u/Dettyboy93

Time to apply real world morals to an amoral sitcom

For one, the fact that he was just using her, getting her flowers and everything, JUST so she would scratch his back is insane. As soon as the itch is gone, so is his attraction to her. But what really gets me (and let's forget the fact that he used a mannequin) is that he tried to make her jealous/break her heart right then and there on top of dumping her. Like, breaking it off with somebody and then kissing your new partner right in front of them, minutes after breaking it off and looking them dead in the eye while doing it, is borderline sadistic and sociopathic behavior. Kramer is usually REALLY nice towards women and people in general. Something about the way he did that just never sat well with me. That always seemed like more of a George move.

This is a tiny bit long lol. But I want to vent and I wonder if anybody has ever felt the way I do.

I have always had close friendships. Very, very close. To the point of codependency. Even in my adult life. I'm autistic and as a kid, I would generally have one friend at a time, who I was very jealous and possessive over. If a new kid tried to join us, depending on the situation (school was where I had this problem. Neighborhood kids I played with but weren't really "friends" with, I didn't care) I would try to sabotage it or run him down to my other friend. This sort of thing went on until middle school until I was able to handle letting a third person join. This would often lead to serious drama and jealous behavior. It was incredibly unhealthy. Once I hit high school and I left my old friends who in all honesty, were just as toxic as I was, I stopped being like this and I relished being in healthy friend groups of 3-4 people, which then lead me into being with even bigger groups and making many friends.

Even today, I can make a friend, like him a lot and then regret it because now he expects something of me. Take my neighbor who's my age. Great dude. Love talking to him for 20 minutes at a time if we're both outside smoking a cigarette. Once we exchanged phone numbers and he started texting me asking to hang out I was like "Dammit." which made me feel bad. He's a great dude and I like talking to him. I just don't want him to expect me to be consistent. It's like I'm fighting between two personalities. One really cares about people and their lives and hates hearing that anybody is going through hardship, and the other is totally callous and wants to live his life without people expecting anything of me socially or emotionally (not saying that being aplatonic is callous, I'm saying I can be)

As an adult, I have been codependent on multiple friends. One of them, for 4 years, would already be at my apartment when I got off work. It would absolutely exhaust me. I helped him with his long term toxic relationship from beginning to end, his heart issues which were very scary and experienced a friend committing suicide which he in particular was very close to. He would figuratively (and literally sometimes) fall into my arms anytime there was a crisis. I have absolutely no boundaries and especially didn't back then, and it would completely dictate the way my life was going.

I don't know what it is about me, but I have had multiple male, straight neurotypical people absolutely try to enmesh themselves with me over the years as if I were their partner. Like, these are guys who are gym bros and far more traditionally masculine than I am. It got to where I actually had to shake them off me like they were a monkey on my back. People who were boring as hell, materialistic, shallow with absolutely NOTHING in common with me would just latch onto me and suck my energy dry for 2-3 years, trying to guilt me to do EVERYTHING with them and then acting shitty when I finally put a boundary up. Like, getting angry because I don't feel like drinking when I agreed to go out a week before. Or expecting me to show up to an event outside of town that he told me about 3 months before, getting mad that I already had plans that day. It got to the point where I had to say "Dude, I am NOT your girlfriend." Like, these are the same guys who would think I was a freak or make fun of me in middle school, now being completely codependent on me for whatever reason. They liked that I processed the world different than them, being autistic and high functioning, but they added literally nothing to my life other than obnoxious obligations and a painfully shallow perspective on life. I am so, SO careful with who I let in my life now because this world is full of energy vampires. And that's the thing. They don't mean any harm so I feel bad saying this. They struggle making connections and I get it. High school is long past and they're lonely because they have little personality or depth. I am a very empathetic person that will offer a connection if somebody asks for it (not talking myself up, this is genuinely makes people latch onto me) and what's worse, sometimes I connect with people personally while I'm masking. I have nothing in common with them so for some reason I talk on a personal level because well, anybody can talk like that if they're open enough. Then we "connect" WAY more than I want us to. I didn't want to share myself. I just didn't know how to talk to you and now I've overshared, thus making you overshare and get attached to me in some way when really, I was just reaching for an easy defense mechanism to get me through this until I can leave.

