u/Ill-Illustrator9384

ripping out their entrails and shit on the streets and sidewalks in the middle of the day. seeing this daily. 1400s plague stricken ass city. someone had a trash bag out on clifton and that thing had a good 5 rats going in on it. whole bag shaking. god help us.

edit: i mean love/intimacy in the relational sense not like having sex

What do you mean that as soon as I engage in love and intimacy with a woman that this tall, sexy man who has spent years cleaning his act up and been in all sorts of therapy and recovery work can get “triggered” into a state of near paralysis and nausea (nothing that severe happened) ? Gay gay gay.

About to go spend a ton of bread on EMDR or some shit.

I will say having a “high performance” job has annihilated my nervous system and I’m effectively never able to fully relax so that’s a problem too.

But whatever man. Severe mommy issues past 30. I’ve come a long long way but come on bucko. Get a grip.

I had always sort of noticed “something” about the photo in question. She has this really lovely soft, warm expression on her face. Just very doe eyed looking into the camera. Things have gotten quite serious between us and I’m not sure what did it but it suddenly hit me that she was obviously on a date in this photo. I asked her about it calmly and she immediately looked embarrassed and admitted an ex had taken it.

She made the move herself to change it (I made no such demands) but I did think it was weird for her (someone super neurotic about photos, hates every picture we take) to kinda “memorialize” a moment from 3 years ago like that. In her mind, which I pretty much believe, she gave it zero emotional weight. It was just a pic she liked and that was it.

I’ve definitely got some big abandonment wounds and the idea / visual artifact of her looking like that at someone that isn’t me really had me activated. Felt super stuck in an abandonment episode.

There were a couple of smaller things like early on we slept with each other and she wore this shirt a guy had given her right after or after 3 months of genuinely not having a single pic together outside of selfies I took, we were at a wedding and a pic of her arms wrapped around an ex beaming popped up on her iPhone memories.

None of these things are major in isolation they more so fed into narratives around “hm.. its like she doesn’t want to be seen in a picture with me or hates when I specifically point a camera at her” - like it fuels a strange feeling or lack of affirmation around how she likes being seen with me even though there’s more evidence to the contrary.

Anyways. Back to the past stuff. Thoughts of her with other men invade my brainspace. Just wrecks me to think she chose to memorialize a moment like that (I understand its a dramatic way to put it) and taps into insecurities about how I don’t do enough or am not up to par compared to past relationships.

We talked about it and her take was there was no intent or feeling around any of it, it was just a set it and forget it kind of thing. But I feel a still burning retroactive jealousy around having seen that moment and the image of her looking like that is eating at me big time.

How to process / get over it?

is very sad :( we have great times together but sometimes this burning level of self hatred rises up in her and I’m like woah.. that’s a lot. just OD heavy. for example, i’ve helped her fix a couple things at her house and instead of idk man.. being happy i was able to help.. she uses it as evidence for why is “useless” and has “no value”. i’m hella willing like i see her as someone i want to be there for and i feel useful being able to assist. i reassure her a bit, squeeze her butt and tell her i love her but once shes in that place she kinda just stays there for a while. its like.. first theres a huge anxious outburst over a trivial issue (minor home repair) and then it somehow gets worse and worse despite there having been a resolution.

tough because i know where it comes from but its a bit much. life will throw much more challenging things are way and its the kinda stuff that makes me feel like what we’ve got is doomed :*(

i dunno bruh. makes me sad.

Like what the fuck is good? Went on a walk this morning and these things are the size of small cats walking around unafraid. Gross man. It’s the kind of thing that makes me think increased taxes is a complete fucking waste of time. We genuinely can’t figure out basic operations like more efficient / frequent trash pickup or some kind of organized sidewalk cleaning.

So nasty man. Walking home at night is traumatic as shit. Several of these fat cunts might scurry past. I even accidentally fucking KICKED one as it ran by and I just rocked it mid stride. It was like kicking into a 20lb bag of rice the thing was completely un fucking phased.

Gross city man. I lived in a developing country for years. They had an unbelievably efficient trash pickup system and also had people cleaning up the streets every day early in the morning. Never saw one rat. Hardly ever saw a roach either and it’s a tropical climate.

Gonna be 90 god damn degrees this week. All the trash and waste is just going to fester at an exponential rate while these massive bastards continue to grow fatter, more powerful and unafraid as we wallow in squalor.