Libertarian Prepper

@Eclectic: I found your post very helpful, thank you. After reading it a few days ago in the morning I had quite an emotional reaction and started journaling. I think your point resonated a lot with me: it is primarily about me, and not about her. I think I've been avoiding my feelings about my own sexual past as a way of avoiding pain, and instead that's been spilling out in the form of feelings about my girlfriend. Perhaps because she's made some bad mistakes in the same category as me, it's easier to feel my pain through her, sort of? Not sure if that makes sense. Yeah... I feel like some of the comments people have left, especially stuff like "man up", are not helpful at all. You don't heal emotional trauma by "manning up", that's called dissociation and it's at best temporary. That's also somewhat of a trigger word for me as my mother used to tell me that whenever I didn't want to obey one of her commandments. "It may be something it says to you about a person's susceptibility to consuming junk food instead of a more healthy diet. It may be that you imagine that they are weak-willed when it comes to temptation that is clearly harmful to them." I think you might be onto something with this. I do worry about her choices and how she would behave in similar situations today. (See below for an example.) What does a person's virginity mean to you? Specifically, what does a woman's virginity mean to you? Why do you consider it important? What does it say about the woman? What does your own (previous) virginity mean to you? Do you consider it important? If you could reverse your choices and be a virgin, would you do so and why or why not? I guess to me when I think of virginity I think of things like "purity" and "innocence". Very fairy tale kind of stuff. Or maybe not. Maybe there's something in there about losing one's childhood... Especially since both losing your virginity and losing your childhood (to e.g. abusive parents) are irreversible in similar ways. You can't go back and have a good childhood. Once that's taken away from you, that's it. Makes me quite sad... If I could reverse my choices, I would not necessarily still be a virgin (I think it's likely that 9 months in we would have consummated the relationship, I don't have any regrets about my girlfriend, only about how quickly we did it), but I would definitely take back losing it to the person I lost it to. This sounds to me like a big area to look at. The biggest regrets we will ever have in our lives are regrets over acts of self-betrayal; the second biggest, over the betrayal of others we love and who love us. These are the most difficult decisions in our lives that we will ever have to make amends for, to those we have harmed, including to ourselves for those acts of betrayal. Once we are able to accomplish that, we are free to move forward unburdened from the pain of carrying those decisions around with us. I think you're excruciatingly correct. I absolutely did betray myself, my emotions (by sharing with someone it wasn't safe to share with), and my body (by exposing it to someone who wasn't healthy and lied to me about it). And the worst thing is that all the red flags were there. I just ignored them. I have some suspicion as to why: a combination of low self-esteem and being drilled into me by my parents that I'm a bad person, and therefore deserve to be punished. I think I need to examine my own self-betrayal more. Thank you for highlighting this to me! Yes, I agree... I think I started dating too soon without processing all my traumas. Even the 1.5 years I waited was too soon as I wasn't actively self-knowledging and healing. Most of my focus was on immigrating to another country and getting a stable job for the first time in my life. My girlfriend was worse: she only gave it a week before she started dating and we started talking online, and her prior relationship lasted a lot longer than mine. There are times when we have to be really patient with each other and intimacy is difficult, but I think our commitment to self-growth, to each other, and to each other's health is strong. I think in many ways this relationship has both helped unearth and bring to light a lot of issues, but also been quite healing in terms of the love and care I've experienced for the first time in my life. So, I've been referring to this wheel the past few days when I've felt triggered and it seems like there's three main emotions (although it's somewhat hard to identify sometimes): - Despair (powerlessness), whenever I imagine that I'm going to be enslaved to these feelings and images for the rest of my life (assuming we stay together for the rest of our lives). This feeling also comes with a kind of hopelessness that the relationship is therefore doomed and I should break up. I know there are parts of my subconscious that believe relationships are extremely dangerous, both emotionally and physically (as I mentioned, I have some bad history with my ex and STDs). Based on my journaling this starts as far back as my mother and is only reinforced with my experiences with other women before I met my girlfriend. In IFS terminology, these parts are able to generate all kinds of feelings and images with the end-goal of getting me to break up and get out of a dangerous situation. They're called "protectors" and are essentially survival mechanisms. I think some of the powerlessness may also be about changing the past, both mine and hers... - Revulsion. I think this closely ties to the above. - Judgemental. I judge her for her choices. This feeling doesn't always come up, sometimes it's just the other two. I suspect I'm actually judging myself but taking it out on her, so to speak. It is true that I am insecure and I've felt jealousy too, though not often when I get triggered for this in particular. Do you have any suggestions for how to break out of this illusion? I think you're right, and we've discussed before that we jumped the gun too quickly. Something that says a lot about both of us. I would very much like this relationship to be my last, though. That's why I spent money on therapy despite being worried about my money situation, and why I'm here asking for help. "The first being that I was focusing outwardly in an attempt to avoid focusing on myself" This sounds like what I've been doing, too. I've felt a fair bit of anger, also. As well as compassion, because she came from a broken childhood, too. Usually when I feel compassion, the other feelings sort of "wash away", but it doesn't come up that often. Sometimes the anger I feel is at the people who abused her, and sometimes (if she was an adult by then), at her for putting herself in that situation. I think the latter is also an anger at myself for similar mistakes. 1. The time gap for me was over 1.5 years. After the horrendous betrayal I experienced from my ex, I couldn't even imagine so much as touching another woman for about a year. That took a while to "recover" from and I'm pretty sure there's a lot left to heal. At one point I even did NoFap for 3 months, in retrospect as a way of rejecting my sexuality I think, since I blamed it for getting me in that mess in the first place. 2. I don't think there's that much of a narrator actually. Then again... I think I do hear things like "Is it always going to be like this?", i.e. am I always going to see these images. That one comes with despair. I think when I feel disgust it's more like "Why would she do that?" 3. A few years ago she "dated" a guy who when alone with her would start to grope her even when she asked him not to. He also kept saying he didn't want a relationship. She felt uncomfortable with it but was also desperate for attention, and persisted in that "relationship" for a few months. She kept seeing him despite him ignoring her lack of consent. It never got to rape, thankfully, but her continued exposure to that man put her in danger and traumatised her, and says (or said) a lot about her past. It makes me feel worried and insecure because I wonder how much of a fight she would put up if something like that happened again. I think after the third time it happened she finally stopped seeing him alone, and tried to make sure others were around, until she finally broke things off. To me, the biggest danger was that one night she actually slept on the couch with him (they were clothed). She says she's pretty sure nothing happened, but she's also a fairly heavy sleeper sometimes, so that thought scares me. She's better about her safety now but I'm not sure she's fully processed that. I think the feelings I have when I think of that are dread and anxiety. Sometimes also anger. 4. Virginity isn't a virtue to me. Or at least, intellectually it isn't. But you're right, I'm acting as if it were. I suppose care in who one dates is a virtue to me... one I've not embodied myself, either. I don't think I'm applying any real standard here, it feels more like knee-jerk emotional reactions than anything else. Perhaps I would feel differently about losing a partner to illness. Logically I should but it's hard to say how I'd feel.

