u/phuca

As far back as I can remember I never really wanted kids. I didn’t play with baby dolls as a child and as a teenager I told everyone I would never have children, lol. It’s only in the last few years I’ve started to consider it, and am very much on the fence. I’m in a relationship with someone I can see myself with for the rest of my life, and he does want children. I’m only 23 so a decision doesn’t need to be made right now, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

I just feel like a lot of the reasons I have against having children are similar to the fears I have in relationships that are related to my avoidance - loss of independence, fear of regret, fear that I’ll change my mind later on. I don’t want to make a decision based on fear or avoidance. But I don’t really know how to separate my avoidance from this decision either, and trying to trust my “intuition” hasn’t always led me down the right path in the past. Wondering about how other avoidants have handled it.

Really been struggling with this lately, and need to get it off my chest. I am in therapy and discuss these issues but it’s not really helping with this specifically.

I’m FA, 23, in a 2 year relationship (the longest I’ve ever lasted!). I know he is perfect for me, we love each other very much and I can absolutely see myself spending the rest of my life with him. The only real potential issue is that I’m still on the fence about having children whereas he definitely wants them, but that’s ok, I have time to figure that out.

So the main problem for me is internal. I am afraid of commitment. Irrationally, I have FOMO about being with other people (even though I have had quite a lot of sex/relationship experience prior to this one). Irrational because I know a relationship with someone else would not be as good as it is with him. But I still find myself developing crushes on other people and fantasising about them, etc.

I have never cheated and don’t plan on it, I would end my relationship if I felt I couldn’t control myself and it would break my heart. I know I would regret it forever if we broke up over something stupid like this. But I also fear that I’ll regret everything I’m missing out on. I miss the dopamine hit and the feeling of wanting something you don’t already have. It sounds really silly to write out that I’m really happy but still wanting more, but that’s how I feel.

Historically I’ve always monkey-branched from one relationship into another, usually with someone I was friends with. Probably some were borderline emotional affairs. He was telling me the other day about someone he knows who has physically cheated in every relationship he’s been in, because after a year or so he starts to get bored and his eye wanders. And I thought, it’s terrible, but I kind of understand it.

Anyway. I hate this about myself and I want to change. I just want to be content with what I have and not need the dopamine hit or external validation or whatever it is. Have any other avoidants dealt with this? I would love to know how to overcome it.

Hi all, very niche question probably but I don’t have people at work I can ask. I am a PhD student working with iPSC-derived 2D differentiated cells and organoids. I want to do an experiment that just involves treating them with a drug and measuring response in terms of protein expression. We work mostly with 3 cell lines, one control and two with a disease mutation. I’m wondering about independent repeats/biological replicates.

Ideally I would have more cell lines, I could differentiate and treat them in parallel and those would serve as robust biological replicates. But we only have access to 3 lines at present.

My PI would like for me to generate more biological replicates by plating iPSCs for differentiations on different days and performing the treatments/assays on different days. However, this seems really messy to me as my 6+ different plates would all require different medium formulations daily due to being at different stages of differentiation. Daily medium changes are required for a couple weeks and we have to make up the medium fresh due to factors degrading quickly.

I’m kind of at a loss here for what to do. My preference would just be to perform the whole experiment from iPSC to differentiation to treatment, and then perform it again independently to confirm the results are reproducible. She thinks this will take too long.

I’m just wondering what my fellow iPSC researchers are doing with regards to differentiations and independent repeats. Thanks all.

On the abcam product page it says to aliquot and freeze, so that’s what I do but a lot of people in my lab just keep the vial in the fridge. Wondering if anyone has had negative experiences with either!