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My relationship's in a bit of a weird place right now. It was an absolutely crazy whirlwind for almost six months exactly, with neither of us ever having been more in love before, and then we had a run of disappointing weekends, culminating in a few fights where she was stressing about how much money we spend as a couple, both by going out and by getting each other things. Since then... well, the past month's been a big change. We're seeing each other a lot less during the week, maybe getting dinner or watching TV together once or twice, and recently our weekends have involved a lot more breaks and meals apart, again to save money. Somehow, although I make a third of what she does, money's more the thing that matters to her, so this is what we're both doing, even though it means seeing less of each other and doing less when we're together. It's fine? I don't know, my biggest insecurity in a relationship is my partner getting less interested in or attracted to me over time, so even though I don't think she's being that much less affectionate, at least when I ask for affection, the dramatic deescalation of our time together is still gnawing at me in a bad way.

 

She's also been looking for a better job, which I support completely since she is enormously talented at what she does and mostly squandered at her current place of work, but she's had difficulty finding anything at the other hospitals in town, so she's recently started looking at jobs in Chicago, and that's very confusing to me. At first, I didn't think she was serious about moving four hours away to a completely new city, just to make a slightly bigger paycheck, but she's talked about it enough over the past couple of weeks that I can tell it's really an option in her mind. I tempted her out to dinner tonight, since I hadn't seen her for the better part of a week, and she was talking sincerely about the potential of moving to a new city and totally overhauling her finances. I was just like... cool? She knows I can't move, not with my assistantship only halfway done, and I don't know what conclusions to draw from that. We couldn't really talk much about it at the restaurant, because she left right after the bill was paid to go watch TV with her dog. I'm trying desperately hard not to feel like I'm being broken up in the slowest and most passive way possible, hopefully not... sigh.

 

A lot of this relationship has been reminding me how much it hurts to be in love, since I haven't really experienced it since college. It's amazing to have someone to whom you can give yourself over entirely, but fuck me if every little thing doesn't mess you up. It was a great deal easier dating people whom I didn't particularly like and wouldn't really miss too much if they took off. I know, I know. Ridiculous, I am.

 

Update: she got the job offer, at a third again her current salary, and we immediately got into a fight about how it would or would not change our relationship. This fight has recurred over the past few weeks as she rejected the offer, because the company only gave her the weekend to decide, and then was invited to visit her prospective workplace and make her decision before the end of the year. I'm very stressed out by all of this, not least because I have a long history of great relationships falling apart once they go long-distance and because this one has been so natural and easy thus far, but I think she's ultimately going to be inclined to take the offer, since she feels trapped in her current job and craves any kind of change, and our relationship's just going to have to adapt or die. I can't tell her to stay, because that'll kill our relationship for sure, but I don't feel good about any of this.

 

I fuckin' hate grad school in the humanities. I have literally no way of making enough money to help myself, let alone to support someone else while they do what they want to do. Moments like right now leave me feeling so trapped because of that...

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Well shit. I'm going to say something horrifyingly lame:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love will find a way.

 

Blegh, sorry. But hopefully it works out between you two?

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Update: she got the job offer, at a third again her current salary, and we immediately got into a fight about how it would or would not change our relationship. This fight has recurred over the past few weeks as she rejected the offer, because the company only gave her the weekend to decide, and then was invited to visit her prospective workplace and make her decision before the end of the year. I'm very stressed out by all of this, not least because I have a long history of great relationships falling apart once they go long-distance and because this one has been so natural and easy thus far, but I think she's ultimately going to be inclined to take the offer, since she feels trapped in her current job and craves any kind of change, and our relationship's just going to have to adapt or die. I can't tell her to stay, because that'll kill our relationship for sure, but I don't feel good about any of this.

 

I fuckin' hate grad school in the humanities. I have literally no way of making enough money to help myself, let alone to support someone else while they do what they want to do. Moments like right now leave me feeling so trapped because of that...

 

That sucks, man. Sorry to hear it. One wouldn't normally expect fight to result from a job upgrade (from what you write it's great for her), but  things don't always line up that way. 

 

From what I've read here, you might want to consider how much you're letting your past negative experiences prevent you from taking the windfall and adapting from there. Sometimes the best you can do is hope for the best. But that's hard.

