no boys allowed in the room!!!!

I love planning events and have done so professionally, hence why I want a wedding at some point in my life ... but if you have a strong aversion to event planning ... yeah. follow the wisdom of La Lechera

Oh, I want to hear more about flotation therapy whenever you have time.

inorbit, just do whatever you want to do. I did. the only thing I would've changed is maybe not having drank so much two nights before during a co-op board meeting when i hadn't been drinking all month. I also did not invite my brothers which I have absolutely no regrets about. I am trying to think what we spent money on.
F got a new tie and shirt (our friend who works at RL took him to use his employee discount)
I got a non-wedding dress off the internet and that jacket I wanted
Picked out flowers for a bouquet the night before at Sprout in Blyn it was like $40
Paid for my parents' hotel room
Fees for city hall (we didn't have a photographer, just my friend's iphone)
Subway?
F's dad paid for lunch after at Gramercy Tavern
Dinner for 16 people at L'artusi the night after in their wine room. We went through like, 22 bottles of wine. But I think it still stayed decently priced at like ~$2000?
Karaoke after in koreatown, byob. I really don't know how long people stayed. ~$400-$500?

And things change, F and I went two years without living together, 6 years living together and then 7 years not living together. Both of us had full developed other lives so it wasn't a big deal. Now we've been living together again for the last 2 years? And I had huge anxiety the night we got married "like wtf have I done?" And then I got over it. It's all exactly the same.

Jesus christ I haven't told my family anything, I'm not an idiot. If my mom finds out we even talked about it, I'll have created a monster.

I haven't figured out where my over-abundance of ~*^~*FEELINGS~*^*~^* is coming from, I'm sure more than one place. I'm not that into marriage and feel kind of claustrophobic at the thought of "forever," but the legal formality solves several other problems. And my partner deserves for me to fish or cut bait and not act like I need to have one foot out the door all the time. I mean I know myself, I'm not going anywhere and my life would be poorer without my partner, who's absolutely committed to me and supportive of basically whatever I want. I'm just not very relationship-focused/romantic/whatever, I'm sure partly because I was taught all this Evangelical Christian marriage stuff for 20+ years of my life. It's time for me to heal myself from my past I think, and be able to move forward.

Sorry for processing out loud a bit.

xp LOLOLOLOL "And I had huge anxiety the night we got married "like wtf have I done?" And then I got over it. It's all exactly the same." <--- this sounds familiar and is extremely helpful.

what would you like to know? i think everyone gets their own benefits from it and arrives at it for their own reasons. my strategy for talking about it is to ask "do you find the words 'sensory deprivation' appealing?" and if so, i keep talking. if not, i stop.

for me, it's an absolute dream come true. obviously it would not be for everyone.

It's time for me to heal myself from my past I think, and be able to move forward. otm -- that is why i am optimistic about my gift to myself of mental health.

it = flotation therapy, sorry for xposting

I was having panic attacks in the middle of the night after it was all done. It was terrible. And I so don't care about marriage and think it's a terrible deal for most women.

I told my parents a month before calling from an airport right before I got on an international flight. I was just like, this is what's happening, it will be lowkey, you don't need to come but if you do I will keep two seats at dinner for you.

oh, i know almost nothing about it and thought it was for going into a meditative state.

in some ways it is. i am using it to heal my nervous system, which has been malfunctioning to the point that it is interfering with my ability to function normally.

my life would be poorer without my partner, who's absolutely committed to me and supportive of basically whatever I want. I'm just not very relationship-focused/romantic/whatever

of course you should focus on what you want and you need, whether that's this partner, or any partner. Idk I have a close friend that is the serial monogamist type that is having issues w/r/t her partner, who lives with her, and she has complicated feelings, mixed feelings, but she will say, "well, he is in love with me and is supportive of whatever I want to do" -- and to me, there's an element of gender conditioning there, where as women, we are taught that we need to be in a relationship and that we are, in a sense, the object of our partner's affection, and it's less about what we want, whether this partner is the right person for us. I definitely grew up with that. So, it's the kind of thing where I end up questioning "is this what I really want, or is this about me finding contentment in meeting socio-cultural standards for success as a woman?"

otm "is this what I really want, or is this about me finding contentment in meeting socio-cultural standards for success as a woman?"