These days, especially the past few years going through opioid addiction and SEVERE burnout, I just have no capacity for friendship anymore. I haven't seen my best friend of 17 years since April. I haven't seen any of my close high school friends since I went through my breakup, which was short lived but very traumatic and ended in an emotionally violent way. When I met her, I realized that I value that sort of connection FAR more than a platonic one. Which, as much as I have WANTED to be left alone following the grief of that ending, I can't help but notice that all that energy I gave to my friend, basically being a mediator in his LT relationship, bordering on making decisions for him, was absolutely not given back to me when I could've needed it. He cared for a week or so and then moved on doing stuff with the rest of the group. Now, since I don't want that attention I shouldn't care. But it's another thing that adds to my sentiment of "Why do I even want all these friendships?" Like, if my years of energy and effort of making my friends' lives better can't even be followed up with a simple message checking up on me at all within these 3 months (especially knowing I had just gone through severe depression and suicidal ideation after my detox) then I literally just do not care about keeping these bonds alive.

I don't dislike them and I don't want to cut them out of my life, but I simply don't give a shit. I don't miss them in any capacity. If anything, all I do is feel guilty. We always said we would be best friends until we died. And because we've been friends for over 15 years, I feel like I HAVE to keep it alive. I genuinely miss our old mall more than I ever miss any of them. I miss those old days and the times we spent together in the past more than anything. I'm very sentimental... but I only miss them in very specific moods. But after all this, them knowing how badly I've struggled this past year... they just don't give a shit and that's totally fine. They love having me around and they're always really happy when I show my face again. I genuinely do love these guys like family. I've known them too long not to. But I don't miss them. And they're so distracted with each other (it's a big group) and their hobbies that it just makes sense that I'm not a concern and it just makes it so much easier to detach.

I work with 3 of my best friends and my cousin who's more like my brother. This is all I have capacity for. I cannot escape these guys. But I also love having them in my life. 2 of them are moving to Detroit within the year, and I can actually say I WILL miss them. They're the very few people that I can say, this will leave a void. But we're all neurodivergent and just get each other. However, I know I'll get over it. Because I just can't miss people for too long (romance is different) I have very close internet friends 3 states away and have been friends for 15 years. I have all but dropped out of their orbit for 4 months. Now, alot of this has to do with my complete withdrawal after my breakup. But this has been in the works for some time now. After the breakup I was completely lost and relapsed back into addiction (Yeah, I am PISSED at myself and am back to draining my bank account and am once again stressed about money) and sought comfort on reddit with strangers, because I can make tiny connections in the comments with people also dealing with trauma or heartbreak, make them feel a little better and then completely withdraw.

I connected with a certain girl though from the UK and she is the most beautiful soul I've ever met. Within days, our dynamic was strange. It wasn't platonic, but it wasn't romantic. We tried not crossing too many boundaries but we each had a very deep, dark void we were trying to fill. Not that we were using each other, but we completely soothed our nervous systems which had been screaming for months at this point. Usually, I can't stand doing back and forths with people I meet on here. I'm not looking for deep connections and I'm DEFINITELY not looking for a person I feel obligated to keep up with. She is different though. We talk for 6 hours at a time. Sometimes 8. Sometimes all throughout the day, it will accumulate to 10 hours. Because of the ambiguity of this relationship between us, I completely attached myself to her and so did she. It started off with her helping me send once last message of closure to my ex, but then things got very complicated, mostly due to her fear my ex will want to try again (I guarantee she won't) which will end our friendship because she was possessive. Not only that, but we would have to change the dynamic of our friendship and completely dial it back, or it would be emotionally cheating. We spoke very intimately but not QUITE romantically, but it was damn close. Random stuff like her complimenting my appearance... then it quickly turned into "I wish I could hold you in my arms right now." and I still have no clue how it got that way so fast. Once I came home to a message saying "I really missed you today" (which I absolutely loved and missed coming home to messages like this) the lines got blurred and lead to arguments and constantly questioning our boundaries and what the outcome of this was.