Thanks Tyler! I'll keep that bookmarked and have a look at it next time I get these triggering feelings. I have some vague idea of the feelings but I'd rather be as precise as possible, so I'll report back with what I find out when I get triggered again.

Looks like there were more replies to my old thread than I last checked! Thanks guys, and sorry for not replying earlier. There is definitely an honest effort, and our interactions have improved a lot over the past half year since I posted this. We're doing a much better job of not being triggered in the first place, and if we are triggered, we're usually able to identify that relatively quickly and see that it's probably more about something that happened in the past than something going on right now. Therapy helped a lot with this process. As a result, I don't over-react as much. Of course she's also grown and improved a lot. I think in the last 6 months there might have been two occasions or so when she said something I considered hurtful. As opposed to a couple of times a week when I first posted this thread. We're really tapering off here We're also better at not triggering each other. So in the past we'd have more issues where if I got triggered, I'd act out in some way that would then trigger her, which would make things worse for me, and so on in a spiral of negative feedback. Now, whoever isn't triggered first is usually able to be more compassionate in the moment and recognize that the other person is triggered, which helps the triggered person calm down too. I would say there's definitely been some overlap in terms of my mother. Not in terms of behavior, that's quite rare, but in terms of my neediness. That's really a combination of two factors: - I deFOO'ed near the start of our relationship, so my need for a family and to be able to rely on someone is greater than it was before. - My girlfriend is very kind and nurturing in many ways. I feel like in the past few months I've felt more loved by her than I have by my parents in my entire lifetime. While this is fantastic, it also means that my unmet needs from childhood are going to come up and I'll "revert" or get triggered to an earlier self more. She was. I recommended IFS to her and I think she benefited from it a lot. We both were in therapy for a few months at the start of our relationship (mostly because of all the triggers and issues). Her ACE is a 5 (mine is 6). We've both stopped because of money issues but plan to restart once we've saved up more again That was one of the doubts I had early on and we discussed it a fair bit. How do I really know she's doing xyz because she thinks it'd good and not just because that's something I want? She told me that sometimes it's both: she started therapy both because she wanted to remain in a relationship with me (and she wanted to reduce some of the bad behaviors she had) and because she thought it was good for her self-improvement. I don't have any doubts about her sincerity anymore, and on the occasions where it's not something she's convinced is actually better/good, she tells me that. She did quite a bit of therapy, had some uncomfortable discussions with her family (not enough yet though I think), moved out from living with her abusive mother and abusive step-father, and even talked to her friends about some things (to try and help them) on the basis of some of the things we learned together. i.e. she's gone way above and beyond what someone just trying to "placate" me would do. That's an interesting idea about calling into the Stef show. She's been listening to a few of his podcasts since we started our relationship, especially stuff around peaceful parenting, circumcision, and spanking. I'll propose the idea to her Haha, yes, I overthink things a lot. My brain doesn't switch off. This has its advantages but it's also a real pain sometimes when I just want peace and quiet. I do enjoy her company! Despite being an introvert, I spend almost every available hour with her. Even when I'm doing something alone like coding or playing a video game, I enjoy being in her company and sharing what's happening. She's my favorite person Which is saying a lot, because I don't tend to like most people. I like your simple reasoning, perhaps if I could think more like that it would enable me to be more present in the moment (see my other post).