I hate that women think getting married is success or an achievement.

my strategy is to just forget about these straw-women -- even if they do exist, i don't share their belief system. for example, many people (friends, people i haven't even met) snap-judge me because i changed my name when i got married. in reality, those people don't know the first thing about me, why i made the very deliberate decision to do that, or what its significance is to me. who cares what they think? i sort of relish people being mostly wrong about me if they are going to leap to conclusions about something they know nothing about. been dealing with this my whole life tbh. fuck it!

xp to LL: That is concerning and I'm glad you found something therapeutic that you'd been wanting for a long time!

xxp to sarahell: I hear you and agree with all of that. I think I would be fine not being in a relationship but this person brings a lot of things to my life that I would miss and would have a less rich life if they were gone. If I did the math I'm sure I get more than I put in, by my own measure, because he has different needs than I do and that's our balance. I would be fine staying together without marrying but the world is not that way--the first time he has any health need, it will bankrupt him, and looking long term I don't want him to die because he can't go to a cardiologist or w/e. So for our mutual well-being I need to resolve some of my shit.

xxxp: my strategy is to just forget about these straw-women -- even if they do exist, i don't share their belief system. SNAPS X 1000

god it feels good to say "fuck it!"

you are all great and I support you in the fuck its!

Ilx is quite difficult to come to as a new person and it feels (to me anyway) like everyone knows each other a long time and that can be quite intimidating because you don’t want to be the stupid outsider blundering in. I feel this even more keenly with threads like this, but I’m posting here cos I’m glad it exists and I also notice the lack of female posters in most threads.

I generally stick to a few threads for various reasons (UK politics mostly because it’s relevant and it’s nerdy enough for me not to bore people irl about it), but I have read the same threads as previously mentioned and have avoided posting on there for much the same reasons.

I used to be much much more interested in talking about these sorts of topics when I was younger online but I got so ground down by having my experiences denied and just really aggressive responses and it’s like, what’s the fucking point? It doesn’t change anyone’s minds.

Sorry to go on like, but tl;dr I like this thread even if I don’t know anyone else on here and I’m always happy to see it active!

in orbit, I used to want to get married when I was younger and I’ve been engaged a while but really feel no urgency to do so, weirdly. 99% of the reason is worrying about disappointing family and mental health (lol I’m a mess) but I love my other half and want to be married to him. Ideally I’d love to just say fuck it and do a registry office wedding but my family, I think, expect certain things. I should really just do it.

LL, I hope you don’t mind me commenting, but that’s a really great thing to read. I hope it goes well for you.

most of the posters here have been here way longer than me, so I totally empathize re new-ness

And I just realised reading that that I’ve posted on and off here for years, so I realise it might sound ridiculous lol but it’s how I still feel! Thank you, I’m glad I’m not the only one!

I was going to say, I for sure know your name!

I lurked on ilx for the first couple of years because I was intimidated at the intellectual standard of discussion. So even though I've been here for a long time, I was not immune. Now I don't know if I'm less intimidated or we're all dumber. Probably both.

Hi, gyac!

i am absolutely less intimidated than i was ...13 years ago when i slowly started posting (??!?!?!?)
also now people tend to ignore me when they don't like what i have to say instead of attacking, which is nice

i am actually a lot more sensitive to verbal attacks (compared to physical) and i MUCH prefer to be ignored

L, I’m with everyone else - if you get married, do it how you want. You don’t even have to tell anyone- you could just go to the courthouse and do it.

Personally, I regret having a wedding. We did the courthouse thing first for immigration stuff, and I wish I’d known how special *that* would feel, and made it more of a thing for just me and my husband. We had a tiny wedding ceremony a year later and it was pretty lame for the most part.

I have friends who eloped to Vegas, other friends who eloped to Hawaii, and an old ilxor did a cool thing where they eloped and got really nice photos done in marfa (I think).

I think of it this way:
My wedding was pretty dumb but my 10 yr marriage has been nothing but awesome (LL so otm about choosing your family - I never felt like I had a real family till I met him). My BFF had a gorgeous destination wedding in Italy at a castle or something, it was crazy decadent and she had an amazing day. A few years later her and husband were cheating on each other and then divorced.

HMMMM. Maybe we can elope to India or something. He likes it there.

many xposts but: in orbit, does your upper back pain tend to be in your right shoulder blade? Do you get cripplingly painful, er, pains around your upper abdomen ever?
Just cos I had this (without ever realising it was focused around my right shoulder blade or attributing it to using a mouse all day with my right hand) and it was gallstones. my doctor was useless and it was women on another message borad who correctly diagnosed me

xxpost

I think a major benefit of marrying was having my employer give me less shit about taking 3 weeks off for a "honeymoon" in Sri Lanka. They grumbled less than if I'd said "hey I'm taking three weeks off to go to Sri Lanka by myself." Assholes.

My two cents is that I grew up with the whole "marriage is hard work!" thing. Which it was, when I was in the wrong marriage. Now that I am in the right marriage, it isn't any work at all. Honestly it is quite easy, and makes other things (like living expenses, housework, and legal shit) easier.

