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Wellness Wednesday for July 24, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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This is what my life is like. Nothing ever, ever works out, and whenever I think I'm making an emotional connection with someone, reality itself seems to realize a mistake has been made and steps in to correct things. I have a day or two of emotional torment as I accept that I am going to continue to be alone and to feel arbitrarily alienated. I am not allowed to do the things regular people are allowed to do. I don't get to be human.

Bro; this sucks. I'm an optimist about your ultimate outcomes, the male half of the dating pool is absolutely terrible, but I'm sure this was just fucking rough at the moment.

I was once at a new years event at a board game bar in Milwaukee, 2017. It was a wristband all-you-can-drink thing. At around 11:30, a small, delicate woman with dark hair and a bare, well-defined back sought me out and loudly said she "couldn't find her friend." I say, well, I'll help you find them. We exchange names, re-fill our drinks, chat, she asks me to dance, I say sure. She has to go to the bathroom first, asks me to hold her drink.

While I wait, a fat redhead gets in my face and demands to know who I am, who I'm with, what I'm doing here, do I know her (small woman's) name. I reply her name is [name], I'm holding her drink while she goes to the bathroom, give her a confused raised- eyebrow look. Small woman comes out, takes her drink and my hand, and pulls me to the dance floor, doesn't acknowledge fat redhead. This is great, I'm gonna get a new years kiss, possibly more, frankly I'm just happy to get this person home safe (I had ubered. It was hilariously cheap back then in Milwaukee). I had only just moved to the city, this could be my big break.

At 11:53, the redhead suddenly re-appears with security dudes that step between us, her shouting in my face "who are you with, what's her name" and the security dudes repeating "who are you with" and pulling me towards the door. [Name] has been spirited away by security, presumably to be given a foil trauma blanket.

I repeatedly say I'm with [name], where is she? No I didn't come here with anyone, is that a crime? Am I being kicked out or not? No they say, they just want to know who I'm with. This loops a few times, I'm not allowed to see [name], but I'm not kicked out, who am I with, no I'm not allowed to see [name]. I'm slightly drunk and very pissed off, so instead of roaring in the face of the fat redhead demanding to know why she seems to think I am undeserving of love, I leave. It's 11:59, and I ring in the new year stomping down the snow-dusted sidewalk of Milwaukee. How fucking dare I go to a bar alone and let people ask me to dance?

So no, it wasn't just rough in the moment. It's been rough for a while. It continues to be rough.