Elizabeth wrote:I was done commenting on what I saw, and it appears that both of them are on break from this board, but I am concerned about what you and Deibert are both doing in telling me to do something that I had already decided on my own, for now, subject to change if if circumstances change.
Understood.
As far as whether or not Ryan and Mady's relationship is "normal" - if you read enough "woman" philosophy, you would conclude that it is "normal." I'm not so concerned with what is "normal" as I am with what is healthy.
One would like "healthy" to be normal, to be sure. I was basing "normal" on the supposition that even intelligent, aware couples have their fights at times.
Elizabeth Isabelle wrote: If no human offered advice to any other human until they were perfect themselves, then all anyone would have access to would be their own thoughts.
Exactly, and indeed we only have access to our own thoughts. All we can do is question each other as far as we question ourselves. In this specific context it might sometimes look like one is receiving sound advice but it's really just a confirmation, an answer to some need for encouragement, otherwise it would feel like being forced, manipulated, disbelieved or ignored.
If you really believed that what you write would not have any effect, you would not write.
It has as much effect as not writing at all, for sure....
you can insinuate that you might be a professional on the very topic being discussed, whatever the topic may be.
The proof of knowledge is always in the pudding, for those with taste buds intact of course. Anyway let me make it clear that I'm not a mental health professional (no surprise) but savvy enough not to provide actual diagnosis or advise people on what to do in any specific way, beyond "getting help", "think", "quiet down", "read carefully", "focus" and that sort of thing, to find their own exit. This is something different from speculating on the universal mechanism behind ignorance and suffering, which I tend to introduce quite often in my posts.
the word you wanted above was the verb "advise" not the noun "advice")
I'm glad for you that you found such a spelling error. A tad childish, isn't it?
that where it is normal for people to fuck up, fucking up is not a normal state for normal people.
Well, actually I was agreeing with Animus there that it is the norm. I do understand many of the points he made while he seems to prefer to believe I don't. What exactly health is in psychological sense, many books have been written about without much success. One of the best approaches has to do with functionality which will always remain contextual and temporary. This is also why adaptivity and flexibility has been raised as a desired normal state but that doesn't mean it's that common .
This board is not the same thing as seeing a trained therapist, nor is it the same thing as going to a support group or a support message board, nor is it the same thing as reading a book - but it is what it is.
The main difference will always be that therapy needs trust of a level which probably will not happen, and I think should not happen at this public anonymous place and also requires a belief that the therapist has actually something to say, that his words or approaches to the conversation are something to be considered very seriously. In some ways he needs to sit on the pedestal, the distance like between client and professional is part of the process, even the large bill can help, anything which makes people sit up and "pay" attention to the exchange. This is the basis for all therapy and that's why the biggest hurdle for many is to actually submit to it, since trust is so hard to give, or hard to hold a believe something could be changed by an exchange, just by putting attention on a couple of things and learn to try different methods for different situations. For this and other reasons therapy generally will not work that well for many, while others might just find other approaches.
-Animus-
Fact is, if I quit smoking marijuana, and thus quit acquiring it from my sources, "Satan" would have nothing to smoke herself and it wouldn't be long before the both of us were pretty crabby.
-tomas-
My better suggestion would be to cut back to an ounce a month. That should still yield about 30-40 doobs per month. Unless you watch old Cheech & Chong movies every day.
-Animus continues-
I'd probably compensate by smoking more cigarettes, she'd either go back to smoking cigarettes or increase the amount she drinks (like start drinking on weekdays).
-tomas-
Well, well, well, well. Clearly give up the cigarettes. You live in Canada, buy a few Cuban stogies. They may be a bit pricey but they aren't laden with all those nasty additives the corporations put in them. As far as the booze goes just cut back to a bottle of dinner wine a couple times a week.
-Animus-
I don't know if you know anything about addiction, but both of us have been dealing with it for a while.
-tomas-
Been there, done that. It's been 15 years since the last drag on a coffin nail. Smoked Marlboro's in the box. Two packs a day. Still hit the bar once a month or so with a Cuban cigar and may have a pitcher of Budweiser draft beer - no hard liquor - drives the mind loco. Besides, the hard stuff makes it difficult to hit the eight ball straight on for the win!
-Animus-
I don't remember "bragging" about smoking marijuana, for the most part I've declined to mention it and when I have I've spelled out the harmful effects of it and discouraged it.
