u/coldcoffeethrowaway

My partner and I are going through a little bit of a rough patch in our relationship regarding expectations, getting needs met, communication and my partner having an idealized version of relationships and what they “should” be in his mind.

Does anyone else ever watch the show and wonder what Dr. Orna would say to them/about their relationship? Or how couples therapy would go with her with you and your partner as the couple?

My boyfriend and I recently had a conversation where he said our sex life is “boring”.

We’re a straight couple in our late twenties and we’ve been together for 5.5 years. I had felt dissatisfied recently because the frequency of our sex life isn’t enough for me. Some of it is because my boyfriend travels for work so we spend a decent amount of time apart, but some of it isn’t that.

He told me because our sex life is boring, he’s gotten to the point where sometimes he would rather jack off than have sex with me, which was hurtful obviously.

I’m kind of worried he’s gotten porn brained. I asked him how often he’s watching porn and he said he watches homemade stuff 2-5 times a week.
I myself masturbate probably 3-4 times a week, especially if our sex life is slower, but I am either using my imagination or reading smut. Porn doesn’t do much for me.

I suggested we take the mojoupgrade quiz. He didn’t seem that impressed by it and said it didn’t have enough on there.

Regardless, my hard no’s sexually are anything involving poop or pee, pain to the point that it is genuinely hurting me, and I would prefer not to involve any other people into our sex life. I’m pretty much open to trying other things that don’t involve those things.

We’ve done anal before, we’ve used butt plugs on me, used blindfold, used handcuffs, used a ball gag, I’ve worn lingerie. This is all stuff we’ve mostly done in the beginning (year 1-1.5) of our relationship so I acknowledge we haven’t been doing that stuff anytime recently.

He said he’s into BDSM and name calling (slut, whore, bitch). He said he’s into rougher stuff and tying up. I’m like, okay, I can get into that as long as there is proper aftercare and we have conversations about this. You don’t just do BDSM without conversation beforehand about a safe word, etc.
he doesn’t like that he feels like he’s the one bringing in the ideas for our sex life.

I guess I’m more “vanilla” than he is, but I have a pretty high sex drive for a woman (I could have sex 2-4 times a week or more, depending on what’s going on in my life. I’ve never once turned him down for sex in almost 6 years.

My ideas that I have and I know I would enjoy are giving him blowjobs more, wearing lingerie, involving vibrators, blindfolding, sending him sexy pics of me when he’s away for work, me trying to get on top more (I get self conscious about this), trying new positions, letting him do some name calling. He also said he likes to be called daddy. I find that a little cringe but I think I could get into it, knowing that he enjoys it.

I am more submissive naturally and I like being told what to do in the bedroom, so feeling like the responsibility is on me to spice things up feels a little daunting. Sometimes I get shy and scared to do things. Any ideas would be helpful.

Recently, my boyfriend told me he hasn't been feeling happy and isn't getting his needs met. When I asked him why, he went through the list, saying he is enjoying his job, his family is fine, he wishes he had more friendships but that's okay. Then we got to me/our relationship, and he said "we have things to work on."

I feel like all relationships have things they need to work on, that's just part of being human and being in a relationship with another person. I had to kind of pull it out of him because he said he didn't want to talk about it, but I said that that's not how adults communicate, and we needed to talk it through. We had like a 2 hour conversation about all of this.

For context, we've been together for over 5 years. This is really confusing for me because most of the time, he is a really loving and attentive partner. I enjoy spending time with him, we have similar hobbies and lifestyles, my family loves him, he is kind and thoughtful with me most of the time, he is smart and generous and I really believe he has a good heart. I feel like he has things he needs to work on, for example he is kind of avoidant and isn't good at expressing his feelings and he tends to get frustrated easily and express it passive aggressively instead of talking about it.

For more context, I also feel like he has some low level depression that sometimes comes up. He has just achieved a big career milestone and I was worried that he would slip into a mild depressive episode because I have noticed that when he achieves something in his life, instead of feeling accomplished and happy, he might feel that way for a short while and then move into feeling like the accomplishment wasn't enough and he needs to do more. I had noticed this in him for about a month. I've also noticed when he gets like this, he sometimes displaces the frustration/discontentment onto me, which he acknowledged has some truth to it.