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I had advice until I realised I was talking out of my ass, but I think she absolutely should take the job. If she stays, her resentment is going to ruin the relationship, so hopefully it'll make at least one person happy.

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Yeah, I know this is good for her even though it feel scary and a bit of a betrayal to me. I just need to get myself into a place where I can make it all about her instead of worrying about what it means to me. Thanks, everyone.

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Yeah, I know this is good for her even though it feel scary and a bit of a betrayal to me. I just need to get myself into a place where I can make it all about her instead of worrying about what it means to me. Thanks, everyone.

 

Hey, if it makes you feel any better, my wife and I went through a year of long distance relationship when her mother moved them back to Washington for her senior year of high school (I had graduated the previous year). Now that I've had a solid 12 years to reflect on that one super difficult year, I have some thoughts on long distance relationships (assuming that both parties actually want to continue the relationship, even long distance):

  1. A long distance relationship is way different than a normal one but can still be pretty exciting. You have to get creative to get some of the same satisfactions you would get if they were physically there. Suddenly, phone sex is super appealing and exciting and because talking is all you have, conversations are completely different and more interesting than the mundane conversations you might have on a daily basis.
  2. You get to plan trips to see each other and when you finally do it is the greatest thing in the world. Oftentimes in normal relationships you don't really have big things like that to look forward to.
  3. Having some space from each other gets your head out of the clouds and is a good opportunity to really reflect on your relationship from a different angle.

Number three is a really tough one but it is hard to understate how valuable that perspective ended up being for me. When she moved away, I was devastated. We had spent every second of every day that we could together, were having sex every second we could sneak it (we had a whole range of lies that we would tell our parents but always went to our secret sexy spots instead), and our entire lives revolved around each other. It was maybe just a little unhealthy.

 

Those first few months I was just utterly lost and numb and our relationship came close to ending a couple of times. But being forced to face those feelings on a daily basis ultimately forced me to come to terms with how unhealthy my obsession with our relationship had been and let me rediscover myself and learn to not derive all of my happiness solely from our relationship. I started hanging out with friends again that I had drifted apart from, started smoking a bunch of weed and having other fun experiences, and stayed busy working full time and getting through my first year of college. Once I accepted that it wouldn't be the end of the world if our relationship didn't work out and just resumed living my life, everything got so much easier. Somewhere along the line we came to a mutual understanding that we just had to be together and that this long distance thing was no big deal and with that pressure off, it all just ended up working out for us.

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  • A long distance relationship is way different than a normal one but can still be pretty exciting. You have to get creative to get some of the same satisfactions you would get if they were physically there. Suddenly, phone sex is super appealing and exciting and because talking is all you have, conversations are completely different and more interesting than the mundane conversations you might have on a daily basis.
  • You get to plan trips to see each other and when you finally do it is the greatest thing in the world. Oftentimes in normal relationships you don't really have big things like that to look forward to.
  • Having some space from each other gets your head out of the clouds and is a good opportunity to really reflect on your relationship from a different angle.

 

 

:tup: :tup: :tup: :tup:

 

I'm sure at some point I've at least covered the basics of the lady and I's long distance period.  There is the potential for good, as well as the bad, with long distance.  Sometimes we even wax nostalgic about our late night, multi-hour phone calls and how ridiculously fucking excited we would get about trips to see each other.  I wouldn't want to go through it again, but I would if it were necessary. 

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I appreciate the advice, everyone, and I hope that I'm smart enough to take it. I think my main hangup, to which Osmo alluded, is that my happiness in a relationship tends to come from feelings of physical contact, proximity, and intimacy. Absent that, in the past, it doesn't take much longer than a year before it begins to feel like the relationship itself has started to dry up. The last time that I thought that I had "the one," back in college, this sequence of events happened twice: we'd date for about a year, she'd have to move (back home the first time, grad school the second), and we'd make it eighteen months, maybe two years, before our relationship had been reduced down just to complaining (and sometimes arguing) over the phone and getting naked together in person. I know that the circumstances are entirely different now (though very supportive and kind, that ex was deeply depressed and quite negative even when not so depressed; I'm getting better at self-reporting all the time; my current girlfriend is proactive, ambitious, and wise, which unfortunately is what makes her so excited to take on this opportunity) but I still have to work off of the experience I have, which does not make me confident about upcoming events.

