u/ArugulaBeginning7038

And by "so cool" I mean "I have literally withdrawn from everyone left in my life to preemptively prevent them from abandoning me too after having this happen a few times with people I trusted enough to be vulnerable around, and now I have zero human connections, zero trust left in other people, and zero reason to keep trying to survive and heal since I can't be close to another person without feeling like the most disgusting and evil person in the entire world." I am so so so so so terrified of ever opening up about my trauma and mental health with another human being again after some of the things that have happened in the last couple years since I started treatment and thought I could let my guard down a little because I was finally making progress. Now I have literally no one in my life, I am so lonely and isolated all the time, and I cannot bring myself to inflict myself on another person because it just feels like a punishment.

I have a high number of ACEs, have been in intensive treatment (3-4x a week) for coming up on two years, have been working on healing myself so fucking hard but am seemingly only getting worse and worse. I don't even want to be here anymore but I can't abandon my pets so I have to stick around.

I don't want to, though.

Just venting, unless this hyper specific scenario has also happened to you, in which case advice is welcome.

Anyway.

I'm in my mid 30s, a cis woman, and have never had an orgasm with a partner. I identified as bi until my late 20s and have had multiple long and short term relationships with both men and women, but sex has never been particularly great for me. I am not asexual - I feel real sexual attraction to others, I frequently see women on the street who I'm attracted to - but due to a lot of complex trauma stemming from the environment I was raised in, I struggle with intense hypervigilance and an inability to enjoy sex enough with a partner to actually come during it. For many years I would start out relationships being honest about my limitations, but eventually it would create so much frustration for my partners (both male and female) that I'd eventually fake one just to make them feel better about not being able to make it happen for me, and then get stuck in this cycle of them thinking "Great, I've fixed it!" and having to continue faking while never actually enjoying sex as a result. I know this is a subject people have big feelings about but at the end of the day I'm aware now that it was a fawn response brought on by the complicated feelings and issues I have around sex and my body and all I can do is try to not go back to it in the future.

In the ~2 years since I decided to stop faking orgasms, things have not improved. All I've ever really wanted was to have one good orgasm with a partner once in my life, but at this point, despite trying literally everything any expert or layperson recommends - I've read the books, listened to the podcasts, tried all the things, yes, I promise, even whatever it is you think I haven't tried, I very much have - I've accepted that this will likely not happen for me.

The issue is that since I've accepted this about me, and have started being more honest and not just throwing out a fake O to end a sex session that is starting to feel interminable - telling people in the most respectful way "It's genuinely not on you, but I don't come with partners" and really holding by that when I don't - conditions have not improved. People I'm hooking up with ghost after 2-3 sessions of me not being able to get off with them, and I have been outright dumped over sexual incompatibility by two different women. When I drilled down on this, yeah, they both admitted it came down to the orgasm thing. It feels like it doesn't matter how much I try to make it clear that this is my thing they don't need to take accountability for, it's not a reflection of my attraction to them, and that I "still enjoy sex plenty" (which isn't even really true anymore, although it used to be)... there's nothing I can do.

And yeah. This week I've been really thinking about this and I... just don't want to have sex with anyone anymore. The concept of getting all groomed and dressed up and going out and performing likability for the purposes of making someone want to sleep with me, have nothing enjoyable come from it, getting them off a bunch and then just going home alone, cold and frustrated has started to actively turn my stomach. My body and nervous system are wildly touch-starved, but my brain never wants to touch another person again. I'm lowkey becoming sex-repulsed despite being a very sexual person because it just makes me feel so broken and inadequate and just like a failure. I feel like crying every time I see someone bragging about how amazing lesbian sex lives are and touting the orgasm gap as proof that we're simply so much better at sex than straight men. I would give anything for a normal relationship with my body and sexuality. Being 35 and the most attractive you've ever been, and still never having had the kind of sex you can't wait to tell your friends about just really sucks.