-tomas-
Pot makes one forget the nuances of the high. Short term memory loss tends to work against the grain and cigarettes further cloud the already murky highs and lows.
-tomas earlier-
PS - If at wits end, call the cops and have the drug dogs find all his hiding places. He needs to lose his crutches before he can grow as a man. You are living with a boy who refuses to grow up.
-Animus-
I don't have any stashes. I keep my bag of weed out on the coffee table all the time except when we have company. "Satan" usually leaves hers out. "Satan" usually has 3 or 4 bags of weed stashed throughout the house.
-tomas-
Yeah, I remember the rainy day stashes :-)
Once again - cut back some. Give the lungs a break now and then. Change to hemp papers. Zig Zag's are rice paper - bad for the lungs.Brew up some marijuana tea. Bake some weed brownies.
-Earlier tomas ranting-
While you're rounding up his pot, check for his 'roach motel' .. the marijuana butts he keeps around when his dope supplier isn't around.
-Animus-
That's why I have two suppliers who both deliver, they are pretty much always around. And anyway, "Satan" has given me weed when I run out so I don't resort to smoking roaches.
-tomas-
I'm hip to the dealer scene only my "neighbors" (grower-friends if you will) turn me on to their plant trimmings, the loose bud or two. When the wife and I have a few friends over I'll roll up a few for the pals that smoke.
My roach motel is about five ounces worth though haven't toked now for a year or so. And that is with the paper removed. Just that oily THC goo! The Lord loves a cheerful stoner.
-Animus-
Now, is it time to talk about Thomas' addiction to being a douche?
-tomas-
A doccia water pipe? Now, that brings back some pleasant memories. Some fine, Turkish tobacco is the real buzz!
To the inter webs, GF and other forums where this has ended up......
It is interesting to see what has transpired as a result of all of this. It has also caused a fair amount of pain to a lot of people, including Ryan and myself.
I would like to officially put an end to this, well as much as I can, train wrecks tend to continue once in motion though; But like AA says, you don't have to take the garbage truck all the way to the dump before you get off.
Yes, Ryan and I both have psychological problems, it's inherent with being human. Because everyone has their own "problems", it probably is better termed something like mental characteristics so I will try to use that going forward. We both have had horribly traumatic childhoods, I didn't feel the necessity to share mine for you people to understand why I might be so emotional and over-reactive. I too suffer from a type of post traumatic stress disorder which has mostly manifested as co-dependency and a lot of symptoms similar to borderline personality disorder. I don't hold these as life sentences though but more generalizations of characteristics that seem to apply to me. I have had varied amounts of success in overcoming these tendencies in myself with various amounts of counselling. Before Ryan moved in here, I purposely arranged to have 8 months living alone in a house. That is a co-dependent persons worse fear and I did it on purpose so that I know that I know I can live alone. It ended up being quite enjoyable and I found I don't know myself that well, as I'm usually too busy trying to please others.
It has been hard for me to identify what all of the issues are for him because I am not him. He doesn't fit into categories as easily and he takes offense to some and I apologize for using one that was extremely offensive to him. He has a different way of looking at things, and I don't mean non attachment and non dualism. I find those lines of thinking to be helpful with any mental makeup and with the problem of existence. I find it hard when he is not sympathetic to the fact that I am what I am. If I get emotional, all bets are off. No talking, no listening, end of conversation, I am a woman and I am being emotional. But, it's kind of my make-up, so then I feel like he is not empathetic to my problem/make-up and that I am unheard because he unable to process any amounts of emotion or he often mis-interprets what he does take in.
We read this article in American Scientific Mind on people like me. It was about how people who go through things like I have end up with their DNA changed. The stress hormones released end up eating away at certain parts of the brain and switching on and off certain markers of epi-genetics. This was horrifying to me as I thought I have overcome so much and that made it seem like it was all pointless, my genome was already changed and now I can even pass this bullshit down. Ryan reminded me epi-genetics isn't permanent either, I can reverse a lot of the switches, I can make changes in my brain through conscious thinking and retraining. So he is there for me intellectually, if I can remain calm which I can alot, but there are times when I will be human and fail too.
