Seriously? I don't know much about Trunk, but taking her account at face value, she reports that her husband told her he'd stop beating her if she stopped making him stay up late talking; that he thinks it was "progress" that he went two months without hurting her; and that she sometimes thinks she deserves it because she's impossible to live with.
No idea if that's a true account but it's certainly an account of SPOUSAL ABUSE. And it's really fucking disturbing.
It sounds like spousal abuse, and if she believed that she deserved it, that sounds like one of the symptoms of battered person syndrome.
I'd like to hear both sides - maybe the abuse went both ways, maybe they both were codependent and had battered person syndrome, I dunno.
OR - maybe her spouse said "I don't like this" and she took that as an assault. Sometime people perceive something that is not there. There is no way to tell for sure what actually transpired.
But, for the record, any unwanted physical touch is assault, and any unwanted verbal or emotional negativity is battery.
Yeah, no, that was the most rushed paragraph ever. I haven't clicked through to her blog and read a single thing. Maybe it's the all caps version.
Yeah, same reaction here - the account (based on the top post and another Jezebel linked) seems to be one of almost entirely asymmetric physical and emotional abuse. Hewing closely to the traditional narrative, in fact.
I should probably go back to TFA for the previous threads.
My impression from reading her blog, though, is that she would be beyond impossible to live with. Of course he should never hit her, and hitting her doesn't solve his problem, but I cannot think of a single option for him. He can't leave; she's on his family farm. She won't leave. She sounds awful to live with in a long list of ways. That has got to be a horrible situation for them both.
That all the advice she gives ever about anything is terrible is neither here nor there. She's definitely being abused based.
I think she's being abused -- from what I've read of her blog I think she's also (not qualified to diagnose anything medical or psychological) a very strange person who's probably extremely difficult to have a healthy relationship with. She needs to get out; her husband's left significant bruises on her and the police should be talking to him about it. But man, oh man do I not understand why anyone reads her as an advice columnist.
Seriously, though. You should read her accounts of how she acts before you come to conclusions about him. She may be being abused, but by her accounts, she sounds like she is beyond maddening.
5: That's interesting. I don't actually know, but what are the legal options for a married person who's living on property they owned before the marriage, and wants the spouse off? I suppose he could file for divorce, clarify that the farm is his, and then have the police remove her as a trespasser. Or if it's not his, but belongs to his parents or something, they could probably have the cops remove her now. But I don't really know -- there's got to be some way of doing it, but she almost certainly has some kind of rights as a tenant.
Since I am sure I will have to state the obvious: being beyond maddening doesn't mean that he can or should hit her (or push or throw her).
They are also not legally married, I don't believe. She's mentioned that their marriage ceremony wasn't also a legal marriage.
maybe her spouse said "I don't like this" and she took that as an assault
She's posted pictures of her bruises.
....any unwanted verbal or emotional negativity is battery.
No means no. Just ask first "Do you want some verbal or emotional negativity", and if they say yes, pile it on!
8: Dude. I completely agree with you that she sounds like a nightmare and a half, but it's perfectly fair to conclude about him that he's the kind of person who solves an intractable interpersonal problem by hitting a weaker person, repeatedly. That's a bad kind of person to be.
If he wants her off the farm he can get a lawyer and a restraining order.
Right, I believe this is a marriage with unacceptable violence and it needs to end.
I just wanted to somehow say that sometimes, the conflict is completely one-sided: the abuser flies off the handle over any little hair out of place, and the abused person walks on eggshells. And that is not the case here.
15: Can he get a restraining order if she's not abusive? I think he's got a property-owner's rights to have her off his property, but I don't think he's got any right to a restraining order.
No intractable person problem, no violence. No relationship, no intractable personal problem. Easy.
Spousal abuse almost never sorts neatly into "evil abuser who dishes it out" and "meek abused recipient." That has nothing to do with whether it's abuse.
but it's perfectly fair to conclude about him that he's the kind of person who solves an intractable interpersonal problem by hitting a weaker person, repeatedly. That's a bad kind of person to be.
Yep. I could believe that. Not knowing anything else about the situation but what I've read from her, I would also believe that he was pushed extraordinarily far before he started solving that problem with hitting. With most other people, that side of him might never have come out. Or maybe it would, maybe that's how he does. But given how extreme she her behavior is, I'm not in a rush to call him a blanket ABUSER. He could be one. But both of them have my (weak and only mildly interested) sympathy.
Can you get a restraining order for someone talking all the time and keep you awake? Or for being unbearably annoying? To me that looks like one of the virgin frontiers of law.
I just wanted to somehow say that sometimes, the conflict is completely one-sided
I think this is almost never true, and it's an unproductive way to think about it. It sets up 'real abuse' with a perfect victim who hasn't done anything wrong, as against complicated situations that aren't really really abuse. Pretty much any real life situation is going to be complicated; I have an extended family member who was in an abusive marriage as a young woman. And I have on many occasions wanted to punch her myself; wanting to punch her is a natural, human reaction. Actually punching her is what made her husband an abuser, and how maddening she is doesn't change that at all.
I've known cases when the non-abuser's only option was to rush out the front door and drive away. Some non-violent situations are still unendurable.
That is a strange choice of pictures to show the bruise.
Given that of course he shouldn't hit her, I do wonder what he can actually do, given that she's in his house, on his farm, she won't leave and she won't stop the unbearable behavior even as she acknowledges that he hates it. In the long run, an eviction, if he can. But in the short run, what does he do with her day to day? She says she follows him around the farm during the day to continue arguments.
28: She's really strange. I've looked at her blog off and on, and the exhibitionist choice of pictures is very much in character.
The Jezebel piece is actually a pretty perceptive analysis of what's probably going on, not only with Penelope Trunk but perhaps in a larger way with many would-be dispensers of self-help advice. Self-help and advice writers are, on the whole, a notoriously dysfunctional sector of the writing world. It could be that the tendency to dispense advice as part of a process of trying to impose some order on the chaos of one's own life isn't limited to Trunk.
29: There are probably rooms with locks where he can get away from her. He has to be on the farm while he's working, but any free time he has he can drive away or lock himself in a room.
Can I get a link or keyword for her unbearable behavior? I don't want to go trawling her archives more than necessary.
Fuck one pig and you're a pigfucker. It's the law.
I would love a link somewhere in 5 or 8.
I read her blog years ago (up until some time shortly after she met "the Farmer"). Her advice never seemed very good.
From personal experience, any unwanted physical contact not done is self defense is abuse, so I agree about the bruises as possible evidence of assault. And I don't know the details here.
But I know this for a fact - if you are a big guy who does not bruise who is assaulted by a smaller woman who bruises easily, and you hold her off by grabbing her arms while she is in a rage, the bruises on her upper arm are evidence of *your* assault, and you will have a devil of a time getting anyone to believe what actually happened.
AND, if divorce happens, it will be YOU who is at least temporarily kicked off the marital property. Separating is the right thing to do, to prevent future confrontations, and at least in Minnesota assets brought into the marriage are not marital assets to be divided, but if you made the payments while you were married, it WILL get divided and usually the man must move out.
One other fact I learned - rich families know all about sheltering their wealth, and they are very careful to firewall any gifts they have made to their children during the marriage to keep all gifts from the spouse in the case of a divorce.
Only suckers take gifts (such as small inheritances) and co-mingle them with their marital assets. Once you co-mingle the gifts, you've lost them, and the rich get richer.
By firewall above I mean keep them in a secret account that is only in the name of their child, not the joint accounts with the spouse.
My advice - never fall in love with someone from inherited wealth, and never fall in love with a corporation.
What, you're going to make me go look for it? Gimme a sec...
Also to 29: I haven't read the whole history of this -- has he asked her to leave (rather than just asking her to stop talking about shit so much)? I'd have more (although still not a whole lot) of sympathy for him if he was consistently trying to disengage and get her away from him without abandoning his livelihood. If he's still trying to make something work in a way that as it works out incorporates violence, I get less sympathetic.
Can you get a restraining order for someone talking all the time and keep you awake?
Let me tell you that the above is a form of torture. If you've ever lived with someone in full manic mode you probably know that.
30: I'd say the choice of picture fits perfectly with what she says about herself in the accompanying post, and is possibly of a piece with her blogging career as a whole (and the story of her apparently physically abusive childhood into the bargain). It's all part of reaching out, of trying to be noticed and/or missed.
Oooh, yes. I had a roommate once who stood outside a bathroom door and talked to me through it for fortyfive minutes until I gave up hoping she'd go away and came out.
He loves the feeling of getting rid of me.
That's why I can't leave. I want someone to miss me. ...PT
Could be borderline.
Her parents too? What we say about a person, who, wherever she went, whomever she was with, that person would punch her in the nose? "Yes, I was looking for peace so I went and visited a Cistercian Abbey, but now all the monks are in jail for assaulting me and I have nowhere to go."
I think this is almost never true, and it's an unproductive way to think about it. It sets up 'real abuse' with a perfect victim who hasn't done anything wrong, as against complicated situations that aren't really really abuse. Pretty much any real life situation is going to be complicated;
Often so, but there really are a non-trivial percentage of cases where it is completely one-sided. Where one spouse uses the threat of anger and rage to keep the other spouse toeing a very narrow, fearful line, and walking on eggshells, spending all their energy keeping plates spinning. I have definitely seen sufficiently much of one marriage in particular to know this is the case. And I believe it to be the case in another, where the abuser was an alcoholic.
It's my understanding that Battered Spouse Syndrome cases often follow this pattern. That it can be totally one-sided.
39: Manic mode or being a toddler with colic.
I had a friend who was going to work on two hours sleep because of that problem.
