u/red1127

I'm a computer science tutor, focusing on AP Computer Science, and I created a website with a main page that addresses the part, another page which is "tips for success", another page which is a FAQ, and finally a "Pricing" page.

The website is in Wordpress and I have the Google Site Kit installed so I can get analytics.

GA is showing a lot of visitors, but many of them are from other countries. I'm pretty sure that most of them are not from the local area where I'm advertising.

I added some utm parameters to my "learn more" link in the ads, so hopefully that should let me filter on visitors that are coming from my ad.

At that point I'm wondering what I can learn from analytics. I'm curious if I can learn whether the asking price ($90/hour) is too high by seeing if people leave my site after seeing the pricing page. Or is that metric drowning in noise, given that most visitors don't send me a message anyway?

I bought Altiverb 7 about 8 years ago for my MacBook. I've since upgraded to an M4 MacBook, and I'm told by Apple that support for Rosetta will stop in a future version, so I can't run Altiverb 7 for much longer.

Upgrading to Altiverb 8 for $99 will fix this, but after doing some research, I realized that Altiverb is not really appropriate for my goals. I'm an amateur composer and electronic musician, using modeled instruments, samples, and UVI Falcon. I've read that Altiverb is oriented toward post-production and focuses on real spaces.

I could get Valhalla room for $50 and save a bit. One thing I don't like about Altiverb is that with most of the IRs, there's a distinct echo sound to the early reflections that makes it hard to turn up the wet setting a lot without sounding unnatural. Gemini tells me that Valhalla room will fix this, but I want to confirm it here. (Real people are great for finding out exactly what's going on!)

I don't need hundreds of IRs, I just need 4 or 5 varied reverbs for different situations, like a composition that places some samples in a large room and uses direct sound on others, or a modeled piano that I just want to sound nice, and once it sounds nice, I don't need to fiddle with it.

I was thinking of Valhalla Room because I want really good natural spaces. I don't know anything about plate reverb models etc.

Any advice is welcome.

57M. Located in Los Angeles. I have an invisible-type disability. Chronic pain and fatigue, some vision problems, and a psychiatric disorder (OCD). Put it all together and it's impossible for me to work full-time. So I receive a disability payment ($3100/month).

I'm allowed to work about 10 hours/week while receiving disability, and 9 years ago I discovered that I could tutor high school students. I enjoy it, I think I'm pretty good at it, and I don't need to have perfect vision.

The OCD takes the form of obsessions and I don't have rituals. I actually feel free from OCD when I'm working with high school kids. My OCD doesn't get in the way of relationships and friendships for the most part (because I don't have rituals and I have a good therapist that keeps my head on straight).

The tutoring brings in about $1000/month extra.

On Hinge, which I've been on for 3 months, I list my career as tutoring. I've had phone calls with several women (none of them worked out for dating) and around the second phone call I tell them about my medical problems and that I don't work full-time.

In several instances, I think that the women just couldn't relate to me because they were in a high-powered career and very busy. I have a lot of free time and engage in a lot of self-care (like meditation and therapy). Only one woman seemed to not care at all. She was unemployed. But it didn't work out after the first date, just a personality difference.

On r/disability one person said that being on disability means I have an absolutely reliable income that is not in danger of being taken away. That's a lot better than being unemployed at least.

Anyway I'm just wondering what women here think about a guy on disability, and whether you think I'm handling it okay for dating. (1) saying my career is tutoring. (2) telling them on the second phone call that it's just 10 hours/week.

By the way this does prevent me from doing athletic activities like hiking, and it prevents me from taking long trips, although I can do day trips. I tend not to respond to women who obviously, from their profiles, care very much about those things.

I have a background in science and one of my favorite phone calls was with a professor of biology. Still didn't work out for dating. I think one issue there was that she was exhausted from working all the time and just couldn't relate to a guy with all this free time and self-care.

57M. I have excellent hearing for my age now, but I have a severe medical problem that is probably going to require me to take a medication that is known to cause hearing loss, at least temporarily, and sometimes permanent.

