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Yeah, I've been moving in that direction myself. I have repeatedly told her (and the other two) that her "reminders" don't do anything besides make me feel bad, but she's got this stock speech about how she believes in "honesty and remembering things how they happened" and I tend to give ground in the face of that because she's not wrong, per se.

 

Tonight was the first night in a while that I really caught her out, bringing up our former relationship out of nowhere when I was talking about something entirely unrelated and then not backing down when I pointed out how it had nothing to do with anything we'd been saying. If she's not going to apologize for making digs like that when she's cut-and-dried in the wrong, it's probably appropriate for me to get up from the computer or get away from the phone. It's just too bad, I really do want to be friends, but it does seem like she's still mad about me breaking up with her four years ago, even though the relationship was supposedly terrible and all she wants is that part of her life back.

 

Anyway, thanks for the ear and the sympathy!

 

Can I ask what's so important about being friends with exes? If it's a principle thing, I ask why it's crucial especially since these exes seem to not be good friends in general, would you tolerate this sort of behavior from non-ex pals? There's no reason to keep shitty people who harp on things that are long and gone all because you dated once. For me, once I started having really close, good friends who treat me really respectfully, I started noticing friends who didn't do that and wondered why I was keeping them around. Friends are not in such short supply that you don't deserve ones that treat you the best! Exes might feel like friends because they know you but it's fairly obvious at least one of them only knows you in a very limited way that is used to hurt you repeatedly and keeps going against your wishes. That's not friend-behavior. That's just rude as fuck. 

 

Dump the ex!

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Can I ask what's so important about being friends with exes? If it's a principle thing, I ask why it's crucial especially since these exes seem to not be good friends in general, would you tolerate this sort of behavior from non-ex pals? There's no reason to keep shitty people who harp on things that are long and gone all because you dated once. For me, once I started having really close, good friends who treat me really respectfully, I started noticing friends who didn't do that and wondered why I was keeping them around. Friends are not in such short supply that you don't deserve ones that treat you the best! Exes might feel like friends because they know you but it's fairly obvious at least one of them only knows you in a very limited way that is used to hurt you repeatedly and keeps going against your wishes. That's not friend-behavior. That's just rude as fuck. 

 

Dump the ex!

 

To answer your question, I really get a lot out of having a shared history with someone. If I've dated someone for a non-trivial amount of time, their continued friendship is important to me, so long as they weren't terrible to me during that time. Still, everyone's right that there's no point in shared history if it's principally a means for my ex to shame me over an extremely exaggerated interpretation of my actions during that history. I've found that she's generally the kind of person who has to shit all over her former relationship to be able to "move on," which didn't really bother me because I was there and I know it wasn't a living hell like she sometimes says, but four years is definitely beyond the statute of limitations for low blows like I still get from her. I don't think she's trying to move on, I think she just hates me and doesn't really realize it. Cue my exit, yeah.

 

Again, thanks everyone for your kind words. It's good to get this kind of support.

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Slightly tangential to the topic, but I always find that a potentially good metric for judging someone's character is how they talk about their exes.  If every single ex is the worst person ever, and they mostly shit on them, then that tells me a lot more about that person than it does their exes.  If they have a wide range of opinions about their various exes, some fondness, some distaste, again, I've learned more about them than I have the people they once dated. 

 

I'm very leery of people who speak of all their exes universally negatively. 

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Slightly tangential to the topic, but I always find that a potentially good metric for judging someone's character is how they talk about their exes.  If every single ex is the worst person ever, and they mostly shit on them, then that tells me a lot more about that person than it does their exes.  If they have a wide range of opinions about their various exes, some fondness, some distaste, again, I've learned more about them than I have the people they once dated. 

 

I'm very leery of people who speak of all their exes universally negatively. 

Yeah, either they are really spiteful or a horrible picker. It also speaks to an ability to forgive and move on. Unless that ex does something legitimately horrible, then you can hate them forever.

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At this point I've lost all friends from earlier than college. I figure it's only a matter of time before those undergrad friends start fading away.

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At this point I've lost all friends from earlier than college. I figure it's only a matter of time before those undergrad friends start fading away.

I feel like some of that is because people you grew up near/went to pre-college with weren't entirely friends you picked. They were the best of limited options. I assume this stays true if you went to a small college as well.

