u/Loveiskind89389

I don’t know what’s going on with the heating pads I’ve been buying, but I swear they don’t get as hot as they used to. If anyone feels strongly about their heating pad, can you share the brand/model?

I am so tired that Ive been putting off my first embryo transfer. I feel too old to do this, too tired to check the mail, too much brain fog to work with any semblance of efficiency. I wake up at night for about an hour between 3-4 or later so my sleep quality is pretty poor unfortunately.

I went through absolute hell for this chance at motherhood. Is this how life is from now on?

Because if this is forever, I cannot be a mom. I was 35 before I considered having a child/children. I was 37 when I met a guy. Three pregnancy losses and severe DOR and a year of IVF to freeze embryos, only to end up so exhausted.

I can’t do HRT until after pregnancy apparently, from what I’ve read. But it feels like at this rate I’ll be 75 next week (no shade to my 70+ baddies). I just genuinely did not imagine being this tired at 40.

TIA to anyone still with me after my rant. I’d love any suggestions or advice.

Edit for egregious typo

It does not hurt for me.

The days and nights before my period - I pee three times an hour. Overnight it’s down to once an hour. Hardly any sleep.

Then the diarrhea and bad gas starts up and I am on my ass with a heating pad and do not wander far from the bathroom for 2-3 days straight. Soft serve turns into watery poop. The heating pad is to soothe the gas cramping. I tend to look wildly dehydrated during these days. And very hollow/gaunt in the face.

Hey bitches. The title says it all.

I picked her up exactly one hour ago. Exchange with the sitter was fine except that my dog didn’t seem to recognize me at all, no greeting, no recognition on her face. I get her home, she’s hiding and shaking. What do I do?

Update: the rover sitter said some other dog was harassing her. A dog that isn’t fixed? My dog is spayed. This sounds like subterfuge. I offered her a pupsicle and she walked backwards from me and went in my other dog’s crate.

I’m asking what should I literally do right now? The sitter offered me a full refund immediately and I think I should tell someone

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2nd update: thank you all for your comments. I am sure that the majority of you are wonderful sitters/boarders. That doesn’t mean that there are not questionable providers on Rover. I believe it was 50% situational, 50% mismatched expectations. My expectation was that there would be walks, attention to the dynamic between dogs, and some better explanation of why my dog is so distressed than that some other dog was engaging her to play and:

“He still is not neutered and have extremely high energy levels which he doesn't normally stop until I put him separately”

I came for advice, I received advice, thank you.

I had to take a year off for medical stuff and have been cleared for whatever I want to do for about SIX MONTHS. I just could not initiate.

My therapist said yesterday afternoon that ya know, what if we just call it an “experiment” and she shrugged and said “what’s five minutes?” I immediately latched on to this and yeah, what the hell is five minutes? I have five minutes, maybe even more minutes? Who knows?

She separated that my workouts don’t have to become part of my identity like they used to be (the only thing I have ever truly stuck to in my life). Maybe they are indeed just five minutes here, five minutes there, who cares?

I rowed on my indoor erg for 25 minutes. Haven’t touched it in 18 months.

Edit for typo

My (40f) ex (37m) moved out (finally). We are still communicating for some reason. Probably my self esteem being so damn low.

About me - I came from a physically and emotionally abusive home. It was parents against kids, not parent on parent. If you think you know, I’ll add that it was extreme. For that reason, I cannot cope with yelling/screaming. To me, it means violence is soon to come. I do not ever yell. I cannot handle being screamed at, I go and hide if anyone yells. I consider it unacceptable. It is unbearable. It is a boundary.

My ex grew up in a family with constant screaming. By everyone. The meanest things that could be said. Year 1, we were so careful to take care of each other with very few exceptions. Year 2 is when things changed.

Fast forward to six months ago. We have serious problems (as in he had stopped working and I’d been doing it all for quite some time. Mortgage, the cleaning, he’s ADHD and is gaming 6-11 hours a day. The gaming was why he lost his job. I was doing all of it, plus IVF.) This is all for context. There was rarely food in the house anymore unless I went to buy it and I am working as much as I can.

