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textsfromtheborderline · 5 years

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Hey, I have a couple of questions; do you think any of the following are related to BPD? Or do I do both because I am simply an horribly abusive human being? (Which I know I am, but still.) #1 - humiliate the people I love in public. I know I do it, I always try to avoid it, but sometimes I slip. I do it with whomever is my FP at that moment. I rip them to pieces publicly and I feel high, 'cos it sorts of shows everybody how intimate our connection is?

Still the horrible abuser over here. #2 - whenever I meet a prospective FP I always feel the urge of showing off the absolute worst of me. How unbalanced I am, how callow, how sexually crass, codependant and full of anger. I think I sort of want them to know how fucking intense I am and match it... ? Or at the very least accept me. Although I know full well I only come off as unhinged. But it makes me high too... is it oversharing to the extreme? (I hate it. So humiliating, but I can't help it)

It takes guts to send a message like this and I admire the fact that you’re being so honest.

Simply put, the FP type of relationship is an aspect of BPD. And so is devaluation, which is the running thread of your message (humiliating people you love in public, but also displaying the worst of you). But you are making your own choices, personally, and they are clearly part of an unhealthy pattern of behaviour. So please don’t conveniently blame BPD, because mental illness is always the context, but never the catalyst, for action.

Let’s take a good, hard look at what you’ve said, since not only is it intriguing, but I think it can help us all learn from your experiences.

Regarding your first point, ripping someone to pieces publicly absolutely does not demonstrate to “everybody” how “intimate” your connection is. It just shows off in public that you are abusive. I bet you do this behind closed doors as well, but at least in public it’s something that’s out there for everyone to see and reaffirm.

I feel very sorry for your FP, current and prospective, yet if I may, I want to offer you several reasons why you do that:

You are “testing” your prospective FP by seeing how much hell you can put them through and how much bullshit you can pile on before they breakdown. Doing it in public is, as you say, immensely humiliating. I suppose that they pass your awful test if they lack the self-respect and backbone to fight back in public. Which is actually what you secretly hope for.

The first reason you hope for this is so that you can dial up the abuse more, in public, because if they fight back then you can somehow give yourself permission to be even worse, despite knowing all along that you are being abusive and provoking justifiable retaliation.

The second reason you hope for this is because you’re obviously self-pitying (as most abusers are) and sub-consciously (or perhaps even consciously) you want to be punished for being a horribly abusive human being. So in front of an audience, you are hoping for someone to step up (including your FP) and challenge you, this time in order to put a stop to your appalling behaviour (which you claim that you can’t do on your own; hold onto that thought). You want to be punished severely for what you have done and are doing; you want justice to rain down on you out of some sick sense of masochistic martyrdom, again arising out of your self-pity.

There is a “connection” that happens between an abuser and their victim, unfortunately, and it’s called trauma bonding or Stockholm syndrome. It’s perverse and terrible. That’s the kind of “connection” that you are referring to.

Real human connection doesn’t thrive off traumatic experiences. It is founded on mutual respect, care, and trust. It’s healthy because it’s focused on the well-being of the people who are connected to each other by virtue of their shared interests, heartfelt emotions, and free will.

Now regarding your second point about “showing off” the “worst in you,” this may also be some kind of test. To see if you will get “abandoned” by your FP when your true colours are on display. Doing this in public too will also give you lots of attention, which depending on your ego functions, may be contributing to that “high” you feel.

There’s really two key elements to this point. Firstly, you are devaluing yourself. Now I’m not disagreeing with you about the fact that you’re a shitty person, but I also don’t think you’re being entirely realistic. You say: “ how unbalanced I am, how callow, how sexually crass, codependant and full of anger.”

These are all decidedly dramatic descriptions of yourself. They still don’t get at the core of you as a person, and so without a clear self-image, you’ll never be able to strive for a stable one. You must know who you are and what you want in order to be happy. Believe it or not, I relate to what you’re saying here. I recognize my own toxic traits, but it’s also why I can tell you that everything you’ve identified as the “worst” in yourself can be entirely unlearned.