The problem arises because we are like a psychiatrists sick joke, in a sad way. If you look at someone with my characteristics of mental make-up and then look at someone with his, we are actually a match made in hell, but we don't feel that way most of the time. His problems feed my problems and back and forth until we end up in bad places. Neither of us want to be in those bad places, but we do love each other a lot. We've been friends for almost a decade and thought this would be really easy and found out it wasn't due to our makeups, even though we were aware of each others problems going in.
As I get emotional, he turns off. He usually is unaware of his emotions but hyper aware of others as he doesn't know what to do with them and often misinterprets them. Part of my reason for coming to the GF was to point out that I don't feel the way or think the things that he is saying. There were lots of posts about how I think this or feel this and it just isn't true. Also a lot of the recalls of situations had a few fights melded together. Often he will recall a situation, but forget or not know that he was yelling or agitated. Then when I get emotional, he definitely recognizes it, points it out and then turns off. Then I am upset and getting more upset because he is not responding in a caring way. He also feels like if he shows me support while I am being emotional that he is re-enforcing my emotionality so out of principle he also feels like he shouldn't show me support. On a relationship and friendship scale this is devastating. I then feel like he doesn't care and eventually things end up somewhere bad, especially with my level of identifying, (something I am trying to minimize.) Conversely, if I decide I am not going to react to his emotionality then he does the exact same thing I do, he escalates to bad places, sometimes worse than me. We both have decided that the best course of action is to LOVE, to stop the escalation and deal with the issue after the escalating has stopped when people are actually in an open receptive state and combating has ended. Then we can discuss how we were colluding in a rational fashion. We can also give loving reminders when someone starts to get agitated.
I want to make clear that I didn't come here to say Ryan is abusing me, you people do something about it. Definitely not what I was asking his "church" to do for him. I was purposely vague about a lot of it because I didn't want it to be about domestic violence. If I gave details people cling, I would only revealed more to ask him to be more honest with himself and look at what he is doing. I also am aware that nothing happens in a fishbowl, we are reacting to each other, we are both responsible for each step that we escalate, each point where we chose ourselves instead of love.
What happened was that I read all of these things that I think, or all of these motives that I have during our fights that weren't there or some of the way he was portraying it was very favorable to Ryan and very unfavorable to me border-lining dishonesty (but unintentionally.) There was a lot of melding, changing, additions and deletions. It bothered me that it was even up there at all as I am often ridiculed for talking to family or friends about our relationship, so then to see it on-line with all of this skew made me upset. I should have just pulled him aside and said, I've read several posts online, here's where I see a problem with that. I think it is a breach of trust, a form of public slander (I was told to use my real name or I was hiding), and it showed things that I was upset about, the constant deflects and inablilty to see that he is usually doing the same thing. I could have gone through his posts and told him what was upsetting in a rational manner. I was concerned he would just justify it as I've had these conversations several times for several hours, so I thought I could use the examples from what he's said about me, show what I meant and leave the community to hold him to it. This is supposed to be the community that rips everyone apart so when he says, no one is giving me the benefit of the doubt while assuming that I truly am sitting there thinking he's a moron or when he says she thinks I do these things on purpose and I say verbatim his stuff right back to him, logically if he isn't doing it on purpose then I'm not either, etc, I just assumed the community would take over holding him to his own posts. I left out alot of potentially damaging stuff that people cling to and tried to make it about him reflecting or seeing the pattern within himself because if he does do what I say he does he will just keep right on doing it, and he pretty much did. I pushed him too far though and I caused him a lot of pain and pushed him into a place where he probably shouldn't have been, I'm sorry Ryan. I tried to stop the truck from going to the dump, but you didn't want to/couldn't get off.
He states I don't admit to anything, that I'm not sorry, that I don't apologize, etc. So when I am on here admitting to what I have done, I am just publically admitting. It doesn't matter though because he still maintains that I think I'm perfect, even though I am on here saying, yes I hit him once, yes I've yelled at him, yes I've pulled his hair, etc. I was just hoping it would make him more honest in return (or even see that I am admitting it and that I am not hiding), so when he dramatizes it, I was saying come off it now, admit to any of your part. So to have people like Naturyl re-enforce he is not responsible for his reactions, he is pushed, she is just looking to rally sympathy for abuse, you are wrong. Tell yourself what you need to justify whatever you've done, but the whole point of my post was to point out that he wasn't taking responsibility for his reactions and his own thinking while dismantling mine. He is negatively biased towards me as I am to him (as I stated at the beginning), that he has a hard time actually accepting criticism instead of deflecting (who doesn't, it's human), that he often is asking me to do the very thing he is not doing while not doing it (she always is putting motives behind my actions that aren't true, what were all his posts about me doing? - also hugely human). I am not trying to say everyone jump on big bad Ryan, he's eeevviilll, not at all, I am saying he won't see it when I point out how hypocritical what he is doing is, so maybe you guys have a go at it seeing as I heard that's what this place is for. The only reason to mention the abuse was that I was publically admitting my actions and he had already mentioned me and my knife wielding, etc. I was taking responsibility and saying okay, now your turn.