I don't know. I just wish there was something I could actually do to enjoy sex more, or at least to not drive people away by my inability to do so. Unfortunately, "just date asexuals" isn't really the solution people seem to think it is, because it is really important for me to feel desired and sexually attractive to my partner, and "just be a stone top" is out for other reasons (I don't like the idea of forming any kind of identity around my ability to give pleasure because that puts what feels like an undue burden on anyone I date to be able to receive it). I'm in so much therapy for the root causes of these issues but even my therapist admits that there may be nothing I can really do in this regard. It just sucks and I feel so fucking alone because of it. Wish there were a way to just turn off my desire to find a life partner and not be alone because the loneliness is really just as crushing as my inability to physically connect with others at this point.

As a primer, I have had and looked after cats since I was eight. I am in my mid-30s. This is not my first rodeo. I can usually figure out the cat-to-human psychological translation of whatever behavior is on display through experience and context clues.

This one is a baffler.

I have a lovely black cat, female, three years of age, named Fortunata. She is very smart, very snuggly, very annoying when she wants to be but so am I so I can't fault her for it. Her brother Murray does not do this. Her brother does not cause any trouble at all, basically, which I chalk up to him being both very incurious and also very orange (perhaps the same thing, who's to say). Point is, I know she's the one who's doing this, because pure simple Murray does not have an impish bone in his body, nor does he particularly like playing with toys besides sitting there licking the catnip out of a beat-up catnip banana and getting very stoned from it. Also, I've seen her do it.

Fortunata really, really likes leaving me surprises in my shoes.

Often it's her favorite toys. I have found many a wiggly worm or catnip mouse nestled in my Birkenstocks. Lately, she has taken to stealing individual Jolly Ranchers out of a big bulk bag I keep in my kitchen (I get a medical treatment twice a week that has an unpleasant aftertaste so I always have them on hand) and leaving them in there. I know why she likes the Jolly Ranchers as playthings - I am always stopping her from eating plastic, and crinkle toys, or basically anything else that makes an ungodly annoying racket, are basically her black tar heroin. What I do not understand is why my shoes.

When I am playing with her with the wand toy, she will grab the worm or feather in her mouth and demandingly strut down the hall, me following behind with the wand in hand, until she reaches my shoes, then flops over to bunny kick it and lick at it right next to them.

Sometimes when we're doing hunting play, she runs down the hall to my shoes where they're lined up and crouches behind them to do her stalking and hunting.

I know they smell like the most concentrated version of me. I know that's why cats love shoes. What I don't understand is why she keeps putting her favorite things in them for safekeeping. Is it a "Mama will keep this safe" thing? Is she doing the "I'm gonna scratch and scratch and bury this" thing but trusting me to do it for her? Or is it a "stupid mama can't hunt for herself, here's a fresh kill" thing? Or a secret third thing that I can't figure out?

Please. Anyone. I am just so confused.

Just venting. Idk.

34F. Identified as bi from college until age ~28-29, but always went back and forth questioning whether I was truly bi or a lesbian. I had two LTRs with men during this time but also dated women, but none of those evolved into anything serious and in hindsight I realize they didn't take me seriously as a romantic prospect. Around 28 I realized I was not attracted to men at all. There were a number of different contributing factors at play there: a lot of trauma in my background that made it impossible to perceive signals from my body and made emotional investment in other women feel incredibly dangerous, my abusive mother not allowing me to date until I was 20 or have male friends at all growing up and therefore not really understanding the difference between feeling platonic affection and romantic attraction to a guy, greater societal messaging about how heterosexual relationships are disappointing and men will always let you don't and most women don't even like sex with them, but put up with it because boys will be boys and we love 'em, right? I knew I was attracted to women from a young age but it took me so much longer to understand that I wasn't attracted to men. I thought when I came out that my life would get much easier, and that I wouldn't be stuck in this dating cycle of meeting a guy, really enjoying hanging out with them but just tolerating sex, the spark fading out very quickly and getting dumped for the next. I honestly felt like I could chart a whole new course for my life and finally find the person I could settle down with. I wanted, and still want, to get married and find my life partner more than anything.

But I'm just so tired of the way the women I seem to consistently meet react to learning that I came out later and had serious relationships with men. Snarky jokes at best, but sometimes some really insulting and judgmental interrogative questions that all seem to lead back to them insinuating (or outright saying) that I'm a lesser romantic prospect for a serious relationship because I didn't come out until much later than they did. Sometimes they outright insult me and tell me I was weak or desperate for male attention or that I'm probably going to go back to men eventually. Or sometimes they just ghost - after showing interest and being engaged in pursuing me - right after it comes up.