That starts with developing a healthy outlook on yourself. Instead of thinking of yourself as always being “unbalanced,” try to think of yourself as working on “stabilizing.” Instead of thinking of yourself as callow (inexperienced and immature), try to remember that you are a work in progress, a dynamic person who is learning, and seek out interesting, positive experiences. Instead of thinking that you are “sexually crass” and berating yourself for lacking some sort of class and sensitivity when it comes to sex, be more careful and caring about your body; take sex and partners at your own pace, and if it happens to be that you enjoy a lot of sex with a lot of people, then at the very least make an effort to do it safely. Develop your self-respect.

And instead of resenting that you are “codependant and full of anger” (both of which I’ve addressed, right here and here), start taking little steps toward independence and processing anger. You’re going to (re)discover a lot of yourself throughout this process, which is essential to developing a healthy, realistic self-image.

You might think this is all semantics, but it’s actually about altering your thought processes. So that in turn, you can start to invest positive emotions in those healthier thoughts.

And if that’s you at your “worst,” don’t you want to live in a way that lets your best shine forth?

Secondly, you want to have control over the situation. As you pointed out, you want your intensity to be accepted and matched-even if it’s at your “worst.” I understand that longing very well.

But I want to point out that Oversharing isn't exactly healthy in and of itself. It’s already “extreme” so to speak because there's already the potential to breach someone's healthy boundaries. What you're actually talking about specifically is being callous with "honesty." You may really be feeling one way in the moment, and things may be happening a certain way in fact, but there is still an appropriate time and place to share your own thoughts and feelings about what’s going on. You’re not respecting that. You’re being “honest” both in an effort to get your intensity out there, but also with a complete disregard for boundaries. That certainly does come across as unhinged, but it reveals a lot too: You associate vulnerability with being “humiliated” yourself. At the same time, being vulnerable makes you “high,” which I take to mean that it makes you feel “good,” so you’d like to keep being “honest” but you don’t want to be “humiliated.”

It’s too bad you have such a twisted outlook on being vulnerable, because when it’s done right, it’s one of the most amazing sensations ever.

Speaking of honesty, the truth is that you can help your behaviour, but you do not want to. That's at the core of you being a horribly abusive human being.

Why? Well, you said so yourself: being abusive gets you "high."

Here’s the darkest truth about abuse: abusive behaviour also hurts abusers, and abusers keep on abusing because they are emotionally invested in abuse.

Back in May, I made an infographic guide for people who recognized their abusive behaviours but were willing and determined to change them in order to live in a healthy way.

And the relationship between willingness to recover and not be abusive versus remaining abusive is something I extensively cover in my own work Between The Lines: Comparing BPD + NPD. I argue that for the most part, personality disordered people are quite willing to recover and learn to live in a healthy way, yet we lack the stigma-free resources to give us the ability to do so.

However, I also note that while resources alone have a positive correlation with willingness to be healthy, they still may not be enough all by themselves. This is due to the fact that most horribly abusive people refuse, that is to say they lack the will, to choose healthy behaviour, despite all the resources that could possibly be available to them.

Why? Well, we’ve come right back around to your admission: because being abusive gets you “high.”

As anyone who has ever been at the very least toxic realizes, there is a kind of thrill, a rush, a sense of being empowered or powerful, when it comes to having an advantage over someone. No matter how slight or twisted or real it may actually be.

Being on the other side of someone’s trust? Someone’s earnest feelings and thoughts? Getting access to their motives and drives, being involved in the sharing of that? Fuck, it’s so seductive and mesmerizing. It is honestly a “high” unlike any other. And abuse is inherently about taking these precious things and using them to your own gain or to cause pain, which then creates a vicious cycle of feeling “high” when you can still have someone’s trust but you’re not longer doing it with their best interests at heart.

So then horrible people like you get carried away in the thrill of that, the emotional investment, and find it almost impossible to stop. But as I keep emphasizing, you certainly can stop and break this unhealthy behaviour pattern.

Why? Because feeling “high” in the moment you abuse someone won’t ever be enough for you. Because it’s not a genuine connection.

And abusers do want a real connection with another human being. The problem is, they lie and fake and hurt their way into it; they manipulate and manufacture that “connection” because they cannot really be themselves and develop a real connection by being honest.