The condition is thyroid eye disease and the medication is Tepezza. It's given as 8 infusions over 24 weeks and then the thyroid eye disease is cured so you don't have to keep it up. The medication has numerous side effects, many of them quite bad, but the scariest one is hearing loss.

I have thought about this and I feel through some mystical knowing of the future that the benefits to me will be worth the risk, even if I do have some permanent hearing loss. I've had dreams about this and other ways of knowing the future.

In my dreams I'm often trying to listen to music with hearing aids. I would like to know from other hard-of-hearing music lovers what the experience is like.

I'm a rare breed. I primarily like classical music and I have an expensive headphone system at home including tube preamps and amps. With my own system, I can equalize the sound, which may compensate for loss of high frequencies.

But I also attend live acoustic concerts, such as the orchestra, and appreciate the beautiful sound with a sense of immediate live presence of the instruments. If I lose the high frequencies in my hearing, I might lose that sense of immediacy. If I wear hearing aids at a concert, I will probably lose the immediacy and power of the live instruments.

Music is by far the most meaningful experience in my life and is very comforting to my soul, especially in dealing with some traumatic experiences of my youth. I know that makes it sound pretty scary to think of losing my hearing, but maybe it will work out okay in the end.

So I'd like to have some of your thoughts on being hard of hearing and being a music lover.

EDIT: I want to clarify what may be some misconceptions here.

I primarily listen to classical music without words. I appreciate the beauty of the sound which creates what could be called a "numinous" experience (something like a spiritual experience). In this regard, music is almost entirely sound (although it could be imagined sound in some cases, such as Beethoven's manner of composing after he went deaf).

I have many experiences that are analogous to something getting in the way of the beauty and immediacy of the sound (that is, chopping off the high frequencies). For example, having an ear infection or too much earwax. Also listening to a bad recording on a bad system. Listening to a familiar voice on a mobile phone. Listening to an orchestra from a distant seat in the hall.

A hearing aid is basically a cheap digital transducer similar to poor audio equipment.

So I have some ability to imagine what loss of high frequencies would be like, although I'm still asking the question, because it could be different in some ways, and there is an emotional component to a loss of hearing.

I have normal thyroid panels but my eyes protrude, and I have all the nasty side effects of TED (eyes not closing all the way, especially at night, redness and irritation, etc.). An opthalmologist who specializes in TED diagnosed me from a CT of my orbits, so I'm pretty confident I have TED, and he says he's seen normal thyroid panels before.

Anyone have muscle pain in your eyes? My eyes hurt to move, especially away from center. I can't converge my eyes unless I'm looking straight ahead. I tend to move my head or body to look to the side. I know this affects my body and neck pain and stiffness (fibromyalgia, amplified by the TED).

I'm thinking of getting Lumvoa (rather than Tepezza to minimize the length of time I need to put up with the side effects) but I already have muscle spasms and awful muscle pain, and gut irritation, so I expect it to be hell. I'm thinking of having my doctor prescribe a fentanyl patch for the pain and taking a strong benzo for the muscle spasms.

Fentanyl patch rather than pills so I'm not tempted to take more than one at a time. (I've had problems with abusing opioids in the past.)

I'm be interested in hearing from those with similar symptoms.

I previously posted about my interest in re-familiarizing myself with calculus to be able to tutor it. I'm giving myself until fall 2027.

I also posted about how I have brain fog and I make a lot of mistakes in doing math. I mentioned that normally I tutor computer science and programming, and I've been programming for 45 years continuously, so despite the brain fog I can do pretty advanced stuff with it and tutor advanced classes. So perhaps if I practice calculus enough between now and fall 2027, I can get good at that.

But I realized something that makes me less confident. I make a lot of mistakes in programming, too. But programming software tools, like Integrated Development Environments, catch a lot of mistakes as I type. The best thing I can say about my programming abilities is that if I make a mistake, I know pretty instantly how to fix it -- after the IDE warns me.

