bloodymediocrity

@MissMJ I feel you so hard. I’ve gone through a lot of swings over this whole nonsense and I’m definitely feeling like it’s a low point now. My state has been ok at managing it, but it doesn’t seem like schools are ready to go back in session.

And our President is so. Fucking. Stupid. He’s still on about lowering testing to make our numbers look better. And 38% of people are still like “yeah, that’s my guy.”

If he wins again (by electoral college shenanigans or simply cheating), how are we going to survive this? Our national trajectory will be what? We just keep letting people die for another 4 years? Eventually they will stop paying for testing and treating it and now not only will it possibly be death sentence, it will also bankrupt anyone who contracts it who isn’t already a millionaire.

I’m just so out of hope for the future.

Listen – I’m going to defy the common opinion here and say you don’t HAVE to leave him. If you’re truly happy 70% of the time and think you can get to a place where you’re happier, you can work towards that.

To get there, you have to accept the boundaries your husband is putting down. It doesn’t matter how “normal” it is or conventional. It doesn’t matter if it’s fair. Your husband is requiring a gigantic space in his life for this other woman. Maybe he’s sleeping with her, maybe not. But if you’re going to continue this marriage, then you need to accept that this is how it is going to be.

That means it’s time to stop posting here and asking “is this normal?” “Is this ok?”. It doesn’t matter at this point what is normal or common. Your marriage is now outside of “common” so what other people are doing is totally irrelevant. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no blanket template for what a marriage looks like.

To get there, you need more hobbies. You need to keep your mind busy and more fulfilled when he’s off with her.

Even if your marriage may be sexually monogamous (and frankly, that’s a big maybe), you might want to read some literature on open marriages and polyamory to learn coping strategies to deal with your jealousy, and you should encourage your husband to do the same.

You also need to gird yourself to the possibility that they are in fact sleeping together and how you will respond if/when you find out. Is it truly a dealbreaker at this point if they are?

It really depends on what you’re doing. Are you planning on leaving him? Because if your not, you just need to get yourself to a place of acceptance with everything he does with her. If you can really, truly believe that he’s not having an affair with her, you need to just start accepting when he makes plans with her.

At this point, what he does is totally irrelevant. The only thing that should matter at this point is what you’re doing. Are you okay with the status quo? If not, what will get you to be ok with it? And if that answer is nothing, then it’s divorce lawyer time.

Tina – I will give you the information you are looking for on how other relationships work as far as this is concerned because I think it may actually be helpful to you.

Some details for context: my wife and I have been together for 7 years now. We have partial custody of my daughter who is with us around 50% of the time. I’m pretty introverted and don’t make friends quickly. She’s very extroverted and can’t leave the house without making a new friends (pretend we’re not in a pandemic for the moment).

Neither of us are jealous at all. We’ve discussed even the possibility of some day opening our relationship down the line, but it’s not something we’ve done. I have never cheated on her, and to the best of my knowledge she has not cheated on me.

I’m primarily attracted to women. One of my best friends is my co-worker we’ll just call V, who is straight and married. We don’t talk often outside of work, but what we do talk about is often serious. I have intimate knowledge of deeply personal things like her family relationships and the state of her marriage, and she has similar knowledge about me. We don’t really hang out outside of work but will occasionally message each other, but rarely more than once a week.

My wife is pansexual and extroverted, so I’m only going to look at her friendships with men and women who are attracted to women. For many years she had a very close friend who is a straight male. They would text frequently (daily at minimum) and talk on the phone for 1 to 2 hours every week. A few times a year she would visit him and spend the night (he lived a couple hours away). I was ok with this. They eventually had a falling out and they aren’t friends anymore, but it has nothing to do with me.

She’s also very close friends with a woman who is a lesbian in her late 20s (about 9 years younger than us.). They text each other all-day every-day. They bond creatively over their writing, share cute animal pictures, and pre-pandemic would meet up maybe once a month for the majority of the day. I will admit to being a little bit jealous when they first became friends but it’s become clear that over time they have more of a mentor-mentee bond and I’m over it.

My wife has another friend who is a lesbian that she has a very deep connection with. They have worked together regularly on public works and planned classes together. They have comforted each other through multiple heartbreaks over the years. This friend officiated our wedding and my wife was the maid-of-honor at hers.

She also has a friend whose sexual orientation I’m not totally sure on, but on the chance that she’s bi or pan we’ll include her. They text regularly every day. They bond over health issues and joke around a lot. They have a once-a-week phone-call that lasts 3 to 4 hours. They’ve really only gotten to know each other post-pandemic so they don’t see each other in person often currently, but I suspect that will change.

I could got on with more examples, but my point is, there’s a lot of deep, close personal friendships between people who could technically partner up, but we don’t get jealous of the time we spend with others of potential partners or connection that the other is spending. If there was a couple where “I’m going to hang out with X person every Friday forever” would be us. And it’s still a totally unreasonable request.

Is this Tina again?

We had a bunch of idiots in my state protesting our stay at home order. Here in MN we’ve got the lowest cases per capita and these fucking morons out here gathering in groups without protective gear getting to change that.

I just can’t with these people. I just want to blast off this planet forever when I see this nonsense.