They haven’t developed a realistic, healthy outlook on themselves, because they’ve never fully taken the time to know themselves and be real about all their flaws and qualities.

Right now, that is you. At this time in your life, you are a horrible human being that is choosing abuse as a way to cheat their way into the best life has to offer, without being real about it. That’s pathetic.

Although I appreciate you sending this message, I don’t know quite what you expected to get out of me with it. Were you wanting me to publicly humiliate you? To offer you some sort of vicious punishment, or to reopen my old wounds?

If there’s only one thing you get from my response, I hope it is this:

You don’t have to remain a horribly abusive human being.

#anon #q + a #textsfromtheborderline #wow my hands are shaking after typing this

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lordendsavior · 7 years

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Harry Styles is a faithful disciple of silence. He rarely does interviews, and when he does he speaks with charm and cheek while avoiding any nuggets of actual information that could be described as revealing. Until he started doing press around his debut solo album this spring, giving him various bits of artwork and magazine covers to screengrab, his Instagram looked like an A-Level photography project—full of dramatically monochrome shots of infrastructure and food. His Twitter timeline is essentially a corkboard littered with messages expressing thanks to his fans, structured like love letters from a husband in the trenches—"See you soon. Love. H."

In our climate of oversharing, his withholding nature may conveniently double up as a watertight marketing tactic, creating a shroud of mystery that's inherently desirable (what's he wearing today? What's he eating for breakfast? What does he do when he's not making scheduled public appearances?). But for him, it's more than that – "When I go home, I feel like the same person I was at school," he told Rolling Stone earlier this year, "You can't expect to keep that if you show everything."

This is why you don't often see Harry Styles among the names that frequent the daily aggregated news cycle of and Person Says Thing > The Thing is Outrageous! > Actually, The Thing Is Very Nuanced > Ugh, Someone Has Said Something Else Now. He has, to paraphrase someone he once dated, removed himself from the narrative. But, at the same time, Styles has created a narrative that exists just between him and his fans. Simply put: he cares about them, very sincerely and very unabashedly. Which isn't unusual—Lady Gaga is a perfect example of the often very intimate way fandom culture works today—but Harry Styles is muse to such a vast number of teenage girls, a demographic whose interests and opinions are rarely taken seriously by music critics or society at large, that his respect for them takes on a different meaning. It's a relationship best summarized by the following quote from Styles in that Rolling Stone interview: "Who's to say that young girls who like pop music—short for popular, right?—have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That's not up to you to say." He goes on: "Teenage-girl fans—they don't lie. If they like you, they're there. They don't act 'too cool.' They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick."

This was also the defining characteristic of One Direction's relationship with their fandom. They knew exactly who elevated them from bronze winners of a generic talent contest to global superstardom, they knew exactly who kept them there, and in return they gave them what they wanted. In the wake of their split, journalist Anna Leszkiewicz described One Direction as "a towering monument to the power of teenage girls."

It would have been both a strange and fairly stupid move for Styles to abandon that relationship moving into his solo career, but if anything he seems to have doubled down. He still doesn't say a great deal to the press, save for the endless shouts of appreciation for the people who make his life possible—namely, his fans and faves (artists like Stevie Nicks, to whom Harry Styles owes much of its inspiration)—but over time he's fostered a channel of trust that means his shows have become as close to a safe space as is possible for young girls to get as far as experiencing live music is concerned.

Harry Styles is currently touring Europe. He passed through London last weekend, with fans arriving to camp outside Hammersmith's Eventim Apollo in west London as early as Tuesday. Approaching the venue on Sunday evening, the area outside is deserted. It looks like a Glastonbury camping zone on clean-up day. Duvets are draped over the empty barriers; the floor is littered with foil blankets and carrier bags full of empty sandwich boxes and crisp packets; Pride Flags and Black Lives Matter placards have been taped in place like calls to arms. Everyone is already inside, obviously, and has been for ages. There are about 50 girls camping across the road on a patch of grass underneath Hammersmith flyover so they can be first in line for tomorrow's show. To arrive on time to a Harry Styles show is akin to missing it.