I'm so tired of it. I have had such consistently bad luck in relationships and only dated people - men, bi women, and gay women alike - who seem to enjoy finding exciting and unique ways to make me feel worthless. I'm in therapy three times a week, I am always looking for ways to improve my mental health and relational patterns, but I'm just so tired of meeting someone, thinking they like me, and then boom, they find out I had two serious boyfriends in my twenties and split.

So I'm just done. I'm sitting here looking at Bumble messages from three different women with absolutely no desire to text back, just this heavy weight on my chest that makes me want to cry. I honestly feel kind of repulsed by the concept of dating and romance altogether now. I honestly feel like I'm not even attracted to anyone anymore, like the past five years have made me lose all sexual and romantic desire whatsoever because I feel like I'm just going to be discarded and written off as soon as they find out I haven't been a perfect out lesbian since my early 20s if not younger. I feel so alone and isolated but I also really don't trust people anymore and I would rather die alone than have one more woman basically tell me that I ruined my life by dating men and if I wanted to be deserving of a female life partner, I should've made better choices. I wish I could've. I wish I hadn't wasted my first decade in the dating world barking up the wrong orientation tree. I just didn't have any insight or clarity into my body and didn't feel deserving of sex that I actually wanted to have, let alone think that was something accessible to me.

I've accepted that I will never find a serious girlfriend or a wife and that's really hard and heavy on me, but I still wish I could just... be okay with that.

My OCD ruminations and intrusive thoughts frequently focus on my two cats and everything bad that could possibly happen to them. Sometimes I have really distressing intrusive thoughts about hurting them on purpose (but these I have figured out ways to manage, mostly by picking them up and reassuring them out loud that I love them, would never do anything to hurt them on purpose, and that I'll always come home), and intellectually I know that these thoughts are so distressing to me specifically BECAUSE they're ego-dystonic and I would never do anything to harm any animal... so they are more manageable.

But the anxious ruminations about all of the bad things that could happen to them through no direct action of mine, OMFG. They're kicking my ass these days. I worry constantly about my long-haired orange boy's health after he had a small health scare earlier this year - I thought maybe he'd ingested something like a hair tie that had caused a blockage, but $2500 in vet bills later they didn't find anything and later he threw up a pretty gnarly hairball so I'm obsessive about brushing him now (I've never been negligent of it on purpose but was extremely ill and hospitalized the week before he got sick, and I was just wracked with guilt that maybe my friend hadn't brushed him when I asked her to look in on him, because he's pretty wary of strangers and hid under the bed while she was in the apartment). He also has very mild asthma that is exacerbated by my neighbor smoking in her apartment, and even though I leave the air purifiers cranked to max speed when I leave the house I still freak out any time he seems unwell.

And now I'm in this pickle with my other cat. She has a high prey drive and is a real nosy nudnik who has to investigate everything in her space, and isn't deterred by things like foil or citrus oil sprays. I live on a fourth-floor apartment with a fire escape where we get lots of birds. I usually keep the windows closed (sometimes open at the top for air, but never the screened-in part) because I'm so afraid she'll see a pigeon outside and bust through, then fall four flights and die. She's also much more interested in the outside than her brother and always looks out the front door into the hall with interest when I'm coming and going. She's never been an outdoor cat and wouldn't know what to do if she got out. And I just put in a window-mounted AC for the first time since having them and now I'm scared to death she'll find a way to bust through the accordion fins on either side to get through! I'm basically terrified to leave her alone when I go to work tomorrow. It's so hard to do ERP around this image when I'm not sure if it's a valid thing to be worried about or not. She's never TRIED to escape, but, I mean, she's really smart and could probably figure it out if she wanted.

I'll probably just leave the fan on the unit when I leave tomorrow (it makes noise and blows air, two things she is a lot more nervous about than her bro) but still. It's just hard. Part of me wants to be like "Well, this is a legitimate concern, how can I cat proof this beyond taping foil to the accordions?" but another part of me wonders (and hopes) if it's just my disorder running away with a bad possibility.