But the thing about math is that when I'm working on problems from Kahn or a textbook, I have to do the entire problem with no aids and get a final answer. I then check that answer, and often I've made a mistake in it.

I was hoping that I might get past that, but the brain fog is pretty bad and I'm not sure I can get past making a lot of mistakes even if I practice for a year.

What do y'all think? How perfect do I have to be to tutor calculus?

Note that in my student days I got a 10 on the AIME, so I have a lot of math potential. It's just that I have so much brain fog now and I'm slowing down. I'm 58 and I'm actually partially disabled by brain fog and chronic pain. I only work about 10 hours/week.

I posted about how I have a chronic illness and brain fog, which is making it hard to get up to speed tutoring math, although I'm aiming to tutor calculus in fall 2027, spending time every day in preparation.

I have two questions for math tutors:

First, I'm wondering if I have a touch of math dyslexia. I frequently get the x and y axes mixed up, or the negative and positive sides of the coordinate plane mixed up. I don't remember having any trouble with this when I was younger, and it could be just the brain fog. But it means I have to double check my work when I'm plotting or computing the exact values of trig functions, and that slows me down.

Maybe I'll cure this problem just with more practice, but I feel like I'm slow and that makes me feel insecure as a tutor.

So I'm wonder if any of you have a kind of math dyslexia like this, and how you cope. If I'm clever in fixing my dyslexia, I may end up being able to use what I learned to help students with dyslexia or dyscalculia.

Second question: do you pay attention to how you organize your math work on the page, and also, do you help your students to organize their work better?

Note that I'm speaking mainly about tutoring in person, which I greatly prefer to tutoring online, so I can watch the student work. Tutoring in person gets me out of the house, which is good for my psychological mood, given that I struggle with pain and fatigue and it's easy to get depressed.

Regarding page organization, obviously if I'm starting with a cluttered page, then trying to fit in a new problem, jamming it in the available space in a disorganized way, that's about the worst way to use the page.

What I like to do is start each problem with a blank page. As I work out an equation, I write the entire thing once, then write it again with some manipulation, then again with further manipulation, and so on, until it's solved.

It's possible to skip some steps and not write them down. Or maybe if I manipulate only one side of the equation and the other stays the same, I could write down just the manipulated side and not copy the parts of the math that stay the same.

But the more steps I skip, the more likely I am to make a mistake. When I was a student at Caltech, I was very competent. I could manipulate complicated integrals, never lose track of where I was on the page, rarely make a mistake. Or when I was doing competition math in high school, I don't have any memory of getting mixed up or making mistakes due to skipping steps. Boy was my brain sharp when I was younger. The brain fog now has really impacted me.

As I mentioned in the last post, I don't have any problem tutoring computer science. A course like AP Computer Science is very simple compared to the programming I've been doing for decades. I also teach some competitive programming (USACO). Yes I'm impacted a bit by the brain fog. I have students in 7th grade who are very sharp, and sometimes they pick up new material faster than I do. But usually I have a lot to teach them and I don't feel insecure about my abilities there.

EDIT: one more question: for those who tutor in person, how do you cope when you arrive at their house and the "setup" is terrible? For example, they have a very small table to work on, it's cluttered, they're working from a screen but it's badly positioned, and also when you have to sit on the wrong side of a student to see their writing? (e.g. you have to sit to the right of a right-handed student)

Do you insist on changing the "setup"? Moving things around, sitting on the other side of the student, etc.?

I'm a middle school/high school computer science tutor, also with a little experience in algebra tutoring.

My business is dropping in computer science. I suspect it's the way families are not convinced CS is good career preparation any more, now that AI can code well.

So I'd like to get more into math, particularly calculus tutoring. Why calculus? I have a good resume from a top-class engineering school (year of graduation was 1991) so that can probably appeal to clients, and also I don't have a teaching degree and I'm not trained in math pedagogy, so it's probably best to avoid younger math grades and students who have basic struggles in math.