As for inside the venue, you can hardly see the stage for the number of LGBTQ Pride and Black Lives Matter signs held aloft by the audience. In Manchester, people also held up the city's bee symbol. The "I love you"s and "Marry me"s stereotypically associated with teen girl fandom are still very much there in spirit, but their articulation has taken on an actively political tone. The rainbow, the striking black and white of the BLM logo, the Manchester bee—all are symbols of support shared widely on social media, where pop fanbases tend to be most active, exemplifying a generational shift in consciousness towards social awareness. Here, they're brandished less a show of resistance and more as a celebration. People feel comfortable expressing themselves this way because they know everyone in the room is already on their side.

Styles has spoken generally about equality in the press before ("Most of the stuff that hurts me about what's going on at the moment is not politics, it's fundamentals," he told Rolling Stone. "Equal rights. For everyone, all races, sexes, everything"), but it's what he says at his shows, addressing people directly, that means the most to those who care the most. Throughout the night he encourages people to be "whoever you want to be in this room" and continually thanks them "from the bottom of my heart." Someone throws a Pride Flag on stage and he holds it with both hands above his head and runs back and forth across the stage. Someone else throws a French flag and he does the same. Someone else throws a bit of tinsel and he drapes it around his shoulders like a stole.

The room is full of groups of teenage girls hugging each other, hugging people they didn't know, turning to ask the people behind them if they could see alright. Anyone crammed towards the front has been there from the second the doors opened, denying themselves water or a sit-down so they could be as close to their idol as possible. The show had to be stopped twice to help two girls who fainted in the pit. Harry calmly asked people to take a step back, repeatedly checked if everyone was okay and spoke soothingly about looking after one another. He played "Kiwi" twice because it's what the fans wanted, though not without a bit of showmanship ("if you want us to play it again you're going to have to scream louder than that").

It's also worth noting that, although it was ostensibly The Harry Styles Show, five of the ten people onstage are women. As well as a female drummer and keyboardist playing in his own band, he's being supported by MUNA—a goth-pop trio from LA whose music communicates the emotional disarray of sexuality and relationships, as well as heavier topics like assault, through a specifically queer lens. On stage in Hammersmith this weekend, they repeatedly acknowledged the marginalised communities present within the crowd, providing reassurance that—in this room, at least—they are seen and heard. There are, sadly, so many awful reasons to feel unsafe at any show, but in light of the Manchester Arena bombing, pop shows now carry a particularly horrific association that lingers in the back of your mind and can make you inadvertently take note of the emergency exits. Rather than avoiding it, guitarist/vocalist Naomi McPherson addresses the elephant in the room and reminds people how brave they are for being here at all. Singer Katie Gavin introduces their single "I Know A Place"—essentially the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror as a song—by describing it as their imagining of an ideal world we should be working towards. "I know a place we can run / Where everyone gonna lay down their weapon," Gavin sings over a dancey four-to-the-floor beat, "Don't you be afraid of love and affection."

For all the talk of inclusivity and equal rights often thrown around within subcultural communities like punk, hardcore and indie—predominantly male-dominated spaces that can't seem to go a day without someone in a band being called out as abusive—it strikes me as significant that this is one of the few shows I've ever been to where I've not felt threatened by anyone in the room. And it's not because I am, at 5 feet 3 inches, one of the largest people in this one. It's because Harry Styles supports his fans' politics while they really live it, and as a result his shows have become a place for people to celebrate being whoever they are. The diversity of the room itself speaks to that. He's cheering just as much for his fans as they are for him.

Pop music is accessible and available in ways that more subcultural music isn't, but this dynamic doesn't just present itself anywhere. Justin Bieber shows, ecstatic as they may be, are not largely comprised of kids shouting down racism while overtly celebrating their queerness. Pop, like all music, can often be a form of escapism—a way to forget yourself, especially if being yourself can mean facing a multitude of hardships. The actual content of Harry Styles' music isn't anywhere near political but, because of the way his fans engage with him and each other, his shows inherently are.