I'd bet that even in those cases, if you were right in the middle and knew everything about what was going on, you'd have flashes of thinking that "Well, [the abuser] has a point about that. Honestly, [the victim] was just fucking with them there." They're people, there's always going to be some kind of complication. What makes it abuse is that it's an unacceptable form of handling conflict, not that all the blame for all the conflict is entirely and always on the same side.
(Thinking about a marriage I know well, where one party clearly was batshit crazy, but the other partner was also not treating her as well as he might have. If you had to point to one side as the problem, it was obvious. But it wasn't where absolutely all the problem or all the blame belonged.)
33: The post describing how she ended an argument by breaking a lamp over her own head is a good example.
One carries no water for Penelope Trunk,* but beating up people who are annoying or even crazy is not acceptable.
* She is a charlatan, enabled by the Internet. That isn't her real name, by the way.
43: Often so, but there really are a non-trivial percentage of cases where it is completely one-sided.
I won't try to argue with you about your anecdata, but by reportage of the kinds of people who deal with multiple examples of spousal abuse on a daily basis, by far the more common pattern is that it does not work this simply. Codependency in such relationships is a very common problem dealt with by social workers, for instance.
Yeah, what kind of asshole operates under a pseudonym on the internet?
41: I always assumed everybody with a roommate like that was murdered.
OK, urple, here you go:
A description of a fight in which she breaks a lamp over her head.
A description of bringing the fight out into the field where he is working.
In which she breaks his window, then takes the car in the middle of the night while medicated.
She also invites blog readers to stay with them without consulting him, then accuses him of wanting to sleep with them. She acknowledges that she consistently does a lot of stuff that he's asked her not to (blogging about their sex life, swearing). She spontaneously redecorates. His parents own the farm, and changed the will to protect it from her and maybe him. If you figure they live in a small town, his neighbors are watching. I would believe a healthy couple could do any or all of those things and be fine together. But it doesn't sound like he wants any part of most of them, and from reading the blog, it sounds like they happen a lot. With a few assumptions, this could be a description of a really horrible period for him, entirely induced by her.
Codependency in such relationships is a very common problem dealt with by social workers, for instance.
Codependency is completely consistent with what I'm describing. There's a reason that the recipient isn't leaving, and isn't objective, and isn't behaving rationally. There's a whole host of fears operating. They're not a paragon of self-actualization, but they are meek and submissive.
47: Inc. Magazine called her "the world's most influential guidance counselor."
Explains a LOT.
Just reading half a page of the #47 link reminds me of a cubist painting, or maybe an engineering schematic, where all the parts of a relationship are present but they are not fitted together right. She's really much more aware of things than most couple-participants, but with major blind spots evident both in her behavior and in her writeup.
Like many people who are total assholes online, David's contact info was easy to find. I called him at work, because, big surprise, he is not a stay-at-home dad talking about how everyone should love parenting. He is a dad who is not home all day talking about how everyone should love being home all day with their kids. There was no answer at his work. But I noted the number so I could ruin his life there if I ever felt like he needed to be taught a lesson.Then I called David Dellifield's house. I thought maybe his wife would answer and I could ask her if she knows that her husband is emailing other women to encourage them to send more kids to his wife to take care of. All day.
OT: This probably ought to go in the '86 Bengals thread below, but the New Yorker has a long article about a powerhouse New Jersey high school football team that does not mention concussions or long-term neurological or physical damage at all. Actually, it seems rather approving of the whole enterprise, in a way typical of fancy-periodical writing about macho stuff. It does, however, provide a nice, presumably unintentional reminder that the worst thing to do for children's and adolescent's recreational activities is make it possible for adults to make money from them.
48: As long as it is another man of roughly the same size and age, I do not think you should completely rule out the option for the most annoying people.
48: I suppose that you're going to tell me Faith Popcorn isn't real either. Or Xeni Jardin
It's not the same as hitting someone else, but harming oneself and then saying to the other person, "Look what you made me do" is also abusive.
Moby, can I hit (the most annoying) women who are roughly the same size and age? I haven't had to, but it'd be good to know the rule.
59: I think I saw Faith Popcorn on the street once. She looked real enough, in a clone-of-Barbara-Walters way.
55:After this, I am not sure I want to hang around this thread. She could read it. She scares me.
She does feel kinda borderline, worshipping and seeking unjust rejection alternately, half-consciously as tactics. Some people can make an art form of inspiring great cruelty in others.
Hmm. I'm a little reminded of Jackie Parker Posey Paisley, but this woman is weirder. I mean, how can someone go from: "I smashed a lamp over my head. There was blood everywhere. And glass. And I took a picture." To: "I think my life is getting better because it used to be that I wrote everything. In order to cope. Now I can take pictures. So I have two coping mechanisms."
Two is bigger than one, so life is better! Wait, you just smashed a lamp over your head. That was your real coping mechanism. That? Not a good coping mechanism.
Anyone remember Joyve Maynard? She also had a Farmer type.
Yeah, what kind of asshole operates under a pseudonym on the internet?
I prefer to think of it as a nom de guerre.
Eh. JMPP was a strange one, but she ended up being friendly to me and has since settled down happily (to my knowledge). I don't class her with PT.
The family came home, so I'm out. See you in a few days.
68: Sneaking out the basement window with your domino mask and the heirloom silver, eh? Classic for a reason.
64: The thing about the posts describing her dysfunction is that they are, in a way, quite lucid. The "two coping mechanisms" thing comes off as bleak humour, not as something she believes. I think the real coping mechanism underlying all the others is the notion that lucidly describing her dysfunction to strangers will change something about it. But she doesn't really seem to believe that either, it's just sort of all she's got left.
But judging from the evidence in 52, 55 and elsewhere, she basically looks like someone who really really needs psychiatric help and hasn't gotten what she needed. Having been in a relationship with someone like this, about all I can say is first, that I pity "the Farmer" for not having seen this and gotten out before marriage and cohabitation -- I had a near-miss with that myself -- because there's sometimes really nothing you can do for such a person, really no way to "open up" that will satisfy them, because they need a kind of help that a partner cannot provide. And second, that it doesn't matter how crazy she got, if he didn't leave instead of hitting her, he's still an abuser. (And I don't care what the excuse is. Was he staying with her "for the kids"? You can't tell me the kids are well-served by being in the household she describes. I don't expect everyone to be a psychiatrist or a social worker... but at least know that if you're even tempted to shove or hit your spouse, that's a situation you shouldn't stay in.)
But, for the record, any unwanted physical touch is assault
Ok fine, I just had a stranger, a matron in the grocery store, reach out and touch my arm yesterday.
The fact is, this a power/privilege thing. Women want to define the terms of physical contact to completely control when both they can touch and when others, mostly male, can touch them. "It's ok if I do it, because I am a woman. You need permission, I don't."
This privilege, which largely used to belong to men defining when their possessions could be touched is residue of patriarchy, a mere transfer of privilege.
This is not to say physical abuse or unsolicited touching, by men, or anyone else, is to be tolerated ever.
I should have reported that matron to the police but I would have been laughed at.
I would be willing to bet that in almost all of the cases the abuser can point to something that set him (or her) off that makes the abused person or her (or his) well-meaning friends think that there's something they could be doing or refraining from doing to make it better. I mean, that's the cliche, isn't it? I only hit you because you made me so mad, baby, why'd you have to do that?
She may be a pain to live with, but I don't really see a bright line between a sainted meek and submissive abuse victim and someone earnestly arguing to the Internet that really things are going quite well, she's stopped keeping the man up at night and he's stopped hitting her as much. People don't have to be perfect in order to count as a real abuse victim (or a real rape victim, mutatis mutandis.)
I would be willing to bet that in almost all of the cases the abuser can point to something that set him (or her) off that makes the abused person or her (or his) well-meaning friends think that there's something they could be doing or refraining from doing to make it better. I mean, that's the cliche, isn't it? I only hit you because you made me so mad, baby, why'd you have to do that?
She may be a pain to live with, but I don't really see a bright line between a sainted meek and submissive abuse victim and someone earnestly arguing to the Internet that really things are going quite well, she's stopped keeping the man up at night and he's stopped hitting her as much. People don't have to be perfect in order to count as a real abuse victim (or a real rape victim, mutatis mutandis.)
64, 70: It's like a lucidly described Dada-Cubist-surrealist marriage, or a found object marriage, or a performance art marriage. It is, and isn't, a marriage.
72.1: Even more so, it could actually be true in a sense -- the victim could really be doing something that a sane outside observer would think of as wrong, or enraging, or whatever, at least sometimes. Doesn't really change the rights and wrongs of it.
I just wanted to somehow say that sometimes, the conflict is completely one-sided: the abuser flies off the handle over any little hair out of place, and the abused person walks on eggshells. And that is not the case here.
I haven't finished the thread, but would like to add that this is such a common depiction of spousal abuse that it is quite difficult, while one is being abused, to recognize oneself in it. Maybe that's what it looks like from the outside, but most of the time, that's not what it feels like from the inside. It feels like you've been fucking up and being annoying and you know your abuser has gone too far, but then again, you were really annoying. It's what makes people say things like Megan's 8, which seriously pissed me off so much I almost decided to ignore this thread altogether.
You know who tends to act in really dramatic and obnoxious ways sometimes? People who are being threatened and attacked on a regular basis might just be among them! Sometimes the arrow points the other way.
As for whether Trunk is lying about having Asperger's, a conversation which is pretty played out, it's hilarious how every iteration of it goes, "Oh, she SAYS she has Asperger's, but REALLY she's just a barely-functional obnoxious person who is totally tone-deaf and jumps from one subject to another and can't follow directions." Reframing Asperger's as a series of character flaws is incredibly shitty, you guys. It's really weird how people seem to think that a person *either* has AS or is a dick. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you really don't like some people with AS? Saying my uncle has AS doesn't mean that he's NOT a non-functional asshole who speaks only in quotations from old westerns. That's who he is.
