u/Interesting_Candy310

I just got laid off. I am having a hard time because I had the worst year of my life, and I'm worried that this contributed to my team not seeing me as valuable anymore. I lost my home in the beginning of the year in a disaster and so I haven't been on top of things since being displaced. But my work didn't suffer, I didn't make any huge mistakes or mess anything up. I think I was just maybe more stressed than usual, maybe I was more unpleasant due to not having a home? I try very very hard to keep that stuff away from work but sometimes I guess mental state just bleeds into everything, especially when dealing with something like this.

Things got weird a few months ago when my direct manager was out, and our team communication sort of fell apart. I spoke with two other people on my team who both seemed frazzled and upset, and one of them said they got yelled at, the other was just like "yeah... everything is chaos recently". When my manager got back she yelled at me and wrote me up, which was really jarring to me because we were friends outside of work and I didn't see this coming. I had never in my years of working here ever had a problem, never had a performance issue, always had very good relationships with everyone I work with. The reason she wrote me up was actually not even true, and I swear I am not lying or making excuses -- she wrote that I had made mistakes that I didn't make. But because I didn't want to cause issues further, I just sort of accepted it and said yes I would definitely improve. She even later admitted that it was half her fault and said HER manager wrote her up for it as well. It was just weird all around.

This put me even more on edge, and again I tried really hard not to be paranoid but my manager stopped being friendly to me, stopped speaking to me outside of work, etc. I tried to ignore it as just that she was going through something, the company was struggling, etc. I spoke with another person on my team who expressed similar anxiety and dissatisfaction about how the management was handling issues (yelling at us).

Then a few days ago I got called into a meeting and it was my direct manager's manager and HR. They said they were eliminating my position and it had nothing to do with my performance and explained everything to me, etc. I thanked them for giving me some time and for the years of growth and opportunity, etc.

What I am worried about is that I could have avoided this layoff had I not lost my home and become more frazzled and stressed. I don't know why my direct manager started not liking me, and I worry that I was doing some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy by noticing it and having some kind of energy that made her dislike me even more. I am worried that this is going to keep happening, although I have never been laid off or fired at all in my life.

I'm also a bit stressed because my entire life is in shambles because I lost my home and now I lost my job.

I guess I'm just looking for advice, like if it sounds like I did something wrong, or if being under stress can cause someone to be targeted for a layoff. I can't help but think if I had not experienced the loss of my home I would still have a job. I know rationally that the company is strapped for cash and many of my coworkers are stressed and worried as well, but I guess it just stings that I was the only one laid off to my knowledge.

I am really struggling and scared. AA never worked for me and I’ve had experiences with sexually predatory men there so it’s not an option since SA is at the root of my drinking habits to begin with.

In 2022 I sort of spontaneously recovered. I had been drinking alcoholically for over a decade and then I just … stopped. I got into health and learned a lot about the effects of alcohol and really developed a drive to care for myself and my body.

Recently I’ve had some experiences with coercion that I guess re triggered my alcoholism. I’m really scared because this time I can’t see a way out. I have no idea how it happened last time where I just stopped drinking and had no desire to do so for years. And now after a few experiences of coercion and having to see the person who did it socially I can’t stop drinking. I feel like a disgusting monster who deserves to be raped and I feel ugly and terrible and I wish I could wear a mask and sunglasses in public because I feel so ugly. I have no hope in life and I don’t know what to do.

Has anyone ever had an experience like this and did you come out of it? I am not looking for advice I just want to know other people have had some kind of similar experience like a trigger that makes them drink again and then they were able to stop again. I’m so scared.

When I was in my early 20s, I remember taking my first gender studies class and the professor was amazing. She taught us the material history of feminism, and this is where I was exposed to more radical feminist ideas. I also had a few female literature professors who were similar in their way of teaching gender/sexuality. I remember feeling so much hope and looking up to these women. This was like 2008~ or so, then thanks to the encouragement from one of these profs, I started grad school in literature in 2012.

