I was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia. My father retired from the military and bought a house the summer I turned three and I lived there until I was an adult.
I graduated high school with some of the same kids that had been in my kindergarten class. My parents were married more than fifty years, until my father's demise.
I'm very stuck on the idea that personal relationships are supposed to be "forever." Some part of my brain just takes that for granted as some kind of default assumption and I don't quite know how to turn that off.
So when I was younger, one of the most jagged little pills in life was the degree to which positive change tends to kill relationships.
Finally getting a proper diagnosis for my congenital disorder was extremely empowering and set me on the path to improved health. It also caused me to get divorced.
To my shock, getting divorced and getting healthier also caused some of my friendships to end. Unintentionally losing weight as a consequence of getting healthier likely was a factor in my last boyfriend exiting my life because he preferred a BBW and I was no longer so full bodied.
Even more shocking for me, I have had people in my life who were actively helping me solve my problems who also eventually had to be ditched.
My experience of those relationships was that they metaphorically wanted to be my crutch and wanted to help me learn to walk with a crutch and stop being trapped in a wheelchair, but they did not want me to actually learn to stand on my own two feet. They wanted to be needed and they actively were against me getting strong enough to no longer need them to be my crutch.
When push came to shove, I felt I had to choose between the person in question and further progress and I chose further progress. When it came to the point where I wished to learn to stand on my own without a crutch, they became an active hindrance to further progress and decried my efforts to seek additional gains.
They seemingly couldn't imagine that I could still care for them if I no longer needed a crutch. They seemed unable to envision a relationship to me based on something else and seemed unable to imagine the relationship growing as I grew.
Whether you are friends or lovers, most relationships seem to not survive the transition when one person seriously changes, even if that change is for the better.
The relationship made sense for both parties before the change. After the change, it may no longer make sense for either party.
For me, the most puzzling part of this is that good people who were kind and supportive during a crisis often do not celebrate your success. People who tend to run around metaphorically adopting lost little puppies are often people who need to feel needed and/or need to feel "superior" in some way and are often not prepared to treat you as their equal if you get your act together.
Some friends are Good Time Charlies and the world is well aware of that fact, aware enough to have a phrase for it. But some people are rainy weather friends and I find it weird that such friends often disappear when things get better.
I have also found that when I am helpful to people, they tend to disappear on me when they get better. Me genuinely caring and helping them solve their problem rarely gets me a true friend who sticks around through thick and thin. I often end up feeling used.
At some point, I got better about giving only as much as I could afford to give away and began channeling my helpful tendencies more into my writing in hopes of developing a better income. I am talented at helping with certain kinds of problems and I'm burned out on people acting like we are "friends" while I am helping them and then ditching me and not being there for me after they got theirs.
I need more earned income. I need to invest myself in a different social contract, one where I expect people to leave a tip or support my Patreon if they find my writing helpful and stop thinking of me as a "friend" until their problem is solved and they no longer need my help.
That's an abusive pattern that boils down to people justifying using me to get my help for free.
I graduated high school with some of the same kids that had been in my kindergarten class. My parents were married more than fifty years, until my father's demise.
I'm very stuck on the idea that personal relationships are supposed to be "forever." Some part of my brain just takes that for granted as some kind of default assumption and I don't quite know how to turn that off.
So when I was younger, one of the most jagged little pills in life was the degree to which positive change tends to kill relationships.
Finally getting a proper diagnosis for my congenital disorder was extremely empowering and set me on the path to improved health. It also caused me to get divorced.
To my shock, getting divorced and getting healthier also caused some of my friendships to end. Unintentionally losing weight as a consequence of getting healthier likely was a factor in my last boyfriend exiting my life because he preferred a BBW and I was no longer so full bodied.
Even more shocking for me, I have had people in my life who were actively helping me solve my problems who also eventually had to be ditched.
My experience of those relationships was that they metaphorically wanted to be my crutch and wanted to help me learn to walk with a crutch and stop being trapped in a wheelchair, but they did not want me to actually learn to stand on my own two feet. They wanted to be needed and they actively were against me getting strong enough to no longer need them to be my crutch.
When push came to shove, I felt I had to choose between the person in question and further progress and I chose further progress. When it came to the point where I wished to learn to stand on my own without a crutch, they became an active hindrance to further progress and decried my efforts to seek additional gains.
They seemingly couldn't imagine that I could still care for them if I no longer needed a crutch. They seemed unable to envision a relationship to me based on something else and seemed unable to imagine the relationship growing as I grew.
Whether you are friends or lovers, most relationships seem to not survive the transition when one person seriously changes, even if that change is for the better.
The relationship made sense for both parties before the change. After the change, it may no longer make sense for either party.
For me, the most puzzling part of this is that good people who were kind and supportive during a crisis often do not celebrate your success. People who tend to run around metaphorically adopting lost little puppies are often people who need to feel needed and/or need to feel "superior" in some way and are often not prepared to treat you as their equal if you get your act together.
Some friends are Good Time Charlies and the world is well aware of that fact, aware enough to have a phrase for it. But some people are rainy weather friends and I find it weird that such friends often disappear when things get better.
I have also found that when I am helpful to people, they tend to disappear on me when they get better. Me genuinely caring and helping them solve their problem rarely gets me a true friend who sticks around through thick and thin. I often end up feeling used.
At some point, I got better about giving only as much as I could afford to give away and began channeling my helpful tendencies more into my writing in hopes of developing a better income. I am talented at helping with certain kinds of problems and I'm burned out on people acting like we are "friends" while I am helping them and then ditching me and not being there for me after they got theirs.
I need more earned income. I need to invest myself in a different social contract, one where I expect people to leave a tip or support my Patreon if they find my writing helpful and stop thinking of me as a "friend" until their problem is solved and they no longer need my help.
That's an abusive pattern that boils down to people justifying using me to get my help for free.