I could only get through the first of Megan's links. People read this woman? For advice?
It didn't help that I was flashing back to the time an ex stood in front of a door to prevent me from walking out from the latest in a series of manufactured arguments. I tried once to open it and she shoved it closed, so I tried a second time in a more forceful (but still deliberate and controlled) manner. She stumbled and claimed she hit her shin on a nearby table, and then threatened to call the cops for domestic abuse, showing as evidence a bruise that had to be a week old. This, at least, had the virtue of finally convincing me that I had to end it.
It's hard for me not to sympathize with the farmer and wonder how real the physical abuse is.
Also, being dramatic and obnoxious, or stubborn and wrong--or even having Asperger's!--does not mean that what's happening isn't abuse. Sorry that might get in the way of some Lifetime movie image of a beautiful perfect woman trapped by circumstance and fighting her abuser to save her innocent children, or whatever.
People don't have to be perfect in order
She is calling a person's workplace and home 3 states away because of an annoying tweet.
Not to excuse violence, but "incredible annoying and dangerous scary asshole" is a distance away from "not perfect"
In any case, calling the cops is a socially acceptable way of outsourcing your violence. Cop has the knee in the back of your annoyance, tasered in gibbering spasms, you can say to yourself:"But I am not a violent person."
There doesn't have to be a bright line in the middle there are poles at the ends.
A factor not discussed here is being trapped. In some cases neither spouse has anywhere to go, but they can't stand being together.
77.last: The Asperger's thing is a whole other can of worms, because it often seems like something people invoke with little appreciation of what "Asperger's" clinically means, as a way to deflect accountability and reframe their dickish behaviours as a sickness for which they deserve sympathy. Of course you're right that the options aren't either-or: there are people with mental illnesses who are dicks with them and would be dicks without them. But it is unfortunately more than plausible that there are people making use of Asperger's as a shield in dickish ways while not actually being on the autism spectrum. I don't know if Trunk is one of those people; honestly it looks like that would be the least of her problems.
I havent read her blog, so I am completely unqualified to discuss what she says.
But, that wont stop me from giving my opinion!
He doesnt have a right to leave bruises or assault her even though she is a pain in the ass. HOWEVER, bruises on her could be the result of self-defense. Based on the comments of her breaking a lamp over her head, it wouldnt be shocking if she went crazy and attacked him and he just held her to stop her or pushed her off of him.
You simply have hear both sides in order to attempt to get a somewhat clearer story. I have heard this version many times. Sometimes, I find out that she/he has undersold her story and he/she is MUCH worse. Sometimes, I find out that she/he is the crazy one, and the other person was absolutely justified in defending themselves.
Man, have I seen that in domestic disputes, the wife telling the cops in rage: "Hit that son of a bitch, hit that sob again."
This is privilege.
people with mental illnesses who are dicks with them and would be dicks without them
OK, but AS is not a mental illness. I have anxiety, and, if I wanted to take drugs, I could get "back" to some earlier state of myself--me without the anxiety. AS is not something that is separable from who the person is. It's not like there's a "real" person inside of there who might or might not be a dick; it's a developmental thing--that's who they are. I don't think it's fair to think of AS as something like depression or anxiety that can arise in adulthood and be treated with drugs. (AS can lead to depression and anxiety, but that's a different matter.)
I appreciate the gender-neutral language everyone is using here. IRL my ex-mother-in-law assaulted her husband for years and none of them saw it as abuse because it was female to male. Why did my ex-FIL stay and take it? There were kids involved, but also because she had all the money and he'd lose his jobs as Bank President of two banks if he made any waves.
That dude ended up being the meekest, nicest guy I have ever met, and few people knew the price he paid at home. Unfortunately, his kids grew up with a warped view of how a marriage should be.
77 - Indeed, a friend of mine who has a small child with an autism spectrum disorder responded to that article in the New York Times last week about the couple who both have Aspergers by saying one of his main goals as a father is that his son never learns that having ASD is an excuse for being an asshole.
People don't have to be perfect in order to count as a real abuse victim (or a real rape victim, mutatis mutandis.)
No, but abuse can be two-sided. Maybe that's a better way of phrasing my speculation: that they are both abusive towards each other. It sounds horrendous and like the marriage should end. I said that in the OP.
I think that all aspergies seem like dicks at times, and many of them seem normal or even superior at other times, so if you draw a hard line against dicks you probably don't like aspergies. The whole thing about the condition is that they aren't able to figure out the right thing to do. Things that normal people automatically do more or less well are these difficult puzzles to solve by trial and error.
84: From what I've read of her, I do mostly believe that her factual reporting is straight. She self-describes as Aspergers, which I haven't got any reason to doubt other than not knowing much about it, but I would say she's certainly got some diagnosable condition. Her methods of dealing with everything are screwy, but she doesn't seem to be being self-protective about what she says happened.
I was flashing back to the time an ex stood in front of a door to prevent me from walking out from the latest in a series of manufactured arguments. I tried once to open it and she shoved it closed, so I tried a second time in a more forceful (but still deliberate and controlled) manner. She stumbled and claimed she hit her shin on a nearby table, and then threatened to call the cops for domestic abuse, showing as evidence a bruise that had to be a week old. This, at least, had the virtue of finally convincing me that I had to end it.
Like Eggplant, my ex did similar things. Very aggressive. Very crazy. She would flail at me not infrequently. Most of the time, I could walk away. That isnt always possible when someone starts kicking/hitting you in bed.
Her second hubby got charged with an assault and got a protective order entered against him about three years ago bc she was flailing at him and he picked her up and carried her outside so she would stop hitting him and breakin shit.
A month ago, she finally got caught and got convicted of assaulting him. Finally, he left.
So, yea. Bruises dont tell you who was the aggressor.
Aspergers? What?
I think she's borderline. Seeking to seduce so she can be rejected. I saw it in writing style, she is switching incessantly between disarming and offputting.
It is called, if you will extend a metaphor, a tease.
86: OK, but AS is not a mental illness.
Sure it is. It's discussed as a Syndrome because it is diagnosed as a set of pathological symptoms which can hopefully be treated. Personality traits commonly conflated with Asperger's are not mental illnesses, but someone diagnosed with Asperger's is being diagnosed with a mental illness. That there is apparent confusion about this point is precisely illustrative of the whole problem with people self-diagnosing with Asperger's because they happen to have some odd and off-putting personality traits.
My daughter's autism is an excuse for her being an aggressive asshole.
That doesnt make it any more fun. Last night, she was convinced that she had to hit the dog. The dog that she LOVES 90 percent of the time. And who loves her.
Ug!
Of course, I try to redirect her and tell her to use her words and not her hands.
Somewhat related, she has a boney growth on one finger that we call "The Bone Club." It REALLY hurts when The Bone Club meets your body forcibly. But, calling it The Bone Club takes some of the sting away.
89: Agreed. I don't think there's much difference between our positions. I just think that's it's unhelpful to think of a given category as the pure paradigm case, in part because I think such cases are probably outliers. Someone can be both abusive and abused.
In 94: is being diagnosed with a mental illness
Well, okay, this is totes wrong. A neurological disorder is indeed different from a mental illness strictly speaking -- though most mental illnesses would probably have neurological causes -- and you're right that AS is a developmental disorder of a different category from anxiety. You're wrong that this makes it untreatable, though.
97: I didn't say it was untreatable. It is possible to treat related symptoms, and also to intervene with useful kinds of therapy in children, and hopefully there will be bigger leaps in the future. What I'm taking issue with is imagining the person without the disorder in order to find out if they're "really" a good person or not. Would you do that with someone with a different kind of developmental disorder, like Down's? Let's imagine her without Down's before deciding whether we like her or not!
98:
If you could imagine me as not such an asshole, I would be a really good person.
I don't think that the DSM-IV pigeonholes are worth much. They tweak them every once in awhile in response to drug companies, advocacy movements, care providers, etc. What good is a diagnostic pigeonhole that tells you nothing much about causes, gives you only rule-of-thumb diagnoses, and in many cases just juggested that you shotgun treatments until one hits?
Not that there aren't any valid psych diagnoses at all, but the DSM-IV is 900+ pages long and a lot of it is as described.
98: What I'm taking issue with is imagining the person without the disorder in order to find out if they're "really" a good person or not.
I would mostly want to know whether one needs a disorder to explain a behavior that's being objected to. If not, then the presence or absence of the disorder is really not the issue.
61: Yes. There isn't even a form.
I don't follow that. There are certainly things that a person who was generally, um, mentally healthy (mentally ordinary?) might do out of malice that someone with some diagnosable condition might do because of the effects of their condition. Does that count, to you, as a situation where one 'needs a disorder to explain a behavior'?
I have no idea what you're saying, Castock. Are you saying that aspergies should be held to the same standard as others? Are you saying that it's a fake diagnosis? Is the dominant question for you people making excuses for themselves because of self-diagnosed aspergers? You seem to be skirting all three lines pretty close.
I just wonder what drives the impulse to un-diagnose people. Sure, there might be a few fools out there who say weird things or who self-diagnose with this or that, but what I would hear there is someone trying to say that they're suffering from something. Maybe they don't know what it is, and they're afraid to get help if that's just who they are. No one is going to like you any more if you really have AS than if you don't have it.
61: If they've had comparable martial arts training, Ms. Killer Hands.
Imagine in what other scenario it would be OK to go around saying someone doesn't have a limitation they say they have. Oh, she just says she's depressed. He's all oh, I can't go out; I have the flu and I'm like whatever. Waaaah, I'm Bob! I can't walk because I'm paraplegic! Fucking faker.