One day he bought trail mix. I’m not even supposed to be eating that much sugar because I’m doing IVF but I was hungry. We had this trail mix and I was up all night with our puppy, and starving. I fell asleep next to her crate on the ground in the living room. He wakes up, I’m elated, fix myself a sauce bowl amount and go scurry to get in bed. No idea what’s about to happen.

We pass each other in the hall. He pushes me reaching for the bowl. He pushes me the rest of the way down a hallway throwing trailmix from my bowl on the ground. He’s screaming at me. I get to the bedroom and crawl across the floor and pull it to my chest crying, he leaves the room. There is no trailmix left in the bowl. It gets quiet. I go to the kitchen and try to put more in the bowl and he comes out of nowhere behind me and pushed me so hard into the granite counter that the little porcelain (unbreakable kind) bowl broke in my hand and cut it open. Blood gushing everywhere I didn’t even see. Then he takes the glass jar the trailmix was in and throws it on the ground, glass everywhere, trailmix, my senior dog and puppy cowering. I’m barefoot, bleeding, screaming, and I try to hit him. I tried to punch him, ended up scratching his nose.

He calls the police and while on the phone he keeps telling me to apologize and he will hang up. I told him no, I’m just staring into space and thinking something needs to happen finally. They arrive and I hear him in the yard animatedly talking. I wait. The cops come in and ask me some questions and start to tell me what’s going to happen now. My hands are shaking, I show them the video he keeps talking about from the pet camera. They ultimately arrested both of us but thats only because one officer listened to the doggy cam audio (not just the footage) and heard me say “why did you shove me?!?” And him answer “because you were eating my food!!” They were fully prepared to arrest only me because when I tried to hit him was the only time and of it was caught on video.

I hit him once before. The first time my senior dog was in the ER overnight. This was after we first met. I had asked him to check the alley for rat poison hours ago. At the vet they are asking me every 30 minutes if he had sent me an update on whether any was found. I get home, without my dog, he had his phone in airplane, is video gaming. I start crying, he tells me “it’s not my fault you killed your fucking dog.” I hauled off and slapped him. I’ve never hit anyone in my life. He apologized profusely and said he deserved it. But it started this pattern where he would start telling me I was an abuser any time I asked him to do anything.

He moved to his parents 6 weeks ago. By me physically touching him twice, it is like everything I sacrificed, gave him (a home I own to live in, pets, my paid off car, stability, happiness, the last of my fertility) means nothing. I have had the worst things I’ve ever heard screamed at me. I used to wonder if anyone could tell what was going on at home by the way I spoke or looked or how weird and isolated I was and how weird I felt I was acting. I took disability leave from work because I was having major depression. He rarely spoke to me unless it was to tell me I was all kinds of mentally ill. I caught him on the phone telling his brother that I had given up on household chores - this was while I was on disability leave and so depressed that I just wanted to make it through each day. He told me that his brother said he shouldn’t put up with me because I “abandoned my responsibilities.” This was while we were doing IVF as well.

He would start fights and I would find myself trying to get away, then him storming in and screaming me into a corner. Physically me in a corner even if he didn’t touch me. Sometimes I would try to get him to stop and he would hold me by my shoulders and I’d have bruises. I couldn’t deal with it at the time. I didn’t tell anyone.

My therapist (I finally told her what was really going on) told me simply that him being gone is the best thing for me and not to let him keep telling me I was the abuser. That sort of thing.

I don’t know if I need anger management. He has told me he will only come home if I do anger management. But all I can think is how peaceful it is living alone. No one is telling me how lazy I am while I rush around all day and evening working and cleaning until bed time.

I needed to tell someone. Was it me? I am stuck mentally. Is what I’m saying what an abuser would say?

Recently started online dating and I don’t know WTAF I was thinking. I joined Tinder (and paid for it 😭). 8k bots and maybe a hundred humans have liked so far. Feeling overwhelmed.