Hey there, I'm hoping to get some advice on an issue I've been "dealing" with since I started my current relationship about 9 months ago. Basically, I seem to have an issue with my girlfriend's sexual past, specifically the fact that she's not a virgin. Here's a summary: - She's has sex with one partner before me, which by modern standards is significantly less than average for a 25 year-old, and I recognize that. It was also as part of a long-term relationship, so not a casual one-night stand or anything like that. - I've had two sexual partners in the past, so I'm not a virgin either (I'm 26). Any judgement and issues I have with her past I should (and attempt to) equally apply to myself. I'm well aware that if I consistently applied an idea such as "having a sexual past is a dealbreaker" it would mean I would never date anyone else. On a rational level I think prior attempts at relationships and mistakes should not be dealbreakers (I suppose depending on the details). Unfortunately, on an emotional level I am frequently bothered by images of her sexual past in my head. I imagine way more graphic detail than I'd like and it's emotionally painful. Sometimes it interferes with our intimacy... Since in our relationship we have a strong emphasis on honesty, sharing, and RTR, we made the mistake of over-sharing some details about our past that wasn't necessary. Partly that was her mistake for telling me certain graphic details I didn't ask for, and sometimes mine for asking. She did also on a couple of occasions put herself in dangerous situations a few years ago (before we met) and that bothered me a lot when she first told me, but less so over time. It's the thoughts of her non-virginity that don't seem to be calming down. I've tried to deal with what I consider "obsessive" thoughts/images with therapy. Both of us actually did some IFS therapy quite actively near the start of our relationship, which I think was very helpful. I did about 20 sessions but then I basically ran into money issues (and found out over time that my therapist was a spiritualist that believed in souls and life after death, indeed claimed she had "experienced" it, which made me unable to take her seriously) so I had to pause a few months back. Since I can't afford therapy right now, I figured maybe someone here could offer some helpful advice because whatever thought processes I've attempted so far (including googling advice on the issue) haven't turned out fruitful. I'm not sure what the root cause of these thoughts is. Perhaps finding that would help? For whatever reason, in my mind virginity in a partner is important. I'm not entirely sure where this belief originated from. It's not religious brainwashing, as my parents were vaguely Jewish but there was little indoctrination and I've been an atheist since I was 15/16. Since I was a kid I did however have this fantasy in my mind that I would find a partner, we'd both be virgins, and that we'd fall in love and stay together forever. I still think that might be the best possible outcome, but maybe not a realistic one, especially when both our ACE scores were pretty high (mine's a 6 and hers a 5). We both agree that if we knew of each other's existence from the beginning we would never have dated anyone else, but unfortunately for us both it was a journey of mistakes and standards that were too low and only gradually increased. One lead I have that I discovered through therapy is a strong fear of STDs (which relates to a traumatic event with my ex). However, we both got tested before we did anything and another time since then and all is well. Another idea is that I've had trouble forgiving/accepting myself for my own sexual history (I dropped my standards and ignored huge red flags and it bit me later), so perhaps if I'm not able to even forgive myself, how could I forgive/accept my partner? We like each other a lot and if I could focus better on the "now" of the relationship I think our ratio of good/healthy to bad/unhealthy interactions would be about 95/5. That ratio didn't start out this high but it's been improving pretty consistently since we've both been working on it (that's one of the reasons we both did therapy in our first few months). Unfortunately, whenever I get triggered and start thinking of her past, it interferes with the now... Any advice/thoughts/input/insight?

I've just read the thread about apologies here and I'm thinking now that half the reason the hurtful things my girlfriend does are so hurtful is because she doesn't apologize properly afterwards. Certainly at the beginning her attitude was very defensive when I would point out some hurtful behaviors on her part (which is also a trigger for her related to her childhood and an abusive step-mom who always labeled her as a "bad person"). I think the pattern until a couple of weeks ago was roughly like this (in chronological order of events): 1. At first she didn't really think what she did was wrong (defensiveness). 2. After much talking, explanation, and increased frustration and anger on my part, she admitted what she did may have been wrong or was wrong. 3. She said she was sorry without necessarily knowing what sorry even feels like (this was revealed in one of her therapy sessions). Her apologies are often intellectualized and I can pick up on this quite well, so I often ask if she's connecting to what she's saying and she's always honest in admitting when she isn't connecting. 4. She seems more concerned with me breaking up with her than with my feelings of hurt. During the first few talks about this she'd cry but because that's such a trigger for me around emotional manipulation (a crying girlfriend makes me dissociate from my feelings and empathize with hers, something I'm getting better at over time too) she's doing much better with this now. I don't think she ever cried to intentionally manipulate me and to some extent this is an issue I need to deal with also so that we can both feel our feelings without overly-empathizing with each other. 5. She almost always added a "but" somewhere that invalidated whatever she just said before and provided an excuse. 6. She expected or asked for forgiveness as if it were some kind of on/off switch, when really forgiveness works the same way that love and trust does. She's since recognized this behavior and stopped. We talked extensively about these things as and after they happened and she has made quite a lot of progress since. I can see improvements week by week where she takes ownership more readily, doesn't expect some kind of instant forgiveness but instead just lets me feel whatever I'm feeling and come to my own conclusions in my own time (regarding trusting her again), leaves the topic open for repeated conversations as much as is necessary, and commits to actual difficult things like weekly therapy, introspecting, being more self-aware, apologizing better, etc. But this is far from consistent and there are times when her apologies are like they used to be before, and that's frustrating. I guess a fundamental change like this would take a lot of time? Because this kind of pattern of hurts followed by disingenuous or unfulfilling apologies is so pervasive throughout most of the relationship, it makes a lot of sense that I trust her less, feel anxious during many of our calls, and often have difficulty feeling connected during conversations. There needs to pass a lot of time where her apologies and reactions to hurts are much better and she's more consistent about them before she regains my trust again and I connect more easily during conversations. I also have a fear that I'm trying to get a square to fit into a circle sometimes. Thoughts?