What good is a diagnostic pigeonhole...
Classification as a ground of research? I can't imagine a science without an excess of classification.
Queen's Gambit Declined, Rubinstein variation, 0-0-0 was one of my favorites.
I can't find an archived discussion of whether PT is a fabulist. It does all feel very soap-opera/Wuthering-Heights-ish; possibly calculated on that basis to draw readers?
Anyway, it looks like people are all pretty close in the positions occupied here; the issue is how careful we should be to avoid the Platonic ideal of abusive relationships as being angel vs. devil.
will/gswift, is it possible in practice, when one has told an un-live-with-able partner to get off one's property, to have them removed for trespassing? Or given the partnership status, are police likely to say "work it out" if no abuse is alleged or discovered? That seems the simplest solution for someone in pre-violence-Farmer's position, logistically if not emotionally.
107: Well, I can actually think of circumstances where I'd call someone a hypochondriac and want to tell them to stop whining about a claimed physical ailment or limitation. But mostly, you're right, no.
105: I just wonder what drives the impulse to un-diagnose people.
That's very simple. Go to where geeks are. Throw a rock*. There is a ninety percent chance that you will hit someone with openly-expressed misogynistic, racist, xenophobic and soi-disant misanthropic views (because being a general misanthropist is somehow supposed to make the other things better) who justifies it by their being someone who is like totally unusual and thinks they have Asperger's, probably, so that explains it. And what, are you hating on them because they're a Spergie? You should totallt be more tolerant, man.
These people exist in vast numbers. And mostly, an Asperger's diagnosis is not necessary to explain them. They are just dicks who think claiming they have Asperger's will make their behaviour look okay.
(* Metaphorically speaking. Do not throw any actual rocks. If in a chat room or on a forum, throw an... asterisk, or something. The principle is similar.)
There was a brief, stupid moment when someone was referring to AS as "extreme male brain," so I think some wannabe-manlier-than-thous were like "ha that's me totally omg fer real" but I think that time has passed, no?
In Virginia, you cannot kick your spouse off your solely owned property like you would a tenant via an unlawful detainer or a trespass warrant.
You have to leave the property yourself and then seek to gain possession via the court. (lengthy process)
It is often the most difficult part for me: getting separated.
110: It happens at least once a week at 6:30 a.m. in our house. I felt a bit bad the time it did turn out to be an actual ear infection, but when the approach is "My ear hurts so lets go play Wii" it can be hard to assume total honesty.
(And of course, further to 112.2: their existing in vast numbers makes them a living insult to people who actually have Asperger's and have to put up with the fact that because these dicks exist, this conversation exists.)
113: No. A thousand time no. That time has not remotely passed. That is what I am telling you.
When science starts to succeed it goes beyond taxonomy, which seemingly has only haltingly begun.
DSM-IV classifications are used to justify treatment and also insurance coverage and the amount of the coverage. I'd be interested in talking to a doctor or shrink to see how much use they make of the 290 categories and sub-categories. It doesn't seem much like medicine to me, where in many cases though not all, you have a lot of powerful diagnostic tools and treatments.
re: 107
But illness _is_ often seen as exculpatory and often used as an excuse: sometimes when one is genuinely ill, sometimes when one thinks one is ill (but may be deluding oneself), and sometimes when one is just lying about it. The flu example is particularly apposite as people do it all the time.
"It's not that I just can't be bothered coming out/going to work; it's that I have the flu."
"I'm not fat, I have a thyroid disorder."
It's complicated in the case of putative personality disorders, as it seems like sometimes we want to attach moral disapprobation TO the personality disorder; and sometimes want to make it exculpatory.
My mother had a friend who she thought was a hypochondriac. He died of a heart attack when he was in his 50s. My mother could be a little unsympathetic.
John, are the 209 categories you refer to the 'personality disorder' categories?
People who diagnose themselves with Asperger's or bipolar disorder or whatnot today remind me a bit of the people who, in the '90s, had both chronic fatigue syndrome and the energy to threaten journalists and writers who questioned the classification.
These people exist in vast numbers.
Has anyone else had this experience? Maybe Lord Castock lives in a bad part of town.
118.2: You mean 290.xx or 29x.00? I think you mean the latter, in which case I think we've been all over that before.
120: Ooh! What did his gravestone say?
113 There was a brief, stupid moment when someone was referring to AS as "extreme male brain,"
A brief, stupid moment known as "Simon Baron-Cohen's entire career."
Tripp: Total of all categories and subcategories.
re: 123
I've come across a few although not as many as Lord Castock; working as I do in IT, I probably run across more of these people than in some other areas.
There's a lot of disease-advocacy out there.
It's funny, I've seen other people complaining about the Aspergers hypochondriac crowd, not just Castock. But I've never run into anyone myself who was excusing bad behavior by claiming Aspergers. I do see people diagnosing other people acting like jerks as having Aspergers, and I usually think the diagnosers are either wrong, or at least don't have enough information to say what they're saying.
I'm suspicious of the move to calling it a "spectrum." It seems like another camel's nose to medicalize even the slightest symptoms.
People who diagnose themselves with Asperger's or bipolar disorder or whatnot today remind me a bit of the people who, in the '90s, had both chronic fatigue syndrome and the energy to threaten journalists and writers who questioned the classification.
What, people with fatigue have to be devoid of all energy 24 hours a day, so they can't even write a flame email or two? Or did they jog to the journalists' homes and threaten via interpretive breakdance?
From the horses mouth: DSM-IV includes 886 pages. DSM-IV includes 290 diagnostic entities grouped by categories and sub-categories;
130: I think in the case of autism/Aspergers it really does make sense. The image of autism was totally or almost totally non-verbal, completely unable to take care of themselves; given that there are genuine, and at least sometimes quite severe, conditions that are related to that sort of autism but are much more compatible with independent living, I can't see how better to describe them than 'autism spectrum'.
Perhaps my fantasy is that personality could be less moralized and graded, and thought of instead as something about which people have preferences. I prefer people around me to have certain traits that others don't value, and vice versa. The fact that some traits that I like or dislike are associated with certain disorders or illnesses should not make them more or less blameworthy, though I'm really suspicious of people who deeply hate any trait shared by everyone in a particular group. But I have to admit there are certain disorders I personally find really fucking unnerving that other people seem to deal with much better. For a lot of people, AS is pretty much down the line all of the things they hate, and, especially if the person is otherwise pretty high-functioning, it can mean a life of people telling you to just get your shit together and be normal. Why can't you just figure out what normal is and imitate that? I don't have AS, but people have been saying that to me my whole life, and that I'm a bad person for not behaving in ways that make everything easier for them. To some degree, I suppose maybe this makes me an asshole, but I'd prefer it if people who don't like me would just stop talking to me, rather than moralize about how much better they imagine I could be.
131: That's what I thought. But 290.xx is garden-variety brain-got-olditis. Numerically, a huge problem, but not one where anybody much argues over the diagnosis on the internet.
Back in the days when LiveJournal was big, I had an LJ friend who was a woman working in Silicon Valley who had Asperger's and was into Asperger-advocacy things that I didn't fully understand. But, based on her writing, she seemed like a normal, thoughtful person who liked to interact socially with friends, and the symptoms she wrote about were perserveration and repetitive movements. This gave me a very different impression of how the disorder tends to manifest than the types Lord Castock is talking about.
re: 133
I'm quite sympathetic to a general pulling away from moralising certain aspects of personality (and also unhappy with the medicalisation of personality traits). Some personality traits are pretty hard to separate from moral claims, though, as they are defined by how you interact with other people. I'm thinking here of particularly aggressive or manipulative behaviour.
132: That makes sense, it's probably a net good. But still, where do you draw the line?
137: I know. I really struggle with Borderline Personality types that way. It's very very very hard for me to stop thinking of them as bad people, rather than people I should not be around because I react strongly and aggressively to them.
Especially when there are apparently lots more types of autism/Asperger's-like syndromes being developed or advocated (I saw this on an advocacy website I can't find now). Good for promoting acceptance, not as good for resisting medicalization.
I'm suspicious of the move to calling it a "spectrum." It seems like another camel's nose to medicalize even the slightest symptoms.
Where this gets useful is for young kids, who may show symptoms or even register abnormalities on CT scans, but who, with intervention, may lead totally normal lives.
A friend's son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Learning more about autism, he decided that maybe he should also get tested (I forget now whether it was an MRI or a CT scan). He learned that he too was "on the spectrum," which had the effect of calming everyone down about the diagnosis. (The friend's father, a trained but non-practicing neurosurgeon, had suspected some form of autism for years but had decided it would be better to raise my friend in ignorance. I have a lot of issues with this father.)
The good thing about the diagnosis, though, was that it freed up money for serious early intervention. That was true for a cousin's child as well, and in both cases, it's made a huge difference.
My sister is raising a maybe Asperger's syndrome son. The school guidance counselor has just started tactfully, carefully mentioning the word. We've always known him to be a bit odd and standoffish (and have privately raised the Asperger's word), and it's not clear what difference a formal diagnosis would make here. Maybe a little more emphasis on strict moral rules and empathy for others? The parents are doing that already.
Maybe there's more infrastructure for early intervention in cases of autism.
(I have little to say about Penelope Trunk besides Oh Jesus! and Get out, everyone!)
I've been able to demoralize my views of some disorders, and I for one am glad that the psych scientists have studied this stuff so they actually have created some order in what appears like chaos.
Diagnosing people, and especially oneself, is really fraught with danger. Many of the disorders are a matter of degrees, and we tend to exaggerate what we see in others. Also, with at least the OCP Disorder, which is totally different from the OC Disorder, the person with the disorder is incapable of seeing that they have it.