Obviously, anything can happen anywhere and anytime. Harry Styles' name on the front of a building can't guarantee the absolute safety of everyone in it. But it does foster a world away from our current one; a world that feels less oppressive and more like MUNA's "I Know A Place." I can't imagine how valuable it is for teenagers to experience that—even if it's just for a night.

#i love this article #harry styles #the pink tour press

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thesinglesjukebox · 7 years

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SAM HUNT - DRINKIN' TOO MUCH [5.33] What've we got here? Why, it's a CONTROVERSYBOMB!

Ramzi Awn: A bold experiment with a few good ideas, "Drinkin' Too Much" employs dark moments of candor to highlight a muddled mix. [5]

Olivia Rafferty: The heart and soul of country music is storytelling, which is why this track works so well. "Drinkin' Too Much" shifts the typical country subject of alcohol abuse to the context of sad man R&B, aka Drake's genre. The spoken verses contain a rawness that could only be conveyed with that style of delivery, and the lyrics themselves are so vivid. Lay this over a subtle blend of 808s and slide guitars, and you have a solid attempt to influence the direction of country music. Let the genre-mashing begin. [8]

Anthony Easton: John Prine, in a recent Rolling Stone cover story, spoke about how Dylan's Nashville Skyline broke apart country music for him (he was a folkie at the time): "Man, there's something there where their two paths crossed. My stuff belongs right in the middle." This is also in the middle: between soul and hip-hop, between the drinking and heartbreak of Nashville and the fame-wasted ennui of Kanye and Drake. But it's also at the bottom: the bottomed-out production, how Hunt trips over details, how he extends stories, how he never quite brags about his money, how his self-loathing bubbles up like swamp gas. It's the opposite of all those party songs, the opposite of Moore and Eldredge and Gilbert. It has a singular voice -- a songwriting voice, but also how he sings, a gravelly push that reinforces his production choices. It is the smartest thing he has done, and maybe the most heartfelt. [10]

Alfred Soto: I'm no country corn pone. I like electronic whooshes and the kind of manipulation of space more common on Drake or "Climax"-era Usher, but Sam Hunt can't even talk-sing without his sockless boat shoes tripping on his ill-lettered cadences. He comes off like a lunkier Chainsmoker, in the market for any hook that'll get him on the radio and laid -- two of his more admirable virtues. Find better songs, dude, and don't try so damn hard. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: This non-single posted on SoundCloud is the audio equivalent of a viral video, and like many viral videos, it's also essentially a journal entry set to music. Frankly, it's not up to snuff: this is him doing his rhyming couplets (he loves rhyming couplets) with a woozy rhythm track from Pro Tools or whatever. It also sounds a lot like a demo for Justin Bieber. Most of all, this is slightly creepy oversharing; I want a Silkwood shower after listening to it. [0]

Elisabeth Sanders: Everything about this is deeply embarrassing, and that's why I love it. While I can't pretend I like this as much as anything off Montevallo, it makes up for it with "I wish you'd let me pay your student loans," and I'd like to submit this as a great entry into a music category I'd like to call "voice-memo pathetic-wave." (The other artist in this genre is Mike Posner with his great, deeply pathetic album At Night, Alone.) The song approximates, sonically and with almost nauseating accuracy, the feeling of being just too drunk enough that the room is spinning a little, being very sad about something that might be your fault in a crowded place at 2 in the morning. BEEN THERE, SAM. [7]

Jonathan Bradley: In which Sam Hunt pens a letter to Montevallo's Courtney From Hooters On Peachtree and proves himself to not be country music's Drake, but rather its Mike Skinner. The hook is the weakest part; it doesn't resolve Hunt's thoughts but elides them. (The austere "8pm" take works better and is worth a point or two more.) There is frisson in a lyric that pushes too far past the fourth wall, threatening to combust as it reaches the event horizon -- for the non-country, non-rap examples to which "Drinkin' Too Much" draws nearest, look to emo acts like Cursive's The Ugly Organ or Say Anything's "Every Man Has a Molly." "Hope you know I'm still in love," Hunt closes, except it's a correspondence that is only intimate the way a performance is, and so his words are combustible as well as heartfelt. The sour sense that this song bears too much truth is its most compelling point but also its most repellent; Hunt is too casual in his exhibitionism. [5]

