Midnight Voyager posted:

I never said they should try to fix it. But interacting like a person you are talking to who understands what you are saying. "Oh, that's your next door neighbor, right?" "Oh, that sucks," loving conversation filler that you have in an actual conversation and not a monologue. It also needs a bare minimum of consideration from the person telling the story to clarify points that the other person doesn't seem to know (Who's Brenda?) or move on when the other person indicates they know the basics of their job.

If you're just vomiting words to someone who does not comprehend a word you are saying and you want no response whatsoever, that's not venting, that's being an rear end in a top hat. Go get a pet to talk to or something. The other person is clearly not needed for this. It feels weird to have to tell someone that ranting is still a conversation you are having with another human and that you should treat them as such.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

On the other hand, I've met way too many women, exclusively in the US and Canada, who are dead-set against receiving oral. Never happened in Israel, or with women who came here from overseas.

Tender Bender posted:

I mean I hate being stuck on the phone too but something isn't gelling between "she tells me every detail" and "I have no idea who any of these people are". Maybe if he listened instead of fuming about his girlfriend taking up his time he'd remember some of those names. He says it can be anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes!

Galaxy Brain posted:

A huge number of men are loving teeerrrrrible at oral, presumably due to total disinterest in female anatomy or desire. There are way too many dudes who think jamming a tongue into a girl's urethra makes her insta-horny and agreeable to anything. I don't know any girls who've sworn off oral entirely but it's definitely a red flag if a guy keeps bragging about his oral skills and wants to go immediately to oral the minute the netflix app opens. I could definitely see telling a guy I was anti-oral if it was the only way to keep him from chewing my labia off.

Women who don't enjoy pushy, painful oral aren't puritanical about their bodies, they're in touch with their bodies. Once again, this thread blames women.

Pvt.Scott posted:

They could just assert themselves and say “no thanks,” but that’d take effort and a spine, two areas most /r men are deficient in.

Galaxy Brain posted:

A huge number of men are loving teeerrrrrible at oral, presumably due to total disinterest in female anatomy or desire. There are way too many dudes who think jamming a tongue into a girl's urethra makes her insta-horny and agreeable to anything. I don't know any girls who've sworn off oral entirely but it's definitely a red flag if a guy keeps bragging about his oral skills and wants to go immediately to oral the minute the netflix app opens. I could definitely see telling a guy I was anti-oral if it was the only way to keep him from chewing my labia off.

Women who don't enjoy pushy, painful oral aren't puritanical about their bodies, they're in touch with their bodies. Once again, this thread blames women.

quote:

My (25f) FWB (30m) did something that I find more weird than sexy and I don't know how to respond.

I've been friends with this guy for over three years. He's really awesome and I value our friendship, we've been there for each other through difficult relationships and hard times.

Our relationship became sexual the last time I went home, about three months ago. We're now long distance, but we've still been sexting and having fun together.

A week ago he texts me that he has a surprise for me--but I have to wait. He hints that he bought something "sexually embarrassing" right after I left, and he's excited to see my response. He really builds it up. So I have a lot of kinky and sexy scenarios running through my mind, and I'm pretty excited about it. We both have similar interests in sex as far as multiple partners and a few taboo topics. But I was also a bit worried that what he would introduce might be too much for me.

Well it turns out it was rather anti-climatic. He bought a sex doll, and he emailed me a ton of pictures of him having sex with it. It was one of the biggest turn offs of my life. To me it just seemed kind of... weird.. sad... pathetic. Not exciting at all. I don't really get what was supposed to be sexy about having sex with silicone.

I don't want to ruin my relationship with this guy, but I don't know how to respond without embarrassing him. Any advice?

13Pandora13 posted:

Not sure whether this is a misplaced "I like watching her -> she'll like watching me!" or worse. Probably worse.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

He explains that she repeats stuff he already knows while not telling him relevant information that he doesn't know. It's not that he isn't listening, it's that she's completely ignoring her audience.


No, I'm sorry, I'm comparing women from this country to women from Israel and a few other countries, who are just as uninterested in men being pushy or making them feel bad in bed. The women in this country who have told me they had no interest in receiving oral sex would go on to ask to have anal sex or light bondage or fingering, so I don't think it's an issue of them being afraid of poor skill levels or whatever, it's that there's an American hangup about it. I don't care whose "fault" it is, maybe American men are especially bad at oral sex while simultaneously being okay at the other types of sex, maybe it's the media, whatever it is, it's a distinctive thing about the US, it stands out.