We were both so confused as to how this happened. I absolutely hate making new friends. I do not want people I have to keep up with. The idea of multiple people constantly being in my inbox just drives me insane. But, I looked at that aplatonic bingo card somebody posted, and the desire to have a non-romantic, non-platonic relationship seems to be a part of this. Because this isn't just a friendship. We actually decided to take a week break from talking because we both became so codependent and after a fight we had where we didn't talk for 20 hours, we both got genuine separation anxiety where her chest was hurting, and my head was aching. Even now, it's been less than 24 hours since we talked (I caved and told her that she was missed just in case she was feeling sad... and because I miss her) and this is still hard. It's so strange like, this year has made it abundantly clear that I have codependency and attachment issues, but it's reserved for literally one person. When I met my ex, only one other person had ever seen the side of me that I gave her, that being completely vulnerable and showing that soft side that I never, ever want anybody to see. Now I've done that with my friend and it feels safe. But this is absolutely not platonic. This feels so deep even if we haven't known each other long, we both agree that there are deep psychological reasons that we were both drawn to each other this way. We want to take the attachment test and figure out the root at how in the hell we ended up emotionally throwing ourselves at each other. Especially since I'm a dismissive avoidant when it comes to platonic relationships.

Sorry for the long rant. Thank you to anybody that read this.

I am a 32 year old man. I have only been "in love" once in my life, but I have felt very deep attachments to people that I only met a week or two ago. I have a lot of friends. But being a man, alot of them are surface level even if they can get deep at times. I absolutely love these people and many of them have been my friend for 10-15 years. However, this past year has been the hardest year of my life. Addiction, severe depression, heartbreak.... I have been able to lean on a few of my friends and confide in them. But to be completely honest, a lot of these people could exit my life and as unhappy as I would be to lose them, I could absolutely manage and get over it quickly. This year though I have met a few people, being women, that I made myself vulnerable to. One of them in town, another long distance. Much of this, if not most of this communication is via messenger. Typing for whatever reason, makes me lower my guard immensely. I'm not so afraid of "showing" myself.

That ability to constantly be talking to each other..... coming home to messages saying they missed me and are thinking about me..... it fills a very deep wound I have. I don't attach to people "easily." I keep myself locked up. People do not know me on an intimate level and that's how I want things over all. But when somebody makes me feel seen, understood and wanted, I absolutely lose myself and completely attach to them. Supposedly this isn't healthy (I can understand why) but when somebody else feels that same connection and attachment to you, it is so hard for me to reel things back. When I lose them, I feel so lost and devastated. I wish I could be like everybody else and detach like it's nothing. But I can't.

I don't even feel ashamed that I do this even though a lot of people would see it as weird, especially seeing as it was a very short time. Maybe this is why things get messed up. We both jump into it and all the sudden, we both feel so attached to each other and are suddenly saying good morning every day or coming home to a message saying they were thinking about me today and missed me. One of us gets scared. Even when I do get scared, I just keep it going. How do people NOT get attached when things get to this level? I dunno. I feel like this is a really common thing with autism, especially with men. We spent our whole lives struggling with human connection. Masking nonstop every damn day and being disconnected from most people that you cross paths with or make friends with. Then you find somebody that gives that lonely, scared little child within you the biggest hug ever. I know other people deal with this. I just want to know how common it is.

This is seriously so hard to deal with and makes life much more difficult and emotionally heavy than it needs to be

My vote goes to Susie's daughter finding a picture of Larry's nasty tooth in his coat pocket. It literally put an abrupt end to the dinner party and everybody gave him the death stare 😆

This wasn't the worst reaction he ever got, but the reaction was still pretty insane, rather than telling the child not to go through coat pockets OR hide peoples' shoes

For the first 2 months, I was looking damn near every day. It ended HORRIBLY ugly. She has BPD and NPD. She unfriended me, but never blocked me. She split on me (BPD terms of vilifying you, not split as in "left") and accused me of cheating, lying to her about who I am and just being a horrible person. Spent a whole week burning me alive on social media and torturing me by posting about hypothetical men that she might text. Really immature, ugly shit coming from a 27 year old woman with kids towards a 32 year old man. Our relationship was short lived, but VERY emotionally intense as are all relationships with people with BPD. I tried to slow down and keep my emotional walls up, as I do with everybody. She got me to take them down within a week. She was talking about sharing a life with me and after the fucked up year I've had (I had gotten off opioids 3 months before meeting her and was still struggling with depression,) she was holding the key to my happiness and my next stage of life. Life finally was worth living again.