Will Adams: It feels right; we've reached the level of bleakness in our pop music that songs can now just be actual shitposts with first draft choruses tucked in. [3]

Katherine St Asaph: Did we need another country "Marvin's Room"? In every country review I keep harping on artists telling the same generic story addressed to the same imaginary sorority girl, but here's a lyric and addressee that are certainly not generic or imaginary, and I'm not sure what to think. If Sam Hunt's byline didn't scare off the traditionalists, the first vocoded note is almost deliberately scheduled to shoo away the rest (none of the subsequent vocal is so blatant), leaving a smaller audience of fans and an explicit audience of one specific, named girl. There's something inescapably creepy -- voyeuristically creepy for the listener, manipulatively creepy for the artist -- about this, this couple chords and a tirade. Most of his target demographic will hear this as romantic, but for those unfortunate enough to have been stalked, the details are so familiar as to be textbook: presenting her with his un-rebuttable imagination of her life, in which she stages the Everytime video every time she wants to cry, in which there's nowhere else in Georgia she can buy peaches, in which everything reminds her of him, or at least does now; reminding her of her debt while holding Montevallo money over her head; apologizing for boosting her profile while writing her name into a huge triumphant chorus; pondering "whether it's OK to lie" while careful to mention none of the indiscretions that got him there -- merely their consequences, which now seem unreasonable. Better to address this as fiction, then -- like most "autobiographical" songs by celebrities, somewhere between songwriting exercise and publicity stunt, because you don't cross over into pop and stay without some dating drama. What's left is slapdash: accurate-sounding candor spewed over a couple identikit country choruses, each piece well-crafted but only assemblable by a real-life happy ending. Which is the point, and the problem. [5]

Megan Harrington: Too much of my instant dislike of "Drinkin' Too Much" hinged on the preposterous way Sam Hunt apologized for (more or less) doxing his then ex-girlfriend, now fiancé Hannah Lee Fowler on his debut album Montevallo, only to turn around and close the song by singing her name. In case there were any straggler fans out there who hadn't quite put her identity together, I guess. It was incongruous in a way that grated on me until I realized that it was the perfect synecdoche for the song, one that indulges overwrought production as 40 as it was country and several different singing styles, including plain old talking. It's right there in the way he names her his first fan and then cheats on her, the way he dismisses her sisters as "matchmakers" but hopes her dad still prays for him. Real life is messy and filled with leaps forward followed by half-steps back, relationships are chaotic and confusing, and Hunt captures all of it, ending hopefully with a (sort of, he hopes) romantic pledge to win her back. And it (sort of, I think) worked? [7]

Crystal Leww: The first time I heard "Drinkin' Too Much," I did not like it. I did not like the 40-esque production, the sad sap lyrics, the way that Hunt called out his ex-girlfriend. Then I listened to the 8pm version, stripped of the production flourishes, and figured that it was just the production that was bugging me. The lyrics were sad, but they were so specific: peaches in Pelham, a hotel room in Arizona, and that devastating, heartbreaking "hope your dad still prays for me," a reminder that breakups are the deaths of families, too. I've never liked the comparisons to Drake -- Drake is someone who has clearly never been in an adult relationship with a real woman rather than a built-up image of a woman, but Montevallo and "Drinkin' Too Much" feel like they're about real adults who have genuinely loved each other and created lives together. I still like the 8pm version more, but I've come around on the full version. It's dramatic, but I appreciate the attempt to appeal to a broader audience, and it highlights that Hunt's lyricism shines through anything, even snaps and strings. [7]

Josh Langhoff: A prof used to tell us, "People who are sorry weep bitter tears." I don't buy Sam Hunt's sorrow. Nor do I buy that this song has a melody or a beat, that it has any connection to country or R&B, that this is the same Sam Hunt who did "House Party," or that picking peaches is anything but the pits. More schnapps! [3]

