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How do you navigate non-reciprocal relationships? (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So I've been in a relationship for a while where it feels like I am much better at navigating my partner's feelings and supporting them in hard times than they are for me. I'll give a recent example of what I mean, and here I should put a content warning for a deceased pet.

My partner's last childhood dog recently passed away, she was getting pretty old and was in failing health for a bit. When she died it wasn't a terrible shock but it was very sad. My partner got some remembrances from the cremation and upon receiving them was very upset. They didn't want to just hide the remembrances away somewhere because it felt disrespectful but also couldn't deal with it at that time. So I stepped in, said, OK, I'll take them, they're going to be kept out in the open, not hidden, but I will hold them for you until you're ready to reach a more permanent solution. Pretty good response if you ask me.

Now flip the script, say I'm the one in need. My partner doesn't have anything other than cliches or proposed solutions to my problems that clearly aren't well thought out and are effectively useless. I feel very unsupported emotionally a lot of the time.

But it isn't just this relationship. I feel this throughout my life. I've wondered at times if this is a performed gender roles sort of thing. I'm a man and nobody has said to me directly "you're a man just don't have problems lmao" but it does at times feel like we are dancing around that implication. I don't know. Just curious if other people have experienced this because I'm sick of needing to be the mature party in my relationships. If I cut off everyone that made me feel this way I'd be alone.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

i had a nasty situation emerge from almost literally the start of covid (she came with the disease i guess), of a really inadvised third to our relationship (we are poly, but it was the first time we tried something as a proper live-in triad), and it was a situation that was quickly very one sided. She could provide money, and she tried to use it as a means of emotional control. She was very fragile emotionally, had an active meth addiction she was "hiding" [i know what that looks like, it just took time to accept that's what it was and begin being dilligent about catching her lies] - but I spent the better part of a year and a half putting up with this person who needed constant love and affirmation and gave absolutely none of it, but would money-bomb a couple of broke girls into putting up with it when she smelled a threat to her place with us.

The financial security for that year and a half was nowhere close to worth what she did to my head. PTSD symptoms worsened. Seeing obvious drug abuse behavior but being told by someone who doesnt know what that looks like, and someone just straight up lying and gaslighting, took a huge toll on my emotional stability.

I try to be there for my nesting partner still, but it has been three and a half years and I'm still not over it.

These things will ruin you if you let them. Sometimes it's best to move on, and as much as it hurt, emotionally and financiallly, We told her to leave when the lease was up, because she wouldn't be on it when we renewed.

That signed us up, ultimately, for a long game of cyclical poverty - but that's somehow less fucking terrible than living with that kind of damage.

Take care of your brain.