Middle aged already (thanks, current LLM) 40f, no kids, have career, graduate degree, long-term relationship participant, people say I’m funny but they don’t seem to realize I’m never joking. Introvert. You can find me walking my dogs and cat. Puppy is a bit much at 6 months. What an incredible pitch.

And ladies, what apps are you using these days?

I want to get my body back to a good place before doing a transfer (prep for that will include lupron + letroxole for 2-3 months). I’m talking about diet/exercise and glp1 potentially.

The 30 lb weight gain is mainly in my lower abdomen, below my belly button. Could this be endo? I read that the hormonal swings from so many cycles of egg retrievals could contribute to inflammation. My belly is so distended that acquaintances have asked if I’m pregnant.

After my first egg retrieval I had to have my appendix out. I suspect that was somehow related to endo as well.

Any weight loss ideas that actually worked? My BMi is now borderline overweight. I have water weight all over my body and face as well that comes and goes with ovulation and my period. It’s much more extreme than regular bloating that I had before starting ivf.

This is a relapse story too, honestly all the flair made sense.

My husband and I split up three weeks ago. I don’t think he will ever see what gaming did to our lives and I just need to say this somewhere. I do not understand it at all

Husband 37m is a recovered alcoholic. He has eleven years sober.

He bought himself a PS5 as a gift for getting a certification about 2.5 years ago. It was great for a year. He played for a few hours on sundays and whatever it gave me time to do stuff I enjoy.

Then there were layoffs at his work. He found a new job where he set his own hours. Basically we (I mean I) had to get rid of TVs other than the living room one. he’d be gaming for 9, 11, 13 hours a day just on his PS5.

He was also playing games on his phone. Basically it was an argument every day, I was the only income for the last six or eight months. We got into financial problems. He completely quit on our life. He’s living at his parents’ house across the country now. They’re away for a month. We are still talking sort of and I can see his location. He is not even moving from their living room.

If any of you can help me understand the “why” part of all this, it would help me, a stranger, a lot. He still says gaming was his creative outlet and I just didn’t want him to be happy. I think gaming made him really unhappy.

He failed out of the undergrad program that he had three semesters left on. Lost his job. Completely different person. Idk how gaming was worth all that

Edit to add: by “relapse,” I just mean that he said he used to have a gaming problem before we met

Is my (40f) husband (37m) a narcissist? Also, I wrote the really long post this time. Thanks to anyone who reads, I’m in a weird place right now of disbelief and self doubt and I just really appreciate it if you took the time 💙

About 6 months ago he started telling everyone including my family and his own that I had borderline personality disorder. His sister in law is a psychologist but also a drama queen/super nosey. She would call and he would go on a walk and come back with all these new terms and insults to give me later. Eg “SIL said you show all of the classic signs of a cluster b personality disorder due to xyz and that abusers like you only get worse with time.” I went into twice a week deep therapy to sort this out and my psychologist and I walked through the DSM together and she explained each term/diagnosis my husband had been using. It took a months and I paid a lot of money for us to deep dive and do a bunch of extra sessions. I am not diagnosed with a personality disorder, just ptsd, anxiety, depression.

Three weeks ago when he left he made me start AA because he said I was an alcoholic and he would never come back if I didn’t work the 12 steps. I did go to AA for two weeks daily and 100% believed I was an alcoholic. I drank at least a glass of wine most nights and sometimes started around 4pm before the workday technically ended. Of course I believed him, he has eleven years sober so he would know, right? Wrong. I had a sponsor lined up, a group of women I breakfasted with at the crack of dawn, I spoke up in meetings and researched. I haven’t felt like drinking alcohol once since he left though. Now he tells me I need to go to anger management classes and if I don’t he won’t come back.

So, when we got married, I had a home I owned for us to live in, a paid off car, wonderful senior pets, a good career, a graduate degree, worked out a ton, had a lot of love to give. While together, I paid for everything - mortgage, 1 year of IVF (6 cycles), utilities, condo dues, all home maintenance and stocking of everything from hand soap to replacement door mats to furniture and even his clothing. Veterinary needs, oil changes, you name it. He paid for food and utilities (part of the time).