WrenP-Complete posted:

As a woman with a history of giving oral to women, from Israel and the US and a few other countries, my experience is that American women seem more anxious about receiving oral - more anxious about how they smell, look, etc. There's some anecdata for you.

13Pandora13 posted:

Not sure whether this is a misplaced "I like watching her -> she'll like watching me!" or worse. Probably worse.

WrenP-Complete posted:

As a woman with a history of giving oral to women, from Israel and the US and a few other countries, my experience is that American women seem more anxious about receiving oral - more anxious about how they smell, look, etc. There's some anecdata for you.

WrenP-Complete posted:

As a woman with a history of giving oral to women, from Israel and the US and a few other countries, my experience is that American women seem more anxious about receiving oral - more anxious about how they smell, look, etc. There's some anecdata for you.

quote:

My wife [29F] wants us to give up our child for adoption; I [30M] can either support her or leave

I’ve been married to my wife for 4 years, we dated for 7. I love her. She’s the best thing in the world to me. Recently, we decided to take the first step in starting the family we both want. We’re expecting our first, and my wife is about seven months pregnant. Of course, we’ve been over the moon. Lots of buying baby clothes and other things, a lot of just general excitement. We talk a lot about our hopes, what we’re looking forward to. I think we’ve been doing really great. Last week, we started on the nursery. It’s about halfway painted right now, and furniture has been ordered. I'm really satisfied with how things are going, and she hasn't shown me any indication otherwise.

Last night, she came to me and said she couldn't do it anymore. She basically told me that all her friends with kids had their lives at a standstill, and she knew there would be an obvious time commitment involved in having children, but she couldn't think of giving up her career like that. She said she wanted to give the baby up, do a closed adoption, and we could maybe try again in 3-5 years. I told my wife it felt like this was coming very out of left field, and I thought we might want to think it over some more. She told me she's been thinking about it for a few weeks now, but wasn't sure until now. I was told if I didn't want to support her, I could pack my bags, take the baby when it's born, and both of us would go no-contact with her. That was such a suckerpunch. I decided to leave it for the night, see if things calmed down, and I woke up with this weird feeling, so I made this account to post on. Then, I went to get some juice before posting, and my wife started talking to me about it. She said she hadn't meant to be harsh, but she's not going to raise this baby. I asked what it was all about, and she said she'd been ready seven months ago, but now she was having doubts. I asked if it was about me, and she said no, she loved me, but she didn't love this baby. She didn't feel like she could be a good parent, and she would resent this baby the rest of it's life. I've just spent all day mulling it over and thinking about it. It's scary. I love my wife. I don't want her to leave, I don't want to leave. I wanted us to be parents, and when we decided this all those months ago, I thought this was going to be my life. But I love my baby. I've wanted them for so, so long. And I'm being made to choose between my marriage and my child.

I know Reddit can't give me all the answers. I just need some perspective, someone to tell me where to go, I guess? Involving family and friends feels like a violation of privacy, and I don't really know where to go from here. How do I talk to her about this? Where do I even begin? I know it's just "talk to her, tell her this", but I don't know how to be respectful of this. Right now, my "talk to her, tell her this" is "Hey, this is unfair as hell, you said you wanted to do it, commit." But I know that's not fair to her. None of this is fair, and I just need help. Is it wrong to think I can change her mind?

TL;DR: My wife has decided that, at 7 months pregnant, she wants to give our child up for adoption. I'm told I can either support her, or leave.

spite house posted:

It's because we're taught to hate ourselves from birth, to make us more likely to purchase products which supposedly fix the things we hate. Also because we're encouraged to present ourselves as consumer goods, top-of-the-line and without fault or flaw, or else risk being alone and unloved forever. We're a thoroughly commodified population.

It's all well and good to tell us to lighten up, but especially if we're younger, we're very likely to encounter male partners who have been educated primarily by porn and don't know what to do with a woman who isn't presented as a product, and it's also all well and good to tell us to just kick 'em to the curb, but it's hard to communicate exactly how loving demoralizing it is to be in an intimate situation with someone who's actively reinforcing all your lifelong self-hating indoctrination.

