u/Savings-Avocado-7136

Been pretty steady in my sobriety the last few years, but a lot less steady lately. Wondering if any support groups exist locally outside of AA?

Also interested in connecting with local women who might be open to occasional conversations (I’m a woman also).

Thanks in advance.

I (39f) have enjoyed a few dates recently resulting from Reddit conversations, and honestly Redditors seem way more aligned with me than not; each one has been his own kind of sweet, intelligent jackpot, and I've really enjoyed my time and conversations, so I thought I'd play again.

I'm an educator and journalist working on a book and looking for late afternoon and evening distractions. It's a dreamy time of year, and I want a tatted man with kind eyes in my bed and to drink coffee with on my backyard patio. I've got a kayak and a paddleboard and a strong desire to kiss and flirt in woods and water. Have a few tents, a hammock, really love snuggling under the stars and inside orange vinyl.

I am, by all accounts, a sweetheart and will probably make you a playlist or bake you the cookies you loved in childhood. I love love and being sweet to someone and wholly believe it makes life richer for the experience. Not looking for a boyfriend or a longterm relationship, necessarily, but also not looking for someone who just wants to fuck; the crush and what it does to my headspace and in my body is most of the thrill and joy for me (little lover at my core). I also write better, frankly, when I like someone; happiness feeds my heart and in turn makes beautiful language come easily. Maybe it goes somewhere, maybe it doesn't, but I'm in a weird season of my life after serial, serious monogamy and trying to embrace it and enjoy connection without the stakes of consequence. Either way, I'll be sweet to you and thank you in the acknowledgements of the book, and we'll both know it's because you loved on my body/soul when my brain needed a little rest.

I'm attracted to men who evidence thoughtfulness, honesty, and are emotionally-attuned communicators. I seek kindness (to humans and animals alike) above all else. Prefer trim/athletic build but also kinda love a dad bod and a reason for us both to work up a sweat. I seem to hit it off with men with uncustomary career paths and I don't mind that, my own career is wild in ways, but I do need someone who has their own place (not with/dependent on parents) and stable employment, ideally in or adjacent to a field that brings fulfillment (or you've got something else in your life that does this work). I know I'll get shit on for this last part, but I'm only seeking liberal, non-religious (spiritual is cool!) men--no less than seventy-five percent of any crush for me is mental alignment, and it's so much hotter when we're on the same page.

I'd say I'm decently attractive (happy to exchange pics before we meet) with a warm and playful personality that tends to put others at ease pretty quickly. I'm of trim build, fairly athletic, known to scale a PNW mountain several times a summer and love yoga and meditation. Novice boulderer very attracted to boulderers. White, blond, average height, eyes the color of hardwood floors, per a boy I dated in middle school, so I'm your girl if you like an old home's rustic charm. I enjoy hiking, yard projects, camping, cooking, and being chill and I have a dope yard and adorable all-season porch. Not a big partier or drinker so I’m looking for someone similar—would so much rather go on an adventure, cook a great dinner, and find ourselves somewhere quiet where we can actually hear each other speak. Equally happy to spend a quiet weekend out in the woods or hanging downtown somewhere. Big on mental health and can show up for hard conversations while also handling my own stuff. Love to playfully tease and shit talk. Introvert but you wouldn’t immediately know it.

Any other questions, happy to answer—DM directly for discretion, please. Like all things, we start small and build: coffee, ice-cream, volunteer dog walk, a yoga class. First a friendship that gives way to a crush and then we go from there. I'm looking forward to building your playlist.