This is where things got weird for me. During this time, choice feminism / (post) third wave feminism started gaining more traction, and obviously social media changed the rhetorical landscape and things like porn and prostitution became more normalized. And then they became part of "feminism." I was really vulnerable and impressionable, and I was being told that not supporting "sex work" was reactionary. I was surrounded by these "rad" queer communities where sex was the center of everything, sex positivity felt mandatory, cis women were "privileged" and needed to sit down and check it, etc. Combine this with a history of abuse and SA and bad personal boundaries, and I got coerced into thinking either giving my body freely away or actually selling it was part of feminism. It was a really dark time for me.

Only recently have I realized I didn't have to do any of that. I really did feel pressure by the "left" to support the sex industry and kink and porn and see myself as privileged for being cis. When I slowly realized how much this was damaging my life, it was a shock, like I was waking up from a nightmare. I had felt pressured as a poor woman to do sex work because it "was just labor" and it gave me this nihilistic validation to do something really damaging to my own body. I became hyper-sexual because I found validation in this culture that that was somehow radical? And now I am horrified at what I let be done to me and what I did to myself. I feel groomed by pornography (which I was exposed to at a very young age because my father was a pornography addict and it was everywhere...). But the worst part of it is ALL of this stuff was presented to me as "radical" and morally righteous when I was in my 20s. I feel like I lost a decade of my life to this.

My issue now is that as I've come out of that period of time and have realized I was always allowed to say no, and that it wasn't my fault when men didn't listen, and that this type of "feminist" ideology isn't something I have to agree with, I am in what feels like a deep period of despair. I used to look to "radical" communities for hope and connection, but I feel betrayed by "leftist" men (and women) who encouraged me to make my body into a commodity. I feel betrayed by leftist men who scapegoat the Epstein files but refuse to let go of their precious pornography or at the very least acknowledge that pornography has EFFECTS on how women are treated and viewed. I can't stomach the idea of letting myself get vulnerable with another man who goes home and watches women wince in pain and gets off to it, then goes about their day as if nothing is wrong. I hate that my experience is viewed as some sort of anomaly and I'm a killjoy or something. I just don't know where to turn anymore, I feel very alone and isolated.

The problem is, one antidote to the isolation would be loosening some of my reactions to these things, like ok, nobody is perfect, and if I want to be a part of community, I have to accept that not everyone shares my views. And I guess acknowledging that my reactions are "PTSD" -- like my therapist says, not all men watch pornography, and my experiences are clouding my view of the world and making it black/white. But why do I feel like everywhere I go misogyny is more rampant than ever in the past 10-15 years? Maybe it's just the mask coming off, I hope maybe women here will have some words of reality for me, I just don't know who to talk to or where to turn. I really want to be rational and live a life that is fulfilling to myself, but right now it's scary to try to engage with the world especially with the past year of news (Epstein, Pelicot, etc..).

How do you deal with isolation and despair? Is there some way I could meet other women who are like-minded? I don't hate men, in fact I feel like the despair is coming from the fact that I don't hate men... I don't believe they are evil, and I wish I could help them see that they don't have to see us as objects to be consumed, as animals, that we could all have connections and relationships if we could just see how these things were affecting us, but I can't. I can't get through to people, they all think I'm dramatic and uptight. But I know where that line of reasoning goes, because that's how I ended up letting my own body be debased in the first place (oh I'm so uptight, I should just drink more, learn to have fun, explore kink, etc).

Sorry this is rambling but I feel so alone. I wish I could go back in time and take classes with those professors again. I just want to read books and talk about history and ideas with other women, I wish there was a place to do this.

I just moved into a prewar apartment and the water is kind of weird. There’s a lot of black particles in it and it’s making my hair feel like it is simultaneously dry and greasy at the same time. I know NYC’s water is soft, in the last prewar apartment I lived in I didn’t have these problems. So I’m wondering if anyone has experienced this and if a shower head filter has helped? I know they don’t really help for hard water, but I’m assuming it’s build up from old pipes and maybe a shower filter would actually help in this case? Any recommendations?

Okay, I posted yesterday describing how my 6000 BTU unit didn't seem to be powerful enough for my ~130 square foot room.