And with all that said, everyone, including people with disorders, need to be judged on their behavior, and not there internal state. Disorders may explain some behaviors, but they do not excuse those behaviors.
Over the years I've know people, aspergie or otherwise, who you had to either just avoid or else you had to baby along. Some of them were worth knowing. Some of them weren't, but even if you happened to run into them involuntarily the kind thing to do was to make some special concessions for them, saving you, them, and everyone else a lot of nuisance.
When someone goes beyond what is endurable, as a practical thing you take steps to keep them from causing harm, but that doesn't necessarily mean "holding them responsible" because is they have certain condition, they can't be responsible.
I've know mental health workers who've learned to deal with their patients effectively, but in a way that normal people would not accept. It was more the way a strict mother would talk to a small child or even a pet, giving clear and firm directions, smoothing down feelings, and at times speaking very sternly.
"their" not "there." I shouldn't rush.
136: I have had similar thoughts -- people who I've thought of as possibly being on the mild end of the autism spectrum haven't been jerks, so much as having odd body language and difficulty participating in conversation at normal speed/subtlety.
Here we go (and, oof, there's a quote from PT at the top). High-Functioning Autism, Nonverbal Learning Disorder, Semantic Pragmatic Disorder, Pervasive Developmental Disorder NOS?
143: Unless I misunderstand you, I don't quite take it that far, at least when criminal behavior is involved. If you mean anti-social behavior that is not criminal, then I go along with you. I may not like what they are doing, and I'll avoid it, but I'll know that they can't help it.
129: Basically, if you don't want to encounter the trope it's best to stay away from the bulk of gaming and SF fan forums. My experience is based on relatively mild and low-duration exposures, to some of the healthiest versions of each, and still.
I have also, by the same token, seen people use "Asperger's" as a shorthand for "asshole." Which is an unsurprising but very unfortunate and unfair side effect of years in which large numbers of assholes tried to pass their personality flaws off as Asperger's.
because I react strongly and aggressively to them.
Why do you have these inappropriate and pathological overreactions to Borderline Personality types?
re: 139
I expect I'm more comfortable with thinking of them as bad people. I'm not entirely ready to give up on moral judgements altogether, which is where I think applying that perspective strictly leads to. There are lots of other cases where I think you are right that it might be better expressed in non-moral terms, though.
re: 143.last
My mother is a mental health worker (social worker who specialises in mental illness, and she used to be a psychiatric nurse). She has one client that none of her co-workers will work with because he's always threatening to kill them.
Him: 'I could beat you to death with my walking stick, you know. No one could stop me.'
Mum: 'Don't be silly, George. You are just looking for attention. Now, have you been taking your pills?'
136. From my very limited experience of interacting with people who've been formally diagnosed with AS (it really isn't all that common), I wonder if part of the problem is that it's too broad a diagnosis. Person A may be perfectly functional in almost all situations and seem pretty "normal" but have no go areas that they have to work around; person B may need a certain amount of support to get by at all. Calling their diagnoses by the same name isn't necessarily helpful to outsiders. Using the spectrum concept and trying to describe how a person fits on it seems rather more appropriate.
That said, there was (I think it's largely past) a fashion when public awareness of AS first became widespread, for people to self diagnose because they though it sounded cool. It isn't and that wasn't.
Well, to the degree that behavior is objectionable, you respond. You respond differently to someone with a disorder, but it's not like saying "Oh, it's OK, they have a disorder". In a work situation you'd make allowances only up to a certain point, etc.
For the record, (and I know this is anecdotal) I think that I've seen OCD traits over-represented in math and computer programming. I've also see introverts over-represented in computer programming. These are all good people and good workers, and I have no problem working with them, once I understand what is going on. I think management is overrepresented by swearing people, but I don't think that is asperberger's. They swear for a reason, usually anger or frustration, and not randomly.
141: That's also good! But mostly, I think, to the extent that it promotes acknowledgement, personal/family effort, therapy, etc. Less so when it leads to routinely treating being on the low spectrum of a disorder with the drugs indicated for the full-blown version.
Very interesting article on that "disease creep" in medicine generally here.
There are far more self-diagnosed Aspies out there than psychiatrist-diagnosed. Some of the self-diagnosed probably do have Asperger's, but can't afford a psychiatrist (many of the Aspies I know or know of have very sketchy employment histories).
The DSM is actually quite strict on Asperger's. There are five criteria and all five must be met for a diagnosis.
150: I agree that my reaction is inappropriate and pathological. It's a product of having been the intended victim of several attempts at murder by someone with BPD.
criminal behavior is involved.
Discussions of the intersection of mental health and criminal law are complicated.
It is easy to say "they are still responsible." But, you really need to break it down to components bc violating a criminal law means violating a defined action.
First, are they guilty? Criminal behavior often requires proving intent.
It also involves the ability to know right from wrong.
Second, the mental health component impacts punishment. To discuss punishment, we would need to break it down into the five purposes for punishment.
My preference is for people to be a lot more tolerant and understanding of those with mental health issues. "Hey, I can go around without screaming at people! Why cant they??!?!"
"Or, I can resist the impulse to hit. Why cant they?!?!"
As John mentioned, if someone cant control it, sometimes drastic measures need to be taken. But, I would suggest to you that if more people took the time to understand mental health issues and could be more tolerant of differences, and maybe, just maybe, be a little fucking merciful to those with a lesser capacity than them, everyone's lives would be a lot better.
That's so anecdotal, AWB. By one person or several?
139: Your initial advice -- that there isn't an either-or option between "having a pathology" and "being a bad person" -- was sound. Borderline Personality types are often awful, horrible, abusive, dangerous people. Some of that is because of their pathology, some of it maybe not, but those of us who aren't their attending psychiatrist (assuming they manage to get help and get better) will probably never know which. After a period of trying to understand and support such people, I've long since realized that I'm less concerned with whether I think they're "bad people"-according-to-Hoyle and more concerned with keeping them out of my life.
Also, I'm not talking about mere social awkwardness. Not being able to talk to girls/boys, or being uncomfortable with one's body or shy at social gatherings, or being more argumentative or cerebral than the norm, doesn't make someone a dick. Having been awkward at some point in your life does not necessitate that you make excuses for the genuine and extreme dickineshness that typifies huge swathes of geek culture today; that you understand the alienation underlying it does not make the behaviour okay. I think many geeks are far, far too gun-shy about talking morally in these contexts, and that geek culture has become so horrific largely as a result of this reticence.
Let's all diagnose each other.
Back in the day here at unfogged I was diagnosed with Aspberger's syndrome, but I think they meant ahole.
In some cases I deserved it. I'm now more careful now to include phrases like "from what I've seen" and "maybe I don't understand you". It takes longer to type things, but it helps avoid some misunderstandings.
My mother is a mental health worker (social worker who specialises in mental illness, and she used to be a psychiatric nurse). She has one client that none of her co-workers will work with because he's always threatening to kill them.
Him: 'I could beat you to death with my walking stick, you know. No one could stop me.'
Mum: 'Don't be silly, George. You are just looking for attention. Now, have you been taking your pills?'
nattm:
I love your mother. Buy her a beer on me. Or wine. Or whatever she wants.
People like her deserve glory and admiration.
Instead of bitchng about people, we should spend our time trying to be like your mother.
157:It was an attempt at a BPD joke, probably a bad one.
Mostly I agree with your 133. We all have limitations, some willful or whimsical, and we all relate to others based in part to what human flaws and failings we are willing to dance with. With few exceptions, "harmonic dysfunction" describes the relationships I observe.
I haven't played "irritating magnanimity" for quite a while.
Let's all diagnose each other.
I think I'm just a moody son of a bitch.
158.last: *clapping* I tend to think that moralization is, 9 times out of 10, a projection from very personal interior struggles with self-control. If you lack the desire to do a particular pathological thing, then when other people do it, you think, wow, no one would choose to do that. If that behavior somehow echoes an impulse that you wrestle with, it can be extremely irking. I think part of my reaction to people with BPD comes from being raised in a family in which I wasn't allowed to have feelings or express needs, so I repress that shit as hard as I can, and the fact that other people go around placing dramatic emotional burdens on other people and get away with it irritates the fuck out of me. It's the "get away with it" that should tip you off when you're reacting sort of shittily to someone else's life.
151 is a perfect illustration of how I think diagnosis should be used. It is not meant to be exculpatory. It is to be used to manage future situations. If the diagnosis tells you that the person is likely to keep doing things that you find unacceptable, then avoid them. Otherwise you use the diagnosis to figure out how to make future interactions as pleasant and reasonable as possible.
will,
I take your point - and thank you for expanding on this. The whole area is fraught with subtleties and matters of degree.
For example, my second son is a drummer, and he loved marching band with the precision of the snare drumming, and he is now studying math in college, and he is doing very well. But he probably has a bit of OCD - he has a compulsion to drum his fingers at times. He can suppress that, but it is difficult for him.
The good thing is that, like most people with OCD, he can see his compulsion, and he does not like it. He is amenable to treatment, and he can understand why he must suppress his finger drumming in certain situations, such as while in class, or while attending a movie.
One thing I have learned is that it is possible for everyone, at times of great stress, to exhibit some behaviors which are classified as part of a personalty disorder. In general these are more or less normal brain functions which have become exaggerated, in my layman's opinion. (I could be wrong about this, though).
So to me the area is incredibly complicated, and I try to be Un-judgemental in my views of it, while still noting that some behaviors are criminal or anti-social.
I'd like to believe that if we returned to the gold standard accepted Batman as our personal savior ate more roughage got out of Vietnam had universal healthcare, there might be a little less need/enthusiasm for folk psychiatry, self-reflexive division, but I'm probably wrong.
