u/lileina

Does anyone else just not like sweet scents? It’s interesting bc I also don’t love eating desserts, or wearing sweet perfumes, for the most part! I love salty and bitter foods, fresh and woodsy perfumes, and fresh or strange scented slimes, especially with gritty and packed textures, though I also like icee and thick sometimes 😭😭😭 anyone else have these sensory preferences??

I get especially sad when there’s a slime that looks very appealing for other reasons, but then the scent is randomly sweet. Like I do understand when for example a fruit themed slime is fruit scented, of course, but I’ll see a beautiful space-themed slime, for example, and then it will have a pineapple vanilla scent or something haha and I just know buying it won’t be worth it for me for the texture and look alone. It’s like the sweet scent ruins the experience. I would rather an unscented slime (and actually love unscented slimes bc im weird and like the smell of “unscented” body care products and glue and beads themselves) than a sweet scent.

I just got OG’s hair salon slime for the second time, and I feel like they changed the scent and I’m sooo sad lol. It used to smell like hairspray and chemicals w only the faintest floral notes, and the restocked one smells like straight up roses. I felt like I was going crazy but I still had the first one I bought, and I compared and they def smelled different.

I know, frivolous complaints. But the world is hard and sometimes it is nice to disappear into slime world! would love to bond with any slime lovers w similar preferences, I find it so so interesting to compare and wonder how we “got” this way haha! Weirdly enough, I also don’t like *really* dank, musty, or “dirty” scents like “attic” or anything like that. My favorite kinds of scents are fresh, clean, and/or chemical — lemon zest, gasoline, petrichor, lavender cleaning spray, cement, markers, nail salon, dishwashing soap, fresh laundry, things like that.

Hi all! I’m wondering if anyone else has had this experience. Before I accepted that I was a lesbian, I briefly thought I was bisexual and I dated a boy for a few months and slept with him. The sex was totally consensual and everything, but I have a lot of complicated feelings about that period of time in my life.

Some people have considered me an invalid lesbian bc I was with a man, and I was always picturing the man I was with as a woman and feeling not good enough for women at the time. Sometimes I still don’t feel good enough for women, and I cope with that now by being alone, rather than trying to be w a man.

I also had some body and gender stuff going on at the time that I didn’t have the tools to cope with and that it was weird to explain to a man. It’s just not a great time to look back on. I often feel really grossed out when I have memories of having sex with this man. It feels like a different person did that and produced these intrusive memories that now viscerally repulse me. You now could not pay me to have sex with a man, so sometimes I pretend that was a different person, but I know it was me and I just feel so perplexed, as I wouldn’t make the same choice today and I feel no attraction toward men. It feels like I was disrespecting what I now know to be my identity which feels really degrading.

Yes I have a therapist, but I feel I need community support. I can’t explain to people the exact way in which it makes me feel bad bc the boy himself was very nice and all and I was not assaulted (nor have I ever been assaulted by anyone, so this isn’t like a sexual trauma response). I know this might sound silly and I don’t want to appropriate the language of gender dysphoria, but thinking about my body doing those things now is almost like sexuality dysphoria, kind of. Even at the time, I grieved not being with women and felt “not myself” if not with a woman, but felt I had to identify as bi anyway to “do penance” for being with a man and losing my “purity” as a lesbian. By contrast when a woman is attracted to me or when I am with a woman, I feel a sense of euphoria, almost, like I am where I am supposed to be and my body can relax. I am femme and frequently perceived as straight unless hand in hand with a woman, and I know I should be grateful for straight passing privilege, but I just feel triggered bc it reminds me of these memories and I’m reminded I’m still often perceived as available to men when I’m not.

Also despite being femme, I have some gender stuff going on that’s hard to describe (I def identify as a woman, but also as a femme as part of my gender) and it felt almost like being with a man felt like I was becoming another gender I didn’t want to be and couldn’t authentically perform.

I don’t think non lesbians understand and a lot of lesbians I know have never been with men and I am jealous of them; or they have been with men before realizing they were lesbians or before it was safe to be out, but it doesn’t seem it was as upsetting to look back on for them as it is for me.