Anne Whateley posted:

e: no I won't finger you instead, everyone knows women love oral so much more, it's their favorite thing

lemon-lyme disease posted:

Okay, this conversation’s probably gone on long enough, but I guess I can’t help myself:

Instead?

I can’t speak for the experiences of other men, and I certainly can’t speak for women, but I thought it was fairly standard practice to combine the two activities, at least after a little bit. Why the hell wouldn’t you? (barring your partner saying “I’d rather you not.”)

13Pandora13 posted:

Not sure whether this is a misplaced "I like watching her -> she'll like watching me!" or worse. Probably worse.

Pick posted:

I have a secondary problem where oral makes me think of the opening to my favorite episode of Ugly Americans, where the wizard is giving a mermaid oral sex in a jacuzzi and when she gasps (seeing the evil nega-wizard) the wizard pops up to the surface wearing snorkeling gear and goes "what's wrong, did I lick the wrong flap??"

Slays me every time.

HIJK posted:

This thread is so illuminating, I had no idea people spent so much time fretting about whether women want oral sex or not. I hate getting oral but that's because I've never had a partner that was any good at it and it loving sucks to be stuck with men that can't perform and it's easier to give a blanket "I don't like that" and take it off the table. It's better than spinning a roulette wheel on the random hook up on whether or not he knows that he shouldn't bite you.

Malachite_Dragon posted:

Because you're an inexperienced newbie who hasn't had enough practice to be able to do both at once without overloading his poor, stupid, sex-riddled brain?
Like me I love giving oral sex to the point that I'm perfectly happy to do it without reciprocation but I'm still at the stage where I have to concentrate at least a little on what I'm doing, and bringing a hand in just throws me off entirely at this stage.

Pick posted:

Absurd Alhazred posted:

All I can say is that I'm glad my early experiences were with someone who liked oral sex and wasn't afraid to give directions.

Galaxy Brain posted:

Social pressure doesn't exist. Just assert yourself. There's no such thing as other people. Defying the norm never has consequences. Every face-to-face conversation is exactly as easy as typing words on a dead comedy forum.

Pick posted:

13Pandora13 posted:

Doritos Corporation just told American women they need chips that don't crunch or make bag noise to feel feminine while snacking/so nobody knows you eat so yeah I'd say hatred of women is pretty deeply embedded in this country.

spite house posted:

It's because we're taught to hate ourselves from birth, to make us more likely to purchase products which supposedly fix the things we hate. Also because we're encouraged to present ourselves as consumer goods, top-of-the-line and without fault or flaw, or else risk being alone and unloved forever. We're a thoroughly commodified population.

Lime Tonics posted:

it weirds a woman out, when you just want to get her off, and her alone.

like, i'm going to get you off and you can't touch me,

i dont get it.

Pick posted:

just wait until someone finds out you have a Pube

quote:

My [26F] boyfriend [28M] made comments about my friend’s discomfort during pregnancy, and I think my reaction is a little over the top. I don’t know what to do.Relationships
1,379 points 360 comments submitted 21 days ago by anxietyheythrowaway to r/relationships
Hi Reddit, thanks in advance for reading. I am sorry if some of my words are a little off; English is not my first language. This might get a little long, but there is some relevant backstory that sheds some light on my behavior. My boyfriend and I have been together for a year. We do not live together, but he is often over at my apartment.

I grew up my country’s equivalent of the bible belt. My country is well known for being very very progressive in our larger cities, and very very conservative in our villages – this is true I think for most countries, but the sheer difference between our “levels” is pretty well known.

I grew up in an abusive household, surrounded by really misogynist men, and have experienced trauma on both these fronts. This obviously caused me some mental health issues. I was afraid of, and uncomfortable around, men for a very long time. I have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

I tried very hard to get out of my shithole village. I graduated a year early at 17, left for the most liberal city in my country, and started on my university degree and after a couple of months I started therapy also. Just getting out my surroundings did help. Obviously I needed (and still am getting) professional help, but now that I had men around me that weren’t over-the-top horrible I could imagine a life where my feelings on them had changed.