I also want to note at this point that I have a chronic illness that affects a number of things. In particular it causes brain fog. I tutor fairly advanced CS (a lot of my young students are working at the college level) and the only way I can stay ahead of my students is that I have decades of experience programming and I'm very facile with code. The brain fog troubles me, but I'm like a bodybuilder with chronic fatigue or something... the mental muscles in coding are very strong from all these years of practice so the brain fog doesn't trouble me too much.

However, I'm very rusty at math. I'm reviewing math right now, and I'm starting with precalculus. It takes me a lot of practice to recall what I used to know in high school and college, and I make a lot of mistakes. In high school I was into competitive math and got a 10 on the AIME in 1987, but boy do I feel a million miles away from that now.

So I took a precalculus tutoring job this summer but I'm not sure it's working out. The main problem is this: when I'm working on a problem with my student, I try to solve it working on my own first, then help him. But I'm pretty slow, and a lot of times he finishes before I do. When he makes a mistake, I can help him find it, so I'm not useless, but I feel like I'm not staying on top of this. I might tell this client they need to find another tutor.

I'm curious for people who tutor calculus: do you have to solve the problem they are given, then help them? Or do you watch them solve it? Or do you just know the solution right away because you've seen so many calculus problems?

I thought of using Wolfram Alpha to solve problems, then helping the student, to prevent me from making mistakes.

I will probably get much sharper at this by the time I want to start calculus tutoring (I'm aiming for fall 2027) but it's difficult, and maybe this isn't realistic.

Happy Pride Month everyone. Very inexperienced guy asking a question.

I'm a straight cisgender 57M and I've only ever dated cisgender woman. I met someone on a dating site who listed her gender as woman, then later told me that even though she uses she/her pronouns for convenience, she identifies as non-binary and bisexual. One way she expresses her masculine side is dressing in men's clothes and performing in drag.

We've talked on the phone a lot, sent pictures and so forth. I really like her as a person Planning an actual date next week.

Background: I'm very inexperienced with dating because I've spent my life recovering from childhood trauma. Because I'm straight, I'm mainly romantically attracted to the feminine parts of her, particularly her voice, but also her body and some of the body language she uses and her lived experience in a female body. As a guy, I explore my feminine side (and if I were younger I might identify as non-binary myself, I've rejected a lot of the male stereotypes) so I certainly like that she explores her masculine side.

Is it wrong to date a non-binary person when you're thinking to yourself "I sure like that dress because it makes her look pretty" or something like that? Or that I love her feminine voice?

To be clear, just the fact she's non-binary doesn't bother me. Because maybe I'll explore some of my feminine side. Maybe I'll put on necklace or carry a purse to see how it feels. It's just that for me to feel safe with a person that I'm intimate with, I need to think of them as a woman.

So, would it be wrong to date her? I imagine that I would have to ask her, so that brings up the issue of how I should go about asking her without being offensive.

(NSFW as I mention sex near the end)

I recently healed quite a lot. I started participating in Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families and that helped me get more social, and awakened a desire to have a romantic partner.

I've been on a couple of dating sites, and met one woman, who I like a lot. But there are other things that I don't like. She doesn't have the same kind of intellectual mind I do (Myers-Briggs NT subtype) (although she is very smart, she applies it in different ways). So there is stuff I might not be able to talk with her about. Sometimes I feel bored talking to her (which is not necessarily a bad thing for me as I've had trouble with living life in a much too excited way [mania]).

What's good about her is that she's not traumatized like I am, so we wouldn't be trauma bonded. She is a caring, gentle person and I'm interested in her life and she in mine.

We have talked on the phone a lot but haven't met, so that's the next step.

When I think about whether I want a relationship with her, a number of issues come up that would seem disappointing (like having a different style of intellect and a few things I haven't mentioned).

So what I'm wondering is: does it make sense to start a relationship with her if I'm not committing to her as my ultimate dream wife forever partner? I think I would really enjoy it, it's just that I can't see us going long term, so a breakup would happen at some point. (Maybe she would break up with me first.)