Borderline Personality types are often awful, horrible, abusive, dangerous people
Well, since around 75% of BPD sufferers are female victims of childhood sexual abuse and other traumas and PTSD excuse me if I spend a little while contemplating this reaction.
They usually self-destructive then the opposite.
From what I've heard about BPD sufferers, whatever empathy you have works against you when death with them, because the way they work is to recruit you to support them, and then make demands, and then as soon as you refuse a demand, turn against you. Moral judgment or otherwise, everyone says they're especially difficult.
165: As Paul Muad'Dib would say: "What do you hate? By this are you truly known."
169.1: You're excused.
Awful, horrible, abusive and dangerous people are often so after having been exposed to other awful, horrible, abusive and dangerous people, of course. That it's a cycle isn't news, but unfortunately won't change the awful, horrible, abusive dangerousness of the person in front of you at a given moment.
169+:I mean, I can imagine a particular type who would react instinctively and negatively to contact with a female victim of childhood sexual abuse. Can't you?
Aww, I'm just being playful. I know you are good people, compassionate, kind, nurturing, etc etc etc.
This is a fascinating thread, though I have little to add.
I tend to think that moralization is, 9 times out of 10, a projection from very personal interior struggles with self-control. If you lack the desire to do a particular pathological thing, then when other people do it, you think, wow, no one would choose to do that. . . .
I agree with most of what you've said but would add that one reason for moralizing about other people's behavior is way in which it can interact with social rewards. As an obvious example take the stereotype of somebody who is nice to people above them in status and horrible to people below them -- there's a natural impulse to condemn that as immoral, and not just, "people can be different depending on whether you catch them in a good mood or bad" because it seems so obviously to be motivated by greed.
Similarly look at Megan's repeated comments on this blog about the problems with "acknowledged assholes." There may be many cases in life in which it's best to acknowledge that somebody is occasionally an ass and work with/around that but it becomes more problematic when the person is in a position of power. At that point you aren't just moralizing about their individual personality quirks but also about the effect that has on the people who are subordinate to them.
173: You really are doing some yeoman trolling on this thread, bob. Respect.
I'm lucky if I go an entire shift without being on a domestic dispute call. Her accounts of the "abuse" are exactly how screwy people like Eggplant's ex tell their stories. "He had already pushed me and shoved me and grabbed me and crushed my foot in a door." Yeah, he attacked you by crushing your foot in a door. "The Farmer told me that he will not beat me up any more if I do not make him stay up late talking to me." I bet his version of that conversation makes a lot more sense. Everyone should read Eggplants story again. That type is everywhere and I'm a fan of educating them with an arrest for unlawful detention.
will/gswift, is it possible in practice, when one has told an un-live-with-able partner to get off one's property, to have them removed for trespassing? Or given the partnership status, are police likely to say "work it out" if no abuse is alleged or discovered?
Trespass is a no go. They've got residency and to get rid of them you have to evict them like any other tenant. The other option if there's domestic issues is a protective order which would ban them from the property. But in the absence of abuse you're not likely to get a judge to sign off on a protective order.
Apologies to Lord Castock -- I just checked with Buck, and we do know an asshole who excuses himself by claiming to have Aspergers: I hadn't heard him make the claim, but Buck has. Clearly he needs some kind of help -- he's not just an asshole, he's globally very sad -- but there's nothing wrong with his ability to pick up emotional or social undercurrents, he's just a twerp about what he does with them.
you have to evict them like any other tenant.
This is interesting, because I don't have any idea what the legal implication of a tenancy based on a personal relationship rather than a lease for rent is. I suppose it all depends on the jurisdiction.
170 is right. The worst part is that after you've dated someone with BPD, it's really hard to react to other people's feelings and demands as something other than trying to force you onto a treadmill that you know will just get faster and faster. The only way I was ever in a long-term relationship was with someone who'd recently been left by a woman with BPD, so we were almost competitive about not placing any emotional demands on one another. I expressed delight once when I ran into him on the street and he stopped taking my calls or visits for a month without explaining why. Later he said he was afraid I was stalking him. (He was across the street from my apartment and I said hi.) And while that's incredibly shitty, I know I've been shitty to people I've dated out of terror that they were about to make demands on me. I would have been much better off just walking away all those years ago.
gswift:
Tell us the truth: Are you the guy who dresses up as a superhero to stop crime?
0: what does "butty" mean?
"Footy" = football (= soccer). That's as far as I can take you.
Penelope Trunk is the world's foremost sandwich blogger.
http://thegazette.com/2011/10/13/masked-superheroes-patrol-utah-streets-for-crime/
I can't provide a link, but I've got a super hero persona, Major Rick Talon, and he participates in the Polar Bear Plunge, and I won best costume with him last year, so I'm hoping to get more online exposure this year.
Before you say it - yes, I did have too much time on my hands. I would have much rather worked during that time, but I was between jobs for much longer than I wanted to be, and hobbies kept me from going completely bonkers.
186 is AWESOME! I want to see the costume.
Once again I'm thankful I don't have a job that requires me to sort through the domestic disputes of strangers.
This couldn't possibly go wrong.(from will's link)
About a month ago, Montgomery started what he calls a more "vengeance-based, tactical" branch named Doomwatch. They're working with an official bounty hunter to learn laws and tactics, and they plan to be in high-crime areas so they can "take a more hands-on approach" and intervene in more altercations.
189:
gswift did not deny that he is a masked avenger! It MUST be him.
186: How did I miss this? I have to go out more at night in SLC.
Cause you know that if you ask someone if they're a masked avenger, they can't lie about it if they are. It's in the constitution.
Possibly if you behaved more nefariously when you did go out, you'd be more likely to attract superheroes.
Yeah, walking from work to the symphony or the ballet every other weekend isn't attracting enough attention. I need to cause some mayhem!
gswift did not deny that he is a masked avenger!
Avenging sounds scary. Maybe I'll just do like this dude.
They are about half the size of their mentors, and they don't share their troubled pasts. They just wanted to find a way to express themselves while giving back to their community, said Roman Daniels, who dresses his 5-foot-7, 150-pound frame as Red Voltage. "We're trying to do some good out there," said the 23-year-old Sandy resident, who began patrolling April 2010 and often totes bags of bottled water, snacks and toiletries.
Those lips are criminal! Never fear citizen, Red Voltage is here with chapstick!
170 is exactly right. There's a deep self-loathing, and the bpd person sets up ever-escalating tests where their loved ones are expected to prove their love for the bpd person. The game is rigged, because the bpd person has such self-loathing that no one can actually prove they love the person. Eventually you fail a test, the bpd person is proved "right" (unlovable) and turns against the other person. Plus a whole lot of severe distortion of reality.
The lopsided marriage that I was claiming anecdotally above involves a bpd person, and I discussed this at length with my therapist back when.
146: I got a non verbal learning disorder diagnosis. Might be somewhat true, but I looked up the expert who was very concerned about overdiagnosis. Also (not on super solid ground here, but) the test score discrepancy can sometimes reflect vision problems. I have poor binocular vision and at near I shift between eyes quickly which is very tiring. It probably contributes somewhat to my poor motor skills and coordination.
There are far more self-diagnosed Aspies out there than psychiatrist-diagnosed.
One thing my mom has learned as a family systems therapist is that even more are wife-diagnosed.
|| Some eyes really do deserve fingers more than others. (Here's the Montana Supreme Court more or less rejecting Citizens United. |>
A quote from the dissent in 199:
Lastly, I am compelled to say something about corporate "personhood." While I recognize that this doctrine is firmly entrenched in the law, see Bellotti, 435 U.S. at 780 n. 15, 98 S. Ct. at 1418 n. 15; but see 435 U.S. at 822, 98 S. Ct. at 1439-40 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting), I find the entire concept offensive. Corporations are artificial creatures of law. As such, they should enjoy only those powers--not constitutional rights, but legislatively-conferred powers--that are concomitant with their legitimate function, that being limited-liability investment vehicles for business. Corporations are not persons. Human beings are persons, and it is an affront to the inviolable dignity of our species that courts have created a legal fiction which forces people--human beings--to share fundamental, natural rights with soulless creations of government. Worse still, while corporations and human beings share many of the same rights under the law, they clearly are not bound equally to the same codes of good conduct, decency, and morality, and they are not held equally accountable for their sins. Indeed, it is truly ironic that the death penalty and hell are reserved only to natural persons.
This is the guy who disagrees with CU, but says it's the law, dammit.
200: Yeah. Many people now are able to see that corporations have too much political power. Still awareness is only the first step in getting this changed. My prediction is that it will take a very dramatic event (or events) to get this changed. It may take awhile for that to happen, though.
OT: One is sitting in the waiting room at the train station in one's home town, waiting for the train back to Byzantium on the Hudson, and reflecting on the various distant points that one has visited without thinking about this rotten little cesspool.
s/train/plane/
s/Hudson/Charles/
s/rotten little cesspool/decent but oh so boring place/
Ah, we had Feminist Bob for a while. Now we'll get Reactionary/Beating Your Wife is Authentic Bob for a while. Just like we had Marxist Bob, Austrian Economics Bob, Print Like Hell Bob, and then NGDP Targeters are Hitler Bob in the economic sphere. And we had More War! Bob and then Sky Is Falling Bob and then Nuke Japan Bob. And we had Peak Oil Bob and then we had Suburbia Rules OK Bob and then we had Peak Oil Bob and then we had Suburbia Bob again. We also had Fuck the Boomers Bob and Fuck the Youth Bob, repeating about every three months. We had a bit of Racist Bob, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if we get Black Bob at some point. We had Growth! Bob and Green Bob. We had I am a Rock! Bob and Everyone Hates Me Bob. We had Republican Bob and Progressive Bob and Libertarian Bob and Anarchist Bob and Leninist Bob and Maoist Bob and Joe Lieberman Is An Asshole But He Repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell, Are You A Sensible David Brooks-Approved Centrist? ARE YOU? Bob and Cities Cause Gay! Bob. We had Prolier than Thou Bob, and Alex is Matt Yglesias Bob, and Prolier than Ttam Bob (but that didn't work out so well).
