Blu

She grew up in a dangerous environment. In a lot of ways, she's always in fight or flight mode. Usually fight.

It's something she is getting treated for. She's on an anxiety med and visits a therapist once a month, but between that and a very stressful job, she's worn down.

It's a really complex situation all around and I don't know of a straightforward way to deal with it.

I understand that. It's hard to capture the depth of relationships on some forum. I'll just say that we've both been through some difficult things, but we've supported each other. The past year or so, though, she's been going through a lot more (relatives dying, dad now in prison, etc.) , and I've stepped up to the best of my ability.

Though she wants me to communicate more about how I'm doing, and she actually likes it when I do so, I just don't have the time or emotional energy to do that and still be present for her. It's a definite lose-lose. Because I know she's not really in a good state to have me be vulnerable on the way she likes, but by not being vulnerable, she feels like I don't trust her.

I try to approach this (and all my relationships) with a strong understanding that people aren't perfect. We fuck up, make mistakes, and have to learn from them. Sometimes she doesn't have that same grace. She holds waayyy more grudges than I do. I essentially do a monthly ritual of forgiving her for lashing out a bit when her cycle is on or her psychiatrist doesn't give her a refill for her anxiety meds on time. But my mistakes are usually harder for her to move past. She does eventually, but nowhere near as often.

I am looking for a therapist for myself right now, actually. I think at least ironing out how I'm feeling before I approach what happened with her is important.

Yeah, I am starting to wonder if that's the right call. We've had a great relationship for the most part, but while I forgive and move on from her minor mistakes--with the understanding that people fuck up sometimes and a sincere apology and effort to fix it going forward is sufficient--she's far less inclined to do that.

It has gradually resulted in an imbalanced relationship, where she does stuff like this and I don't. I've supported her through some tough stuff, yah know? And I feel like all that sacrifice got discarded because of a 10 second run in with some HVAC guy.

By virtue of having a disproportionately beneficial EU membership agreement, they actually caused friction with later EU members that received the standard agreements later on.

It's hard to overstate how catastrophic the UK fucked up by leaving the EU. They joined on the bottom floor, had the leverage to negotiate a deal that gave them more benefits, let them keep their currency instead of promising to one day adopt the Euro, and had access to all the immigration controls they needed to deal with the 'problem' Tories perceived.

It's incredible, really. Part of me still can't believe they tossed all of that away. It's got to be one of the biggest peacetime geopolitical fuckups ever.

This one is odd, I guess? So they had the autopsy stating the cause of death was homicide and a bunch of video evidence in September, and per the article, didn't believe there was enough to charge these guys?

I wonder what changed.

Yeah, I'm basically where you are now with my mindset.

This CU helped me out during the pandemic, when I was on the struggle bus, but their rates are virtually unchanged since then. It's pretty much just that and inertia that's kept me with them so far.

Time to finally move on to somewhere that actually tries to keep up with the market.

Yeah, I am probably overthinking it. I'll check around and open a trial account or 2 to see how good the places I'm thinking about moving to are.

And also, if I left, I definitely wouldn't be eligible to rejoin. Moving and changing jobs has ended that.

It's no more conditioned by society than polyamory. Animals exhibit both strategies. You seem to be conflating institutions like marriage with sexual selection.

Monogamy is a pair bonding strategy as old as humans. It developed at roughly the same time as polyamorous strategies. There's a strong body of evidence that it became a very prominent strategy around 10-20k years ago, especially in areas with resource strains.

If you want to have multiple partners, by all means, do so, but don't pretend it's some construct. It's a sexual selection strategy hardwired into many different species, including humans.

It just happens to coexist with polyamorous strategies in our species.