I hate that there is a man out there who has had sex with me, and I hope he never finds out that I am a lesbian, bc he might then think all lesbians sleep with men and I might be dishonoring lesbians, even though I was young and figuring myself out and am not attracted to men. I feel so much shame and responsibility for these few months of my life when I was so young at the time and so confused and felt so unworthy. To make matters worse people in my life are often bringing him up and asking me to rehash those events and explain why I did that etc. I want to move on and I feel “dirtied” by the experience. I hate how much our culture centers men in defining women. I just want my “gold star” back as problematic as that sounds. Only kind comments please. I’d appreciate any words of comfort, understanding, or advice.

okay so — I have been doing way better on many aspects of my vulvodynia, which was original hypertonic PF and itchiness. Now the hypertonic PF is mostly better (though occasionally it will flare if I don’t keen up w exercises) and the itch unfortunately is whole body lol. However I don’t have what I had at the beginning which is generalized sensitivity — underwear used to bother me and id get weird tingling feelings I don’t get now.

or don’t get, EXCEPT, for after having sex. I finally had sex this week after not having it for a long time for non-vulvodynia reasons (I was just extremely busy basically and didn’t find anyone I liked for a while 🤪). I am having this issue where after I have sex, my vulva gets way itchier and my HANDS AND FEET START BURNING?? And keep burning for like a day??

I can find some stuff online about my feet burning possibly having to do with a pinched nerve and muscle issues. But hands?! Important things to note: I do not have this issue when I masturbate/orgasm on my own. I’m wondering if it’s tied to the rush of excitement with partnered sex? Additionally, I am a lesbian and since this episode of sex did not involve genital to genital contact or lube, the only substances in contact with my vulva were my clean hands, my partners clean (with unscented soap) hands, and their spit, and I have even used spit to masturbate and idt it’s what I’m reacting to. And while my hands are involved in sex my feet aren’t lol so it feels like a chain reaction. Please wtf do I do?? This isn’t even just vulvodynia now but feels connected. Do I have neuropathy?? But why only after partnered sex??

I don’t have any known comorbidities except for seasonal and dust allergies and <possibly> MCAS but the only poss MCAS symptom is the whole body itch. I wonder if it’s an autonomic issue but I don’t have pots or anything that I know of!

I also can get physiologically nauseous when very into someone bc I just get very excited I guess and I tend to feel things very deeply? so I think that romantic and sexual stuff maybe triggers this physical autonomic issue for me? But I don’t feel any type of way about sex, don’t have sexual trauma, am happy with the people I have dated, etc. so it’s not a psychological thing and plsss don’t tell me that it is bc I was gaslit so bad w that with vulvodynia in general.

Hi all! I haven’t seen this question asked before but if it has been please feel free to direct me to it. I’m not a scientist and do my best to read scientific papers, but would appreciate anyone more knowledgeable weighing in.

I have been lucky to avoid all symptomatic sickness (Covid and otherwise) for years thanks to consistent masking. I understand and obviously agree with basic germ theory — as we all know, I don’t need to be exposed to viruses in order to “strengthen” my immune system, and in fact, viral exposure can actually weaken it. For reference, I have allergies and maybe some mast cell issues, but am not immunocompromised. AFAIK I don’t have autoimmune issues, but they could be undiagnosed w the mast cell issues.

That said, I am curious what, if anything, I should be doing to make sure my immune system is healthy and well-exposed to the microorganisms (I am not a scientist so don’t come for me here on terminology) that *do* keep it healthy. For example, I’ve heard that it’s best not to overuse antibacterial soap or harsh surface cleaners and alcohol-based hand sanitizers that kill all or most microorganisms. Obviously those cleaners are useful sometimes, and definitely in the hospital, but in the average person’s average home washing hands regularly with soap and water is best, using alcohol hand sanitizers and harsher surface cleaners only when needed. And of course I eat a varied diet and regularly get my recommended vaccines. Is there anything else I should be keeping in mind to ensure a rich exposure to a microbiome and environment that keeps my immune system healthy?

I’ve seen mentions of how kids should play in the dirt to develop their immune systems, rather than be exposed to viruses, but obviously I’m an adult lol and I live in a city so idk about the equivalent of that for me 😭 again, im not disagreeing that avoiding viral exposure is good, but I imagine im exposed to far less than my ancestors (not only w the mask wearing filtering the air of a lot of particles, not just covid, but also w keeping my house very clean, not living in the woods or farming) and i don’t want my immune system to become “naive” again if im also ending up accidentally avoiding actually beneficial microorganisms like bacteria, dirt, etc (which is why I stopped overdoing it w alcohol based hand sanitizer).

As an addendum, I am especially curious about this bc while right now I am lucky to have very little exposure to viruses that I would need to use my immune system for, I still need it to work well for other stuff obviously, like cancer prevention, avoiding worsening allergies (and mine have been worsening, and I know sterile environments can make them worse), fighting off food poisoning, etc. I hope to have a kid someday and I fear I’ll really need my immune system then esp if they are infected with viruses as an infant if i am unable to avoid daycare (obv will do all I can to mask them as young as possible).

Thank you! Please don’t tell me to just ask a doctor — I don’t know any CC doctors and don’t want them to be spouting non scientific anti mask propaganda at me about how I need to unmask to nourish my immunity.