I fully acknowledge that I have anxiety and my own issues. I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder as a teenager and I have done a lot of therapy to work on it. It had a huge negative effect on me growing up and in my formative years, I was behind socially and struggled majorly with my self esteem. I sometimes wonder if I am high functioning on the spectrum. I am still more reserved and sometimes I struggle with being assertive or with my confidence, but I am miles ahead of where I used to be. I still go to therapy 2-3 times a month to work on these things. My partner has never been to therapy. So I feel like I am spending my money and my time and energy and effort going to therapy to work on my issues, but he isn't doing the same. He says he listens to mental health podcasts and is working out and eating healthier, but that's not the same as going to therapy in my mind. I feel like he does not fully understand or emphasize with what it was like to grow up with a severe anxiety disorder and how that affects me now, despite me trying to explain it. He will say something like, "Well I was shy in middle school and high school" like...dude it goes way beyond just being shy.

In this conversation, he said he wasn't happy with our sex life and that it is "boring," which I actually agreed with, and we had a decent conversation about what I can do to spice things up, because he feels like he has put in all the work to suggest things in the bedroom. This is pretty much true, as I had only been with one other person before him and I do tend to be hesitant to initiate new things in the bedroom because I feel kind of shy about it. (I was also raised in Evangelical purity culture). But I have never once, in almost 6 years of us having sex, turned him down, and I have a pretty high sex drive.

Then I asked him what else has been bothering him or what else he feels like we need to work on. He said that he wishes I were more outgoing or better at conversation. I asked for examples and he gave some examples of how he wishes I were more "fun,"-like he feels like when we do things, he is the one who is providing the fun, I suppose? I can see what he is saying, but it hurts my feelings that he wishes I were more outgoing. It's something I also wish about myself, but I feel limited in how much I can change that about myself. I asked him if he wishes he himself were more outgoing, because as I said earlier, sometimes I feel like he projects issues within himself onto me. He said yes, sometimes he wishes he were more outgoing too, but separate from that he wishes I was more outgoing. Some of the examples he gave were things like when he sees a couple out in public and one of them is dancing spontaneously, or the woman in the couple is making a joke and they're laughing together.

I cried during this conversation because some of this triggered me because my whole life, I have been worried that these things I dislike about myself-my soft spoken, quieter personality and my anxiety, would make me unlovable, and it felt like that was being proven here. I told him that exactly, and he said they didn't make me unlovable. I told him that I feel like I am more charitable and compassionate towards his issues (the avoidance, the mismanaging of his emotions, his passive aggressive behavior) than he is of my issues. I said I feel like sometimes he is overly critical of me in his mind. He said he accepts these things about me and doesn't want to change me as a person. But I don't get it. I feel like if you accept someone's flaws, that means that you don't hold them against them or criticize them for those things in your mind.

So I'm at a point where I'm thinking, why are you choosing to stay with me if these things about you bother you so much? Literally the next day after we had this conversation, he was talking about our future and potentially buying a house together. So it's like, okay, are you accepting me fully or not? I know I can work on myself and I am-I can work on my confidence, on saying what I am thinking more, on being more carefree and spontaneous. It just felt so hurtful that he was criticizing these aspects of my personality. I feel like sometimes he has this manic pixie dream girl image in his head of what a girlfriend should be, and he projects it onto me.

I did give him feedback during this conversation about things he could do better, including giving me more words of affirmation, physical touch, and communicating his feelings more. But I feel like 99% of my criticisms are him are criticisms of his behavior or lack of behavior, not of personality traits. I am just not an overly critical person. I don't nitpick people. I feel like I truly accept him and love him for who he is.

He acknowledged during this conversation that I am more mature than he is-that I take life more seriously and I am better at handling my emotions and communicating. I appreciated that he acknowledged this.