Yesterday it was very hot and my room gets direct sunlight so I thought maybe that was the issue.

But I got home today in a thunderstorm, it's only 78 degrees outside, no sun, and the unit has been on for over an hour. It's only cooled my bedroom with the door closed down to 76 degrees. It's set to 62!

Does it seem like there's something wrong with the unit? it honestly barely feels like it's working, like at the lowest power setting possible, it sometimes sounds like it's powering up but doesn't fully kick in. It also sometimes buzzes/hums for a second and then stops. I don't know what is going on, I used to have an 8,000 BTU of the same model and it didn't do this.

Does this sound like an issue with the unit itself? Or could it also be an issue with my electrical outlet as well, and how would I test this?

My bedroom is about 130 square feet with 9 foot ceilings. It’s very sunny in the afternoon (direct sunlight) but I have blackout curtains. I thought 6,000 BTU would be sufficient but it’s only cooling down to 75 degrees and it’s 89 outside. Should I have gotten 8,000 BTU? I was under the impression getting a unit too powerful for the size of the room is also bad so I’m confused.

I guess I mean does it sound potentially controlling/like it could escalate in the future.

I am having trouble accepting a decision I made to cut someone off who made me scared half the time and feel more amazing than I have ever felt before the other half of the time.

I met this man online and we started talking all day, text and phone, from the start. It was honestly a refreshing pace of communication after being on apps where people barely respond. I am also a very intellectual person and this person seemed to be able to intellectually engage with me about literally anything on a level I had never experienced before.

He lived across the country from me, with his parents. He was in his mid-30s but had just gotten out of a 10 year relationship where he was living with her and so he went back to his parents' place. He said the relationship had essentially been over for 3 years because they hadn't slept together and were only together because he had become her primary caretaker and she couldn't take care of herself so he had to do it "or else she would have died" (his words).

I found out he was still paying her thousands of dollars a month in support. When I asked why, he was very vague but made it seem like he was partly responsible for her mental and physical breakdown. But the only specific he would give is that they moved for a job of his and she lost her job. He said, again verbatim, "This is the financial agreement we made so I could leave the relationship."

He visited me after 2 weeks of us talking. On the first night we spent together, I told him I didn't want to have sex until I was in an established relationship, to which he said "aren't we already in a relationship?" and then he said he figured he would just come spend time with me in my apartment indefinitely. When we talked about logistics he said "I figured I would just get a one-way ticket" so he essentially was saying he was going to move in with me after two weeks of knowing me.

Admittedly I was swept up by all of this because we had such a strong intellectual connection, and it is so rare to find, I guess. But the entire time my body was FREAKED OUT. I was not sleeping, I was constantly anxious, and it started coming out in my interactions with him. He was really sexually pushy, but I guess a lot of men are. He made a lot of future plans like saying we were going to go on all of these trips, that once my lease ended we would get a different apartment together, etc.

It made me feel weird because I barely knew him and he wanted to move right into my apartment with me and he had only left his ex's place a few weeks (maybe a little over a month?) beforehand, and was still giving her thousands of dollars. He said he was serious about me and wanted to build a life with me etc. Anytime I tried to have conversations about specifics important to living together, he would be evasive, and anytime I asked more info about WHY he was giving this woman so much money, he was also evasive.

He eventually said he would get an Airbnb instead of living directly with me, for a month, then we should reassess because it made more sense financially to live together. He said he was going to pay half of my rent too.

Eventually I got so overwhelmed and freaked out, and frustrated that he could not talk about emotional compatibility or what this "life" of ours together would look like, that I started reacting to him in a very suspicious way, to which he responded with telling me things like "I'm always expecting the worst from him" and "I am pushing him away" etc.

He also started getting very jealous, would make comments about my male friends like asking if I slept with them, and also memorized my schedule in a way that felt nice at first but then it started feeling really overbearing. He kept trying to meet me at places of work or school before I was comfortable with that.

Communication was really bad anytime I had a need. At one point he said "what if one of my needs are that my partner doesn't need very much emotionally from me" and stuff like that. But on another level I am afraid I just pushed him away and that I will never actually experience an intellectual connection like that ever again.