Hi all. 39F super liberal educated single woman with no kids looking to establish more deep and rooted connections with people of my general age and interests. I like: dogs, hiking, nature, yoga, hammocks, paddleboarding, kayaking, hiking, backpacking, writing, and cooking/grilling/baking (anything food, really), and sometimes stringing a hammock up in the woods or out on an island I've kayaked to for a little Tom Sawyering (reading, drinking bubbly, talking). I'm a professor currently on sabbatical so I'm writing/researching a lot but also have a ton of flexibility in my schedule, and I've identified a need for IRL connection that I've been supplementing with online connections that leave me wanting more. I don't drink and I don't love spending time in bars or breweries for obvious reasons, so that seems to make meeting new people especially difficult. Would love to find some people to connect with and establish some more grounded ties here in central Ohio--open to friends or more but everything good starts with connection. I live just north of the city but come down frequently, or we can meet in the middle. Hi!

This subreddit has been on my mind a lot lately, as I recently passed the one-year anniversary of my ex’s abrupt avoidant discard (is that a redundancy?) and this forum was a place I haunted in those endless summer months when my first sensation upon waking was a genuine sense of panic at how I’d make it through the day. It’s not pretty to admit, but I was so grossly dysregulated those first three months that I cried sometimes up to a dozen times a day, lost fifty pounds from grief, exhausted/overwhelmed nearly all my friends (who, genuinely speaking, have an endless amount of patience for me, as they seem to be truly baffled that I’m still single, but were also really sick of listening to me talk myself in circles in trying to understand/process what had happened), and sometimes, I even threw up foam, I was so worked up. I spent $2k last summer on therapy alone (I am very aware of this outrageous privilege and am really grateful for it) and I really didn’t think, if I’m being honest, that I would ever get over him and or what he did to me. I genuinely thought I would be sick and sad like that forever, and it was that more than anything that truly terrified me, because that was not a space—mental, emotional, spiritual, psychological—that felt in any way sustainable. I’ve had depression/anxiety in my wheelhouse since I was eleven, and on the whole I am really good at managing all of it, but that discard threw me into a pit of hell that not even Mitch McConnell’s visiting.

But I’m writing because after some seven or eight months away from this forum (good for my mental health, because it kept me spinning my wheels, wanting someone to help me dissect the end), it feels like the responsible and, ultimately, most healing thing I could for others is to circle back and say: I made it, and you will, too.

I won’t feed you some toxic positivity and say I am healed entirely, and I definitely still think of my avoidant a few times a day and often with a wistfulness I wish would convert to apathy already, but I am genuinely doing better than I ever have and I feel healthier than I did even when we were at our happiest. So I want to jump on here and say there’s a light at the end of your tunnel, and I’m out here in it, waving and ready for when you join me.

I feel like in order for me to give you this assurance, I have some sense of duty to report on just how down bad I was. So for those who might want more, I’ll start by saying my story is unique but also probably some variation of absolutely everyone else’s: I was with my partner for nearly two years, and they were the happiest of my life. *He* made me feel the happiest I’d ever felt, and I kind of considered him my reward for wading through bad relationships endlessly. I really felt seen and adored by him, and it genuinely felt like a privilege to get to love him (and his two kids) the way I did. I felt very lucky. At 37 and 40 (so: pretty set in our ways), we were wildly compatible on every level—very outdoorsy, very adventurous, both incredibly organized/clean (really a treat for me to finally find a partner who was like this), endlessly enthusiastic and playful and game in bed, and obviously wild compatibility in terms of life goals and values and shared interests—and our relationship featured very little confrontation or even tension, but not in a way that ever made me suspicious. We were just good together, and everyone we knew thought we were good. A few times, even my most dedicated friends told me that I’d done it: I’d found a really good guy who cared about me, and he wasn’t just going to slip away, that what we had was healthy and real and built through work and compromise, etc. etc. Even our differences seemed to be our strength; for all our similarities, we complimented each other in how we differed and we supported and grew with each other. When we met, he was on really awful terms with his ex-wife, who’d had an affair in the last year of their marriage (though, if I’m being honest, now I understand a little bit better why—not excusing it, but goodness do I feel for her, knowing what I know now), and through our relationship I helped them not only remedy their relationship for their kids’ sake but become genuine friends again. She and I became friends. His mom and I got lunch routinely. His kids loved me almost as much as their parents and his son listed me as the thing he was most grateful for during our first Thanksgiving together (one thing, and that boy didn’t choose Minecraft!). His sister said she hadn’t seen her brother, my partner, as healthy and as happy in over a decade, and she was so grateful to me for all I did for him and the children and how little she had to worry now that I was there.