I need practice with relationships. I need practice with flirting. With sex. I have very little experience with any of this. I also have a 75% disability due to chronic pain, fatigue, stiffness in my body, etc. If she is understanding, caring, it could be a great way to get into all these activities, as long as I'm not doing something inherently wrong by thinking in the back of my mind that she's not really my ideal.

I have chronic pain, fatigue, and anxiety (OCD) that all together mean I need to be on SSDI. I do some side work to earn around $1000/month (which is below the maximum you can earn on SSDI). I can walk and do light chores, and people can't see my anxieties on the outside, so my disability is somewhat invisible.

I've been recovering from childhood trauma for some time. As a 57M, I have never had a healthy relationship, but I feel ready to date and look for a healthy relationship. However, I am really insecure about being on SSDI, because it means I can't be a "provider" in the traditional masculine sense. I think I have a lot of internalized ableism. I feel like it makes me less desirable as a romantic partner.

I'm wondering about advice for bringing up being on SSDI with dates (if I should even do it at all). I have been talking to a lot of women on the phone and have scheduled one date with V. So as it turns out, after talking for a lot of hours with V, I told her I'm on disability and she didn't seem to care. She is definitely not looking for a conventional provider. This has given me some confidence. On the other hand, maybe she is not looking for something serious or long term, which would be a bit disappointing as I am.

I haven't brought it up with any other women. I figure that I shouldn't bring it up right away, because for one thing, if I'm going to get past this internalized ableism, maybe I should think of it as something that doesn't matter. On the other hand, I don't want to wait too long because if the woman ends up rejecting me because of this, I'd rather get it over with.

I also had one disability forum member tell me that a romantic partner should think of it as a guaranteed income. Like a job that I can never be fired from.

So, I'm looking for advice, maybe not even just what to do, but how to update my perspective on disability.

I think I'm a freeze type. Let me describe my history. 

I think I was abused (terrorized) as an infant by my mother. I didn't know this until 3 years into therapy when I began having flashbacks and nightmares constantly that suggested extreme aggression toward me, in which my mother's face appeared. 

As a child, I had nightmares too, and I know now I was extremely dissociated from reality and had severe fragmentation. But I only knew that after going to therapy, because this defense was formed in infancy and it was the only reality I knew.

I felt dead. I had constant scary experiences but there was a layer of numbness over them. I was completely numb to my body and lived in my head. One of my defenses was constant thinking. Only when I started to come out of that years into therapy did I realize how dissociated I was from my body and how I previously felt dead.

When I was a child I dreamed constantly of being in a bad situation and then teleporting to another location. I know now this represents dissociation. But again, I wasn't aware of this consciously as a child; it was the only reality I knew.

A few years into therapy I became aware of a menacing presence in my psyche. I was completely numb to that before; it was totally split off. I became aware that this menacing presence was torturing an infant, another part of my psyche that was split off before.

I began to experience pain and fatigue constantly. I still experience that 34 years later.

I also have nightmares and flashbacks about being SA'd, and I remember a creepy neighbor (but don't have many memories of interacting with him other than he gave me a strange attention) so I kind of suspect there was SA.

Right now, I do a form of bodywork called Feldenkrais, which helps tremendously, but I still have extreme muscle clenching all over my body which causes misery, I think a kind of armoring. I developed this armoring "habit" so early that it's very entrenched.

This was all pretty bad, but I accomplished a lot with my first therapist. I got to the point of doing metta (lovingkindness) meditation. I also have to take some pretty heavy-duty psyche meds to keep the internal aggression under wraps. But my life has meaning now. I have good friends. I compose and improvise at the piano to express myself.

I'm interested in dating now. I've had a couple LTR's in the past but they were very unhealthy with depressed/anxious women.

Overall my story feels positive, like I went through hell and came out the other side. My first therapist was a great source of "unconditional positive regard," as the Rogerian's say.

I practice IFS therapy with a co-counselor. I want to write about how my parts might be affected by dating.