I could tell he felt bad for hurting my feelings and he was trying to be extra nice to me after, telling me I looked sad and asking me why, and I don't know how to tell him I'm sad because it feels like my partner, who I have built a life with and spent over half a decade of my life with, doesn't like me as a person. Or at least parts of me that I have a hard time changing.

Recently, my boyfriend told me he hasn't been feeling happy and isn't getting his needs met. When I asked him why, he went through the list, saying he is enjoying his job, his family is fine, he wishes he had more friendships but that's okay. Then we got to me/our relationship, and he said "we have things to work on."

I feel like all relationships have things they need to work on, that's just part of being human and being in a relationship with another person. I had to kind of pull it out of him because he said he didn't want to talk about it, but I said that that's not how adults communicate, and we needed to talk it through. We had like a 2 hour conversation about all of this.

For context, we've been together for over 5 years. This is really confusing for me because most of the time, he is a really loving and attentive partner. I enjoy spending time with him, we have similar hobbies and lifestyles, my family loves him, he is kind and thoughtful with me most of the time, he is smart and generous and I really believe he has a good heart. I feel like he has things he needs to work on, for example he is kind of avoidant and isn't good at expressing his feelings and he tends to get frustrated easily and express it passive aggressively instead of talking about it.

For more context, I also feel like he has some low level depression that sometimes comes up. He has just achieved a big career milestone and I was worried that he would slip into a mild depressive episode because I have noticed that when he achieves something in his life, instead of feeling accomplished and happy, he might feel that way for a short while and then move into feeling like the accomplishment wasn't enough and he needs to do more. I had noticed this in him for about a month. I've also noticed when he gets like this, he sometimes displaces the frustration/discontentment onto me, which he acknowledged has some truth to it.

I fully acknowledge that I have anxiety and my own issues. I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder as a teenager and I have done a lot of therapy to work on it. It had a huge negative effect on me growing up and in my formative years, I was behind socially and struggled majorly with my self esteem. I sometimes wonder if I am high functioning on the spectrum. I am still more reserved and sometimes I struggle with being assertive or with my confidence, but I am miles ahead of where I used to be. I still go to therapy 2-3 times a month to work on these things. My partner has never been to therapy. So I feel like I am spending my money and my time and energy and effort going to therapy to work on my issues, but he isn't doing the same. He says he listens to mental health podcasts and is working out and eating healthier, but that's not the same as going to therapy in my mind. I feel like he does not fully understand or emphasize with what it was like to grow up with a severe anxiety disorder and how that affects me now, despite me trying to explain it. He will say something like, "Well I was shy in middle school and high school" like...dude it goes way beyond just being shy.

In this conversation, he said he wasn't happy with our sex life and that it is "boring," which I actually agreed with, and we had a decent conversation about what I can do to spice things up, because he feels like he has put in all the work to suggest things in the bedroom. This is pretty much true, as I had only been with one other person before him and I do tend to be hesitant to initiate new things in the bedroom because I feel kind of shy about it. (I was also raised in Evangelical purity culture). But I have never once, in almost 6 years of us having sex, turned him down, and I have a pretty high sex drive.

Then I asked him what else has been bothering him or what else he feels like we need to work on. He said that he wishes I were more outgoing or better at conversation. I asked for examples and he gave some examples of how he wishes I were more "fun,"-like he feels like when we do things, he is the one who is providing the fun, I suppose? I can see what he is saying, but it hurts my feelings that he wishes I were more outgoing. It's something I also wish about myself, but I feel limited in how much I can change that about myself. I asked him if he wishes he himself were more outgoing, because as I said earlier, sometimes I feel like he projects issues within himself onto me. He said yes, sometimes he wishes he were more outgoing too, but separate from that he wishes I was more outgoing. Some of the examples he gave were things like when he sees a couple out in public and one of them is dancing spontaneously, or the woman in the couple is making a joke and they're laughing together.