Thanks for reading my post and your reply! You're right regarding the virtues and contradictions therein. After we first met and spoke for about a month I had a lot of respect for her virtues, but that was without full information, and once that came out (to her credit it was all information she brought up once I asked) I felt like her virtues were tainted. I went through a bit of a mental exercise at the time to re-evaluate her virtues in light of the new information and her actions (e.g. it's not kind, caring, or honest to get into a new relationship so quickly and mislead about the recency of the previous one). Since then she's been working on getting them back, but I think like with trust it's going to take a while. You're also right that we both have a dubious history around sex. We've been RTR'ing around it and right now we do things like "emotional checks" before having sex to make sure we're both fully on-board and that it will be emotionally connected, and not something we'd regret later. I think I have some idea of what sex should be about, but what I've fallen short of sticking by that in practice. Edit: Also, I edited the original post to add one more point I had forgotten about (which she helped me remember) but it's disappeared now. I guess it's just waiting for approval again.

Hi guys and girls, Tl;DR I've been in a relationship for the past 2 months. We use RTR to communicate constantly and this makes our conversations very emotionally intense. Some hurts and red flags have come up (I think on both ends) but she brought up some of hers after we had already started dating and having sex, and due to the nature of the hurts and the fact that she didn't tell me upfront (misled me for one of them) it's been very difficult emotionally for me to recover from that hurt. Specifically, the worst red flag/hurt was around the recency of her breakup with her ex. We started talking (we met online on a dating website) in the first week of December and she had told me that she broke up with her ex in November, but that she had essentially started grieving the end of the relationship back in September and it was just a protracted breakup. Even then I thought 2 months was way too short for a 1.5 year relationship, but I was more or less okay with it. 5 weeks into the relationship, around the end of January, it came out that she had broken up with her ex just one week before we started talking, and that she had been having sex with him until the last day of the relationship. Clearly she could not have been getting over him in any sense of the word. After some talking she admitted and took responsibility for the misleading. We're not sure it was a conscious effort at the time. She understands why I'd naturally assume that if someone is "getting over" a relationship they're not actively having sex with the person. There was also no other reason for her to cite September except to make it seem as though the breakup period was longer. Is this a dealbreaker-level red flag? Should I break up? There are tremendously good things about her and this relationship that probably more than balance things out, but sometimes I feel like the red flag is something I should break up over. For more (and a summary of the good and bad) please read more. There are also many confounding variables, like that I find intimacy and relationships difficult and often terrifying, and I could be looking for reasons to break up because of that, also. Or that I recently deFOO'ed. I would greatly appreciate if people read as much of the story as possible. I know it's long but I'm also afraid that people will comment and judge without full information. Introduction I've recently entered into a new relationship (December of 2015) and there are some red flags and issues that have been coming up which I really want some advice or just a third party perspective on. Normally I would go to my friends (who all live abroad), but partly through my fault for neglecting them because of the time I've spent with my girlfriend, it's been very hard to actually get to any Skype calls. Hopefully I'll have one this weekend with one of my friends though. My friends have not been very successful with relationships and so taking relationship advise from them feels a bit like reading a diet book written by a fat man. Primarily though I feel like I've been avoiding them as a way of avoiding important information about this relationship. A part of me fears that they'd tell me I should break up if they knew everything. Having said which, my girlfriend has been supportive of me contacting them, and when I told her just now that I wanted to post on this forum she was encouraging of that, too! She said that either way I need more information and a third perspective and she too was curious what people would say. I think a part of me is also scared of people telling me that the red flags and hurts aren't that big of a deal, because then all of my triggers around intimacy and closeness with another human being would set off. I'm going to try and be balanced and fair to both the good and bad aspects of the relationship. Backstory We met online through a dating site in the first week of December. After about a week of texting we moved to texting on Skype and then maybe within a week after that we had our first Skype video call. It lasted 8 hours. I've never spoken to someone for so long in my life! I easily get bored of people in general and being an introvert I reach social exhaustion levels very quickly, but this was different, I didn't want the conversation to end. Since then we've been communicating a LOT. The logistical complication is that I live in the UK and she lives in the US. We decided the Christmas holidays were a good opportunity for both of us to meet in person, especially as I was getting furloughed and had a few extra holiday days, so we both flew to NY (a "neutral" location). We decided to save on costs by getting a shared AirBnB and also because we didn't want to say goodbye to each other at night. We had decided that sleeping together (I mean literally sleeping, not sex) was a possibility but if either of us didn't feel comfortable there was a couch as an option. We setup some sexual boundaries: we could basically do anything except actual intercourse but we'd only do what both of us felt comfortable with. Bottom line is that by night 3 we had failed, there was way too much sexual tension and we both have pretty high sex drives, so we had sex. From then until the end of the trip we probably had sex averaging 2-3 times a day. I think on some level we both kind of hoped it would happen. We saw each other again last week. My girlfriend came