Clearly, all Unfogged threads go through a moment, between the operating system flushing the write cache and the first request serving, when all possible Bobs are simultaneously present, before somebody (Bob included) observes the thread's existence and collapses its state into the current Bob.
But there's an anomaly - the jazz and the dogs and the Japanese movies. It's as if there was some, basically human and reasonable personality under all the noise and bullshit!
I'd like to lodge requests for Black Bob and Takes-the-blog-out-for-ice-cream Bob.
204:The Abyss Triumphant
Clark Ashton Smith
The force of suns had waned beyond recall.
Chaos was re-established over all,
Where lifeless atoms through forgetful deeps
Fled unrelated, cold, immusical.
Above the tumult heaven alone endured;
Long since the bursting walls of hell had poured
Demon and damned to peace erstwhile denied,
Within the Abyss God's might had not immured.
(He could but thwart it with creative mace. . . .)
And now it rose about the heavenly Base,
Mordant at pillars rotten through and through
Of Matter's last, most firm abiding-place.
Bastion and minaret began to nod,
Till all the pile, unmindful of His rod,
Dissolved in thunder, and the void Abyss
Caught like a quicksand at the feet of God !
206 isn't actually me. I know, because whoever wrote that is more interesting than I am.
204 forgot Bob who survived Pol-pot.
208: that is really weird sock-puppeting. I can't fix it from here.
208: Gosh, but it really captures your voice!
211: the funny thing is, I really am Alan Ginsberg, so 206 is pretty spot on.
No offense to Bob, but 204 is really quite rather funny. As it's the first unfogged comment I've read today, I declare this blog a win.
Note: I agree with at least a couple of Bobs. Especially the bit about NGDP targeting being a pile of shit.
I agree with at least a couple of Bobs.
Oh, who doesn't?
OT informational bleg: if any lawyers or law students are around, when does the upcoming semester begin for most law schools? If people know. Or perhaps it varies by as much as a week or two.
(Just listened to AI all the way through)
The regrets are useless
In my mind
She's in my head
From so long ago
(Go, Go, Go, Go..)
And in the darkest night
If my memory serves me right
I'll never turn back time
Forgetting you, but not the time.
(CA Smith liked the idea of an empty place, aching like a tooth with a hole in it, where a memory used to be)
AFaIk "butty" in the UK means a sandwich, esp. as in "chip butty". In Dublin it = "buddy". Or in Ireland in general as an adjective, short/low-slung.
That was some weird-ass sock puppeting.
Panty hose are basically ass-socks.
Ooh, maybe this thread will heat up again tomorrow and I can write about how after getting out of the abusive marriage I got married again (despite really not being attracted to men, I admit and did admit then, but still being stupid I guess) to someone who has Asperger's for realz. It let me work and put him through grad school and get him into therapy and speech therapy, by the end of which he impressed the receptionist by actually replying to her "Good morning!" at least once. I don't write about that generally in case anyone here internet-knew him or I suppose because he could find it, though I doubt he'd want to since all he does now is play video games and think about Nietzsche. I have tried to be supportive post-divorce but holy shit did the non-stop Nietzsche drive me up the wall. If he'd started that sooner, I'd have felt good about getting an early divorce and not waiting until I was edging toward suicidally miserable because I think Nietzsche-inspired fury would have taken the edge off it or something. I think I suck at relationships.
I was also, back then, diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, I think probably fairly in that I really think it ought to still be called Anankastic Personality Disorder, which is exactly the kind of thing such a person would believe. I should see if I still qualify and just hide how much I think people who don't use their turn signals should die. I think I've really overcome it, though. But I want to go back and see why Tripp was talking about this and whether I want to be argumentative and/or confrontational.
But Val and Alex came back tonight and really seem to want to scream for me periodically rather than sleep, so I'm having a hard time getting geared up to comment when I'm just going to be interrupted.
people who don't use their turn signals should die.
Yes, yes, a hundred times yes.
I don't understand why people don't use turn signals more often. Personally, I'm a pedestrian more frequently than a driver and let me just say to all the drivers out there -- if you use your turn signal than I won't cross in front of you and make you wait for me. I do, in fact, pay attention to clues that might tell me where cars are planning on going and make an effort to stay out of their way.
177
Trespass is a no go. They've got residency and to get rid of them you have to evict them like any other tenant. ...
At what point does a visitor become a resident?
221: I swear, I am no longer hung up on the social contract that it's more important to do things for other people than for yourself, but I stand firm on turn signals. The point is not to remind yourself where you're going, you idiot, but to let everyone else know especially if they're not people you see. And yes, even in the middle of the night or in a parking lot or whatever I still signal and Lee can just shut the fuck up about thinking I'm stupid for it.
The rest of it I sort of regret posting, though unfogged already knows what a fuckup I am, right? I don't know. It was easy to be bad at relationships when I felt like no one worthwhile would ever want to love me. Blah blah mumble blah.
my dad has BPD and it's very trying. he can really be more (verbally) vicious than anyone else I've ever known; he puts evil step-dad in the mother-fucking shade. he was physically abusive as a younger person (I have reflected that throwing an 18-month old al down the stairs in one of those saucer-walker things might well have just killed me). my brother and I had a discussion about it and decided we would still see him, with some rules: no participating in/agreeing with talking shit about the other person. so, dad starts in about bro, I say "I love bro and I don't really want to talk about it." keep visits brief so you don't go nuts. have an escape plan. but it was that or not have a dad in our lives, so... he held all the purse strings for some time and is still a trustee/beneficiary of a trust that is for the kids' education, so there is a certain amount of motive to mollify him here. the thing is, his dad tried to drown him and his cousin in the bath when they were little. it kind of fucked him up permanent. and then his adopted dad (mom's second husband was closeted (not the end of the world) and fucking my dad's HS friends (OK, not cool.)) then he started doing drugs in 1965 or something and never stopped...there's a rich cocktail of factors. he's intelligent and talented and can be charming; he can gut you like a fish with something you never prepared for in a million years, when you thought you'd armored yourself on every side.
thorn, if you actually want to erase things, I have magic powers.
you can email me at realfirstname.reallastname@gmail.com (you have already, even?)
I have indeed emailed you and never emailed you back to thank you for the advice, though it helped a lot. I don't think anything really needs to be deleted; I just felt sort of stupidly selfish talking about myself. I need to go to sleep, but I don't think your magical powers extend that far.
I just felt sort of stupidly selfish talking about myself.
Don't! It was both interesting and relevant.
I just felt sort of stupidly selfish talking about myself
What rfts said! No need to feel that way.
yeah, thirded; you have an interesting life; we are happy to hear about it. if people couldn't overshare about their personal lives on unfogged, comment threads would be much shorter. and I wouldn't be plotting to kill have a resentment against shearer, granted.
34 = mouseover
Or new year's resolution ?
I guess what it sort of has me thinking about is how difficult it is to navigate SHOULDS within a relationship. I don't think this is even a problem that is me-specific. I mean, Lee has often said that she shouldn't have to tell me what she wants about such and such a thing (usually tidiness-related, like if I put something down near the trash can and don't immedaitely open the door to the trash and throw it away) because it's obvious, but obvious as it may be to her I just don't care and would rather make one bigger trash dump than a lot of little ones or whatever. (This is already too wordy.)
But part of what made Lee's unhelpful total meltdown over fostering extra hurtful to me was not just that I was picking up all her considerable slack, which I gather is common for the moms to do in a lot of straight-couple fostering homes, but that I was deeply hurt by what felt like a complete disconnect about what her role should have been and whether we have any shared moral ground and it snowballed from there. Not only was she rejecting the job and not helping or supporting me, which is the part even she agrees is being a lousy partner, but I was having this emotional crisis about not knowing who she was or what I was doing with someone who would refuse to eat family meals because she can't stand the kids.
This isn't about abuse or anything like that. I just think the Shoulds and the ways they cascade into guilt hang more heavily on me than on most, or something.
"I shouldn't have to tell you this" can range from perfectly legitimate (pour out the bathwater after you bathe the toddler, because that's how they all drown! telling you this 15 times was enough) to the completely unfair (you should have known that I was feeling angry at my co-worker over some slight I didn't even tell you about yet.)
stereotypically they are directed at the man in a straight couple, extreme case being "I shouldn't have to tell you it's our anniversary" and are a by-product of women doing a lot of invisible social work and then occasionally getting fed up. but if I may be so forward, putting the thing all the way in the trash if that's something lee cares about a lot sounds like the kind of thing that could be done without much additional effort and perhaps smooth things along? like the rest of unfogged, I have been biting my tongue wanting to say "refusing to eat with the foster kids is nigh-abusive and totally unacceptable!!1!!!," so I think we're all on team thorn here. I don't mean to pile on guilt; I just meant sometimes people have quirks which can be fairly easily satisfied. but that's maybe different from "should have knowns..."
I get so mad about that one still. She's doing so much better and will eat with us sometimes, but the new totally unacceptable thing is using "or you won't get to visit your family" as a threat. I think I put a stop to that as soon as I found out about it, but what the fuck? She'd never actually follow through and just wants quick compliance. I also am not okay with any ongoing complaints about all the money she spent going out to buy herself dinner every night when she wouldn't eat with us, ack, yeah, I still can't think about this.