I cried during this conversation because some of this triggered me because my whole life, I have been worried that these things I dislike about myself-my soft spoken, quieter personality and my anxiety, would make me unlovable, and it felt like that was being proven here. I told him that exactly, and he said they didn't make me unlovable. I told him that I feel like I am more charitable and compassionate towards his issues (the avoidance, the mismanaging of his emotions, his passive aggressive behavior) than he is of my issues. I said I feel like sometimes he is overly critical of me in his mind. He said he accepts these things about me and doesn't want to change me as a person. But I don't get it. I feel like if you accept someone's flaws, that means that you don't hold them against them or criticize them for those things in your mind.

So I'm at a point where I'm thinking, why are you choosing to stay with me if these things about you bother you so much? Literally the next day after we had this conversation, he was talking about our future and potentially buying a house together. So it's like, okay, are you accepting me fully or not? I know I can work on myself and I am-I can work on my confidence, on saying what I am thinking more, on being more carefree and spontaneous. It just felt so hurtful that he was criticizing these aspects of my personality. I feel like sometimes he has this manic pixie dream girl image in his head of what a girlfriend should be, and he projects it onto me.

I did give him feedback during this conversation about things he could do better, including giving me more words of affirmation, physical touch, and communicating his feelings more. But I feel like 99% of my criticisms are him are criticisms of his behavior or lack of behavior, not of personality traits. I am just not an overly critical person. I don't nitpick people. I feel like I truly accept him and love him for who he is.

He acknowledged during this conversation that I am more mature than he is-that I take life more seriously and I am better at handling my emotions and communicating. I appreciated that he acknowledged this.

I could tell he felt bad for hurting my feelings and he was trying to be extra nice to me after, telling me I looked sad and asking me why, and I don't know how to tell him I'm sad because it feels like my partner, who I have built a life with and spent over half a decade of my life with, doesn't like me as a person. Or at least parts of me that I have a hard time changing.

TL;DR: boyfriend told me he doesn't like that I am not super talkative and not outgoing, and that he feels like he has to bring "the fun" in our relationship. I understand to a certain degree but i am also hurt and confused. What do you think? How would you proceed?

Recently, my boyfriend told me he hasn't been feeling happy and isn't getting his needs met. When I asked him why, he went through the list, saying he is enjoying his job, his family is fine, he wishes he had more friendships but that's okay. Then we got to me/our relationship, and he said "we have things to work on."

I feel like all relationships have things they need to work on, that's just part of being human and being in a relationship with another person. I had to kind of pull it out of him because he said he didn't want to talk about it, but I said that that's not how adults communicate, and we needed to talk it through. We had like a 2 hour conversation about all of this.

For context, we've been together for over 5 years. This is really confusing for me because most of the time, he is a really loving and attentive partner. I enjoy spending time with him, we have similar hobbies and lifestyles, my family loves him, he is kind and thoughtful with me most of the time, he is smart and generous and I really believe he has a good heart. I feel like he has things he needs to work on, for example he is kind of avoidant and isn't good at expressing his feelings and he tends to get frustrated easily and express it passive aggressively instead of talking about it.

For more context, I also feel like he has some low level depression that sometimes comes up. He has just achieved a big career milestone and I was worried that he would slip into a mild depressive episode because I have noticed that when he achieves something in his life, instead of feeling accomplished and happy, he might feel that way for a short while and then move into feeling like the accomplishment wasn't enough and he needs to do more. I had noticed this in him for about a month. I've also noticed when he gets like this, he sometimes displaces the frustration/discontentment onto me, which he acknowledged has some truth to it.

I fully acknowledge that I have anxiety and my own issues. I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder as a teenager and I have done a lot of therapy to work on it. It had a huge negative effect on me growing up and in my formative years, I was behind socially and struggled majorly with my self esteem. I sometimes wonder if I am high functioning on the spectrum. I am still more reserved and sometimes I struggle with being assertive or with my confidence, but I am miles ahead of where I used to be. I still go to therapy 2-3 times a month to work on these things. My partner has never been to therapy. So I feel like I am spending my money and my time and energy and effort going to therapy to work on my issues, but he isn't doing the same. He says he listens to mental health podcasts and is working out and eating healthier, but that's not the same as going to therapy in my mind. I feel like he does not fully understand or emphasize with what it was like to grow up with a severe anxiety disorder and how that affects me now, despite me trying to explain it. He will say something like, "Well I was shy in middle school and high school" like...dude it goes way beyond just being shy.