I have an infant part, Mikey, who was very, very traumatized by my mother. She was vicious toward him. (I imagine she was experiencing post-partum depression, extreme anxiety, living with an emotionally abusive husband, and she suffered abuse from her own mother.) Mikey longs for a good mother. So when I'm talking to these women I like, his longing is stirred up quite a lot. Mikey feels like if he doesn't find a good mother in a girlfriend or wife, that he will never heal.

I also have a part I call the Warm Inner Mother. Maybe she is a way of experiencing Self, I don't know. (Self, in IFS, is an inner center of compassion, connectedness, curiosity, etc.) IFS talks about "being in Self," so I get the idea this means that the client is identifying with those qualities of compassion, curiosity, etc.

For me, I think of myself as the "ego" in depth psychology terms (Jungian), and Self is an archetype of the unconscious mind that can become conscious through active imagination. My ego feels "depleted" by which I mean it is lacking in emotional resources, lacking in self-compassion, frozen by trauma, etc. So when I experience Self, I tend to experience Self as coming toward me and nourishing me with those its qualities. But I don't identify with it.

For example, I don't identify with the Warm Inner Mother. I don't feel like I inhabit her qualities. Instead, she comes to me and gives me a dose of compassion and love.

When I have journal sessions with the Warm Inner Mother, it soothes me and any feelings that have been stirred up by talking to women.

But I'm sure that if I cuddle with an actual woman, longing for mothering will be stirred up.

Then Mikey had the experience of losing my mother's love at times. For example, when she got raging mad. Also when my 2-year younger bother was born, I was jealous of him for stealing my mother's love. My parents were very hard on me for being jealous of my brother, shaming me, judging me, telling me I was ungrateful.

So I imagine I will also fear losing this actual woman.

I've also noticed in the few woman that I've dated in the past that I fear getting close, too. Mikey is terrified that the terror of my mother will be repeated.

So, I don't know how well I will be able to tolerate these experiences. I don't want to put any responsibility on my girlfriend to take care of me or reassure me.

So, I met this woman on the dating site Hinge a week ago and we've talked on the phone. It was a great conversation. And she wants to talk again. We've been texting all day long, too. I finally texted her that my childhood was rough, and it still affects me today, but I'm very, very optimistic about recovery. And I texted that I want to tell her a little about it in our next conversation. She texted back "I'm looking forward to our next convo."

She actually thought about becoming a therapist when she was younger. She has a natural curiosity about people.

She doesn't seem to be suffering from trauma in the same way as me. So what I'm wondering is whether this will be good for me. We don't have to "trauma bond." She is empathic and shows curiosity about my experience.

The only thing I'm hesitant about right now is that she's probably not a Myers-Briggs "N" type. I am a very strong "N" and tend to enjoy talking to other N's. I think she's an S.

(S means you prefer concrete experiences to abstract ideas, and N means you like hidden patterns, ideas, and abstractions.)

In terms of parts, an S is similar to my younger parts. It's also part of Feldenkrais work and other mindfulness work, and it's a balancing quality I aim to develop.

N is more my thinking part, and when I was younger it was a defense against the experience of my body and emotions. But it was enjoyable. I got excited about ideas. That excitement was a defense, too. But to this day I get pleasure from ideas, in a healthier way.

My ex Rowan, who I'm still friends with, is a strong N. Rowan and I occasionally go on road trips and we spend the time talking about ideas, which I love. I don't know how much I would miss this if I was dating an S.

On the other hand, I need to develop S to become more in my body and live with my emotions. My best guy friend is S (ISFJ).

I first entered therapy having symptoms of PTSD and OCD in 1990 and was with that therapist for 31 years until he retired. He was great. He gave me unconditional positive regard and helped me change a lot of my patterns. But change was not quick for multiple reasons. I was very numb to all emotions and that numbness was changing only very slowly, largely because of the way OCD affects me. My physical health was pretty bad. I went on disability in 2010. Some things had to change before I could change certain longstanding patterns. For instance I started doing some side work as a tutor in 2017 and for the first time I had a purpose, and that radically woke me up and got me to come unnumb. My parents had to die in 2023 and 2025 before I felt safe enough in the world to confront certain emotions. 