Also, one way we connected initially was not liking porn, not watching it, etc, but when he got to my place and we tried to have sex he had ED. When I asked him about it genuinely concerned I asked if he was anxious or whatever, but he said he started having it because his ex was mean to him during sex? And tried to push him to have sex he didn't want to have (like kinky violent sex/porn-adjacent sex). So ever since then he had ED? But it didn't make sense to me because he was again very evasive, I just got this feeling like something else was going on, and he had death grip (needed me to squeeze very tight if I used my hand) and also when he "came" nothing ... came out?

Honestly my mind has been in shambles since this happened because, although I only listed the bad things here, he was literally the ideal person I could imagine having a life with.

It was just really fast, really overwhelming, and he really scared me on a gut level. Like why did he need to spend thousands of dollars on his ex every month? What does it mean to "have a financial agreement" so he could leave the relationship? I also felt like he was lying about the porn stuff because he had all the signs of PIED but obviously I will never know for sure.

Does it sound like I was overreacting here or is this all really sketchy behavior? I fear every single day that I was wrong and just too paranoid, and he was right about me pushing him away and expecting the worst from him. But it all just felt so crazy and overwhelming. Is there ever a situation where behavior/circumstances like this could be normal and not a sign of more pathological behavior?

I searched but didn’t see anything within the past year, and after the Piece of Cake stuff I am hesitant to trust reviews

Looking for a moving company that can also help me reassemble my furniture. I used PoC to move my stuff into storage but am looking for a more local recommendation to move it back out!

I have been maybe experiencing my own personal collapse in addition to general collapse as the past year of news (Epsetin, Pelicot, the website that teaches/encourages men to drug and rape their wives) has made it impossible to avoid acknowledging how grooming and r*pey behavior has affected me throughout my life.

But I also feel like in the past 5-10 years being a woman has become increasingly difficult. I feel like I get casually harassed more often, men I try to date are pushier about sex and weirder and more defensive about it when I call it to their attention, I feel less able to assert myself in intellectual/professional/artistic spaces without getting at least a little bit of redpill/manosphere adjacent vitriol thrown at me. I have been trying to give up on my hope to find a partner to share this life with because dating apps in the past 5 years have led to me having to fend off sexual assault or stalkers, or navigate men who lie to get what they want out of me anyway.

I know it's always kind of been like this but I didn't feel like this 10-15 years ago. I have always had really close male friends, and I love the men in my life, and I had dated many people with whom it didn't work out but I never felt so disrespected and objectified as I do now. It makes me really sad because recently I feel like I just need to avoid men altogether because I am genuinely scared of them. I never felt like this before. Maybe I was just naive.

I am sorry I don't mean to be offensive either, I don't want to avoid men, I am genuinely just afraid of them. Too many bad things have happened. And seeing what types of porn are available and what it sometimes leads to just makes me really afraid of them. Have any other women experienced this?

I know not all men are like this. I just feel like it's too dangerous for me to assume the better of them anymore because in the past few years I've had some really, really terrifying experiences and again the news cycle this past year has only cemented my fears. I guess just wondering if any other women have experienced the same.

I guess also for clarification, I feel like this is an effect of collapse in some way, like as the social fabric disintegrates and people become more and more alienated from each other and themselves, things like racism and sexism just get worse. In some way I feel really bad for men being affected by the culture of dating apps and how the sex industry targets them to become addicted to porn and align their self-worth to whether or not women find them attractive, but the more empathy I extend to them the more danger I find myself in. So I guess yeah, I'm just sad.

I'm applying to a job that asks me to send 2-3 editing samples, which should be before-and-after documents with tracked changes.

I currently work as an editor for a nonprofit organization that publishes technical / policy research. All of this work is publicly available. Would it be inappropriate to grab a few drafts of pieces I have edited with my tracked changes and upload them to the application if these pieces are already published? Like would I be compromising something by sending the former drafts?

Thank you!

Without getting into too much detail, I’m looking for advice about how to navigate a work environment that has gone south unexpectedly.