In this conversation, he said he wasn't happy with our sex life and that it is "boring," which I actually agreed with, and we had a decent conversation about what I can do to spice things up, because he feels like he has put in all the work to suggest things in the bedroom. This is pretty much true, as I had only been with one other person before him and I do tend to be hesitant to initiate new things in the bedroom because I feel kind of shy about it. (I was also raised in Evangelical purity culture). But I have never once, in almost 6 years of us having sex, turned him down, and I have a pretty high sex drive.

Then I asked him what else has been bothering him or what else he feels like we need to work on. He said that he wishes I were more outgoing or better at conversation. I asked for examples and he gave some examples of how he wishes I were more "fun,"-like he feels like when we do things, he is the one who is providing the fun, I suppose? I can see what he is saying, but it hurts my feelings that he wishes I were more outgoing. It's something I also wish about myself, but I feel limited in how much I can change that about myself. I asked him if he wishes he himself were more outgoing, because as I said earlier, sometimes I feel like he projects issues within himself onto me. He said yes, sometimes he wishes he were more outgoing too, but separate from that he wishes I was more outgoing. Some of the examples he gave were things like when he sees a couple out in public and one of them is dancing spontaneously, or the woman in the couple is making a joke and they're laughing together.

I cried during this conversation because some of this triggered me because my whole life, I have been worried that these things I dislike about myself-my soft spoken, quieter personality and my anxiety, would make me unlovable, and it felt like that was being proven here. I told him that exactly, and he said they didn't make me unlovable. I told him that I feel like I am more charitable and compassionate towards his issues (the avoidance, the mismanaging of his emotions, his passive aggressive behavior) than he is of my issues. I said I feel like sometimes he is overly critical of me in his mind. He said he accepts these things about me and doesn't want to change me as a person. But I don't get it. I feel like if you accept someone's flaws, that means that you don't hold them against them or criticize them for those things in your mind.

So I'm at a point where I'm thinking, why are you choosing to stay with me if these things about you bother you so much? Literally the next day after we had this conversation, he was talking about our future and potentially buying a house together. So it's like, okay, are you accepting me fully or not? I know I can work on myself and I am-I can work on my confidence, on saying what I am thinking more, on being more carefree and spontaneous. It just felt so hurtful that he was criticizing these aspects of my personality. I feel like sometimes he has this manic pixie dream girl image in his head of what a girlfriend should be, and he projects it onto me.

I did give him feedback during this conversation about things he could do better, including giving me more words of affirmation, physical touch, and communicating his feelings more. But I feel like 99% of my criticisms are him are criticisms of his behavior or lack of behavior, not of personality traits. I am just not an overly critical person. I don't nitpick people. I feel like I truly accept him and love him for who he is.

He acknowledged during this conversation that I am more mature than he is-that I take life more seriously and I am better at handling my emotions and communicating. I appreciated that he acknowledged this.

I could tell he felt bad for hurting my feelings and he was trying to be extra nice to me after, telling me I looked sad and asking me why, and I don't know how to tell him I'm sad because it feels like my partner, who I have built a life with and spent over half a decade of my life with, doesn't like me as a person. Or at least parts of me that I have a hard time changing.

TL;DR: boyfriend told me he doesn't like that I am not super talkative and not outgoing, and that he feels like he has to bring "the fun" in our relationship. I understand to a certain degree but i am also hurt and confused.

I’m looking to buy my boyfriend (late twenties) one or two golf lessons for his birthday. He’s never played golf before but he wants to learn. I know nothing about golf. Where is a good place in the Lawrenceville/duluth area to buy him a lesson or two?

Doing IFS as a client has let me know I do not want to learn it as a modality to use with clients. I respect the modality and I am so happy that it works for some people but I have realized I am not one of them.