to the UK this time to visit me and we spent 9 whole days together. Right now our tentative plan is for her to move here in March or more likely April as she wants to quit her job and not live with her parents anymore and I'm bound by a contract that doesn't expire until 14 months from now (breaking it costs a ridiculous sum of money...). The Good I'll start with the great things about this relationship and my girlfriend: We constantly communicate with RTR and have done since day one. Actually since before we were committed to each other. This was largely my doing - I introduced the concept and constantly communicated my feelings and asked her about hers, and she reciprocated and loved the idea. She's ordered the book and is reading it. We split all of our costs half-half. When I came to NY and my flight was more expensive than hers, she paid for the AirBnB in its entirety to help balance that cost out. She wears little to no makeup. She also doesn't wear high heels to make her butt stick out. She's a minimalist, constantly downsizes, doesn't buy useless crap, and saves a very large portion of her paycheck every month. She embodies all the virtues I seek in others and strive for in myself: honesty, curiosity, compassion, kindness, integrity, and courage. She's not perfect of course and sometimes falls short, as do I, but she really strives towards them. She doesn't drink alcohol, smoke, or take drugs. A complete teetotaler, just like me. People like that are rare, even within the FDR community. She loves the idea of peaceful parenting! I'm not sure if she knew the terminology but from the beginning she came into the relationship with the idea that she'd never hit her (our) kids. That we should be respectful of their needs, treat them like people with feelings, etc. She's agnostic/atheist after being brought up very religious in Texas. She de-converted 2 years ago. I hadn't felt safe crying with another human being since I was 10. I haven't just felt safe crying with my girlfriend, I've felt safe weeping with her, and she handled it beautifully. This was trust she built up. If you had asked me 3 months ago when I thought I might feel safe crying in front of another person, I would have said 10 years to never. Following my example (and because of some of the revelations/realizations in the next section), she has actually committed to doing therapy. She's done two sessions and has another one booked for next week. She's listened to some podcasts and videos by Stef, read "On Truth", and generally done a lot of wisdom-gaining and self-knowledge since we've been together. We're incredibly open and honest in our communication, with very few exceptions (see below). She's the first and only person I've ever enjoyed having sex with (not that I have much experience - 2 other women). We're constantly curious about each others' feelings and are empathetic towards each other. When we're feeling disconnected or not empathetic we both tell the truth about it, we don't pretend to feel things we're not feeling and we admit/recognize when we're intellectualizing. We look out for each others' needs and highlight when the other person could be self-sacrificing (e.g. me staying up late to talk to her due to time zone differences and therefore losing sleep). She's very intelligent. I feel like she's my equal and this makes our conversations endlessly engaging and interesting. She's painfully aware of the discrimination boys face growing up in terms of emotional acceptance and abuse, and that men face in courts, in the media, etc. Moreover, she first broached this topic, not me. I would feel safe marrying and having children with her and knowing she'd never abuse the system in case of a divorce for money or custody. She's fit and healthy, and does a good amount of exercise. I do a fair bit too, and we have some good exercise plans together! The Bad There have been a number of hurtful things that she's done. The first to come up were mean or cruel "joke"-like comments, except they weren't funny to me and they were hurtful. I'm a sensitive person and do not at all have a thick skin, nor do I want to, least of all in an intimate relationship. These were not intentional or conscious and when I pointed them out to her, sometimes after some convincing, she realized why they were hurtful and has since made a lot of effort (and success) in stopping or at least greatly reducing the frequency of these comments. I think in time they will stop completely. Verbal abuse can be very triggering for me and still now I feel anxious in conversations because I don't know when an attack might be coming. It's completely random and not on purpose from her end. This is the environment she grew up in and I'm challenging it. But it's getting better. One time I was punished for my empathy. When I expressed a great deal of empathy for the pain she felt during a medical procedure in the past, she lashed out and said "Well maybe you shouldn't be in the same room when I give birth to a child then". This was tremendously hurtful because she was both threatening to deprive me of that opportunity and punishing me for empathizing with her. Later on we realized and it was confirmed in therapy that she was basically pushing me away because she felt uncomfortable with how much I cared about her. She has since apologized many times for this, recognized how hurtful it was, brought it up in her first therapy session, etc. Moreover since then (there was another medical procedure recently that I went with her to) she has felt very comfortable with me being there for her and her pain. She has a very dissociated relationship with her pain in general because of her history of child abuse. But she's actually actively working on it now. The recency of her breakup with her ex. It's in the TL;dr above. She's had just one week to process and grieve over her previous breakup and she misled me about how long that was and presented the relationship as basically over 2 months earlier, when really she was still having sex with her ex of 1.5 years until the last day. This feels like a dealbreaker type of red flag. For more information, this is the only ex she's had that she's had a sexual relationship with. The last few times they had sex she actually cried during and suspects her ex never even noticed. They were not emotionally connected at all and yet she was the one who pushed for the sex more than him. Perhaps the worst thing is that she never thought these two details (the recency of the sex and the crying during sex) were red flags and bad experiences worth mentioning. She never hid them directly, I found out just by asking, but she never came forward because she