relationships – Page 3

rainewynd:

3fluffies:

lierdumoa:

teratomarty:

the-real-seebs:

the-rain-monster:

w0manifest:

Here’s a cool trick to see if a man actually respects you: try disagreeing with him

A friend of mine did something with online dating where, before meeting a person, she’d say no to something minor without a reason for the no. For example: “No, I don’t want to meet at a coffee shop, how about X?”, or “No, not Wednesday”, or “No, I don’t want to recognize each other by both wearing green shirts”. She said how the potential dates reacted was a huge indicator of whether she actually wanted to meet them, something I readily believe.

I’ve mentioned this to a few people and sometimes I get very annoyed and incredulous responses from guys about how are they supposed to know that it’s a test if the girl is being unreasonable? How are they supposed to know that and let her have her way? I find it difficult to explain that if you find it unreasonable for someone to have a preference of no consequence which they don’t feel the need to explain, then you are the one being unreasonable. You can decide for yourself that it sounds flaky and you don’t want to date her, but you don’t have a right to know and approve all of her reasons for things in order to deign to respect that she said no about it. Especially in the case of someone you haven’t even fucking met yet.

The point isn’t to know it’s a test, the point is that if you would only say “yes” if you knew it was a test, then what if it’s not a test, but because she hates coffee shops, or because she’s attending a funeral Wednesday and doesn’t know you well enough to want to share that, or whatever else? Because if you’re making rules for when other people can have preferences and not explain why… yeah, that is a thing they can reasonably want to avoid.

@ all the angry dudes in the replies: the point is not to trick or manipulate men. The point is to see how a potential romantic partner reacts to a minor inconvenience. If they say, “oh, ok, would seven work instead?” or “well there’s this Armenian tea house I’ve been meaning to try out, want to go there?” then that’s a good sign that they’re safe to date. If they throw a fit and/or demand to know every little detail about your rationale over something as simple as rescheduling dinner plans, that’s a bad sign. A really bad sign.

It’s like this, dudes. Women in Western society are socialised to cooperate and compromise. Some men are socialised to get all their own way, all the time. These dudes are incredibly dangerous to ~~women~~ their partners,* and the only way to tell them apart from the OK guys is to pay close attention to how they react. If you’re one of the OK ones, this isn’t about you. Learn to take “no” for an answer, and you’ll be fine.

*Updated to reflect the fact that abusive men can target any gender, and the fact that I used this screening tactic to good effect during my Big Gay Slut phase.

The thing a lot of the men reblogging don’t get – they think this post is telling women to lie. They think this post is telling women to start a fake argument and to be manipulative.

Actually, this post is doing the opposite. This post is telling women to be straightforward, and forthright, and upfront about their values and opinions.

This post is telling women, “I know you’ve been socialized and conditioned to nod and smile at everything a man says your whole life, since you were 4 years old and your grandma told you that little girls should be seen and not heard. I know that by now it’s second nature to you, and you probably don’t even realize you’re doing it half the time. You don’t even realize that the laugh that just came out of your mouth is a laugh of appeasement, rather than a laugh of genuine humor. ”

It’s telling women, “Force yourself to resist your conditioning. Consciously make an effort to be open and honest in that initial conversation, when you’re making small talk, about small things. If he says something you don’t quite agree with (and he inevitably will, because nobody agrees on everything), don’t smile and concede the point like you’ve been trained to do. Consciously make a point of vocalizing your real opinion.”

It’s telling women “If a man doesn’t respect your real opinion about a small, insignificant issue when you first meet him, then he’s not going to respect your real boundaries later on when you’re in a serious relationship.”

Seriously, ladies, read this to men already in your lives. If they get outraged…maybe reconsider their place in your lives.

Also, if someone tells you that you providing a counteroffer that you’re being unreasonable or ‘difficult’, don’t buy it.

feynites:

Can I just say, as odd and as briefly touched upon as it is, I really like Valkyrie’s relationship with Bruce and the Hulk?