There are only 6 people that I still keep in touch with from before college. The rest of my friends I met through clubs etc in college or are friends of friends. When I was teaching in Korea and hanging out with the other Americans there I realized just how nice it is to have friends you have things in common with, I ended up not really getting along with most of the teachers because I didn't like them as people.

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Nah for the most part they are friends I would have loved to keep in touch with. Well, except the one, who friend-dumped me because he was jealous I became friends with his wife. That guy's a piece of shit. But he still was my best friend for a long time and I wish he hadn't become a piece of shit.

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I keep in contact with some of my exes, but I don't think any of any of them as friends. Whatever made us not work makes us not work. I'm going to be torturing myself by pretending that being friends is enough, or I'm going to be torturing them by making them pretend being friends is enough, or we're going to have fights, or we're going to continue to hurt each other intermittently in some other way. I don't have a bad relationship with a lot of my exes, but that doesn't mean I have to expose myself to a relationship that one of us already decided was fundamentally flawed in some way.

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I still have friends I made in college 5ish years ago, but already the dissonance of them not being as progressive* makes hanging out with them weird.

* I can't figure out how to make this not sound like a judgement of them as 'bad people', but essentially they're not as SJ-y as I have become but they're not awful people.

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I deleted my ex on a few social media things the other day because I sorta realized that I'm not really that interested in becoming friends again (we broke up 8 months ago) and I was only keeping contact so I could try and compare who was doing better, which is just a dumb, unhealthy thing to do. I think she's an OK person but there's just not really a place for her in my life and it's not worth the emotional weirdness it was causing me. 

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I barely keep in contact with my college friends. Weirdly enough I couldn't fit in during university, which is where most people find they actually do fit in. There were too many people who just wanted to get drunk all the time, and then there were too many people who just wanted to study all the time. I was somewhere in the middle, and found myself without many people to hang out with.

 

I still keep in contact with a couple of school friends. Not often, but it's never weird when we do catch up.

 

I kinda find it hard to make friends because I tend to reject going out and drinking (which seems to be what people want to do). Then after a while they just stop inviting me. I'm making a conscious effort at my new job to just say yes to everything. If I hate it I don't have to do again!

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I barely keep in contact with my college friends. Weirdly enough I couldn't fit in during university, which is where most people find they actually do fit in. There were too many people who just wanted to get drunk all the time, and then there were too many people who just wanted to study all the time. I was somewhere in the middle, and found myself without many people to hang out with.

 

I still keep in contact with a couple of school friends. Not often, but it's never weird when we do catch up.

 

I kinda find it hard to make friends because I tend to reject going out and drinking (which seems to be what people want to do). Then after a while they just stop inviting me. I'm making a conscious effort at my new job to just say yes to everything. If I hate it I don't have to do again!

 

I had a very similar experience in the university, specially in my course (history), which was very closed and kind hostile to everything, so between the people which just want to party/get drunk and the people which study for real or engaged in something, I was kind out of place there, specially because I don´t drink. Most people meet and friends I made (and make now), came from the anime events or japanese fashion event which I go.

I end up most keeping some minimal contact with very few friends from school (many of them where also my rpg group for a long while) and univeristy as we drift apart, and now most contact I have is with people I meet in events.

 

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I haven't spoken to anyone I knew from university for over a year. I got pretty depressed in my final year, and shut myself in my room for about six weeks with not even my flatmate coming to check on me. I had a pretty horrible realisation that I wasn't as important to my friends as they were to me. I don't know if there was something that made people want to avoid me or if I was just bad at making friends because I had to struggle constantly to even have a social life at university. 

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 I had a pretty horrible realisation that I wasn't as important to my friends as they were to me.

Its happened to me a handful of times. It's shitty, but you drop 'em motherfuckers and move on. 

 

For me, with every cycle of friends I've gone through, they've gotten better because I've gotten to know myself and what I want out of a friendship. The friends I've made in California are way better than my friends in Cincinnati. Don't get me wrong, I love my old crew in Cincinnati, but I devolve to my younger self--I think my crew does too, not just me--when I see them. It's nice for nostalgia reasons but all the hard work I've down to better myself goes down the tubes. I hope all that rambling makes sense.

 

In other news... I'm fighting terrible allergies and a cold and hoping my appeal for Sac State goes through. I've decided to go back to school to finish my bachelor's degree in outdoor parks and recreation with a minor in history. I'm really excited. :D

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Its happened to me a handful of times. It's shitty, but you drop 'em motherfuckers and move on. 

