Long time listener, first time poster

[courtneycm]

Hello boards,

I've been listening to FDR for about three years but have never participated in the boards before. I've fully accepted voluntarism and atheism and the results have completely changed my life. When I first heard FDR I was a feminist vegetarian liberal visiting my parents every other weekend and maintaing really uncomfortable, emotionally shallow friendships. I am grateful for who I was and what I did to survive but am even more grateful for the place I am now!

I'm most passionate about improving my relationships through the application of RTR, pursuing self knowledge through therapy and journaling, and learning all I can about peaceful parenting to be ready if/when I decide to take that step. My hope is to use these boards to practice talking about my ideas and to extend more of a social net after isolating my real self for most of my life. 

Thanks for reading and I'll talk to you soon. 

[Summerstone]

Welcome to the Boards. Remember to box out! [goofy]

[Mick Bynes]

Welcome to the forum, dude!  This forum is easily becoming one of my favorite forums ever.  There's a lot of great people here and I've learned so much.  I too am a voluntaryist and atheist.  I hope to see you as an active member on this forum.  Have a good time here on FDR!  [H]

[Stefan Molyneux]

Hi Courtney nice to meet you, what was uncomfortable about your relationships?

[courtneycm]

Thanks for the kind welcoming!

I would say that what was most uncomfortable about my relationships is that the people I was in them with swore up and down that they loved me, but for most of my life I very purposely let very little of myself out so they had no real basis on which to make that sort of claim. My contribution to almost every relationship pre-philosophy that I can think of was to listen to the other person talk, not to speak much other than to confirm the other person's biases, and comfort them after they were done. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time but would often think about how "squirmy" I felt when I had an opinion that differed from someone else's, and it's because on some level I knew that the person didn't actually care at all what I had to say - only that I was listening to them. 

Of course I played an active role in creating these friendships this way; I was being used because I wanted to be used. My mother was perineally depressed and would never admit it, and I learned very early on that listening attentively and comforting were ways to get people to feel better, even if only for a little while. I pretty much was hooked on people's sadness and that's definitely an uncomfortable place to be. 

[DaisyAnarchist]

Glad to hear you're in a much more comfortable place and I do hope you enjoy yourself here. It seems the members are very much willing to listen to each other. Perhaps it's something about voluntarism Didn't realize you were also new. Welcome.

[Randsrazor]

It is good to hear of someone like you waking up and gaining the confidence to be yourself.