My Mom dumped all over me via email a few days ago. I have tried to set boundaries over the last year and she can’t handle it. She has done crazy shit like sending me a spreadsheet with all the things she thinks I have done wrong in my life categorized by date. This email is just the latest. I’ve been trying to determine her motive for this email, but I can’t. My therapist said I shouldn’t try to figure out her motive because who knows. Instead I should realize this is just who she is. My response to her was that I’d be cutting communication with her at least for the next several months. I’m kind of terrified how she will respond!
I’ll share some gems from her email. To provide context she is angry at me for ruining her birthday. Because during that get together among other terrible things (I’m also fat, and bring down everyone around me lol) she told me it was awful what I did to the man who molested me as a child (telling so he went to jail). I ruined his marriage when I was 11. I responded by leaving the get together with my child and she is still furious.
“I could give a shit about your life. It is just life. What really matters is respect and appreciation for the people who love you.”
“ I honestly don't know what has driven you away from me. Is it your therapist?”
“I apologize for whatever I said that hurt your feelings, but you are not the only one with feelings.”
“You have never been a good daughter. You have been out to intentionally hurt me since you were a child. When you were a child you lied, cheated, stole money, and now you have CANCELED us.”
“I never dreamed I would be hurt so badly by the person I CREATED!”
“Now that I have shared my grief, I will make like a dog, kick this shit behind me and we can move forward.”
So I'm writing this because I feel very lonely in what I'm going through, and I would love to hear other people's thoughts and experiences.
I de converted about a year and a half ago (at least publicly). It was a huge shock to my family, and I piled the revelation of a secret Hindu boyfriend on top of that shock. I then promptly moved across the country to live with my boyfriend (sin upon horrible sin obviously).
I've been trying to be really patient with my family due to the massive bomb I dropped. They've been pretty good as well. But of course there's been the tracts in our birthday and Christmas cards, the Lee Strobel books sent to our place, the description of our relationship as "offensive" and "immoral", and the personal texts of Bible verses and sermon recordings condemning us to hell. At first we just ignored them, but that didn't feel genuine to either of us. Now we're starting to respond in very minimal ways. Just letting them know that these "gifts" and comments on our relationship are in fact hurtful and disappointing. There are better ways to disagree with someone. I know I can't stop them. Or completely shield myself from these things. I really want to maintain a relationship with my family. But I don't know how to respond to these things, especially if they just keep happening.
But does anyone have experience with dealing with this family dynamic? What boundaries have you set? How have you set and enforced boundaries? Have you been able to maintain a healthy relationship with Christian family?
Examples: “you’re in the left lane, please move,” “let me pass you. I don’t want to go 5 under, I’m running late” or “it’s raining really hard, you should turn your light on”
I 26 f and my best friend 25 f had been best friends since high school. In 2018 I was getting married. I was so excited and of course asked my bestie to be maid of honour. Everything was going great and she even helped with some of the planning. A couple of months before my wedding she started being really quiet and didn’t respond to my message about dress fittings. I messaged her to see what was going on. Eventually I got a reply and safe to say it wasn’t what I expected. She started of the message by telling me “I don’t know how to tell you this” and “it was a really hard decision. Long story short she couldn’t be my bridesmaid. The reason why, the dance show she does every year fell on my wedding day. When I found out I was crushed and what didn’t help was her trying to fix it. In my head she made her decision so now it was time for me to make mine. I ended up stopping all communication. Fast forward to 2022 I found out she is pregnant. I was happy for her even if we weren’t friends. I decided to send her a message to congratulate her. It lead to a lovely conversation where we were catching up. I thought everything was great. Until she brings up the fact I stopped talking to her. She now is trying to blame me for what happened with our friendship. This has left me wondering should I have stopped taking to her back then or still remained friends.
Edit: Spent a bit of time but I found the conversations between us. Seems I didn’t ghost us sorry if I confused you all. Am struggling to post the screenshot of them here. But basically I explained how I felt. She then started bringing up the fact she was hurt I that getting my own place before her. I explained that I wanted to get a place with my husband as my family house didn’t have lots of room. Anyway after that she would not stop calling me. I admit I shouldn’t have explained to her that I needed space. But I can’t take back what I did.
Hey all.
I write a newsletter about esports marketing/branding and community management. As a longtime Dota fan (and as someone who's worked for a couple teams in a CM role), last week's stuff about the Major and how the community reacted to it got me writing. It's kind of a warning/analysis from a loving/sympathetic place, not from a malicious one.
A section:
>To a lot of people, the awakening to how Valve care (not necessarily how much they care) is rough because it flies in the face of what brands have taught them over the last decade: fans and enthusiasts are king, and they have small amounts of ownership and influence over how it develops. > >To Valve, it isn’t quite a malicious relationship, but they’ve removed the typical power structure of the brand-to-stan pipeline: they know people are going to play their games and use Steam regardless of what they do in terms of public-facing community building. They’d rather not do that management and interaction, so they don’t. > >However, when events like this occur, people get hurt emotionally, because they believed that Valve was their friend — not literally, but in terms of forming a connection with Dota as a whole, that pseudo-friendship serves the same purpose. > > After all, Valve fought for Dota. They de-tangled the messy nature of who owned the rights to it, between Blizzard (whose Frozen Throne game housed the original DotA: Allstars mod) and Riot Games (who filed an opposing trademark for “Dota” to Valve’s, since they owned DotA-Allstars, LLC, as a subsidiary). > > If developing Dota 2 was a purely corporate move, and Valve wanted to squeeze it for all it was worth, it did not present that image from the start.