One of my most longstanding issues is a fear of pregnancy. I thought for a very long time I “had” a fear but in light of recent events maybe I still have it. The thing is, and this is the huge part my therapist and I had to tackle, my fear of pregnancy wasn’t based in non-facts. I was very well educated on the specifics of pregnancy. My fear of pregnancy was basically the fear of real symptoms (pregnancy brain, your body getting sore, your vaginal canal having to dilate, etc.) and how that would intersect with a potential partner’s attitude. You’ve probably seen the posts on here: a woman gave birth four months ago and her husband is pissed off because her breasts are sore and he can’t play with them. A woman gave birth three months ago and her husband is pressuring her for PiV sex even though she is still uncomfortable. A woman doesn’t enjoy sexual play with her breasts anymore after breastfeeding because it’s a mammary gland and not a sex organ, and the husband gets pissed because he wants to touch her breasts and apparently isn’t aware of other erogenous zones. These were posts I remember reading on here for some relevant examples, but I can go on. And on.

Basically my fear of pregnancy was partly the pregnancy itself, and partly men’s unwillingness to understand women after pregnancy. Where I’m from, men don’t know anything about pregnancy. My mother pumped milk for my 3 youngest siblings, and he didn’t realize you could even do that because he didn’t realize we had a pump and he never walked in on her doing it until my last sibling. My brother didn’t know about lochia after pregnancy – which is fine if my brother was 12, but not okay if he’s 28 with a third trimester pregnant wife. The women where I am from say that it is “impossible” for men to understand pregnancy and we need to live with it. They are at the same doctors appointments explaining the realities of pregnancy, aren't they? I always maintained that men were apparently just unwilling to Google stuff and maybe sometimes empathetically take our word for our discomfort.

This took a lot of therapy to unpack, not to apply to all men, not to fear for every time I had a relationship (romantic/friendly/coworker) with a man. And this sort of thinking obviously pervaded for more than just pregnancy.

I’ve been in therapy since 17, and after three years I got the worst of it out of my system. Now, 6 years after that, I see my therapist once a month for basic check up. Usually there’s nothing to worry about; I like to keep going to have an external reference to keep my head on straight.

The actual problem is this: my friend recently gave birth, 7 weeks ago. She lives three hours away and I saw her right before she gave birth, but after her pregnancy she’s tired of all the visits and kind of just wants to nest – she doesn’t want to leave the house yet or have people over. But we do call a lot.

Yesterday morning we were calling and my friend was a bit emotional. She and her husband had gotten into a fight about sex and intimacy, because she didn’t have to have sex yet. She had a very tough and traumatic childbirth, is still discharging lochia, is breastfeeding, etc. She doesn’t want to be touched if its sexual, and she was crying to me because her husband never just cuddles her unless he wants sex and she has to constantly turn him down. She was very upset and I was trying to console her.

After the phone call, my boyfriend asked me what was wrong since I was obviously consoling a friend. And I was a little affected by it too, more than I’d like to admit I think. I know my friend’s husband and he’s a wonderful man, so this seems very out of character for him, which obviously triggers some of my issues. I explained the situation and my boyfriend started laughing and said that my friend should just have sex, even if she can’t normally it should be anal, and a bunch of other stupid poo poo. I don’t want to get into it too much. Basically all the examples I mentioned, all the fears I thought I worked through, came right out of his mouth.

I started dating him because he was one of the most kind, liberal men I’ve met. He was understanding during menstruation, understanding of my background, understanding of therapy. We never spoke about pregnancy because we’ve only been together a year – my fear of pregnancy specifically only came up tangentially. I guess that’s my fault, I guess I should screen men on these specifics on one of the first dates.

At first I tried to explain to him why he was so wrong, but I started crying. I wasn’t in a position to communicate, and that’s my fault. I was very unprepared to have this conversation, especially when I am emotional. He left. I booked a session with my therapist. Right now I’m cuddled up on my couch trying to keep my anxiety in check.

But I can’t really seem to calm down. Am I overreacting so much? Am I expecting too much? Is my reaction so weird and my expectations so weird? Do I just need to let this go? Or can I realistically just not expect better from a partner? I’m so lost. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to call my friend so soon after she called me with this.

Please help give me some perspective.

TL;DR: I was confronted with my fear of pregnancy that I thought I had dealt with in therapy. My boyfriend's reaction is exactly the reason I had fear of pregnancy. I don't know what to do.

Khazar-khum posted:

I forget what site I read it on, but--one day this kid (couldn't have been over 15) announced in one thread "Now that woman have evolved to have naked pubes..."

quote:

Me [28/F] with my fiance [29 M]. He is terrified of the doctor and it's making me lose my mind.Relationships
53 points 25 comments submitted 6 months ago by needadviceaboutdr to r/relationships
My fiance is terrified of the doctor. Right now, we believe he has a mucocele, specifically a ranula (under the tongue). It's just essentially a blocked or damaged salivary gland. They usually go away on their own, but my fiance has had his for about two months now. It's not causing him pain. It's just an annoyance.