He was my absolute best friend and partner. There was no one whose company I enjoyed more than his. Honestly, he just really made me laugh, and life with him was playful in ways that brought me back to life after a sexual assault with the partner prior and an abusive relationship before that. My friends said I glowed, and I felt it. I was literally like a little light because of him.

Then the abrupt avoidant discard, which I still can’t talk about without getting nauseous, because I can’t believe anyone could treat anyone the way that he treated me. After nearly two years of building a life together—helping raise his kids almost daily (making them lunch, getting them on the school bus, tucking his young son into bed, picking up his daughter from play rehearsals, spending holidays together, etc.), meeting with a fertility doctor (a decision we made together), meeting with realtors (his suggestion), and me relocating to a new job a quarter mile from his house—he called me on the phone one Sunday evening and, in a ten minute manic phone call, told me he still loves me (present tense) but “couldn’t do this anymore.” He said he knew he was being an asshole but this “wasn’t what he wanted for his life.” I still don’t know what that means. I genuinely got no answers, just a maniac spiral of fear and panic that I could not talk him out of and didn’t even try. I was calm, collected, cool, even kind. I said, “I really don’t want this. Are you sure this is what you want?” and he said, very firmly, “I’m sure,” and that was that. Looking back, I suspect things got too real and he felt too vulnerable and it triggered the abandonment wound in him (because his ex-wife had an affair in the last year of their marriage, I think he worried about being left again so he decided to leave me first). He utterly abandoned me, and in the most cowardly, cruel way possible. It was even the night before my last day of school (I’m an educator), so I had to go in and say goodbye to all of my students and colleagues while wiping tears from my face all day. In any case, I somehow knew during that phone call that I would never hear his voice again, much less see his face, and would you believe I still haven’t? There were four weeks of radio silence before he started “loving” my social media posts, but still no communication whatsoever or an attempt to engage in regulated dialogue or an apology for the way he did it, so I quietly unfriended him on social media and, a few weeks later, sent him a kind but firm text that I’d like him to leave my things outside his house for me to exchange with his on my way to work. At that point he texted back only, “Sorry, [my name]—it hurts here too <3” and I said, “I really don’t believe that it does. You were my best friend, my partner, and the person I was building a life with, and you threw me away like I was garbage. It is really hard to believe you care about me at all,” to which he replied, “You’re right. I fucked it up” (note: not “this,” which would seem to imply our relationship, but “it,” meaning the breaking up with me). He fucked it up in the way he did it, but he didn't seem to regret that he did it, all the same. Absolutely blindsiding me, and absolutely no conversation or attempt to repair what I didn't even know was ever broken. I didn't even get to say goodbye to the kids. (His ex-wife offered to keep us all connected and hang out, because she knew how much they loved me and I loved them, but ultimately, that didn't feel appropriate, and until recently I couldn't even say their names without bursting into tears, so it didn't feel like it was in their best interest or healthy for them, either).

Anyway, that was it, and within two months, I learned he had a new girlfriend—someone who is kind of similar to me in ways but has three kids of her own, which is wild to me, since he sometimes felt overwhelmed when I brought my two dogs over to his tiny, cramped house—and to my knowledge they’re still together, though I don’t seek that information out anymore, because yes, a sword to the heart still bleeds.