Like, I don’t think we’ve ever seen (definitely not in the MCU anyway) someone who made friends with HULK first? I mean, Natasha was flatly terrified of Hulk (part of the reason their ‘romance’ never landed with me), and even Tony was more just sort of… not afraid of Hulk, very much. When Hulk goes on his rampage in AoU, Tony still tries to punch his lights out.

Valkyrie, though, was pals with Hulk. They liked one another. They hung out and played games and did fun stuff. Even though she’d also pretty much sold him for a bounty, Hulk definitely didn’t seem to have a grudge against her. Heck, given Hulk’s sheer power levels, it’s unlikely that Valkyrie tazered him or anything. She probably just talked him into coming along and finding a place where he could ‘smash lots of things’ and people would cheer instead of scream.

Over the two years they knew each other, she left enough of an impression that Bruce was pretty sure he knew her, even though Hulk had him mentally shut off from events for that whole period of time. So we can glean that Hulk himself must have liked her a good deal. We don’t even really see Hulk disparage her or get angry with her like he tends to do with Thor. Admittedly, though, some of that can be chalked up to not seeing a lot of interactions between them. Hulk is surly by nature, so I doubt it was all rainbows and sunshine. But if they did have disagreements, Valkyrie seems to have taken them in stride. She’s not remotely suspicious of Hulk inviting her over or wanting to spend time with her.

And then she made friends with Bruce, after the fact. As weird as it is for her to wrap her head around the Bruce-Hulk dynamic, Bruce was probably having a bit of a mental trip himself over that whole concept. Someone made friends with Hulk and then got to know Bruce afterwards. Valkyrie is not someone he’ll ever have to prepare for the dark realities of Hulk, she watched him fight in coliseum-style matches beating up whoever came out of the gate for two years. She knows Hulk can be brutal, it’s doubtful that many of his opponents actually deserved to be smashed into a pulp.

And Valkyrie herself is pretty harsh in some ways, and dealing with her own demons. While she definitely has the ‘charming scoundrel’ thing down pat, that doesn’t change the fact that that level of drinking is concerning. Even for an Asgardian. She’s an outcast, too, a career one, and given her somewhat heady mix of valour and remorse, I’d say she and Bruce would probably connect a lot on issues of self-loathing and resentment for their lot in life.

Like, I feel like the two of them wouldn’t have to bother with a lot of pretenses between them. Valkyrie could be a messy grief-stricken drunk and Bruce could be a bitter, anxious mess, and Hulk could be Hulk, and they’d all get along just fine anyhow.

ghastlyshilo:

aspects of emotionally abusive parent/child relationships that i still can’t believe they included in tangled:

gothel appearing genuinely sweet and caring at times, enough to possibly even confuse the audience

the mumbling: just having that tiny insignificant little thing be something that gothel consistently, for no discernible reason, gets pissed about

having a special “i love you” exchange: seriously like idk if this is common but i had the same sort of thing with my abusive dad and the first time they said the whole “i love you more” “i love you most” thing i was like holy SHIT

when gothel says “oh great, now i’m the bad guy”: i cannot stress enough that 100% of the time any parent who complains about being the bad guy is abusive

and then later when she’s like “you want me to be the bad guy? fine” as if rapunzel’s making her do all this by not wanting to be locked up forever

when rapunzel tells pascal “shh, don’t let her see you”: why wouldn’t gothel want rapunzel to have a pet?? they never explain that, but they don’t need to, because of course she won’t allow rapunzel to have this harmless thing that makes her happy

rapunzel having an entire sequence where she struggles with finally feeling free and happy and also thinking that makes her a terrible person because her mother wouldn’t like it

shipping-isnt-morality:

I’ve debated for a while about sharing this, but I think it’s important, and, to be fair, plenty of antis have shared the stories of their abuse.

So:

I support people creating romantic content similar to my abuse, even though that content contributed to my abuse.