I do not resonate with it. My own personal therapist has used IFS and I have found it to be frustrating and unhelpful. I wonder, what is this supposed to be doing for me? Helping me understand myself better? Because it isn't doing that; I already feel like I have a good understanding of myself, my issues, and where they came from. I've done a lot of CBT and person centered therapy and found those to be extremely helpful but I wanted to try something a little different so I found an IFS therapist, but I think I prefer CBT and person centered, and I have an interest in trying psychodynamic as well.

Do I want to visualize my part as having a pronoun and as being outside of my body, and what it looks like, and what color it is, and what shape is it? No, I don't, it's a feeling, not an entity separate from me. Maybe it's a trauma response from childhood or a core belief or a part of shame, but I do not want to visualize it as a person or a separate being from myself. It feels fake, like I'm pretending and making stuff up.

Do I want to ask my thinking part to step aside? No, because then how am I supposed to answer any questions? I literally have to use my brain to think and talk. I can feel my emotions and still think about how to answer questions. I am sure some therapists would describe me as an "intellectualizer" but that is just the way my brain has always worked. I like to think, analyze, and talk about my issues, and I do feel that doing that helps me process what is happening and what my feelings are.

I appreciate that it works for some people, but I guess I'm not an imaginative or abstract enough thinker for it to work for me. I wish I liked it more because it feels weird that I'm a therapist myself and a popular and common modality is just not resonating with me, but I guess that's just being human.

Just a small rant.

AITAH?

Yesterday, I could tell my boyfriend already wasn’t in a good mood but I asked him if he was upset about something and he said no. Okay, I thought, if he doesn’t want to tell me, he doesn’t want to tell me. Maybe he’s just tired or something.

We get back from dinner and he is meal prepping for his upcoming work (he travels for work). He rarely cooks so the kitchen is more so “run” by me but he can cook whenever he wants.

He puts a pot of water on the stove to boil and we’re just chilling on the couch. All of a sudden, we hear this loud bang. There is glass exploded in little pieces all over our kitchen.

We look around for a minute, trying to figure out what the hell happened. Then we realize that there was a glass baking dish left on top of the stove from a previous night I had cooked (the dish was clean, I just needed to give it another rinse and put it away, but I had put it there for storing purposes because we have a small kitchen).

We realize that he had turned the wrong burner on the stove. He had turned the burner with the glass pan on it to high and didn’t turn the burner with the pot of water on at all. Also, he did not notice the glass pan and didn’t move it.

I take this in stride. I get to work helping him clean it up, sweeping and wiping down the counters. I tell him it was a simple mistake and it could happen to anyone, to show that I wasn’t mad and he didn’t need to feel embarrassed.

He is acting pissed off and giving me short answers/responses but I figured he was just annoyed at himself for turning the wrong burner on and not paying more attention. I advise him to put gloves on so he won’t cut himself with any glass but he ignores that and does end up accidentally cutting himself.

He says he’s going to throw away all the food he meal prepped because he doesn’t want it anymore.

In my head, I’m thinking what an immature response, I get you’re upset but why waste food? But out loud I say, that’s a lot of food you worked to make, why would you throw it away? He doesn’t answer.

I go out the food in Tupperware and put it in the fridge in case he wants it later.

He’s going about his nightly routine without inviting me to join in, which he usually would. He’s still giving me cold and short responses and just not acting loving.

Finally I ask him why he’s acting mad at me, because I’m thinking surely he isn’t actually mad at me, and he will clarify he’s just in a bad mood.

He says he is mad at me! I ask for what? He says because I left the pan there.

I apologized for leaving the pan there but said I was confused on why he was mad at me when we both made a mistake that led to it happening. He said “he didn’t know” why he was mad. He was even laying away from me in bed purposefully so we weren’t touching/cuddling. And he didn’t tell me about his updated travel plans today until I got an update myself on our shared calendar.

So am I justified in feeling pissed off? I want to tell him that I don’t appreciate him acting like an immature dick, but I don’t want to make things worse. I feel like it would have made more sense for me to get mad that he broke my favorite baking dish, but I’m not that kind of person. I don’t get mad easily

TL;DR: AITAH for leaving a glass pan on our kitchen stove and it blowing up when my boyfriend was trying to cook?