Relationships Archive

Alone?

It’s been many years since I have been “alone”. Recently my wife decided she was no longer in love with me, as well as telling me she wanted off the Rhys roller coaster. I told her from the very beginning how I was and what to expect, I even went as far to tell her that she would not be able to handle me. Somehow she convinced me that she in fact would be and could handle me and all of my “crazy”. We got married, and a year and a half later she dropped the ‘I cannot live like this’ bomb. So that left me here, alone.

How To Lose Friends and Not Yourself

You are not the sum of what your friends tell you. Despite what people say, no one knows you better than you know yourself. They receive a projection of you. You know how you are, and you know how you tick.

When a Friend Threatens to Commit Suicide (Trigger Warnings)

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Self Harm, Relationship Abuse

It is three-thirty in the morning here and over the past twenty-four hours I have learnt a harsh lesson. It is a lesson that has left me feeling tired and drained, vulnerable and hurting, awful and selfish. Around twenty-four hours ago, a close friend (an online friend if you feel the need to know) threatened to commit suicide. She posted in a group saying that she could just not handle life any longer, that it was too much and that she was going to kill herself.

Give it to me straight, Doc

So, I have always sort of wondered if I were to be bipolar or something, though I’d never been formally diagnosed as such. To my mind and observation, I’ve always had a fairly… unstable emotional balance. High highs (occasionally) and low lows. I finally brought this up actively to my psychiatrist. I’m sick of it, and I want to know what’s wrong with me.

Death and the aftermath

My wife died four months ago. We had fought the night before, ending with her saying she was taking a bunch of pills. I thought she was joking. I woke up next to a corpse. I woke up with a black eye I didn’t remember getting and spent five minutes trying to clean the vomit from around her mouth until I realized she was dead. Time stands still, memories fail. I called 911 and the person on the line tried to get me to move her from the bed to the floor. I tried, moving a women my same height to the floor, dancing with rigor mortis. A rush of urine. It was then, holding that corpse, that it first hit me.

Hysterical Woman Problems: Jealousy

One of the most common things people with BPD have in common is abandonment/attachment issues. Mine run incredibly deep & I feel that I need to warn people about in advance so they can give emotional consent about whether or not they want to invest in a relationship with me. I feel the need to warn them that I’m incredibly sensitive, have a lot of unexplainable triggers that result in dissociation (a whole other article!), and that I have problems trusting that people aren’t going to randomly disappear. And while I own these feelings, actively work on them & and try my hardest not to bring them into my relationships (often going as far as to isolate myself for periods of time when I’m feeling them), they still come up. They still permeate every single aspect of my life. With such BIG emotions, I have to ask for a whole lot of patience & understanding in all types of relationships. People who are diagnosed with BPD often have the tendency to either dive in way too deep or constantly prevent themselves from dipping their toes in the water at all, all due to fears of abandonment. Some of us are trying our hardest every second of the day to figure out some sort of healthy balance for our interpersonal relationships to the point where it gets super confusing. Many of us are very, very tired a lot of the time because of this. Sometimes, I sit around and think about how fucking un-cute that must sound to all of my potential dates and I feel really fucking defeated & lonely.

I want Sexual Accountability

Trigger Warning: Mention of rape

I am beginning to pathologize the sexual desperation I have felt for a cis-male-flesh-cocked lover in my life lately. This is new for me as I have mostly never been able to enjoy penis-centric heterosexuality and I consider myself exclusively queer. I have been incredibly weighed down by my sexual dysfunction for my entire sexual life. By sexual dysfunction, I mean my inability to experience healthy arousal, be orgasmic and/or connect sexually with another person without fear of becoming triggered. I haven’t had many positive end results when attempting to experience sexual pleasure with another person of any gender/orientation.

DBT Skills: Interpersonal Effectiveness

I have to admit that social interaction and communication are not my strongest points. This is a relatively new development for me, or so I thought. I used to think I was great at using my voice, at standing up for myself, at being in social situations. Today there are a number of barriers that prevent me from being effective in interpersonal communication. One of them is mental and emotional health issues. It’s really hard for me to connect with others when I don’t feel so great myself. Another is acute hearing loss, in both ears, coupled with tinnitus. And finally – and probably the most overwhelming for me, especially when it comes to asking for what I need and speaking up for myself, or saying no when being asked for something – I was raised in an environment that didn’t really encourage me to use my voice under any circumstances. In fact, it was preferred if I was invisible, or at least that’s how I translated it.

Mental Illness and Romantic Rejection

“I just don’t think I could handle that kind of rejection.” – George McFly

When you’re a little obsessed with your own mistakes, and you can replay every stupid thing you’ve ever said in your head, dozens or hundreds of times, until you become the biggest idiot in the world and can prove it mathematically, you tend to take some things a little harshly. Romantic rejection isn’t easy for anyone, but experiencing it with a healthy dose of depression and obsession is a whole lot less fun.

My Experience With Alcoholics Anonymous And Early Sobriety (Ava)

Sobriety is a different forest, and one I am picking my way through carefully. The level of commitment that AA seems to require is daunting, as is the god issue. But I have seen people speak there that moved and affected me in a way that was more beneficial than any serenity prayer. Balancing cynicism and nihilism with the all-to-clear possibility of death, I’ve relapsed this month but I’m trying to embrace the program without losing myself. When I relapsed, my wife yelled at me to give her the rest of the bottle of vodka, and all I could say was, “I want something to myself, that is mine.” I gave her the bottle. I want to believe I have other things to hold onto, but the glacial heft of a glass bottle is a hand held.