Updates: “Paranoid about Being Paranoid” Responds
It’s time again for “Dear Wendy Updates,” a feature where people I’ve given advice to in the past let us know whether they followed the advice and how they’re doing now. Today, we hear from “Paranoid about Being Paranoid” who was bothered by her boyfriend’s online behavior on social networks. “He sometimes makes sexist remarks,” she wrote, “and uses language I find really rude and disturbing. He said online he was an atheist when in real life he is a Christian who used to work for a church, attends church regularly, discusses scripture and spirituality with me regularly, etc.” Hmm. Keep reading to see whether the mystery has been solved.
He was very reasonable about it all, never got defensive, and realized that his online persona and real-life personality didn’t match up. He said he didn’t like how he acted online and wanted to work on it. I personally made a commitment to as much as possible being paranoid and snooping. My therapist and I — for those who brought it up in the comments, I regularly see a therapist and participate in group therapy as well — have been working on these issues and evaluating my behaviors and worries.
Fast-forward to yesterday. In order to provide an update for Wendy, I did a little checking up on his online profiles and comments. Not only did he change all of the things he told me he wanted to change, such as his language, but he has consistently been calling out commenters who are sexist and misogynistic, even though he gets downvoted for it like crazy. He has also been intelligently and kindly defending his religious and political beliefs, as well as taking to task commenters who are nasty to other users. All in all, I am very happy with him and our relationship.
Thanks for the update and here’s to continued success in therapy and your relationship.
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If you’re someone I’ve given advice to in the past, I’d love to hear from you, too. Email me at [email protected] with a link to the original post, and let me know whether you followed the advice and how you’re doing now.
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Guessing this guy isn’t on /b/.
But glad all is well and that you are having success with therapy.
what’s /b/?
It’s a thread (thread?) of 4chan
what’s 4chan?
I’m old.
It’s terrible, never ever go there.
It’s an image-sharing site, at its most basic… but starpattern is right, it’s like everything that’s terrible about the internet
It’s an online forum. The different subforums are all named /[letter]/. /b/ is the image board subforum and is pretty much known as the face of 4chan. All the commenters are anonymous (there aren’t even user names, just randomly generated numbers that change all the time) and people get pretty … uh, sexist, misogynistic, racist.
But since she mentioned downvotes, I’m guessing reddit.
It’s where maturity goes to die.
It’s where humanity goes to die.
There, fixed it for you 😛
Thank you.
Yeah I was thinking reddit too. But the thought of someone trying to bring morality to /b/ is entertaining since /b/ is beyond hope. My ex was obsessed with 4chan…scary.
I’m going to guess that he’s probably a Redditor. As someone who visits Reddit daily, I get how easy it can be to get swept up in the posturing and sometimes overly critical culture of the site, especially depending on what sub-Reddits you subscribe to.
Yeah, my guess (after this update) was Reddit, also.
Or Huffington Post or yahoo. Lots of sites have commenters.
My father is a Huffington Post commenter. And he’s also very conservative. Which means he just posts on Huffington to disagree (and troll) liberals. It’s disturbing, and best for his relationship if I avoid any/all of his posts.
Jeez, my dad can barely operate his laptop or his email half the time (and he’s not new to this). I can’t imagine him, like, POSTING SOMEWHERE. Or even what he’d say….. Well, no, I can kind of imagine it. But it would be typed with one finger.
“I personally made a commitment to as much as possible being paranoid and snooping.”
I sure hope that was supposed to say “… stop being paranoid…”
Haha, glad I’m not the only one who noticed that.
“I’ve made a real commitment to stop snooping — and it’s working!! Today, I snooped and everything is just great!”
Is it even snooping if it’s a public online profile? It’s unnecessary, but I wouldn’t call it snooping. (FYI, this isn’t specifically directed at you BGM, the thought just popped in my head when I read your comment.)
Eh, I am only using her terminology here. She said — I’ve done all I can to stop X. Today, I went ahead and did X… Look, if I had a lover who was policing my Dear Wendy comments, I’d run for the hills.
True that. It’s one thing to look at your significant other’s FB Page or instagram account. They’re putting that out there, with their name on it, and have allowed you to have access. It’s another to go onto a site you know your wife reads/comments on, and look through the posts to see what she’s written. If my husband snooped on me on here, I’d be pissed. And he’s specifically been told he’s not allowed to read DW, too 🙂
Yeah, I agree it crosses a boundary. Forum posts are semi-anonymous so there’s an aspect of expected privacy. On reddit, you can add your friends so they can follow your posts, though I’m assuming the LW is just creeping his profile. It’s just …weird.
I still don’t know why he said he “was with his best friend” / “an atheist?” Unclear!!
Would you maybe (lie and) say you’re an atheist if you wanted people to think your opinion wasn’t biased by your religion? That would make sense. The best friend thing not so much…