 

But Merus is right, I can't tell her to stay without destroying our relationship for certain, and I am excited in the abstract for how this new job will help her career and finances. I just wish I was financially stable and emotionally secure enough to know that I could make this work for certain, through visits and self-confidence. Ah well!

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So it's uh late into 4.am (my partner and I are complete nightowls especially with the semester over) and we're hearing loud dragging sounds outside. It's been going on for the past half an hour particularly when we stop making a lot of noise ourselves, turn lights off, etc. It could just be an animal rummaging through trash but we feel pretty spooked. It's caused me to put away all thoughts of just going to sleep and we're feeling pretty unsafe. I'm currently playing Dark Souls for the first real time and trying to calm myself through that. But overall it's a very spooky night.

We've brought down all the blinds, put up a screen between us and any windows, locked all the doors and closed the windows, etc. Still pretty spooked. We live down a driveway that's pretty far from the road but with three other houses around us. Apparently our house has been broken into before through our sliding door But that's secured as much as we can. We're in a nice ish neighbourhood that has a reputation of being a target for thieves because it's fairly secluded.

It's hopefully just a possum but we're pretty freaked out. Luckily we don't have much that's valuable outside, we have some old bikes and boxes full of memories stored outside but the majority of enticing value is owned by our landlord whose garage is currently open. He's a major jerk so maybe any crook decides to steal his stuff rather than boxes of my siblings teenaged belongings.

We're hearing a combination of loud and soft scrapes so it being an animal might just be wishful thinking.

Edit: Well it's lighter now. Light enough to see outside and feel secure that nothing obvious has changed. Feels comfortingly liklier that it was just a weird possum. The multiple volume and location changing scraping sounds were odd though.

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So I've officially been offered, and officially accepted a position in Germany. Which research project it will be on, I'm going to discuss with my new boss (!!!) later in the week.

I'm really, really excited! I want a way to maintain collaborative links with my old boss and people I worked with in Manchester, and I look forward to meeting up with them at conferences and getting hammered. I'm staying in a similar area of research, and so I'd be foolish to cut ties with them like many others have. Especially as when it comes to bioinformatics, Manchester is a pretty decent place for it, while the university I'm heading to in Germany has a severe atrophy in that department. 

I also got a place-holder job at my current work to keep me monied before I leave. I have to do research obviously, but it gives me a nice buffer before I leave. It's crazy to think how I was so desperate for a job at one point a few years ago, and now every one wants me. I've not even published the papers I've been working on yet either. There are still bits and bobs to finish, probably going to be left to some poor new PhD student, who will get pushed to middle author.

 

Like Gormongous, this is going to put an even greater strain on my current long distance relationship. While I'll be moving closer in terms of absolute distance, the travel time is almost tripled by plane, if connecting flights are favourable. It requires 3 transfers, or flying back to UK, then going direct from there. By train it's roughly 8 hours, and by car it's around 6 hours, but I don't own a car, nor would I want to travel huge distances alone in a car. Compared to my usual 2 hour flight, it's going to be tough. I think I'd choose train, since I can work or keep myself entertained without suffering from the adrenal fatigue I experience from flying. I seriously doubt it's going to last very long, which is upsetting, but there's not a lot I can do about it, other than try hard. 

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*waves*

 

I took a little break from the forums for awhile, since I was legitimately torn up about thumbs. But now that Idle Weekend is ALMOST HERE and I'm settling into my new life in NYC, I knew it was time.

 

In the last 5 weeks... I moved from SF to NYC, got my first pet (my kitten, Finn!), became a certified first responder again and am training to be a full EMT again, and... a few other things I can't talk about just yet. But there have been a lot of huge changes in a short span. Most of them, I'm very happy to report, have actually been good! 

 

Though, I miss my friends (especially the thumbs), the hills, the weather and my boxing gym in SF.

 

The most exciting part that I can actually talk about is the EMT training. I was an EMT when I lived in Boston 7 years ago, and in the past year, I helped as a bystander with a couple of medical emergencies. I had always regretted letting my certification lapse, so, now, I'm retraining. The good news is, if I ever lapse again, New York state will only require me to take the refresher course again, not this full course.