I'm 57M. I'm just starting to feel that I can have healthy relationships (romantic or platonic).

Last December I started attending a 12 step group. I feel more consistent social connection now and that is giving me new hope. Being more social has awakened a longing for healthy friendships or a romantic relationship. I'm starving for human contact especially since my first therapist retired in 2021.

However, I'm struggling with forming friendships and having a lot of shame for different reasons.

For instance, there is a guy I have a lot in common with (we both have an interest in mindfulness of the body). We talked a few times on the phone, but he didn't seem interested in continuing it. I texted him a month later asking how he was doing. He was going through a personal crisis and was on the phone a lot during the day with fellow members of the fellowship. It was getting to be nighttime and I'm a night person, so I offered to give him some phone support at night.

So he called and I was delighted, partially because I'm so used to feeling (from my childhood) that people don't like or even hate me. We talked a bit about his crisis, but without realizing it, I changed the subject to topics more about myself. As soon as we hung up, I realized what I had done, that I had not let him lead the conversation (even though that was my original intention). I texted him to apologize but he hasn't texted back.

I was immediately filled with vicious self-recrimination. I had thoughts about being such a clumsy, non-social person and will be alone forever.

Another person. There is a woman who I feel a lot in common with. A few times after meetings I went up to her to talk.

By the way, after meetings for the most part people form into cliques. It is rare that anyone comes up to me. It does happen sometimes, but it's easy to catastrophize: "no one likes me, I will be alone forever."

So she never came up to me, and instead I went up to her. Then a couple of times she remarked that I ask very good questions and show curiosity about her and that she learns something about herself every time we talk.

I immediately thought - "Maybe she wants to get romantically involved." I'm love-starved, and it was a very powerful fantasy. However, I was always aware that I had no idea if she was feeling that way.

I continued to go up to her at meetings, but never asked her out or anything like that. But sometimes she seemed uncomfortable. So I went up to her less.

Then last Friday I was standing next to her as we put the chairs away and said "hi." She seemed to put up a barrier immediately. However, I was so much craving having some good caring conversation that I didn't give up right away. I asked her some questions about how she was doing, and she gave curt replies. Then she said she had to get going, was feeling tired that day and wanted to go home.

So I gave up. I immediately felt extremely disappointed. I feel like we have so much in common and I crave getting to talk to her. But I resolved not to bother her any more.

As I left, I looked back and saw she was talking excitedly with another guy. So apparently she didn't really need to go home.

I had a very deep trauma in my childhood about my brother being born when I was 2 (I'm the oldest) and stealing my mother's love. I was deeply traumatized by my mom as an infant and was probably dealing with severe PTSD even as a young child. Then my parents judged and shamed me for being jealous of my brother.

Based on doing IFS and talking to this toddler part, I know it was pure hell. PTSD, shame, envy all mixed together while being a 2 year old child with no ability to regulate (and not getting any help from my emotionally immature parents).

So this envy wound was triggered when I saw her talking to this other guy and clearly enjoying it.

Since then I've been obsessing non-stop. I have a vivid aural and visual imagination, and the scenes of her being uncomfortable with me and seeing the other guy are flashing in my brain non-stop. I feel just grueling shame and isolation every time it flashes. I feel ashamed that I "gave away" that I enjoy talking to her (by going up to her so often after meetings) and probably made her feel uncomfortable. She may have even felt I was hitting on her although I was careful not to do anything like that.

I haven't been to a meeting since then. I'm isolating.

Also note that when I was a child I felt horrifically ugly. Apparently, I interpreted my parents' hate for me and love for my brother as meaning he was beautiful and I was ugly. To this day I can't be around him, I feel so disgusting. So a few years ago I started developing spots on my face (keratosis). So now I'm terrified that I look ugly to this woman. Also I don't feel very masculine. I'm physically in bad shape with chronic pain and fatigue. I developed a lot of back pain in the last year and I was at a doctor appointment yesterday with a spine specialist. He was kind of creepy, and said that I was very weak and stiff. That criticism hit me hard given these other events (and also his creepiness didn't help).