I also haven't gotten over how awful I feel that Mara was in a subpar foster home where she was treated as less than the other kids, even the ones still in foster care themselves, but then Lee had to go and try to make our foster kids "not family" and so on principle I should probably hate us just as much, and sometimes I do. I knew fostering would be hard on her and thus us, but I honestly never expected the level of meltdown and backlash I got or I'd absolutely never have done it. I know it's been relatively positive for the kids, but it's hard to think of that rather than the ways in which it was a heartbreaking failure. Lee is starting to be willing to talk about that, which helps.
I shouldn't have made the example of her wanting me to throw stuff away immediately because it seems so minor, but all the examples I could think of were like that.
I probably need to go back to my own Oprah workbook. Parenting has made me no longer think I'm basically dreadful on a daily basis but it probably reinforces some of my martyrish tendencies and I'm not good at getting the balance right. (And much as I generally think I'm over it, I'm clearly still mad at and hurt by Lee. I'm probably just doing my usual thing of holding it all together while I'm busy doing what needs to be done and then breaking down when the situation is calm again. So that's something for me to look forward to!)
using "or you won't get to visit your family" as a threat
What. The. Fuck.
237: I think only once and after a very trying day? And it was "If you want to go with your parent tomorrow, do XYZ," but yeah, the opposite of helpful and I told her I'm pretty sure specifically disallowed for foster parenrs anyway. It's also monumentally stupid because we're not the ones who control access and they know it and trust us for it. It makes no sense but I'm sure she didn't think about it, which is also a huge problem.
I don't know. Normal parents can slip and say something awful, but I feel like we should be held to a higher standard. Lee obviously disagrees. Finding out what she actually believes about any of this is going to impact any future parenting we might do, and no matter how much I might think I'm good at it, she's pushed enough buttons like that to make me think we just can't. I don't know if once they're gone she'll be as upset by her behavior as I've been. If not, then I have my answer.
See, and I feel like I shouldn't say stuff like this because it makes her sound awful. Several foster parents basically told me to stop whining, that they deal with worse from both partners and kids.
238.1 probably sounds like I'm minimizing, when really I'm just tired and trying to be matter-of-fact. I flipped out at her about the level of inappropriateness, not to mention what it would do to Maravif she overheard tha kind of comment, since Lee thinks she can magically be a good parent to Mara while barely a parent to the others.
Mara just awoke, so I'm gone for the night now.
you'll be reading this later thorn but:
1) you're an awesome parent and an awesome foster parent. no matter what's going on those kids are lucky to have been placed with you.
2) I'm sorry, but lee is really over the line here. I know you don't want to feel like you're bad-mouthing her to other people and there are two sides of the story and all, but the behavior you've been reporting is just so not cool. I can't for the life of me think why she agreed to foster if she was going to have this attitude! but she did, so she needs to shape the fuck up. again, sorry to be up in your business and criticizing your partner but I can't bite my lip on this one.
I can't believe no one picked up on
'Don't be silly, George Bob. You are just looking for attention. Now, have you been taking your pills?'
Alameida, you're not overstepping anything. I know that everything you said was true and so does Lee (I think) and certainly we've talked about it in those words.
I'm not being untruthful when I say she's gotten to be good with the kids, though again it's not at the equal co-parent level I'd have hoped for ideally. Alex and Val have always liked her very much, which I think means I successfully insulated them from her more problematic stuff in the beginning. She has a good rapport with them and takes good care of them, although she's still done really problematic things like what I said above.
It's also just hard to know how to respond to a kids who won't/can't really listen to reason, though. I did something that might sound equally awful this weekend. I'd been twisting Mara's hair and she kept hopping up as I was getting near the end of a twist so she could get a snack or grab a toy and it definitey didn't bother her that I said she shouldn't because it meant I had to start over on that twist and it made everything take longer for both of us. And so as she did it again, I just held onto the end of her hair, assuming that as soon as she felt the tug she'd come back. Instead, she looked at me with her stubborn charging bull look and pulled away as hard as she could so that if I let go
I'd risk letting her topple to the floor. So there I was pulling her hair and feeling horrible about myself while I got one hand free to catch and pull her to me so I could let go, at which point she finally let on that it had hurt, of course. And it was stupid of me to use physical force in a battle of wills with a four-year-old, especially when I'm the one who's against physical discipline and all that and so now I get to be the one who messed that up.
I think yesterday I was in a bad mood about all this because Lee was so glum about our vacation as a family of three ending when Val and Alex returned from a week with their family and I was afraid she'd go back to being awful because she'd had a break from tge kids.
We actually had a very good conversation with my mom, of all people, a few nights ago. She was talking about how admirable it is that we're fostering and we talked a little about how hard it was. Lee took full responsibility for her parts, which may have been to protect me in front of my mom but was also just honesty, I think. We talked about how close we got to having them moved to another house and Lee said, "And that's the worst thing that could happen to them!" and talked about how glad she was that we avoided it and she learned to do better. I do think she's grown a lot in this, but I get scared because I'm not good at trusting things to stay good even though I'm better at that than I used to be.
And I'm glad my mom didn't say again that the reason she's glad we're fostering is that it'll teach me unselfishness, which is ridiculous and offensive. Instead she just said that it's a blessing for the kids and a very important job and pretty amazing that we can do it at all while working full-time. We also talked about how good it's been for Mara to have the other two around. It was nice to actually have a decent conversation with my mom and even though I don't feel hurt or surprised by her general lack of support, it does feel good to get some praise for a change. (She thinks that taking Mara was more selfish because the intent was always to adopt and of course gays shouldn't be doing that with sweet little ones, though she doesn't come out and say that's the reason. But she attributes all of Mara's progress to Mara's inherent goodness, which is fair to some extent but there are also certainly reasons she's done well with us and not with prior families, Jesus fuck!)
obviously mara's doing better with you because you're amazing parents. I'm inclined to just email you about the rest of it.
Anyone's welcome to email. Google's mail works for motherissues or realfirst.last.
Lee thought she was ready to foster because she thinks about her own history of being removed from her mother at 18 months and raised and then adopted by the paternal grandparents who didn't like her mother as very positive and so she didn't realize how much trauma or whatever catchphrase you prefer she'd be confronting. I knew it would be a problem but didn't think it would manifest like this, thought she'd dealt with most of it already when Mara came.
So instead we got these kids and she went into a total irrational tailspin and wouldn't admit she was being irrational or that it was anything from her past that could be influencing her, just saying she was obviously doing the normal and reasonable thing. She doesn't feel that way anymore, but she was really in bad shape for a while and I have no doubts it was about the problems she has making attachments and the difficulty she had with her own parents, though also that I've always said she wasn't doing enough prep in terms of understanding child development and just having experience caring for kids. That was one where she was unwilling to waver, saying she'd learn what she needed when she needed it. We now see that I was right but I don't know exactly what she's going to do about it. Luckily she's not like me and won't spend a lot of time wallowing in guilt to punish herself by failing at more things, so she may actually make some of the emotional progress she needs to. Mara needs her to be healthier than she is, and I think she's learned that.
I know stuff from the past can come wreck you when you thought you were ready for it; I can only imagine that was really difficult for her. moreso because she sounds like a proud person who's not crazy about admitting weakness...
using "or you won't get to visit your family" as a threat
Very not good. I ran away from a foster home that did that to me. It was the last straw. But I was lots older than those kids. Thorn, I am glad you spoke up immediately and said this was unacceptable.
Md, I'm so sorry that happened to you. I think it's totally unacceptable and can see why you'd respond the way you did. I am heartsick that Lee stooped to it and I'll pass along her comment to her.
Ironically, we're now seen as maybe the most pro-family foster/adoptive home in our area and the social workers we're working with want us to talk to other families about respect and openness. Maybe someday Lee will be secure enough to talk about what she did and how she learned to do better, but it's still probably better than what other families do, which also breaks my heart. I just really don't get it.
I see that the conversation has moved on to Thorn's stuff, but I do want to make one comment about BPD. It's kind of a broad diagnosis. So, a woman who has poor emotion regulation skills, probably because of a history of abuse, who is frequently suicidal and uses self harm like cutting as a way of self-soothing will probably have a diagnosis of BPD. Not necessarily manipulative. And some will get to a point where they're silently suffering. It's a very draining illness to treat, but I would not describe someone like that as morally culpable or manipulative. On the other hand, some do appear to be.
It may be that manipulative BPD people are the most visible. They're certainly the only ones I've ever met or heard about.
I just think the Shoulds and the ways they cascade into guilt hang more heavily on me than on most
Normal parents can slip and say something awful, but I feel like we should be held to a higher standard.
You have a great many years of parenting ahead of you, are you anticipating any part of it being just plain fun, just enjoying your assorted kids with your mil-spec introspectroscope turned off? Snark aside, it's clear the kids are getting a great benefit from your being in their universe; how about you give yourself a fuckin' break, recognize that, and call off the hunt for perfection. You ain't gonna find it, it doesn't exist, and the effort is very tiring. You're doing good stuff, best wishes for the new year and more.
Biohazard, thanks for saying that. I have fun every day with every kid and I pretty rarely hate myself these days, which is a new all-time record. Yesterday was a bad day for me. I'm still having physical pain to the point where emotional pain seems to almost rise out of it, but my back is getting stronger every day. I have never experienced anything as rewarding as having kids. Even being loved by Lee is an amazing and sometimes eye-opening gift. I complain, clearly, but I am also so fortunate to have all that I do.
Cool. The intimate distance of cyberspace makes accurate perception difficult, thanks for clearing it up.
There's a fine line between oddly compelling exhibitionist and sad and creepy. She's crossed it.
254: Penelope? Definitely. She's well into "Greatly needs therapy" territory. That situation is tabloid headline waiting to happen.
This thread is bringing back old memories of goup therapy as it begins to dawn on me that the fact I actually read this woman for advice might not be very healthy.