didn't realize how much of a problem that is. A few weeks ago, her ex texted her and asked if she wanted to meet up (as they had vaguely agreed on before their breakup), and her response was hurtful. She told him she had a new boyfriend and didn't want to meet up right now. The "right now" made me feel even more like a rebound or replacement as if she were trying to line him up for a possible future meeting if we broke up. This was especially hurtful because she knew how hurt I was by the recency of the breakup. Because of this text incident, I felt even more used as a rebound and insecure in our relationship and commitment. Afterwards, she blocked all communication with him, but closure is something she should have given all three people involved upfront, and not after a long discussion with me. I suspect this was an attempt to self-sabotage in the relationship. She's withheld information about another ex which she didn't even really see as an ex because they had dated but never committed to each other and so weren't "official". That relationship lasted half a year and had the disturbing element of him encroaching on her sexually, groping, etc. They saw each other maybe a dozen times alone. Unfortunately, after the first time it happened she kept seeing him, and of course it happened another two times before she finally stopped seeing him. The fact that she had completely blanked on the worst of those encounters until she really thought about it is quite disturbing and scary, as there was physical violence involved. This was a few years ago now but she clearly hasn't processed or fully understood and felt what happened. It's on her to-discuss list with her therapist. 2-3 weeks ago I had a couple of panic attacks, for the first time in my life. I think those were shortly after the birthing room comment. I had never had these before in my life, and it was very scary. I can suspect what was going on for me emotionally but this post is already growing very long. I haven't had any since then and things have been better. Also, during these attacks my girlfriend answered a call to be with me in the middle of the night for her (timezone differences) to be there for me and asked me to call her whenever something like this happened again regardless of the time. Still, this is a worrying thing and shows how difficult it's been for me emotionally. I feel a lot of emotional turmoil in this relationship. Anxiety, fear of impending doom, and feeling overwhelmed are some of the "negative" (I know they're not really negative) emotions that come up a lot, both because of the closeness and triggers and because of the hurts. Especially since the birthing comment and then finding out more about her exes, it's been harder for me to enjoy our time together. I get triggered and think about these hurts pretty frequently and it really interferes with my enjoyment of the relationship. I also frequently feel disconnected and like I can't fully be there for or empathize with her. Some of these negatives are red flags from her past, and others are hurtful things she's done. Those that are red flags from her past that she did not share upfront were also hurtful. For instance, had I known that she had had sex so recently with her ex and that she cried during it, I would have never went with shared accommodation on our first trip together. In a sense I did not give informed consent to sex because I did not know all that I should have known. Can these hurts be recovered from (on my end)? Are they objectively that bad? The one I feel the worst about is the recency of her breakup with her ex and that she waited only a week before dating again after the end of a 1.5 year relationship, and the text she sent him. Should I (like my therapist said) try to focus more on how my girlfriend acts in our relationship rather than on her past? Is this going to get better over time? A lot of these hurts are very recent. A part of me feels like her efforts to change are "too little, too late", but is that true? I have a rule against dating people I'm not comfortable spending the rest of my life with as they are now. This rule is there to protect me from treating people as projects or from unrealistically hoping that they will change, because in my experience the vast majority of people have no desire to change and never do. However, my girlfriend is actually changing and growing and working on herself. She's taken on some serious commitments to therapy and self-work, there are clear improvements as the weeks go by in terms of reduced hurtful comments and improved empathy and curiosity, etc. Confounding Variables There is a bunch of stuff in my life both in my past and that's going on now that is complicating things, and I think it's important to do a brief overview: I have an ACE score of 6. I begun my path to self-knowledge just over 2 years ago but it's been rather iffy in some parts where I spent a lot of my time dissociating, especially after the breakup with my ex over 1.5 years ago. I have self-sabotaging parts of me (sorry for using the Internal Family Systems terminology) that are really uncomfortable with me being in a relationship. My original plan was: I'm 25 now. Wait till I'm 26 and have some more money saved up and can afford regular therapy. Do therapy for a couple of years. Hopefully find someone I want to be in a relationship with by the time I'm 30. I never expected things to turn out like this. Now I've accelerated my plans and I'm doing weekly therapy sessions (sometimes twice a week, sometimes I skip a week) and it's terrifying because of all my traumas. I've forsaken all of my coping mechanisms. I used to spend most of my free time watching movies and TV shows, playing video games, and watching porn. I no longer do any of these. I've lost interest completely. The only thing I've done is watch 2 movies and those were with my girlfriend because it was on our to-watch list. I've stopped talking to my parents around the beginning of January. I had been blocking their calls and mostly ignoring them for months before, until I got down to just emails. And then I've stopped replying to those and they haven't tried to contact me again in over a month. Stressful work. Finally, I thought I'd share a text exchange we just had about this forum post: Me: Do you mind me saying when we had sex? I mean when we first had sex? On the forum Me: I feel like it's important Her: No, baby. Tell all the truth that you think is relevant! Her: I’m really eager what people will say! Me: It's going to be a long post :/ Me: I hope someone bothers to read it Her: I’m sure the people who bother to read longer posts will have more valuable advice