Huh! Yes maybe! Maybe both shoulder blades? I also scooter in the cold so I usually assume it's a handlebar position thing/smart phone/mouse use thing. And the abdominal pain is a given--I stopped eating a lot of things because of that but never got a diagnosis. I went to a GP years ago and she was dismissive and I never got a 2nd opinion = I am truly terrible at taking care of my health.

Maybe worth looking into the symptoms? Although they often say it follows eating fatty food which I never particularly noticed myself. You can get a scan for gallstones or as I had, 'sludge'.
My symptoms were: it felt like period pain tension in my upper back, usually right shoulder, nearly always at night. Drinking lots of water and peeing loads helped a bit. Then I started getting the colic 'attacks' which I think ilxor carl agatha described as feeling like 'someone murdering you around your upper body' - I thought I was having a heart attack, nothing could really relieve it although a warm bath helped, it just had to go on its own and then the RELIEF when it stops - perhaps 2-3 times a year. Apparently being female, fair, forty (and "fat", but they can get lost) are risk factors... (I know you are female and fair, that's all!)

Xp yes! I don’t really get the “marriage is hard work”. Mine has been easy af.

re marriage, I got married really young and I'm kind of glad because I wouldve really overthought everything if I'd done it as a proper adult. As it was the wedding was fun and the first one most of us/our friends had attended. We sort of thought we were being kind of unconventional which is lol because we're now super boring with kids, mortgage etc. But getting married was probably the major life change that affected our relationship the least, certainly less than buying a house or having kids or moving abroad. Nothing physically changes really so you could try and spend a week imagining you've gotten married and see how you feel?! (I say that because an acquaintance of mine got married then annulled right away because they 'hadn't really realised what being married would be like' which I don't get at all but apparently the guy's behaviour changed a fair bit).

xps yeah we have both always been bewildered at 'marriage is hard work'. Perhaps when you have conflicting logistical issues like having to be in one place for one person's dream job but another place for the other's? But that's not limited to married ppl.

so hey
Two women are killed each week by a current or former partner
I'm pretty mad about this

I feel like if I bring it up in the incel thread or any other thread where ppl are noodling about sidelined men or whatever, it's a bit 'whither Darfur'
but literally no-one seems to know or care about women being murdered all the time by men or the general level of domestic violence that ruins lives

(this is not re: the marriage discussion btw!)

There’s a big thing in New Zealand right now over this stuff - a 22 yr old British tourist was murdered by her tinder date so now it’s all “what should women be doing to prevent this” and a huge backlash from nz women who are like “do u have any idea how much stuff we ALREADY DO to protect ourselves?!?”

https://t.co/cdm5z3JQyV

as a trans woman who just began transitioning this year, I empathize deeply. one of the first things I did was start carrying pepper spray, and I am always deeply aware of how many strange men are nearby and how close they are. (the first time I got on an elevator with multiple men on it I nearly had a panic attack.) I feel somewhat lucky to not have to worry about intimate partner violence, but there are definitely times I feel, if not actually unsafe, then edgy about my safety in ways I never did prior to transitioning.

I’m in the UK right now and the NZ murder is all over the news here too. It’s terrible and I’ve been thinking about how vulnerable I feel all the time. We are taught to constantly be on alert and that at any time someone could attack us and whether or not we realize it we live our lives doing things to prevent that. I can’t eve walk the damn dog at night without looking over my shoulder and checking shadows. It’s scary and sad.

My mother was a controlling monster when I got married and I wound up having the wedding she wanted rather than the one I wanted so IO don’t tell yr mom and don’t worry too much about it. Do whatever the hell you want imo.

yeah you find yourself thinking 'should I be doing this after dark' then you realise it gets dark at 4pm wtf

3:30 today :( which reminds me I’m meant to be looking for one of those lamps for SAD.

I interpret the "relationships are hard work" thing as like, nobody likes to compromise and nobody likes to face their faults, and combining two people's domiciles, schedules, foibles, professions, and daily lives can't happen without both. My choice is just to not combine as many of those things so there are fewer points of conflict. For that and several other reasons I'm not planning to share a home. The End.

My relationship is less emotional strain than any relationship I've ever had before and contains 0% uncertainty and insecurity about my partner's level of commitment or happiness, which was always present in previous relationships. On the other hand my partner is in some ways not who I thought I would end up with, so there are compromises in what kinds of things I thought we would be able to share. Some of the things I thought I needed to have (shared quiet time, love of books and reading, subtle & sparkling "intellectual conversations," whatever that means to you) may never happen. Other things I didn't expect in a relationship are suddenly offered to me on a platter. So I guess accepting that trade-off is kind of a challenge to me--that this is not a placeholder or an "experiment" anymore after almost 5 years. (Jesus. How did that happen?)