Our chemistry was incredible. She started kissing me within 2 hours of talking to me, followed me home and chased me up to my porch (this in itself is a long, wild story that was the most insane night of my life.) She was utterly obsessed and beyond finding her VERY attractive, I didn't want to lead her on because I take dating seriously. I don't do this shit for fun. If I don't see a future, I don't even entertain the idea. I have too much empathy and have had my own hopes dashed too many times. I can't do that to a girl. When she said she's looking to get married and settle down, I really had to tell myself "I either need to go all in or walk the hell away. Because I'm in too deep now." I dove in and let my attachment issues take over because..... I thought I was safe. It was intimacy like I'd never experienced. It may have been similar to her. I know of her exes and they're all emotionally unavailable macho guys that found her to be easily abused and manipulated. She told me no man has ever been so romantic or treated/talked to her the way I did. I had been single for 10 years. I treated her like a fucking princess. Even when she didn't deserve it. We were really, truly falling in love. After the first fight we had that I got fed up and retaliated, she split on me and discarded me 3 days later.

Our last night was the most passionate night of my life. Truly emotionally intimate. Gazing into each other's eyes, holding each other and promising her a future like nobody else would ever give her. She WAS my world. We had a fight later on that night though and it was BAD. 3 days later she accused me of cheating and lying to her about the person I am this entire time. All because I yelled at her and went home. Because she was being verbally abusive. For the second day in a row. I begged her to listen to me. She drug me right in this fucked up state of codependency that she initiated. A week after the discard she made me feel so unwanted. Told me I have too many deep issues for her to deal with and that this was fun, but we were not deep. And the thing is, we really weren't deep. We were acting like lovesick highschoolers. But that doesn't change the fact that less than 2 weeks ago she was talking about starting a life with me. I'm autistic. I don't connect easily and when you tell me something like that, I'm going to take it literally. Straight forward communication is the only thing my brain goes off. So anyway, I told her she basically gaslit me and never spoke to her again. I took screenshots of every crazy "in love" thing she sent me over messenger intending on throwing it in her face, but I decided to just leave it. So I blocked her for a while. But I was so desperate for her to reach out, I had to unblock her. I woke up every morning grabbing my phone, looking for a message. For almost 2 months I did this. It was honestly hell. I've gotten over much longer and more emotionally intimate heartbreaks than this. 4 years of being in love thinking I had found my soulmate in my late teens/early 20s, and I was able to get on with my life a few weeks later after that. This was different though. Maybe it's because my mental health has gotten worse the older I got. Maybe it's because this was so emotionally violent. Maybe it's because I had been given promises that got taken back with no warning. Either way, I was paralyzed.

None of my friends understood because they've never been discarded while their girlfriend was in a state of psychosis. Like she suddenly became a different person. She kept me unblocked, and I believe it was for emotional manipulation. She would post about how good she's doing. New job (she's a job hopper and I don't think she has it anymore) quit drinking (she's drinking again) and how much she loves being single. So for 2 months I thought I really didn't matter to her at all. That she really just used me for her emotional validation and because I fulfilled her "nerdy, shy, traumatized, submissive white boy" fantasy (We kind of fetishized each other's race as she loves blonde white guys and I love black/ Asian girls and she is both. Plus she was dominating in every aspect which I loved)

So over a month ago, I was having a really bad day. Couldn't stop thinking about her and my chest hurt because of it. I relapsed and got myself some opioids. 2 months of no serotonin in my brain and I was at the end of my rope. I hate myself for this decision, but I had had enough. So I got some and seriously, feeling SOME sort of dopamine after 2 months of pure gray was a life preserver. But there was still something bugging me. I had to look at her profile just to calm my nerves and enjoy my buzz/ the rest of my night. I couldn't believe what I saw. After 2 months of making damn sure I thought I didn't matter to her, she shares some post about eyes. She captions the post "I let the green eyed boy ruin me. Fuck it." I am the only green eyed guy she's dated and she was absolutely fixated on them. She told me they were the first thing that drew her to me. I was absolutely floored. I immediately was filled with so much dopamine from what I took AND seeing my worst fears being proven wrong. I did matter to her. In that moment, her defenses fell, and she felt the need to tell the world that the guy with green eyes ruined her. Nobody would even know who the fuck she's talking about except for me.

All that shit she said. All that "I LOVE being single! None of these men are worth it!" and even directly emasculating me, now I ruined her. I knew all this was a front deep down. She was single for 3 years before me. She finally was able to lure somebody into a relationship with her. I believe at the time, she really wanted to start a life with me. When I yelled and took off on her, it made her fear of abandonment go nuts and her nervous system was all fucked up. I even withdrew after that and she picked up on it. I was just trying to give her space. She thought I was about to leave her. So her brain vilified me and told her I was actually cheating. I'm not sure what the exact narrative is, but I know it rests at the idea that I ruined her and her dreams of the "perfect" (unrealistically idealized) man.