PlusHeart Issue #8 - Valve Software, Dota 2, and the responsibility of fandom
This is going to be a long background.
So basically a few years ago I mentioned that one of my pipe dreams is to buy and rent a property for passive income. I have struggled with depression and working and realise I value time to be able to focus on family, me and life. So being able to stop working ridiculous hours a week to have some free time for quality of life without worrying about money would be amazing. (I do not have a career so can’t find a less hour more money scenario).
I did not expect such an adverse reaction from my husband. He basically said landlords are scum of the earth, rip people off and he thinks it’s disgusting that I would even consider being a landlord.
Tbh I was shocked. I felt I had to defend myself about my dream and we had an argument. We had to rent for 6 years before being able to afford our house and this severity of a response to this topic has never occurred before.
I tried to get my point across that I’m not looking to become a property developer but to just have passive income source but he wasn’t having any of it. I mean I think I’m a good person and I know I wouldn’t be able to justify setting a rental price to rip people off - the guilt would eat me alive. It would be priced just to make sure expenses for the property is taken care of and I get a bit of cash each month to help with my mental health/not working. I wouldn’t spike the rental fee for maximum profit. I mean I was a tenant - I know what it’s like!
It seems he may have had some bad memories as a kid when his parents split and they kept moving around in rented flats. But I have no specific details about it.
So I backed off - it was purely a dream at that point and we have never been in the position to buy a second property. Be so it was a pointless argument to feed.
So now onto the present day problem - I am inheriting a house soon. I want to spend more time with the kids and I want to discuss this without anyone feeling attacked by their beliefs/feelings.
How do I go about this? I love him, we have battled through lots of shit together with teamwork. Out communication is way above average. We always chat about stuff and try to explain both our own point of views BUT I feel this is different and I am on egg shells already after last time - it’s almost a taboo subject now. He is my best mate and we are family. I don’t want to hurt him but it hurts that in the past he wouldn’t even consider my point of view on this. Plus the attack on me as a person for
... keep reading on reddit ➡These AMAS are making it worse every single time. Useless questions/no new information. Hire a PR person because it’s causing FUD. Only announce new info when it’s ready.
Hey everyone, this is just a short story about someone who is demisexual and forms and develops feelings much too fast for my own good.
Decided to give tinder a shot, matched with someone cute, we text for a few days. Now it turns out that it was just a bunch of guys catfishing people for "fun". Not to say I'm distraught, but very disheartened, as I'd opened myself up to them, obviously under the pretense that it was a girl, not a bunch of guys.
Just kinda sucks, you know? My 21st is coming up soon, and not as if I'm a social pariah or anything, but I've never gotten close to having a significant other, but just talking to someone of the other gender would be great without it turning sour on me.
An odd world we live in.
Inlaws are racist and have all the attributes of narcisitic parent.
My husband acknowledges how abusive the ninlaws are towards me and their constant love bombing they have started towards him to gaslight me and exclude me.
We are no contact with one member of the family and low contact with the rest. I was vilified the moment my husband complained to them about their treatment and now they just ignore me 100%. I feel content about not being in touch at this point (while I felt a lot of shame for a while that my husband had to go through this but thanks to therapy I no longer feel the shame.)
My husband acknowledges and is the one who always wanted to cut contact but unfortunately to runaway from confronting. Now he receives random messages from them forexample making neice and nephew singing songs for him and saying how much he is loved. He acknowledges how pathetic it is since it excludes me but just replies neutral. It hurts me and I don't know how to communicate that without seeming I am telling him what to do or being petty.
Also I had n parents growing up hence all the shame I carry.
i’m 24 (F) and ever since i was a a young teenager, i thought texting the person you like or that is your boyfriend/girlfriend all day was normal. that’s what i would see all my friends in relationships doing, and i noticed people i’d be involved with would text a lot as well. it’s not that i need to be talking or in constant communication with someone; i genuinely thought that was just what relationships were like for people my age and younger. if someone said to me they needed less communication i wouldn’t be offended at all. but i’m noticing as i reflect on and experience more relationships , that this little thing of texting has helped foster and elevate some codependency issues within me and with past people. i’m seeing someone new casually and i enjoy them, but i’ve done a lot of work on myself and don’t want to repeat past mistakes i have made in relationships if i can help it. we’ve been texting everyday since our first date two weeks ago and while i enjoy talking to them, like i said i want to do relationships and dating differently. i’m still learning how to feel comfortable and open when communicating in relationships, so any thoughts or advice on this matter would really be appreciated !