 

For me, with every cycle of friends I've gone through, they've gotten better because I've gotten to know myself and what I want out of a friendship. The friends I've made in California are way better than my friends in Cincinnati. Don't get me wrong, I love my old crew in Cincinnati, but I devolve to my younger self--I think my crew does too, not just me--when I see them. It's nice for nostalgia reasons but all the hard work I've down to better myself goes down the tubes. I hope all that rambling makes sense.

 

In other news... I'm fighting terrible allergies and a cold and hoping my appeal for Sac State goes through. I've decided to go back to school to finish my bachelor's degree in outdoor parks and recreation with a minor in history. I'm really excited. :D

Weren't you the one who asked me about Sac State like 2 years ago?  Either way good luck!

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I did! And thank you for answering them.

 

I was in a weird position back then and couldn't go back to school. Now things have changed and I'm good to go. I just wish Sac State was too. Grumble grumble. Hahah

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I did! And thank you for answering them.

 

I was in a weird position back then and couldn't go back to school. Now things have changed and I'm good to go. I just wish Sac State was too. Grumble grumble. Hahah

Wrestle them into submission!  Doubt you'll have an issue

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So I just finished my BA in studio art last fall, applied to a couple MFA programs.  Shocked to get interviews with both schools, but ultimately didn't get in.  Just found out from the last school today, which was a real bummer because for a bit there it was looking pretty good.  In this weird bummed out but also looking forward optimistically to the next round knowing that something I'm doing in my work is clearly catching people's attention.

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So I just finished my BA in studio art last fall, applied to a couple MFA programs.  Shocked to get interviews with both schools, but ultimately didn't get in.  Just found out from the last school today, which was a real bummer because for a bit there it was looking pretty good.  In this weird bummed out but also looking forward optimistically to the next round knowing that something I'm doing in my work is clearly catching people's attention.

Awesome. Definitely do another round. Getting interviews from multiple places means you're on the right track. Most places are pretty competitive and the choices they make are very hard.

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Yea, while neither school is necessarily top tier they both are fairly well known, was incredibly surreal experience getting the interview requests.

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Man, yesterday had some high highs and low fucking lows.

 

I went to a place called the Merc (a gay bar in Sacramento) with my friend to have a few drinks and relax. Now, I'm not gay and I go there with my friends (some who are) because it has great drinks and atmosphere. So I went there and we met and talked to two guys next to us. They were old gents and they were funny dudes. One of them keeps hitting on me hard and hinting at sex. Fair enough, I turn him down and tell him I'm straight and why I come here. He has no problem with it. As the night progresses, he keeps touching my knee and thigh. Not in a sexual way, but touchy messy way. Whatever, some people are touchy-feely and he knows where I stand. At one point he moves up my thigh and starts touching my dick and I just freeze. I am completely uncomfortable and violated. And he does it once again. I'm completely fucking violated. I'm frozen and can't talk. So after the second time, I say it's time to go and get food with my friend. 

 

I felt skeevy and uncomfortable the entire night. I could still feel his hands on my dick and it's been on the back of my head ever since. 


I felt like I should have told him to stop touching me when he touched my knee. Maybe it's my fault for being at a gay bar (though it's become a mixture of orientations). I don't know how to feel and I felt like crying a bit this morning. Maybe I should have been more forceful? I don't know. 

Am I crazy? I set up boundaries and I'm okay with touchy-feely people (one of my good friends is one). I thought that was he was at first, but fuck. 

 

I can't get this incident out of my head.

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Yo, none of that is your fault. You made your intentions clear and that man was intentionally ignoring them and assaulting you. You did the right thing by extracting yourself from the situation, and I'm sorry you had to deal with that. It's never your fault if someone else touches you in a way that you don't like, full stop.

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^^^

 

Everything Jennegatron just said.  Fuck that noise and fuck that dude.

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I detect a bit of reluctance to be as mad as you should because of privilege or something (could be totally wrong), but no, that guy did a horrible fucking thing. Rape culture is alive among gay populations as well as straight, and "no means no" needs to be beaten into the heads of men* of all orientations. Not at all your fault. 

 

*Possibly women too? I honestly have no clue how common sexual assault is among lesbians.

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