The last year has been so hard. It got easier over time, but it was so fucking hard for so long. I’ve left relationships that were physically and emotionally abusive, have managed to get myself sober twice after almost two decades of alcohol dependence, and I’ve processed the incredible trauma of one of my best friends walking me home and then murdering a woman an hour later. But processing and healing from this abrupt discard was without a doubt the most emotionally difficult thing I have ever done, bar none. I cried a lot and felt absolutely disposable; I became skinnier than I’d been since highschool (no history of ED but eating felt like making an intentional choice to stay alive, and while I wasn’t suicidal, I didn’t really want to be active in life anymore, either, so food became intrinsically repulsive). I’ve never felt so dysregulated, despondent, hopeless, absolutely unhealthy to the point of scaring people. I genuinely could not imagine, obsessively reading the posts in this forum each night and many times throughout the day, that the pain and betrayal and sense of abandonment I felt would ever go away, but it has, and I know we don’t know each other, stranger, but I can almost promise you that it will subside for you, too.  

A little over a year later, I am my best version of myself. I did it by committing to myself, deciding with absolution that the way he treated me in those last ten minutes (and in every moment since, as he's still actively choosing to leave things this way) showed me all I need to know about who he is and the quality of his character. It doesn’t matter how much I loved and admired and respected him for two years; his mask fell, and I saw him, and that’s who he really is. I would never treat another person the way he treated me. It really is that simple.

I’ve spent the last year doing some deep therapy work, figuring out why my response to his discard was so intense and deep-rooted. I did a lot of EMDR and unpacked the larger wound of not being chosen/not having a family of my own yet at 39. I had to sit with some real uncomfy shit about what I ultimately think of myself and how this discard reinforced it. I also said yes to everything, went on every adventure I could afford and manage to swing logistically, and tried all kinds of new things with new people. Recently, I did my first 5-day backpacking trip (it’s something holy, carrying everything you need to survive on your back through five days in the wilderness), took up paddleboarding, volunteered all the time (mostly food markets and cooking a community meal for 75+ food insecure residents in my town), and became the best and more effective/compassionate educator I’ve ever been. I quit drinking again (a little over a year sober), and so far, my Sunday has been spent with my best friend since childhood, taking my first ever Pilates reformer class and helping her prepare for her first child. While in the shower earlier, I realized that despite however happy I was with him (and I won’t negate that—it was real and unadulterated joy I felt), if we were still together, I would have likely spent today beside him at a brewery, getting day drunk and worrying about why he always placed his phone face-down on the table. I would’ve convinced myself it was too much work to fly across the country to be with my best friend, and I would’ve told myself she didn’t need me, anyway. Over our two years together, I gradually began to choose him more often than I chose myself, and thus I stopped choosing other people, people I genuinely love and care about, and although that abrupt discard sucked, it ultimately meant I had to choose me.

Maybe some day he comes back to actually have a conversation, but I doubt it. I do still find myself hoping he will, at some point in time, at least confide that he just got overwhelmed and panicked and has regretted it from time to time, if only to validate what we had, but I have also learned to validate myself. I know what we had, and it was real, and I never would have done to him what he ultimately did to me, which means regardless of any other compatibility, we are ultimately unaligned. It really is that simple: he showed me how cruel he can be, and it's a cruelty I'm not capable of, truly. That takes precedence over everything. That person is not a person I can build a life with. He has proven himself to be really unsafe for me.

So, I don’t know. Maybe this reads like naval-gazing or comes off as a really indulgent bid for attention, but I just could not ever fathom healing from him or opening myself up again, and although I’m not actively looking to date anyone (I am really enjoying dating myself and deciding who and what I want to let into my life now), I feel like I could fall in love again, that it would be good and healthy and healing for me in time, and in the interim, I’ve fallen back in love with myself and a life where someone else doesn’t dictate my emotions.

Hang in, please. It gets so much better, it really does, and when it does, please circle back and tell the rest of us that it really did happen.

 

 

tl;dr: I was in the shit but I climbed out of it, and you will, too. <3

Does anyone know why? Was supposed to depart Vancouver at 4:30pm and it’s almost 7pm, still sitting.

Emerald Princess was supposed to leave Vancouver at 4:30pm and it’s still sitting in dock. Anyone know why?