Marriage will not be a contract between you and your wife, it will be a contract between you, the state, and your wife. This is crucially important: once you sign a marriage contract with the state, both the husband and wife now gain the ability to use the guns of government to get their way (though predominantly the beneficiaries of resorting to government violence in marriage are women). If the only reason for submitting yourself to such an arrangement is that she doesn't want to inconvenience her parents (and have a shared name, although that reason seems almost entirely trivial), then I would think very seriously about this. If she's not willing to inconvenience her parents over a contract with the state, is she going to be willing to inconvenience them even more once your kid is born and you find out that her parents are abusive? What's her ACE score? What was her childhood like? Do you want her parents in your kid's life? I get the feeling that if her parents were peaceful and open-minded, they wouldn't be pressuring her like this.

This had no comedic value to me but it was really insightful. Thanks for sharing!

First of all - huge kudos for finally getting rid of your toxic father. This is only the first step of course but a huge and really courageous one. I figured that as I was reading through your post I'd comment on a few things in case it may be of some use to you. Just to point out - it's really not your responsibility or obligation to create an atmosphere in which you can talk about your feelings. That's your mother's responsibility and she should have done that a very long time ago. It's sad to see children raising their own parents. But I suppose it's better to have her onboard then not at all. Then again, that's not always the case. You might be better off building new healthy relationships than repairing old unhealthy ones, especially if you seem to be the one doing most of the work and initiative. Good on you for calling! I assume your father at no point asked you about what your experience of his parenting was like? That's really his responsibility to find out. Not your responsibility - his. The parent is responsible for communication with the child and for repairing any damage they do. Yeah, that's a bullshit non-apology right there (Stef has a video on them). You mean after judging you for sleeping around he then claims he won't judge you? Yeah... plus, he seems to have a lot of relationship problems of his own, so why does he consider himself in any position to give advice? Guilt tripping alert! Ugh, this guy is starting to really disgust me. The rest of your interaction with him is just horrible. So he is basically a womanizer but criticizes you for sleeping around? That's projection right there. Claiming to be unconditionally open to you while denying your experiences and feelings. Being dishonest about his view of therapy, etc. I think he might be a pathological liar and a narcissist. It's worth checking that out. When I found out that my mother was a narcissist and read about other people's experiences with narcissistic parents it was very helpful. It's a trap. It's a trap! He's using emotional manipulation. See how sad you felt afterwards? And he's using infantilization to get you to revert to an earlier age so that he can have more control over you. See this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HkokxPewLo You're literally trying to win an arm wrestle with someone who has no arms. That video may very well liberate you. DeFOOing is just the first step... processing all the emotions and getting rid of the "negative parental introjects" (the bad parts of your parents who keep on living inside your head and influencing you) is a long journey. I suggest you either block his number so he can't abuse you anymore with his emotionally manipulative texts, or change number.

What does the car symbolize? My obsessions with various things have always had a clear too cause (though it was seldom clear to me at first). For instance, I have had an obsession with backpacking and survival gear. I would count grams, read endless reviews of equipment, compare backpacks and sleeping bags and tents and everything. I'd make spreadsheets with lists and so on... Turns out, I was afraid of homelessness. And most of my fantasies of an external apocalypse were reflections of an internal one that had already occurred (both in my childhood and up to this day). So you see I was projecting my fears and emotional reality into the world and onto a specific set of things. So what is the car a projection of for you? If your experience is similar to mine that is.

As someone who was raised by Jews who were pretty "spiritual" (a fancy term for superstitious) without any specific religious beliefs, I think I have a pretty good idea of what you're talking about. I was never forced to go to any synagogues or religious schools, but both of my parents clearly believe in superstitious nonsense, in both cases as an extension of their fear of death and desire for some kind of afterlife. To me, her actions are a huge red flag. First of all, she seems to agree with people mindlessly just to conform. When she was around you, she conformed with what you were saying. When she is around religious Jews, she conforms with what they say. I wouldn't want a hollow person who takes on the beliefs of those they are surrounded by to raise my kids. That's a sign of a lack of integrity, courage, curiosity, intelligence, etc. The fact that she can't actually tell you what the Rabbis arguments were is hugely important. It's like someone telling you they discovered a miracle new drug and started popping pills because it has huge health benefits, and then when you ask what they are they say "I dunno". That's deeply disturbing. Secondly, and this is maybe an even bigger issue, is her affinity to Israel. Zionism is a pretty toxic thing. My family is intensely pro-Israel and since I'm an anarchist and anti-zionist, dinner conversations suck. Actually any conversations on any topic suck, but that's another issue. The idea that Jews have some kind of a "birthright" to Israel is genocidal bullshit. Stef has a good video on the history of that but basically Israelis are absolutely in the wrong with what they're doing to Palestinians. They've slaughtered and embargoed them into oblivion, and the Jews who used to peacefully co-exist with muslims in Palestine prior to the creation of the Israeli state protested its creation a lot. Thirdly, besides the nationalism and religiosity, Jews are (in my experience) pretty racist. Certainly within my family, extended family, family friends, acquaintances etc., everyone has been racist, especially towards Arabs. A lot of secular Jews treat Arabs or even muslims in general as sub-human (it's kind of a requirement if you want to slaughter them). If she's using state (tax) money to go on a tour around a country built on slaughter while having religious mind-gams, that's concerning and you have every reason to be concerned. 23 is not an excuse. And if she has no issue with state violence then I would be worried about her not having any qualms with using the guns of government in any possible divorce in the future. In the beginning of your post you talk about how she is kind and loving. If she's pro-Israel and religious, to what extend is that true? I've obviously not met her so you tell me, but have you ever discussed Palestinians with her? I wonder how a conversation like that would go. In short, yes - big red flags and cause for concern. Very understandable and I'm sorry about your experience and her shift towards greater religious insanity.

Oh my god, you just blew my mind! "Depression as emotional paralysis" feels like SUCH an accurate description. How come I didn't think of that before? This might really help me look into dealing with my depression when it comes around. Thank you! edit: And this really makes sense - when I'm depressed I essentially lose any motivation to do things or live my life. That is to say, the why of my life, which lives in my emotions, disappears. Harry Browne writes about the "Intellectual Trap", which is where someone loses track of their emotions and hence they have the "what" but not the "why" and can no longer enjoy life. edit 2: And then it would make sense that this emotional blockage is probably caused by a self-defense mechanism - parts of my mind are being shut off from my conscious to prevent an overwhelming by my emotions and traumas, but the side-effect of this blockage is a loss of motivation and will to live - i.e. depression.

I agree with the above poster - referring to yourself in the second or third person might have been a survival mechanism - a way to dissociate yourself from abuse and your true feelings about it. As far as my personal pet peeves - I tend to think and say "have to" and "gotta" when I want to do something. I'm trying to reform myself to either say "I want to" (because I genuinely do) or if I don't want to do it but want to avoid the consequences of not doing it, I at least think it through and reason it out. Or I might transform a "have to" into an "I don't have to" and just not do the task and live with the consequences. It's a great way to fight off procrastination because unfortunately we've been programmed into using a language of obligation in our daily lives. It was used with us as children, and we in turn internalize it and use it on ourselves, thus creating the same passive-aggressive procrastination behaviors as we (may have) had in childhood.