I think we've come to a larger understanding of each other or at least he is willing to hear and see me again and I maybe it would have been accomplished with a lot more sanity through rational conversation between us instead of involving a bunch of other people with their own ideas, makeups and realities. I'm sorry that we used your board for any of our personal life, I should have just nipped it and asked my partner be more respectful. Then again, whatever happened happened and I hope lots of people learned from it including ourselves. If we can continue to tear down these walls and grow through these challenging times then we can continue to learn from each other and evolve. I love you, regardless Ryan, and I will always, you know love transcends relationships.
-tomas-
Pot makes one forget the nuances of the high. Short term memory loss tends to work against the grain and cigarettes further cloud the already murky highs and lows.
Pot challenges brain (*short term* memory), the way that weight challenges muscle (*capacity to lift* strength).
I have smoked cigarettes and marijuana since I was 14 (maybe younger) and I'm almost 30 now. So about 16 years, every day. About a pack of smokes a day and an Oz a week, sometimes more.
I can still memorize my license plate (6 characters), my old ICQ number (8 numbers), bank account number (13 numbers), credit card number (16 numbers).
I can memorize human anatomy, and computer programming code, and occasionally I keep a near-perfect picture-memory of events.
However, for the life of me, I cannot remember a date. Some dates I know from gross repitition (Christmas, Halloween, My Birthday) but I have a hell of a time keeping track of what date it is today, tomorrow, or some holidays like Easter, Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, Father's Day, my families birthdays (all except my sister who is a day before halloween). I can't remember to keep appointments, and if I have a day-planner, I can't remember to look at it. It's as if my brain is utterly incapable of handling dates... except at work we tend to deal with dates in number format (MM/DD/YY) for example my birthday would be 06/03/1981. I can remember the date I submitted a ticket at work because it is formatted that way. But as soon as words like June, July, August, are used I begin to lose track of them.
As I understand it, performing this function requires disparate portions of the brain. And many of the numbers I have memorized I cannot speak what they are, I can only type them on the computer. They are encoded in the "muscle memory" such that I cannot recall them without typing them on the number pad on a keyboard. As soon as I try my hand spits it all out at roughly 80WPM.
So I don't think memory itself is really cut and dry, there are many different features lumped together as "memory" and I doubt marijuana seriously affects all of them. I think I've had problems with dates since I was hit by a truck as a kid, and that probably had more to do with it. Or maybe I just never had to develop the skill as a kid because my mother was always on-top of me about appointments (I had a few; doctors, psychologists, etc...)
With that said, I have noticed some affect on memory over the years, but primarily to do with my train of thought. I will begin speaking about X and feel necessary to explain Y and come back to X, but I rarely come back to X because I can't remember what it was. I lose my train of thought a lot and have to ask the person I'm speaking to to wait while I perform a reverse exploration back through my chain of though. I have to look at what I just said, what I said before, before that, and before that until I get back to X. Or have the other person tell me what X is, but surprisingly a lot of the time they don't remember either. I'm caused to wonder if this is really abnormal or not.
animus wrote:I have smoked cigarettes and marijuana since I was 14 (maybe younger) and I'm almost 30 now. So about 16 years, every day. About a pack of smokes a day and an Oz a week, sometimes more.
No wonder you in love with rex mundi. You people look like roaches after fumigation. All asymmetric and distorted in body and soul. The poisoned and the poisoners. What a pathetic spectacle. :-(
I like the way that information about the relationship is divulged slowly over time, giving us a continually changing perspective of what is going on. Great entertainment, and very insightful as well. It would make for an amazing movie or play.
Isn't satan something or someone that plays an adversarial role, and not necessarily a specific character? It makes for a great scary bedtime story in order to scare people into submission.