I have never had even the slightest negative feedback in almost a decade of tenure at my current position but money at my company is tight at the moment so I believe everyone is on edge. I was berated by a boss and I am confused about how to proceed because I’ve never been in this position.

The berating was completely unexpected and I didn’t even have a chance to have a conversation about what happened. I did not keep my composure — I cried a little bit in the meeting which I am not happy with myself about.

I guess I am just looking for advice about how to navigate that. Can one come back from something like this? Is it a sign I need to just leave?

I dated someone who told me he never watched porn, it made him uncomfortable, AND that his ex and him were sexually incompatible because she watched too much porn and wanted all this violent BDSM stuff that he didn't like. I told him at the beginning kinky and porn stuff was a dealbreaker for me. I trusted him, and that he was telling the truth.

Then when we were physically intimate, he could not keep his erection. He said he hadn't had sex in 3 years and did not watch porn, but he had pretty bad ED. When I was using my hand on him, he kept saying to squeeze tighter. I got really freaked out because this felt like PA, which I am familiar with, but I didn't say anything. I just asked him if he was anxious or if this was a problem before? And he said that it only became a problem (ED) with his ex because she was mean to him and tried to make him do things he didn't want to do with porn/kink. So obviously I was empathetic.

But the weird thing is he also would spent 30 minutes in the shower in a really territorial way after we would be intimate. And I know this is nitpicky but all the times we had sex I never saw any cum. In the condom I remember feeling weird because there was barely anything in there. And then I also remember having this gut feeling that he didn't actually cum? And when we had sex without a condom again, he said he was coming, and then there was ... no semen. He acted weird about it too, I don't know.

I guess I'm asking because I cut things off with him but I think about it every day. Because I'm wondering if I was too paranoid with this man and just accused him of things he wasn't because of my past with PA partners.

Have you ever been wrong about a gut feeling like this? I had the feeling he was hiding something from me, like he was really adamant about connecting with me about not watching porn and thinking it was bad, but for all intents and purposes he literally acted like any other PA I was with. It confused the fuck out of me. But I have no proof that he was lying, it was just a feeling and I was too scared to see if it was true because I felt like I couldn't deal with the betrayal if I was right.

And yet now I am second guessing myself for almost an entire year, wanting to reach out to him again because I think I overreacted.

I guess I am wondering if anyone has any insight into this, if you've ever been wrong about a gut feeling, etc. Thank you for any insight.

Yesterday I tested positive for strep at urgent care. They prescribed amoxicillin and I started yesterday so I’ve taken 3 doses. So far I don’t feel much better. My throat almost feels worse and I still have a fever between 98.8-99.5 all day. Left side of throat still covered in white spots. Should I be concerned? In the past I remember having strep and feeling better almost immediately after taking the first dose of antibiotics. Should I go back to the doctor?

36F also

I have pretty severe PTSD from multiple sexual assaults / rapes. I am working through it in therapy multiple times a week and finally making progress.

But I am in a city where a bulk of the events happened. Many social spaces feel activating for me because I run into people associated with the experiences. I also made the mistake of telling people and if you’ve ever done that you probably know you’ll get some people who support you and some who start to look at you like a crazy attention seeking sl*t (“we all do things we regret” etc have been said to me after being raped) or people just avoid you because you’re too intense or have shared too much.

I fantasize about moving somewhere where I don’t know anyone so I can start over with my sexual trauma behind me. It’s defined me for the past 10 years or so and I just want to move on.

But trying to do this in a place where I am constantly physically reminded of it, and where people already know it happened to me, is really difficult. I have the ability to move wherever and whenever I want but I’m wondering if it would be just a case of running away from my problems.

Does anyone have a similar experience or insight?

Recently had a bad experience. Looking for perspective because I feel like I have whiplash

I dated someone briefly who, from the very beginning, talked a lot about his exes and wanted to know a lot about my exes.

I tend to be VERY reserved and he even would point it out to me, like "you're so reserved, you have more self-preservation than me, you think sharing things is intense but I've heard way more intense things on first dates" and eventually it kind of made me feel like I should share more with him.