Hello ladies and gents, I've been mulling over a business idea now for some time involving a global network of shared Wi-Fi routers. The software is I think fairly simple to do, and almost everyone (at least in the developed world) has the hardware they would need in their houses already. I am looking for a partner who has good coding skills, mostly website related. I think Android and iOS apps here are vital too. I've only ever done some minor coding here and there and my skills are not up to scratch. I don't want to go into too much specific detail about the idea here, but if anyone is at all interested, send me a message and I can tell you more about the idea and we can discuss its feasibility. It's not without some challenges but the incentive mechanisms for everyone involved are I think very sound, and if a sizable subscriber base is established I think it's very viable. So if you're interested, drop me a line! edit: and I hope this is the right sub-forum to post this in, but if not feel free to move the thread

Sure thing I'm wondering about how you react to physical pain nowadays. Like, say you stub your toe on a chair or hurt yourself in some other way - do you get angry and start swearing?

Hey Ivan, I had listened to the call just today, and then stumbled across this thread. I think that Stef meant anger is useful as a way of rejecting the evils and abuses that are perpetrated against us. If we normalize (and so forgive) evil then we allow it to reside in our soul, and then will tend to replicate it. I also agree that anger can propel us to act and tear down what we previously thought were insurmountable obstacles. You did say in your post that you've been angry for some time now though, but I guess I just didn't hear that anger in the call. When you described how your father kicked you and pushed you out of the room while playing poker, without calling him all kinds of profanities in the process or even changing the tone of your voice, it seemed to me like you didn't have a very strong emotional connection to that. I could be wrong though. You said you cried a lot, and that's good (I think - it helps me too), but that's not the same as getting angry. I can get very angry when I think of my personal childhood history, or when I listen to other people calling in about their own abusive parents.

I agree. I know of many cases when parents are in a screaming match and upon seeing their kids, go to another room and close the door. Not a consideration my parents every gave me, now that I think of it, but definitely something that happens.

Sure, I'd like to help. I had a 45 minute phone conversation with my mother today. It was a follow-up of a previous conversation in which I expressed great disapproval at her lie when my grandfather died (the full story is in another thread here). She promised to explain her side of the story, so to speak, and she did. She pretty much immediately burst out crying, and then continued for a good 10 minutes, as she recalled her history of relatives dying around her. And then she explained how she didn't want me to feel that pain at the age of 4. I didn't agree with much of her reasoning, but instead of interrupting or criticizing I just empathized with her feelings. Turns out this is the first time she's talked to anybody about her bottled up sorrow, the fact that she wasn't allowed to attend the funeral of her favorite person in the world, and that she blames herself (unjustly, I might add). I won't go into all the details but basically this conversation went much better than some of the ones I've had before, where I was just angry and accusatory. Not to say I don't have a right to be, but my mother clearly has never been empathized with before (and herself feels near-zero empathy), and if there's any chance at a healthy relationship this is going to be a long process. I'll try to take baby steps Dunno if there's much to empathize with in this story but it just shows that empathy and patience can really help, although it's tremendously difficult to give to someone who's never done that with me.

First of all, thanks for sharing. Your stories really made me cringe, because that level of torture is unbelievably evil. I don't even know what to say about that.. I get frustrated and stuck just thinking about it. I'm really sorry this happened to you. I can try to venture a guess as to your anger. Perhaps it comes not just from your memories of abuse in the past, but also because you're trying to maintain a relationship with someone while they have yet to understand your feelings and the effects of their actions. It's not your feeling of anger that's getting in the way of the relationship, but rather their unwillingness to take full responsibility for their actions that causes your anger in the first place. Does that sound like it makes sense?

If I may suggest, when I've previously dealt with certain issues, it really helped to read other people's stories. Stories of people dealing with the same issues. So perhaps if you search around for stories of people finding out they were gay and their families not being accepting, it might make you feel better, because you won't feel like you're alone in the world going through this, but that there are others who had to go through it and managed to make it out the other side better than they ever were before. Whatever you do, I really wish you the best of luck!

That was a good read, thanks. Personally I would go into the "truth above all else" group. And you're right, there would be a paradox, but don't forget there are new people being born every day who haven't yet learned that they must repress every natural human virtue and curiosity they have.

Oh - that was you! I can't even begin to imagine what it's like to go through all that in just one week. I'm glad it wasn't something I said. If you do ever want to talk, the folks here are super-empathetic (and I try too ). Thanks for being supportive despite everything you're going through. You're really an amazing person!

Ooh, I'm really intrigued. What was it like? Would you like to share your experience? I don't think anything like this has happened to me, except maybe to some extent in dreams. What's been happening with me the last few weeks is that parts of my subconscious that have been repressed are surfacing, and I'm able to remember, analyze, and understand them with my conscious mind. I now have a lot more clarity over some issues than I did before, but I sense this is only the beginning. Also when I get a feeling of some kind, rather than repressing it I acknowledge it and think about it. But I'm not sure this is what you had in mind, so please feel free to share

I'm not sure. I have sometimes felt a sort of tingle in the same region as someone else feels pain. So if for instance they have a stomach injury I'll feel... I guess a tingling, in the same area. But it's rare for me. Maybe someone else can help more.