Shout out to all my straight sisters I’m so sorry 😞
Jesus, leave his ass.
We learn fast to be very kind and attentive, tho.
My mom, who got her degree in Marriage and Family Counseling when she was 60, says studies show that women will sometimes sometimes leave a long term relationship to live on their own for a while before seeking a new relationship, but men will almost never leave a long term relationship without having a new relationship either in progress or just beginning. They don’t want to give up the caretaker they have without another one on deck or in the wings.
This is so sad
This isnt cute or quirky. This means hes a fucking hopeless user
Please date a man who actually acts like an adult.
Ok I lived with my ex for 2 years and he literally wouldn’t be able to get his own food if I wasn’t at home, I’d get home from work and he’d be angry at me for “making him starve”
My current partner has lived on his own for 8 years and the absolute most I have to help him with is maybe sending him $20 so he can make a bill payment on time
It made me realise for 2-4 years I wasn’t a girlfriend I was a fucking mother
Men who have been independent are capable of reverting if given the slightest excuse. When we married, my ex husband was 10 years older than me and had lived on his own for 8ish years. Yet (and I allowed this until I finally got fed up and took us to counseling) I did 80% of the cooking, because I was better at it. Same with the cleaning, shopping, social planning, etc.
After I left, in the first six months I got texts or calls asking me to please tell him:
The online banking password (dude, I left you, you should really change that)
Where I ordered his special-wecial organic underwear
Where the good cutting board was (my dad gave it to us at our wedding, genius, I took it with me along with the rest of the stuff from my family)
What brand butter we bought
What brand of local kielbasa we bought
Who his doctor was
What RMV office had the shortest lines
Where the old tax returns were (in the fucking box labeled tax returns)
The phone number for his best friend
I shit you not.
Then he had a heart attack (mild) and none of his family or friends were around to take him to the hospital. But instead of calling 911, he called me, who by then lived 45 minutes away. He lived 5 minutes from an EMS dispatch location. He called me, despite the fact that he didn’t believe me 8 months prior when I was feeling suicidal and I had to call a cab to go alone to check myself into the hospital for a 72-hour hold. I told him to call 911, hung up on him when he whined about “making a fuss”, called 911, called his siblings and then texted them “your brother is having a heart attack, I called 911 for him, come home,” and washed my hands of it.
Emotionally vacant men who won’t do household labor or emotional labor are not Nazis, but they aren’t good people, either, and you don’t have to put up with their shit.
Millennial women of Tumblr, please read this post.
And then please: make the decision for yourself to never stay with a man who expects you to be his mother and servant.
Or they need a girlfriend that doesn’t mind listening and trying to help them work through their shit and defeat their fucking demons without asking them to pour out their soul to a stranger who is only listening because it’s their job. That’s the kind of shit you do for the people you love.
your partner is not your therapist. listening to your partner is one thing, but it is not their responsibility to help you work through your shit. that is on you.
one more time.
your partner is not your therapist.
also if I may hop onto this, I REALLY hate when people try to spin “therapists only listen because it’s their job” as a BAD thing. can you imagine if we tried to apply that to literally any other profession?
“why take your phone into the store to get it fixed? they don’t care about you, they’re only doing their job.”
“I don’t want to order a pizza. they’re not making it for me out of the goodness of their hearts, they’re only doing it because it’s their job.”
“why didn’t you just have your girlfriend do that surgery instead of going to a stranger who only saved your life because it’s their job?”
it’s their job because they are better equipped to do it than the other people in your life. jesus christ.
Relationships get so bananas when you start deciphering the other person’s love language.
Like I thought I was just acquaintances with this person because they never told me details about themselves and we just talked movies and writing . But then they made time to have coffee with me and they showed up out of breath because they ran. Like. RAN to be on time for coffee with me?
And I was like “i don’t mind waiting” cause I never want to run
But they said they wanted every minute they could get because I’m so busy usually
Which is when it clicked that I didn’t get how much they considered me a friend because I just straight away didn’t see MY signs of affection in them and went “cool! Casual buds it is.” But now that I’m seeing their signs of affection, I feel a little silly for dismissing them like that even though I felt like we could be best bros.
Anyway, some people show affection through time or intensity or commitment and not vocally. I really have to remember that!