It started with small remarks like “none of these clothes would fit you, would they?” Even though I’m a healthy weight. Or “you’d be so pretty if you didn’t didn’t decide to wear ten layers of makeup” I like to do my eyeliner and lipgloss because it makes me feel pretty. But it just seems to have got worse as time has gone on. Now he’s started commenting on whatever I eat. If I have one burger he’ll make a comment like “oh wow, that’s so healthy!” In a sarcastic tone. Or that I look like I’ve had loads of those. The rude comments is just the icing on the cake of things he’s been doing, and I need to express to him that it really hurts since we’re dating. TL;DR How do I communicate this with him?
hi y'all; welp, the title pretty much sums it up.
i'm solo poly. i caught feelings for someone who was cheating on their partner, and i feel so embarrassed reflecting on it (i had no idea).
to summarize: i met someone, i'll call them jamie, and our chemistry was initially amazing. their partners jealousy ended the relationship, but we decided on friendship while they were going through major life changes.
jamie decides they want to pursue me romantically regardless. they tell their partner that they want me in their life and we continue moving forward; at least, that was the lie they told me.
i was building so much hope on what boiled down to manipulation fueled by new relationship energy on my end. like, i wanted some type of potential future with this person. i gave them so much of "me", and recieved nothing in return.
i mentioned friends i was hanging out with one day; jamie realized they were mutual friends of their primary partner, and they spill their guts out right over the phone. we ended things a few days later. their partner broke up with them over an unrelated argument.
i waited around for someone who never really wanted me; i fell in love. and they just wanted to hurt their partner and keep me around for their own selfishness in the end.
i'm hurt; but i'm healing. i met someone who actually values my time and energy recently, but still, those scars run deep.
please, just communicate. don't drag in people like me who desire real love and connection. thank you.
I don't even feel I know what normal is anymore.
If I simply just don't appreciate sleeping with a partner, and want to communicate that, how would I do that without being too rude or risking hurting their self esteem too much?
I so often get the reply: I don’t understand your question… or I didn’t get this. Literally every 2-3 days and this frustrates me and I appear dumb.
Anyone can help me how to get better? I work in Product Management and Project Management - where this skill is quiet important. Thanks
They're nice to me a lot, they don't know I don't agree with their viewpoints and don't know I'm LGBT. They try to help, but they'll also message saying dumb things about the world situation or bigoted/homophobic/transphobic jokes. Sometimes backhandedly racist or problematic things in other ways. They seem to love to make jokes about trans people, and I'm sure if they knew I was one they would disown me in a flash.
But they're my parents, I don't want to hurt them, but every conversation I have with that is just tense and damages me even if they don't say anything negative cuz I'm just sitting there on pins and needles waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I can't ignore them, but I can't talk to them without hurting myself.
Uggg
I have been going through some issues with my 15 yr old for awhile. On top of the pandemic he’s being struggling with substance abuse. I have him in out patient therapy and doing my best to goal plan with him and be positive working with the therapist. His father has only recently re entered his life (December 2020) I like to think we get along okay but he is very hard to communicate with and set schedules. I really do try and tell him the importance of scheduling and routine for our son especially with what he is going through and we need to communicate and it would be good for our son if he participates in his therapy so we can all be on the same page. I’ve asked for his input and he tells me to handle it. He won’t do it, just says he will let me know, but he doesn’t and tells our son when he makes up his mind. My son normally neglects to tell me. If I bring it up to his dad to tell me too, he’s just like why do I have to tell you both. Our son doesn’t like spending time with his dad, I’ll be honest in saying his dad keeps him busier than I do and as a teenager he most likely wants to spend time at home with me being I let him hang out in his room more and do his own thing on the weekends. I have been pretty stressed out lately with the finical cost of the therapy and carrying the cost myself. His dad said he would help with the cost and work on paying child support more regularly. He had a long haul case with covid recently and I do understand missing that much work can put someone in a bind, I’m not angry at him for it stuff happens but again he didn’t communicate with me he wouldn’t be helping with the very expensive upfront costs. I’ll be okay, but I have been noticeably very stressed being I haven’t been in a finical bind like this in awhile. I did communicate with my son that things are going to be tight for a little bit (I didn’t tell him why) and if I seem stressed it’s because of problems I’m dealing with and nothing to do with him, I’m proud of his progress he’s making and it’s tight only temporary. He didn’t say much, actually asked me to order take out afterwards. The past couple months after he comes back from dads, he’s been very rude to me, saying his dad hates me. when I correct him he denies he’s being rude and walks off. I’m following his therapist advice and not “over reacting” in my anger even though it’s completely disrespectful. When I tell him I’m sorry his dad is telling him such things he just goes in detail telling me what he
... keep reading on reddit ➡
So for some background, we are not bestfriends we met last year but never talked it was just the fact that we knew each other before that led us to agree on being roommates. Some examples of her being too much to handle: i be talking to my mom and she would always interfere and jump into our conversation. The other day I was going to the bathroom and as i opened the door she peeps up and asks me where i am going i say the bathroom and she proceeds to ask for further clarification. Not to mention that she opened my closet in front of me as if it was a basic roommate thing. Yesterday, i was going to meet a friend and i said that and she was like yeah let’s go. She also wants to eat every meal together and wants to talk every other time..