Let me explain. I was very, very into Twilight when I was around 14. A couple years later a girl called me her lamb, and used the romanticization of jealousy and danger from that novel to excuse things like cutting me, stealing my phone, and demanding my passwords. Among other things. This continued until the end of high school, and it ripped apart every significant relationship in my life without anyone really realizing what was happening.

It’s definitely true that I didn’t recognize jealousy as abuse instead of romance. It’s true that I didn’t recognize “I love you” and “you can’t love anyone but me” as contradictions, and a part of that mentality came from the media I consumed. And she sure as fuck sent me fic – even forced me to write fic – which echoed those values. On a very base level, it is easy to blame my abuse on that fiction, on the unhealthy ideas of romance it gave me. For several years after getting out, I did blame romance like Twilight. I got angry when people I loved enjoyed it, and I thought I was protecting them by demanding that they stop.

But I was wrong.

Let me go out another level.

First of all, I grew up in a deeply homophobic town. There were exactly no adults in my life that I could have even told that I was in a relationship with a girl, let alone that I thought something was wrong. Abuse thrives in silence.

Second of all, I’d been homeschooled most of my life, which meant I had zero education on healthy relationships. I had no context outside of romance novels and fan fiction, which no adults knew I was reading. My view of romance was shaped by media because there were no other sources even trying to compete.

Third of all – and maybe this is most important – writing that fanfic, while in that situation, gave me a voice to things that I couldn’t even admit I was feeling. I wrote fic where a human loved a vampire, but they were scared, they were so scared, it felt like having a gun to their head all the time. They were so scared even as they loved the vampire, and they wanted them, and they wanted to help, and they wanted to be better. (She didn’t like that fic.) It took years before I would call what I experienced abuse, or seek out resources for victims. But fiction gave me a voice right then, when I needed one most.

Media didn’t get me abused. A society which failed utterly at telling me what a healthy relationship looked like got me abused. Parents and teachers and authority figures who were wildly homophobic got me abused. Fiction contributed, but if it wasn’t Twilight, it would have been something else – hell, apparently she repeated the same pattern after me with 50 Shades, and then with Captain America (somehow). Because above all, my abuser got me abused. She used fiction as a tool, but it could have been anything. If I hadn’t read Twilight, it would have been Johnlock, or Drarry, or Russia/America. All those things had more than enough content which portrayed danger and jealousy as sexy.

Do I still read Twilight? Fuck no, it’s a huge trigger. But I’ve stopped blaming it for what happened, because it was never Twilight’s job to teach me about romance. Nor was it fandom’s job to tell me, “if someone actually terrifies you, that’s dangerous, even if it’s sexy. If you love someone but they’re hurting you, you need help, not to try to fix them.” What hurt me most wasn’t fiction; it was the silence from every other quarter.

Media isn’t education on healthy relationships. It can’t be, and it never will be. “Fan fiction made me think that this was ok” means that there were no voices in our lives that we trusted more than fanfiction telling us that it wasn’t okay.

There will always be media that abusers can twist to make it look like what they’re doing is romantic and okay. Always. The abuse is still their fault, and the inability to counter harmful messages is the silence of society’s fault.

I’ll leave you with this: after I got out, I continued reading fic that featured jealousy and possessiveness as something hot. Because I did think it was hot; I now just knew firsthand that it was a kink to only be indulged in controlled situations. Firsthand experience is the harshest teacher, but it does work.

I just tag my own fic that features jealousy and possessiveness as “#abusive behavior.” Because if there is another girl like me out there, being sent these fics by her abuser, stuck in a situation she doesn’t understand – well, if it wasn’t my fic, it’d be someone else’s. The kink’s going to keep on existing. But maybe she’ll see the tag and figure something out.

Fiction is a tool, and taking one tool away won’t stop an abuser, because fiction isn’t causing abuse. If it wasn’t fiction, it’d be something else.

Stop blaming fiction for the actions of a cruel person, and the silence of the people who should have been protecting you.

It hurts to lay the blame at the feet of those you love, but if we deny the problems we will never fix them.

Be safe. Be kind.