Happy (belated) Birthday Chaos!!!!! I hope it was full of glitter and awesome underwear!
BBE, fuck narcissists also! Stay vigilant and safe!
Sorry about the breakup, Hawke, but it sounds like you're taking it in stride! And good on him for recognizing that his daughter needs him more right now. On a side note, what the hell are raspberry salted caramels and where do I get some?? Those sound delicious! I'm obsessed with the dark chocolate raspberry cremes from See's Candies.
DaisyAnne, I know this has been a tough week for you, but it sounds like your H is taking all the right steps... FaceTiming you so you can watch your show together is really sweet!
Heartbroken, I am so sorry you have back pain that is bad enough for you to be taking narcotics regularly. My dad injured his back right before DDay, a similar injury, a herniated disc between L4 and L5 that actually caused him to have a drop leg, so they rushed him in for surgery to prevent any permanent damage. Be so, so gentle with yourself, you don't want to aggravate it and have complications! He has spent the past year on an intense regimen of drugs, along with several surgeries, and he is still in gnarly pain. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, even my X! Agreed that chiros can be great, or terrible depending on who you get.
I tweaked my back years ago and it still flares up from time to time, but that's muscle pain, not in the vertebrae. I too have heard that yoga would be really good for it, but I also never do it. The biggest hurdle I have to overcome is what my IC calls my "intolerance for frustration." I have been known to excuse myself and cry when I tip over trying to keep my balance 
It doesn't help that I'm knock-knee'd and therefore doing any of the positions the "right" way is incredibly painful. Also, I live in LA, so even the "beginners" classes are full of people who somehow just easily throw themselves into Scorpion pose... I swear, sometimes the advanced yogis go to these beginners classes just to mock the rest of us haha. We're all in corpse pose and they're over there in Visvamitrasana. I know, I know, comparison is the thief of joy and all that.
Ellie, such good news about Stig! Also, the visual of you distributing kicks in the dick is so satisfying, and hilarious! I know you've earned the Perel award for that, but should we also hand out the Kick in the Dick award whenever our WHs/XHs/BFs/any other douchey males do stupid shit? I mean it's better then actually kicking them in the dick, right? Any nominations this week? Heartbroken, I would say your H telling you to work out your emotions with Jesus is a pretty strong contender in my book.
Wouldn't it be cool to have a partner who didn't make you cry? If I ever get back into dating, that's what I want. Furthermore, I insist on a partner who, if he sees me crying, is overcome with empathy and concern as I would be for him.
I have this sneaking suspicion that this is actually how it's supposed to work.
That would be nice wouldn't it? I have a view that's a mix of Coco and Dee here. I won't disagree that there are some biological factors at play, as there is obviously a difference in how our hormones and genetics operate. I mean, there's a reason why most serial killers are men - with prevalence rates like that, we would be stupid to dismiss that there isn't some correlation. But nurture certainly plays a part, as most of these men also have insanely traumatic childhoods as well.
I do think it is something that is beaten out of them so to speak, the whole "real men don't cry" type of bullshit that is taught from a young age. I believe that empathy was quite literally beaten out of my XH - he received semi regular beatings by his Dad as "discipline." He would talk often about how his youngest brother would cry to avoid the beating, and how he saw that as weak. In our 7 years together I only saw him cry 3 times. I know he possesses incredibly deep feelings, when I got him to open up that was apparent, and it's one of the reasons I fell in love with him, but he had an incredibly difficult time expressing it.
All three of my brothers are incredibly empathetic, so I know it's not something that men are not capable of, it just isn't ingrained in most of them in the same way it is for women. Unfortunately lack of empathy is a detriment to relationships, but a benefit in pretty much every way that we can quantifiably measure "success" - like in career achievements, money earned, homes, cars, etc. all of which are things that many men are taught are more important than anything else. After all nobody makes the Forbes list by being a good listener, or a great shoulder to cry on.
Not that crying is the only indicator of empathy, obviously that's not the case. To each his own, I can understand why people wall themselves off and cannot cry, although I did wish that he felt comfortable enough with me to open up more in that way. But it's much different when being that closed off causes you to be disconnected from others, to lack empathy. For example, even if you don't cry, when you see someone who is crying, can you empathize with them and comfort them? Like how you mentioned comforting your son who was sick this past weekend, Coco. I still distinctly remember having a complete breakdown when my grandfather passed away, and while I could barely string a sentence together between sobs and was basically a pile of snot, XH came up, gave me a side hug, then said "I'm gonna go to the beach with the girls, k?" and just left me there. I asked him to stay with me, and he was just like nah, we're good, and didn't come back until late afternoon. Ummmm, what???