I don't know, if anyone has figured out ways to manage this aspect and differentiate between real and disordered concerns, I'd love to hear them. Also, if you have suggestions for cat-proofing the sides around a window-mounted AC unit, happy to hear those as well. Let's cover all bases, I guess?

Just a PSA to anyone thinking about seeing The Sheep Detectives: unlike most talking-animal kids movies, it’s not dog lover propaganda!

Okay, that sounds melodramatic, but I do get mildly irritated by how many kids’ films I take my nieces to manage to shoehorn in a “dogs are the best” message. But I was so pleased with this one! First of all, I did not expect it to make me cry so much - really good film that adults can enjoy too. But more relevantly, there’s only a couple appearances by dogs in the entire film (big for a movie about talking farm animals) and they are unambiguously scary and not sympathetic characters. So if you’ve been on the fence about this one, go! It’s really so sweet.

Looking for some honest thoughts and feedback here, not just validation, for the record!

OK, so to keep it short: I [35F] cannot have an orgasm with a partner. I'm 99% certain it's trauma-related, I've been working on it for a long time, nothing has changed and I feel very little confidence that anything ever will change. I can do so on my own, but only under very specific circumstances that do not allow for the inclusion of another person in or anywhere near me during the act. As it is, sex is not super enjoyable for me - it's a lot of buildup that peters out without a climax, and then I'm too overly sensitive to get myself off for 1-2 more days after the fact. Additionally, I'm not completely incompetent as a top, so usually it evolves into a lopsided dynamic where the other person is getting off but I'm not, and this does not always make me feel so good about myself either! Basically, this issue has for me turned sex from a meal you cook and share together to a meal that I cook and the other person eats while I watch them.

This, obviously, makes dating complicated for me. Lesbians are really proud of our orgasm rates and in any discussion of the orgasm gap between opposite-sex couples, the fact that between lesbian couples, both parties orgasm typically orgasm during sex gets trotted out as evidence of our general superiority, which has always made me feel a type of way. I really struggle with explaining to new partners that no matter what they do, it is extremely unlikely that they will be able to change my body, and I've noticed that every woman I've been with have gotten their feelings hurt by this information, no matter how it's delivered and in what tone or context. And I get it! It sucks to know that no matter what you do, you're not going to get the kind of satisfaction you have with other partners from giving them earth-shattering orgasms! But at this point, after yet another instance of being treated like a disappointment, I'm starting to wonder if this is a serious dealbreaker for more women than I have previously imagined.

Does it even make sense continuing to try to date under my condition? Like, if you met someone and hit it off with her, but then learned that she would never feel satisfied by your partnered sex life because she's not really getting anything out of it beyond the enjoyment of seeing you have a good time, would that constitute an impossible issue to resolve?

I just don't know if it makes sense to even try anymore. I genuinely wish I were asexual and just never felt sexual desire or attraction at all - it would make things so much easier - but I do, and I'm just so lonely and crave romantic and emotional intimacy with another person all the time! I just... can't really get very much out of the physical component, and that makes me feel horrible about myself. So honest feedback here: am I right in thinking that this is probably an irreconcilable issue for most potential partners? Is celibacy probably the correct path forward?

Marketing/publicity professional here who donates time/skills to a mid-sized nonprofit. I have been tasked with investigating who and where these Google Ads are coming from and I cannot for the life of me figure it out.

SEMRush shows me that they've been doing this for the past few years, but it doesn't appear to be a set-it-and-forget-it operation as they've added new copy and content in recent months. The finance director of the org doesn't think it's anyone who works there as a previous development director who DID dabble in Google ads was fired in 2022 and his card was canceled, and hasn't seen any other charges come through on statements since then. Also, they seem to have some knowledge of marketing best practices, bid on competitor keywords, etc. in addition to just promoting this specific org and its programs. They do bring in a modest number of donations!

I would love to identify who is doing this or at least what email account the ad buys are connected to. Does anyone have advice on tools or processes that can perhaps solve this mystery? This really isn't my area of expertise (haven't played in digital ad or media buying sandboxes since a very early job 10+ years ago and prefer to leave it to the experts and just approve strategy/budgets at my current job) but it would be nice to have an answer.

Thank you!