I'm looking for support and some advice, although be gentle with the advice please.

I've been working on recovery for 36 years, but in some ways I'm just starting to confront the most serious abuse I think happened to me: my mother abusing me in some way, when I was an infant. Actually I suspected this going way back based on flashbacks and nightmares, as well as coming to learn in therapy that I had an extremely menacing inner world (apparently as a defense formed in infancy), but after my parents both died recently, I seem to be "waking up" to the reality of how this affected me. It's no coincidence, I think, that I'm waking up after they're both gone. If they were still alive I would have to be wrestling with confronting them with this. Now it's only me and my own needs, and I think that makes it safer.

One thing that woke me up recently was learning about post-partum depression and how some mothers feel aggression toward their infants. My mother was always a very anxious person and I was born a year after she married my father, an abusive husband. I can only imagine her home with me all day, no doubt severely depressed and anxious, trapped in this house with a screaming infant and having nothing to look forward to except a cold, mean, controlling husband returning at the end of the day. I believe her own mother probably abused her. So I think it's totally realistic to imagine she unleashed aggression on me.

I do have some understanding of this. I don't entirely fault her, despite how deeply it hurt me.

Anyway, I'm wondering if others here either suspect or have confirmed they were abused as infants by their mothers.

I've recovered enough that I joined a couple dating apps and I'm exchanging messages with people. However, I'm really scared about possible conflict and rejection (either I reject someone or they reject me). I just got a rather judgmental message on Hinge. It started when I said that I like to socialize with support groups. This woman wrote back "what do you mean by support groups?" as their only reply, so that didn't feel friendly. I wrote that I mean Adult Children of Alcoholics. Then they wrote back "So you don't socialize with anyone but 12-step groups? I'm not sure what you're looking for. Most women my age are not introverts." (I had also mentioned that I'm looking for introverts to feel most comfortable.)

So this feels unfriendly at best, and possible overtly judgmental. I have almost no experience dating, so I'm not sure how to reply, if at all. I could point out her unfriendliness to "wake her up" to it, but I don't want to risk her sending more mean messages to me. I could just unmatch her quietly. Can I get some advice?

I'm working with an Elementor Pro site previously designed by a professional web designer. I can't afford him now, but I'm a programmer so I usually understand technical things. I want to change the default typography used by H4. I went into Site Settings and found the font I believe he set... the font name matched what I see when I make an H4 heading. I changed the font in Site Settings. Mysterious, it has not changed in any of my pages. I regenerated CSS etc., and cleared the WP-Optimize cache, exited the page editor and reloaded the page, etc. all to no avail.

Could he have set default fonts somewhere else on the site that overrides Site Settings?

Incidentally I have an unrelated question. I'm not sure if I actually need Elementor Pro. Does the free version provide the Theme Builder? Does it provide templates and a template widget, which would accomplish something similar?

It would be awesome if I could get feedback on my website at Learn With Mike Mossey

I tutor junior high and high school students in coding. I have been doing mostly online students, but because I love tutoring in person (and it's great for my mood), I am looking for local students I can tutor in-person. I'm not going to advertise this website nationally... just in local areas and handing out flyers outside the local Apple Store and so forth.

So for instance, I mention "Pasadena," and everyone who finds this site will know I mean Pasadena, California, not Pasadena, Texas.

I'm looking for comments on the copy (the language) and the "look and feel." It's very simple - has only three pages - in part because of the marketing principle that if you give people less stuff to look at, they won't get distracted.

I plan to hand out flyers and talk to people around town, especially where wealthy people congregate. So many people who find this site will have already talked to me. This is just a convenient place to consolidate what everyone needs to know.

Some of you may have thoughts on the viability of teaching hand-coding in an era when vibe coding is taking off and there is some drop in software engineer hiring. I have plenty of students online who like to hand-code, but it's possible that I will have to adapt how I teach, for instance using Claude Code as part of our projects.