But he is freaking out. He takes his temperature about 15 times a day and makes me feel his head to see if he's warm. He's terrified it's something more sinister and spends an unbelievable amount of time looking at it.

He has a history of anxiety and panic attacks also. He refuses to see a therapist about it or even consider medication if it came to that. He claims "literally everyone in the world has panic attacks" and that he'll fix it himself.

We've been together coming up on 4 years. It's not getting any better.

His anxiety is contributing to his fear of the doctor. Yesterday he was on the verge of a panic attack because of the mucocele. I told him he needs to see the oral surgeon, which is who the dentist recommended my fiance see. Just as a side note, he did not see the dentist. He only called him for advice.

I told him he needs to go to the doctor. He's at a point where it's all he thinks about. When I said he needs to go, he responded by saying "when you say I need to go I want to go less". He always says he doesn't want to go because if it's something serious/deadly, he doesn't want to know. I was going to look up some ideas online to see what other people have done to help their mucoceles go away. He stopped me and said "I can't handle the stress. Stop". I tried to talk to him about it a little more and he kept interrupting me with that same line: "I can't handle the stress".

To me, this is insanely selfish. He would rather die of something that is potentially treatable than find out he even has it. His father is like this too. A few years ago, he was getting sick and was literally making GBS threads blood for weeks. Eventually, he went to the doctor and found out he had stage 4 colon cancer. It had spread to other parts of his body. He's still alive, despite the initial prognosis saying he had maybe a year to live, but we still don't know if he's going to actually survive this. For clarification, my fiance has always had this fear of doctors. His father's condition didn't cause it.

I have no clue what to do. I'm marrying this man in ONE MONTH. I'm so scared I'm marrying a man that will never get over this, and I'll lose him to something that was totally treatable. The mucocele is only the tip of the iceberg here. I have my own anxieties about loss and death after I lost my mother when I was younger very unexpectedly. I've made this very clear to him, also.

I've tried to reason with him. I've tried to address it calmly. He's even been to my therapist with me about his anxiety problems because of the effect it has had on our relationship. I know this is a fear and it's tied into his anxiety, so I want to help. But I don't know what to do.

edit: I just wanted to add, although I'm sure you all guessed, I love this man more than anything. I just want to make it clear I'm going to do everything I can to help him get over this, no matter how long it takes and do not plan on ending the relationship because of it.

tl;dr: Fiance will not see a doctor to fix what is almost certainly a very simple problem. He would rather die of something treatable and not see a doctor rather than see the doctor and find out there's something wrong with him. This is an ongoing problem and it almost certainly ties into his anxiety, which he also won't see anyone for. Nothing I say or do convinces him to seek help. I have no clue what to do.

Anne Whateley posted:

Those guys usually finished establishing their routines 10+ years ago, and if you don't come nonstop the problem isn't their routine, it's you, why are you so broken, what's wrong with you, everyone loves this

e: no I won't finger you instead, everyone knows women love oral so much more, it's their favorite thing

Pick posted:

Dienes posted:

Oh Lord, I had an ex like this once. He didn't do oral because it "wasn't necessary" and his fingering technique could only be described as The Claw. I tried demonstrating what I liked. I tried showing him porn that demonstrated what I liked. I tried direct and indirect feedback. I did hand-over-hand physical prompting. He'd slap my hand away saying I "didn't know what I wanted" and tried to convince me I needed herbal supplements and a therapist to get over my "mental block."

He also decided one day that a woman could come from squeezing their breasts alone. We got into a terrible fight one night:

: "No, really, I can make you come like this."
: "This isn't really my thing, its uncomfortable."
: "No, you'll like it, let me try again." *squeezes tits like grapefruits while doing this weird twisting motion*
: *makes turntable noises*
: "That isn't loving funny!"

This is because his previous two girlfriends ended up faking multiple orgasms just to get him to stop. Ladies - if a guy can't get you off and isn't interested in learning how, don't fake it. Stop loving them.

Pvt.Scott posted:

Get you all up in some gnarly 70’s bush and use her armpit hair for a better grip.