He said some weird things to me, like, he couldn't stop thinking about how I "had a hard life" and said he really wanted to know about my exes because it was a way to "get to know me better."

I shared early on that I did have sexual trauma and was currently processing that, because I wanted to be up front about the fact that I was going through a lot, I guess. I didn't share specifics or details, just the vague notion. He said he wanted to "help me process it."

He turned out to eventually be very very sexually pushy, said many uncomfortable pushy things and also pretty blatantly tried to coerce me into sexual acts while I was very upset one night. He also showed me a movie about rape and told me he saw it as a romantic film and that he identified with the rapist.

Eventually he made me feel like I was too needy, needed to talk too much about communication issues, he pulled away, etc. It made me feel really terrible because it seemed like it was my past trauma and non-sexual needs that made him overwhelmed and not want to talk to me as much. He even told me when I broke up with him that he "wanted to help me through the pain I was going through" ...is this weird?

It makes me feel like he was fetishizing my pain, he really wanted to hear all about it, know about the sexual trauma, about what I liked about exes and what I had gone through, it made me feel really uncomfortable. But I am worried on another level that even having this past is making me unpalatable to men. I guess what I am asking is, is the described behavior on his part weird as well? I know I shouldn't have gotten involved with someone while I am still processing my sexual trauma now. I should not have shared with him, and I think the entire situation was just a mess.

Has anyone else experienced someone asking very invasive questions about your past, or fixating on your pain in an uncomfortable way, and then later re-traumatizing you?

I feel trapped in a cycle of abuse and poverty. No matter how much I try I never can get ahead. Got a good job after being homeless, wages freeze and rent goes up, inflation, apartment floods because of cheap housing, no support system, back to square one.

Raped and groomed my entire life? Makes women repulsive to men. They can tell. Can only attract further predators. Dreams of being loved and loving someone are fucking stupid. I tried, I was good for three years like high standards hard boundaries very healthy but they still coerced me with lies. I cannot escape.

What do I do? I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want to at all. I tried to stop getting sexually pushed and coerced and assaulted and it didn’t work. It is like they can tell I’m easy or will freeze when they push. They don’t do it to other women or maybe they do and they say no louder or stronger so they treat them like wives and me like a whore.

How do I want to live? I need something to read about, people look down on people who have had hard lives right? It’s the truth. People love resilience porn but in their day to day lives they wouldn’t marry a woman who has been homeless and raped. What do I turn to?????? Is there some theory that will make me not blame myself?

Epstein Pelicot the rape drug website whatever it’s all true. It’s all happening and people act like oh it’s so sad for the victims but the victims lives are usually ruined. My life is ruined. I ruined my life. People don’t want to be around people who have been broken. So what can I read to at least not want to die

Were you able to eventually find a relationship? Or did you somehow heal this or change in a way that made men respect you more?

It feels like since I was in my 20s, men have mainly pursued me for sex. Is avoiding this just a matter of sniffing out those vibes before they can even propose it? When I was younger I was really naive and would sleep with them anyway, thinking I had to do this in order to find a relationship. But they never chose me.

Now that I am older I don't sleep with them, but I still mainly get men pursuing me for my body and not a long-term relationship. Is this just the plight of some women? Is there some energy I'm giving off that is making me seem not viable as a long-term partner? I am really struggling with self-worth because I was SAed as a child and many times as an adult, so now it feels like I'm trapped in this cycle where maybe men can sniff that out and view me only as a sex object. Any advice?

I am starting to feel insane. Once I did a lot of work realizing I grew up with a porn addict, and had dated them in the past, I made it a point to tell men I am seeing that it's something I have dealt with and is a dealbreaker for me.

Since then, I've had multiple men who acted VERY supportive of me, claimed they didn't watch porn, but acted exactly like porn addicts or I found out they were lying.

Are men more likely to lie than not? Am I crazy or too demanding with this? Like recently one was all about wanting to "help with work through my sexual trauma" but he was simultaneously really pushy and then did something quite coercive in the end. Am I stupid to take men at their word? I'm so devastated because I feel like if I hadn't gone through this I would be a lot easier to date, these things wouldn't bother me. Do men just lie a lot?