Sometimes I think about how the way I met my wife was like a fanfiction
We both had a scholarship to a college soccer team and were the only two competing for center forward, we hit it off instantly and became close friends right away. When our team went to nationals, we had to share a bed and ended up snuggling (and I was, up until that point, absolutely not a physically affectionate person). After we returned home I kept sneaking into her room because I couldn’t sleep without her. Our friends started accusing us of being together and talking crap so, to spite them, we thought it would be a good idea to fake date and sometimes held hands and stuff. We ended up kissing right before she left the country for almost a month and we basically pretended it never happened, and when she came back it happened again and again and then escalated. Cue these lines, verbatin:
Me: *grabs the hand heading between my legs* “Wait, wait.” *sighs, drops forehead to hers* “We’re idiots.”
Her, breathlessly, eyes on my lips: “I’ve always been an idiot.” *swoops in for another kiss*
We ended up taking and decide to be friends with benefits, but JUST kissing benefits, no sex, and then 5 minutes later we had sex. We sleep together for a couple weeks (all the time, any and everywhere) before deciding to make it official, then after another couple weeks say I love you (initially via her closing her eyes and moving her palm from her heart to mine back and forth like a useless lesbian), then about a month later talk about how we wanna get married.
Fast forward a year and we go to university together and we’re roommates. Fast forward four years and we’re married and eloping to Harry Potter World and the beach. Fast forward almost 7 years from when we met and we’re living in the same hometown we first met in and she’s the assistant coach for the team we used to play for. Sex life better than ever (“that much great sex all the time after years together in fics is unrealistic” my ass), I can’t cook for shit but I try, we ride bikes around town and we’re basically the only gays in the village and there’s a little rainbow statue on the outside of our windowsill.
7 years ago I was so in love with her I could barely breathe, and I love her a thousand times more now than I did then.
Unpopular opinion: straight people using “partner” to refer to their SO actually helps normalize the term so that lgbt folx can use it without automatically outing themselves to strangers. It also helps other straight ppl get comfortable with the fact that strangers aren’t entitled to information about other people’s gender or sexuality.
Give op their hard-earned notes
Tbh I hear “partner” and assume gay, I didn’t know straights used it. Very fair point, OP
I hear ‘partner’ and think ‘gay’ too. A girl at work used it for months and I just went with it. When she would say ‘he’ I even thought maybe he was trans*. Anyways, someone using partner makes me more comfortable and I came out to her. She was just an intelligent straight girl that liked the term and was knowledgeable in human sexuality so definitely someone I should have felt comfortable coming out too. It’s a good sign of a straight person uses it IMO.
As a mental health clinician, this is actually my blanket term when discussing any romantic relationship. I agree it normalizes it, but I also think it’s a relatively safe term to use to describe most romantic relationships without making any assumptions about the person’s orientation or identity. I also use the word “partnered” when describing a monogamous relationship status.
The term “partner” also removes the implied hierarchy of boyfriend/girlfriend vs husband/wife. This is relevant both to non-monogamous people, and unmarried individuals for whom the importance of their relationship isn’t dictated by its legal status.
The “friend zone” and unrequited love are not the same thing. Unrequited love is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, I am sad about that.” The “friend zone” is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, you have therefore wronged me.”
Unrequited love is, “My unilateral crush is my problem.” The “friend zone” is, “My unilateral crush is your problem.”
A long time ago I took a course on the sociology of marriage and my professor said “With compromise, you both lose. As a couple, you must collaborate on the best possible outcome.” Ever since, I never prioritize compromise in a relationship, only collaboration.
this seems like a great concept and all but. what does it actually mean?
Compromise is typically thought of as a 50/50 split amongst partner’s needs. They’re both left partially unsatisfied, but this dissatisfaction is deemed acceptable because it is ‘equal.’ However, with additional effort, many problems may be solved through collaboration; keywords: additional effort.
In collaborating, one may try to make the conflict more complex in order to expand the possible positive outcomes. This requires trust in both parties, empathy, and consideration for one another’s needs.
The objective should shift from getting what you want and ‘keeping things quiet’ to making sure your partner feels heard and considered (as they should do with you). Essentially, you must trust that your partner has your happiness in mind, and you must have theirs, instead of fighting for your own best interest.
For further explanation, Google “compromise vs collaboration.”
unpopular opinion but it’s cool if you don’t want to be in love
like, idk. I used to feel so compelled to make excuses for being single, whether it was self-deprecating jokes about myself or insisting that I was too busy for a relationship or making myself go out on uncomfortable and pointless dates just to make a show of trying to not be single. there’s such an expectation that if you’re single you should be actively working of changing that, and it’s like. nah. there are 9999 other things you can be focusing your time and energy on and if you don’t really feel like being in a relationship now or ever that’s cool.
yes and no. I’m aro as hecky but this post is also for people who maybe want a relationship eventually but just aren’t feeling it right now. we’re all cool.
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