Just caught up on this thread. fwiw, i do know a lot of married/long term couples who live apart. But it's primarily academics who can't find jobs near each other so they make do until such time they can live together. And usually they are so busy the time apart helps with staying focused. I would've loved to have lived with F the entire time (18 years now), but being countries apart sometimes was fine because we tended to make each other lazy and it gave us time to grow up on our own. Our marriage is not hard work. The marriage was basically paperwork (3 or 4 years ago?). We have been each others best friend forever. Well except for when we had our dog.

Now I am don't even want to look at that incel thread except to blow it up. Someone else (kinder) should post what you were going to post about women being killed. They obviously did not read the piece that inorbit posted.

nah I'm going to bed

Also, don't tim burton and helena bonham carter keep separate homes?

inorbit, plus your partner seems to know a lot about hardwood floors and this seems like A+++.
I also recognize gyac's name. Post more!

The director of a non-profit I worked for and her husband kept separate homes and said it was the best decision they ever made.

I think it’s super important to know what relationship “style” works for you and be ok with it, don’t worry if it’s not conventional. My husb and I live in each other’s pockets bc that’s what we both like, but I don’t think it’s weird that other ppls relationships function differently to mine. You gotta do what works for you.

Speaking of unconventional...
So I’m friends with this couple who’ve been together 10 yrs or so but we sort of lost contact about 4 yrs ago and only recently reconnected.
They bought a house about a year ago.. a few months after they split up bc she wants kids and he doesn’t. They couldn’t afford to live alone separately but they could afford to buy a house. So they did. After they split.
She was planning to use a sperm donor but wasn’t at all psyched so her ex offered to do it... but will not be a father to the child. That will be living in the same house as him. It is v v unusual.

xpost

My thoughts on the incel thread: something about it just rubs me the wrong way. It got me reflecting on the fact that ilx feels very more dude than it did in years past. It's always been pretty dude, but I really feel that women's participation has dropped off precipitously. And what really gets my goat is that dudes don't seem to find this particularly bothersome. Like, no skin off their penises or whatever. Maybe they overall prefer a dude-centric ilx. Like, they can be outraged feminist allies but don't bother thinking about why and how so few female posters are around compared to five years ago or whatever.

Ilx has been a part of my life for a while, and I really feel a loss here. Perhaps in a year that didn't feature Trump, Kavanaugh, and other awfulness it wouldn't bother me so much. But it does and I'm pissed. On a board full of dude feminists, the feminism is directed *outside* of ilx, and shit all to do with our own little piece of the internet. Because it doesn't seem to bother ilxdudes, and I like a lot of these dudes and am bummed that their ilxlives seem none the worse for absence of fifty one percent of the fucking sky ha.

xpost OK that is pretty weird. Although I had a friend that did marry her friend (who was her ex bf of 3 years) so he could get a green card. They never did get back together or anything and totally led separate lives. Finally got a divorce after 10 years.

inorbit he seems like a great guy. Taxes get harder but other administrative stuff is easier. If things work for you guys, it works. F and I are always 2 feet away from each other but if one of us has to go away it only takes a day to get into our other lives routines. And don't worry about your family. I got some grief about it but I would've been miserable otherwise, and i felt way too old for that shit. I was already freaking out about just having to make a dinner reservation for 16 people and making sure all people would get there. There was no way I could've dealt with an actual wedding.

literally no-one seems to know or care about women being murdered all the time by men or the general level of domestic violence that ruins lives

i think about this a lot. esp when that doctor was murdered in front of a chicago hospital where she worked by a man she had recently broken up with. i heard and saw more than a few news outlets report it began as "a domestic dispute" and no -- it did not. she broke up with him and he couldn't deal so he murdered her. he had been booted from the fire academy for (literally) "misogyny" and yet someone still sold him a gun legally. like...what the fucking fuck. no.

i don't feel like recounting my experiences with being attacked but most recently i was harassed by a student last semester. i am purposely not sharing the details of what he did because that doesn't matter. what matters is that it affected me in a number of adverse ways (which i also won't detail because I am a private person) and my other students picked up on it and would wait with me after class every single week until he left. i reported it and we resolved the issue. i was not physically attacked in any way. did it take a toll on me? fuck yeah it did. fuck that shit.

There are so often stories in the news here (aus) about a woman being found dead, and every time I say to myself "I bet the partner did it" and EVERY TIME I am right. Every fucking time.

I mean it feels like it is higher than the road toll at the moment. Australian men have some real fucked up anger issues. A lot of problems with alcohol in this country. And ice.