, can you imagine how much effort Frank needs to put into his relationship with his kids for them to create him friendship bracelets? For them (their voices, their faces) to, supposedly, light up when Dad is talking to them? For Frank to be present enough in their lives for them to (presumably) adore him? And miss him very much, too.
All of that while he was studying, then dealing with his addiction, now going through his fourth year residency for the second time, and then he's gonna become a "grown up" doctor and will, perhaps, be missing for longer?
Frank doesn't seem to respect his wife (anymore?), but his kids are his world. Except if he was asked to choice between the kids and medicine, he MIGHT choose the kids, but it would pain him greatly. He loves being a doctor. He IS a good doctor. So even then I'm not sure that he'd walk away from medicine, because he was and still IS working hard to "graduate". Because it's borderline just as, if not more important to him.
He's balancing the heck out of his relationship with his kids, his wife, his work, the work team and especially his boss (Robby means a lot to him, whether people like it or not)—the best he can.
Frank Langdon is truly trying.
"My wife threatened to divorce me. I almost lost my kids." Why does it feel like, while he'd try to fix it in order to keep his access to the kids, he still wouldn't give up medicine? Maybe he'd be distraught, but it's like giving up EVERYTHING he worked so hard for? Especially if Abby left him? So he'd be with no wife, kids, with a high energy untrained dog, and then with no job either? That's an immediate relapse—or at least that's how it feels.
So yeah, even if Abby left and Frank would be facing divorce, sleeping at a new apartment/in his car/in the hospital, he'd still show up at work and try to function. Hell, I feel like that might be the only thing that would carry him through that dark time, just like it works for Robby ("but it's killing me" part aside, his work is the only place where he can have things semi in order. Same would be for Langdon, I guess?).
4 a.m. thoughts: a shape-shifting au where, when Langdon fucks it up or feels insecure and wants Robby's attention / reassurance, Frank turns into a puppy / cat and tries to attach himself to Robby (to be constantly carried around, he in his hands, ride in hid hoodie pocket if a kitten). but when Robby is really mad and he can't make Frank turn back, he either locks Frank somewhere or just gets him to Dana.
"take him. I can't deal with this anymore."
then Frank meows / whines non-stop, exhausting Dana, wanting to be reunited with Robby. Dana'd be like, "you can stop this at any moment."
but no, no, he can't, he must complain and be delivered back to his boyfriend. (and maybe there's a time limit. maybe, when he changes, he needs to stay in that form for a specific period of time before he can shift back into his human body.)
Frank losing himself in the moment and taking pics, short videos of Robby while fucking him (the expressions of pleasure on Robby's face? Frank wants to remember that). Later he finds those in his camera roll, freaks out a bit and is grateful Abby or the kids haven't stumbled upon those, but also refuses to delete them. Removes any kind of bio security (face ID, fingerprint) and changes his password so his family can't get into it by chance.
Surely it won't bite him in the ass at any point later.
Even though Abby is not the one to be suspicious or actively check his phone, she's still confused when Frank gives her some lame excuse ("The kids at work must have seen my password and got into my phone, so I had to change it") and instead of telling her the password, he unlock the phone himself. On top of that, he carries the phone on him at all times. Not like he wasn't doing it before, that's just Frank, but that change in his behavior is definitely not good.
Ooc but: perhaps she's even suspecting he's cheating (although she is DEFINITELY not prepared to find the kind of explicit content Frank has on his phone) and lets him get away with it anyway. (Perhaps she has nowhere else to go? And got used to his antics? Or too tired of them to actually do something about it.)
12 steps program sucks big time. It sucks even more that addicts of any kind are being pushed into that program. "Realize and embrace there's a Higher power." Fuck no? Go fuck yourself.
Science all the way for me. I refuse to listen to any other nonsense.
people can be so disingenuous when telling people with EDs that they want them to heal. It's only when the person is anorexic AND skinny that they have sympathy, and they only want people to heal if they stay skinny.
When I started eating again during my ED recovery, I started gaining weight and holding onto it because my body was likely terrified of going without food for so long again.
And guess what? A lot of people in my life talked negatively about my weight gain either to my face or behind my back. People who *knew* that I had been starving myself. They claimed it was about my health, but I know now that it was fatphobia. It was much healthier for me to be eating 3 meals a day than starving myself 90% of the time, but they just saw that I had gone from skinny to fat, and to them, the fat was worse than the malnutrition.
I'm fat now, and much better off. No one who had bad things to say stayed in my life. And I'm better for it. But I worry about fat people with ED's who don't have the support I had. I worry about people who are ready to heal but the shaming from outside sources keep them in their illness or push them back in if they started to heal.