He lied for 6 months about being in school to finish his undergrad. Stopped working about a year ago, so cut his own hours do 1 day/week. He had a video game/phone addiction and was never present. This started about eight months after we got married. He kept me up until 1am most nights trying to convince me to watch one more video (the only time we spent together). He never went to bed at the same time as me. He slept from 3am to 11-12 the next day.

Arguments went like this-

Me saying “hey babe, when you’re at a good stopping point (in your game), could you move the laundry along?” Then 2 hours later, “hey, can you move the laundry along?” Then 3 hours later, “hey I folded the clothes in the dryer to move the laundry along and the load in the wash smelled like mildew so I had to re-run it. Can you remember to move it into the dryer once it’s done?”

And then finally he’d explode and yell “Why can’t you do it?!? I didn’t even start those loads! I’m so sick of doing everything and being treated like your servant.” This is why I always had to keep my mic muted in zoom meetings and check it twice a minute to be sure.

I worked all day. Hard. I have always been the one supporting us. Those types of arguments drained the energy out of me. I was forgetting things at work and developed social anxiety. Every 5 days to a week I would look around and realize my weekend was going to be cleaning again, and he is still sitting in that chair drinking coffee and vaping with his phone a foot from his face playing video games and listening to twitch/youtube videos. I would say “I can’t do this anymore” and start to cry and tell him he needed to do better and thus was no way to live. I frequently got worked up in this state and would tell him that he as lazy and that I really meant that he was lazy this time. The whole thing always feels like a panic attack where I can’t catch my breath and I could hear him screaming in the background saying sincerely awful things. It was a blur.

He left to go live on his parents couch three weeks ago because he couldn’t take “being treated like a servant.” He wants me to show him that I’ve changed before he will come back. He also can’t afford a plane ticket (we never combined finances because I paid everything and he stopped working before we got around to it.

Full disclosure: I slapped him across the face once when my dog was in critical condition at the vet hospital overnight. He had thrown up a stomach of blood and consumed poison/something highly toxic and we were running all tests to try to identify what kind. They wouldn’t let me sleep in the waiting room so I went home and was upset he hadn’t searched the yard for rat poison or answered my texts. He screamed at me, said “stop blaming me you killed your fucking dog.” My dog is my best friend and #1 priority. He apologized profusely after, but then started bringing up in every argument that I hit him and I’m an abuser.

Is he a narcissist? I’m new here and my support group, therapist, family all say that it doesn’t matter anymore, it only matters that it’s over now and I can move on. I can’t stop cycling and don’t know how I’ll ever prevent this again if I don’t know.

My husband (m37) left me (40f) 3 weeks ago to go to his parents’ house across the country. He was tired of being “treated like shit.” He keeps insisting that I need to demonstrate to him that I realized the error of my ways and am working on real change.

Here is the thing though - it’s not okay to not have a job for a year. And it’s not okay to demand that your wife, on the heels of a year of IVF and discovery of chronic disease, suddenly start doing the dishes 50-50. I work all day, pay the mortgage, pay for all pet needs and medical care, bought our car, paid for IVF, just everything except for groceries was my burden.

He was addicted to his phone and video games, talked constant shit about me to his family (eg, “she lost her mind again and took the bedroom TV to I storage because I wouldn’t buy her dinner” when I actually took it to storage bc I didn’t know what else to do. He was playing video games 9-11 hours every day), lied about going to classes and finishing his undergrad degree, gradually stopped working 4/5 days a week, and snapped at me about having to do “all the chores” at home that included cooking and laundry, taking the trash out, cleaning the toilets. So I cleaned the rest of the house excluding toilets, handled all appointments and house maintenance/restocking/bill paying. I did just everything else that he didn’t do.

I don’t even want him to come home anymore. Am I missing something here? How can one person be so self centered that they treat you like shit AND demand that *you* change?

I’m new here, please be kind.

Sorry for the typos my eyes are bleary