“I’ll admit I’ve definitely had days where I’ve thought to myself that maybe I don’t want to be brave anymore. Maybe I want someone to take care of me for a bit. Take a season off. Be a sweetly spoiled baby for a change.”
If it’s something you’re still struggling with, I just want you to know that it’s hard. Really damn hard.
“I’m not sure how to tell him about this,” she says, “What do I say? I like open relationships, just not sure if I can have a healthy one with you?”
Once you’ve had problems, it’s far easier to backslide. It’s something I’ll likely always be dealing with. Because of my past, I can’t get away with as much.
Parasocial relationships are entirely one-sided relationships — ones in which one party is interested and invests significant time and energy in someone and that other party is completely unaware of their existence.
This tendency to ruminate on and better remember tasks that are unfinished is known as Zeiganik effect. And it can unfortunately make ghosting very painful and difficult to move past.
In today’s Advice Friend, a reader asks about attraction that’s neither platonic or romantic — and instead feels somewhere in between.
I’m not being lured in by exclusive as a marketing label. Not about anything, really. Exclusive and good are not the same.
People have different thresholds for complaining, and if yours is very high, you must be careful not to assume that other people are the same way, particularly people that you care deeply about.
I’ve spent most of my adulthood surrounded by people freer than me. But compared to my family of origin, I’m liberated beyond compare.
I know tons of people who have opened up from a closed relationship and thrived. But usually they’re both on board with the decision. It’s a bad sign when one person pressures the other person to open up. Particularly after their partner says no once, twice, or a thousand times when asked.
Due to the first instinct fallacy, we are far too reluctant to modify our initial impression — or change our first answer — than we should be.
In an earlier installment of this series, I talked about a psychological phenomenon called reactance: Simply stated, reactance refers to people’s tendency to rebel or
Not only was I trying to keep myself from falling completely apart, I was doing my best to not offend the people in my life, who took it very personally that I was still struggling with difficult emotions.
While part of me lashes out and says, “Well, why can’t we talk more about things that matter?” kindly, authentically, without ego — I also recognize that this level of vulnerability could be exhausting and terrifying for a lot of people.
“Part of me wonders if I’ll always be doing this — overloading myself until I can’t cope and then paring back and getting stressed again and loading myself back up.”
I believe that mystery is abundant and infinite. That we don’t need to keep ourselves in the dark to have mystery. And I believe that when you give up on the mundane mysteries, the ones that are foisted upon you by society, then that’s when the magic truly begins.
There are moments when I can love like I’ve never been hurt. You do that to me. You bring something out in me, something deep inside. It’s something from the first time I ever fell in love. Back before love hurt or disappointed me.
A recent study found that rude work emails can actually lead people to have insomnia.
Pretty much everyone has cancelled plans last minute. But some people do it a lot more than other people. And that’s because they don’t just cancel for logistical reasons (although they do), but they also cancel their plans with others with little or no notice because something more interesting or fun to do came along.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better,” I confess, “I’ve asked around, and most folks are going through the same thing, particularly if they’ve been stuck inside a lot. We’re all coming out of stasis feeling a little freezer burned.”
For anyone who struggles with it, it is *really* hard to stop feeling responsible for other people’s bad moods.
“What advice would you give your past self?” Get comfortable with risk because you can’t mitigate all of it.
The least successful rules of all seem to be ones that are about feelings. Things like “neither of us will fall in love with anyone else” are particularly doomed.
Shouldn’t there be a point where it’s enough to live a good life, even if you haven’t squeezed every last drop out of it that you can?
Participants who had their hands held while they processed painful memories had lessened pain versus those who didn’t.
Overclaiming is when someone claims to have knowledge that’s impossible to have. A clear way this can manifest is someone saying that they’re familiar with something that doesn’t even exist.
I quickly text a close friend of mine. “You’ll never guess who wants to pick my brain.”
“Oh?” she says.
I tell her the name. “OH MY GOD,” she replies. “The nerve.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen variations on this same theme: Mean comment. Backlash. “You can’t say anything these days.”
It’s something I try to keep in mind, particularly when I’m dealing with someone who is being very bitter. Someone who is intent on picking me apart, letting me know my flaws. So eager to find fault that they’ll coax it from even an ambiguous place.
“You’ll get through this,” I told myself. “It won’t always be that way.” And immediately felt annoyed.
The new normal will still probably be kinda weird for a while. Everything won’t be perfect. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your life in the weird “new normal.”
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