 

I'm LOVING it. Working online, there's obviously a bit of a disconnect sometimes. Medicine feels like the most 'connected' thing you can do - painfully so at times. I'm not going to be a doctor, but I know that it feels incredible to be helpful to someone in a really bad situation, and that gives me a huge boost. I know this all sounds preachy and weird, probably, but it really does feel enriching and worthwhile to me.

 

Plus, it allows me to get entirely outside of the sort of bubble I live most of my life in. EMTs encounter people from every imaginable walk of life, often on their worst day. That's incredible, and it's good for me, radical liberal white queer girl, to experience.

 

Anyway, I missed you all, and I'm happy to be back :)

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Welcome back! 

 

Unfortunately, I have to remind you that it is poor form to post about a new kitten without including pics.  :)

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Moddy, if you just show you are awake, think they'd go away? I don't know how true this is but I hear statistically burglars are looking for places where people aren't home and not any kind of violent confrontation.

 

Germany sounds awesome Griddle, hopefully the relationship will be just fine.

 

Also hello Danielle, the EMT stuff sounds like an exciting career change!

Welcome back! 

 

Unfortunately, I have to remind you that it is poor form to post about a new kitten without including pics.  :)

Oh there's even better!

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So I've officially been offered, and officially accepted a position in Germany. Which research project it will be on, I'm going to discuss with my new boss (!!!) later in the week.

That's awesome, congrats :)

Hope you take the opportunity to learn some German!

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Moddy, if you just show you are awake, think they'd go away? I don't know how true this is but I hear statistically burglars are looking for places where people aren't home and not any kind of violent confrontation.

 

Yeah we had lights on and weren't making too much effort to be quiet. But yeah we were hearing a loud and soft scraping sounds around our car port/storage area and around our landlord's garage (separate building). Looking around outside nothing obvious seems to be missing. We did find that the rowing machine we keep outside makes the same kind of scraping sound when you drag it a certain way. Still hoping it's just bumbling animals, especially since it'll be just my Mum in the house for 10 days later in the month.

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That's awesome, congrats :)

Hope you take the opportunity to learn some German!

 

They provide free German classes but they're at awkward times (mid day for some dumb reason). I should start using duolinguo, I've heard that's pretty good.

From my limited experience, everyone there speaks perfect english, so it might be hard to convince people to speak German at me.

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Finn is so cute!  And welcome back, can't wait for the new 'cast to start, and it's exciting that things are going so well for you in NY!

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I never stop tweeting pictures and vines of her:

 

Yay cat pictures!  I am so allergic that I would be dead if that were me in that photo, but that's no less adorable.

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So I absolutely hate traveling and luckily I have to do very little of it for my job, but this week is one of those rare cases where I had no choice.

So hello to any LA/Pasadena thumbs out there! I'm actually somewhere other than Arizona for a change.

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Hey guys, so my wife is divorcing me as of today. It's not really a sudden thing and I understand. We've been holding on for like 11 or so years now trying to make stuff work, to make it better, and we can never just get along when we fight which kind of mars all the good times. I don't want to dwell too much on it or I'll feel really sad.

 

But if there's any Thumbs out there who ever want to IM me sometime in AIM, slack, skype or whatever, about divorce if you've been through it or just help me get through this, it'd mean a lot to me. This is probably going to be the hardest moment in my life and it's compounded by money problems, no job, finishing school, etc. I probably can't talk much right now, I'm trying as hard as I can to finish my final final project for this semester, and I think I'm going to drive home to Houston this weekend to be with my family because I'm scared of being alone right now but if there's any time, I'd appreciate a friend.

 

Thanks everyone.

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Thank you Mike, that means a lot.

 

We did agree to try six weeks of marriage counseling, but it's definitely hanging by a thread. If anyone still wants to talk to me about this or now (haha) went through this kind of thing with marriage counseling and has some advice, I'd still really appreciate it.

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Can't give you any advice on divorce specifically, but generally, change doesn't have to be a bad thing, and you still have an entire life in front of you, to make of and mold into whatever you wish. You'll be fine in the end!

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