After this I kept looking every day. "Maybe I'll get more confirmation from her. Maybe it'll give me a sign of when I should reach out." Well, I started getting more info than I wanted. With her defenses crumbling and starting to feel the void I left in her emotionally, she started talking to other guys. She posted about getting ghosted by an ugly boring guy and then the NEXT DAY posted about how she almost got suckered into a hookup. 2 days and two different guys. One she didn't even find attractive at all. That told me she is so desperate to fill that void that she is messaging any and all guys hoping they'll give her that level of intimacy I gave her.

At that point, I realized I needed to stop. This was info that just made me lose respect for her and made me sad for her. She's got 3 kids and her red flags are out of this world. You see them just by looking at her socials. No sane man wants to deal with her. Hell, no INSANE man wants to deal with her. She SA'd me the night we met to be perfectly blunt. She cried and berated me when I told her to slow down. I was trauma bonded to her and felt sorry for her. I wanted to give her comfort because I have a caretaker personality. I wanted a project and she gave it to me. I lost my smart phone a week later in a different town. Now all I have is my laptop. Her profile no longer shows up when I share a post on facebook, suggesting me to send it through messenger. I still can't bring myself to block her because I don't want her to know she still has power over me. I don't see her anywhere online anyways. Our moms are friends and I almost ran into her the other week at the campground but our timing was off. I saw her walking with her friend last night to the bar we met at while delivering pizza. If I really want to run into her and try to repair some of the damage, I can. Our town is small. Should I? Probably not. I just hate having to feel like I can't go to certain places because she'll show up. There's still a part of me that says "Can we please just put all that behind us and be cool? I don't want to have to avoid you my whole life" but who knows how that'll go.

Either way, getting rid of that easy access to checking her socials was the best thing I did. This laptop sucks and Facebook is so user unfriendly that I don't even wanna be on it. It feels like her profile is inaccessible. It's not even an addiction anymore. I forget I can even do it. I still ruminate a lot and get in terrible moods at work when I'm driving alone and can't get it out of my head, but I am doing a HELL of a lot better than I was a month ago. I suggest everybody try and work past this aspect of looking at them all the time. I love not seeing her face every day, as much as I wish I could still see it IRL

I'm watching Curb for the first time in like 6 years or so. Absolutely love this show and I find it hilarious how it evokes more emotion out of me than any show I've ever seen because of how convincing it is. Plus, I just absolutely feel for Larry (not all the time but most times.) Now, I know it's pretty common to find Cheryl infuriating in how she takes zero accountability and lets Larry be a sponge for verbal abuse. You will go through dozens of moments where Cheryl just sits there making that oblivious face while Larry is straight up accosted like a child. For Cheryl to ACTUALLY sit there quietly and make a surprised face while Wanda says "YOU FIRED HIM!?" and then looks back at her is unbelievable. Like "Yup, Larry's doing out of control Larry stuff." raising her eyebrows. When she does finally say "We had all sorts of problems with him," she said it in the midst of the yelling to where nobody would even notice what she said and never bothered to say "This was my decision and Larry honored my wishes" And then Wanda flips out saying "YOU HAVE TO TURN THE SATELLITE ON. OR FIRE THE BLACK MAN. WHICHEVER WORKS FOR YOU" Is Cheryl, who is far more concerned with this damn TV than Larry is, completely exempt from the responsibility of learning how to work this thing? The other girls thanking Larry is the only bit of humanity in this scene. The fact that it happened directly after Richard Lewis's girlfriend was an utter bitch about the brownies not being exactly the same as she remembered it just made me get so much more annoyed 😆 Also, Wanda is such an outward misandrist.

Also, I will also fix a tip no matter who I'm with, but I will often do it discreetly just because I don't feel like having the conversation of "I think they deserved more than 2 dollars." Being black had nothing to do with anything.

I thought it was bad when Larry got blamed for ruining the surprise party when Cheryl was both holding the present and demanded he change his outfit, but this one was utterly insane. Cheryl fired the black guy. It was her decision and Larry didn't want to do it.

I almost want to tally up the worst ways Cheryl avoids accountability while watching Larry squirm trying to defend himself because of something she did or contributed to lol

PS- I know this is a show. I'm not ACTUALLY angry, before people say the inevitable. I just think this is a really fun show to compare real life standards and equivalences to because it's so "real"