And Coco, I know this was a few pages back, but I totally understand why the lying upsets you so much. I would catch XH in the dumbest lies, and he would deny, deny, deny until I finally said fuck off, just admit it, and he would have a smirk on his face like whoops, sorry you caught me mom! I would ask him all of the time, if you can lie about this, what else are you lying about? If you lie about something that is demonstrable, like whether or not you took money out of the joint account, when I can clearly see in our transaction history that you did, how the fuck do you expect me to believe you when there are things I can't verify? The only lies that are acceptable are ones that are told when you're planning a surprise party, or hiding a birthday gift. It would bug me even more that he had basically told your son that it wasn't that big of a deal, because it's just perpetuating that cycle. We're supposed to be teaching our kids right from wrong, and watching your husband model bad behavior has to be so incredibly frustrating!
Even when taught about family life, it seems men are more often taught to take on the provider role where it's still all about things and making enough money to pay for all of that stuff. Much less about the actual emotional IQ it takes to be a good father and husband. Though when I see the way some of the BHs here talk about their children and all of the steps they take to be there for them during all of this trauma, my hopes are high that this isn't always the case, it's more about the perpetuation of cycles. We've seen it time and time again, trauma begets trauma, liars beget liars, those who are abused often become abusers, hurt people hurt people. Not always, but it's tough to break the cycles.
I know there is a lot of talk about how we need to raise our daughters differently, to tell them it's ok for them to want success, to be career driven etc. and I agree, it needs to be part of the discussion when raising a child of any gender, but it's all about balance. I have to say, I think we're better off as a society going in the opposite direction - IMO we'd all be happier if we taught men to care less about that, rather than teach women to care about it more. I'm sure the answer actually lies somewhere in the middle, but if I had to pick one direction to focus on, it would be teaching men to have more empathy, not teaching women to have less.
Whether I'll ever have another relationship again is still in question. I literally feel terror when I think of it. I could have sex again, absolutely, but I think I'm now the one who's intimacy-challenged, lol. It would be like "thanks, man. NO!!! OMG DON'T CALL ME!! Why do you need to know my last name?!?" Ha ha
I completely relate to this, and I do fantasize about having NSA sex just so I don't have to deal with the emotional aspect of it. I actually used to very much have that attitude when "dating" before I met my XH. I mostly stuck to FWBs, guys from the periphery of my friend group so that I knew them well enough to know they weren't psychos, but I also didn't have to "get to know them" in the same way you do when dating. I didn't have to give a fuck about them, and I found that freeing. And I don't mean not giving a fuck in the same way our WSs did, where they don't care who they hurt. But in the, I know some generic facts about you, and I care enough to hope that you're happy, but I'm not gonna call and ask how your day was kind of way where I could just see them when we were all hanging out, we both knew we were going home together at the end of the night, then I could have sex with them and leave so I could go to sleep in my own bed.
I thought I was protecting myself, but with therapy I quickly figured out I was really setting myself up for failure. Because by being as closed off as I was, the ONLY kind of person who was going to be able to penetrate that wall was the love-bombing personality disordered kind. Enter Meth-head McSexAddict, my lovely XH. When I look back at it now I think, of course the girl who was only looking for a fuck buddy was going to attract a sex addict, duh! 
So we've really got to be careful ladies, let's not become emotionally stunted, or else we'll just attract that into our lives!
In the current dating market, I just don't know if most men have that empathy in them, or at least many men my age and older (early 30s). I'm even skeptical of what appears to be empathy in men now, because it can often feel like something they learned to mimic just as a means to an end - to get laid, or to get you to pay for stuff, or to get their wife to do something for them etc. Think about this whole incel movement - how they think they're nice guys, and that being nice entitles them to sex, so women denying them that makes them involuntarily celibate. Nice isn't nice when there's an ulterior motive behind it. It's fucking nuts.
I'm hoping with the changes in parenting over the last few decades the ones coming up now will have more empathy - thank god for discussions re: toxic masculinity - but that doesn't help me much for my future in dating, unless I want a child groom 
And the fact that porn is now a non-starter for me has basically drained my dating pool down to either the uber-religious or old men who don't know how to use the internet. Nothing at all against those who are religious, or those of a certain age, but considering that I'm an agnostic who wants children, those aren't going to work either haha.
Also, I know this is the womenz thread, and we often talk about our husbands, ex husbands, boyfriends whatever, but hello there to all of you womenz who don't fall into that hetero-normative category! I know we have several women in same sex relationships on this site, just want to make sure you all feel welcome in this thread too!
TL;DR hugs to everyone, and kicks in the dick all around!
Oh, and FUCK Wednesdays!