Katie Gill: Look, I'm sorry, I can't hate this. With the exception of that "I hope your dad still prays for me" bit, the verses are awful, not singing but the Sam Hunt Spoken Word Poetry Hour. They swing between endearingly hokey and the awful Nice Guy sort of patronizing that was the entirety of "Take Your Time." But the chorus is AMAZING. It's so silky and smooth, perfectly mixed, and Hunt shows that he has a halfway decent R&B(ish) voice. But the two never really meet. The transition between verse and chorus is awkward every time, as the buttery-smooth chorus butts up against the not very smooth speaking voice of Sam Hunt. [6]

Joshua Copperman: I keep singing this title to the tune of Twenty One Pilots' "Ride", attempting to remember what little melody this song has ("I've been drinking too much, help me..."). Until the bridge -- which would make a better chorus -- nothing is worth remembering: not the strings, not the drum machine, and especially not the single strum of guitar to signify that it's still country. What made "Marvin's Room" work was the honesty and subtextual self-loathing that Drake would spend the rest of his career distilling. This seems less stream-of-consciousness and more trying to write stream-of-consciousness, which rarely works as well and results in lines like "I wish you'd let me pay off your student loans." The dramatic piano ending makes clear Sam Hunt's lack of shame in copying Aubrey, but that just makes him sound even less authentic, even though the backstory contains more than enough drama for something genuine. [3]

Edward Okulicz: The first time I misheard the line as as "I'm sorry for making the album Montevallo," but this sketch wouldn't be a repudiation even if he were sorry for that. And it's really not that much more than a series of lyrical fragments and a chorus, but I find myself nodding along at some parts, and being frustrated at the lack of detail in others, and going to the "Personal life" details of his Wikipedia article to see the resolution. So that means it's fairly compelling for its limitations. [7]

[Read and comment on The Singles Jukebox ]

#Sam Hunt #Drinkin' Too Much

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bonesandblood-sunandmoon · 4 years

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Aro Community Wishlist

CoA prompt for Nov 2019 - “Aro Community Wishlists” [Call for Submissions].

A by no means exclusive wishlist:

Resources: For mental health professionals.

Despite previously internally freaking out about disclosure to the intake counselor, I actually stuck with simply answering questions without diving into explanations. I vagueblogged about it, but it would just take a little tweaking to phrasing on their questionnaire to reduce the mental translation.

Q: How long was your last [context: romantic] relationship?

Thanks for assuming that I’ve had one. Now, instead of filling in the amount of time, I have to add an answer the system wasn’t prepared for.

Q: How many intimate [translation: sexual] partners have you had?

Please just cut to the chase if you mean sex because intimacy isn’t exclusively sexual, and I’ll wind up with a different answer than what you’re trying to ask if I pick apart what an intimate partner means. (My first thought was emotional intimacy after having a question where I had to answer if I had someone “as a support”, but I can overshare emotional shit with far more people than I’ve “been sexually intimate with”.)

I would also appreciate if I knew I could mention quoi, greyro, or the aro spectrum in passing without needing to walk the therapist I’ll be assigned (for the actual counseling) through basic terms. I made a point of asking for an LGBTQ-aware therapist in order to hopefully avoid that for basic trans terms, but I honestly don’t know what they’re going to know yet.

Resources: For other health professionals.

It kind of depends on the area in question if a medical person really needs to grok a-spec identities or could get by with introductory knowledge, but if someone’s intake questionnaire only asks me about sexual orientation, I would ideally like to know they’d understand my answers if I were honest. This whole five answer deal doesn’t give me a lot of faith - 1) Hetersexual, 2) Homosexual, 3) Bisexual, 4) Other with space to write in, and 5) Choose not to disclose. I must admit that I wouldn’t really expect every medical specialist to ask, but if I have to get referred to someone dealing with sexual health, I really wish someone could offer them some training or something.

(Please not that I used ‘a-spec’ on purpose here. I know aros don’t want to be lumped in with aces while forming a separate community, but if we’re talking about updating that intake questionnaire and general awareness, someone should also be brought in to cover the ace part. As much as the split attraction model isn’t helpful for some a-spec people, it provides a quick way to explain why anyone is even trying to talk about aromanticism when the question was about sexual orientation. And fixing the gender choices under that section (also vented about). Like, thanks for the attempt, but please, actually do the LGBTQIA+ friendly thing right.)

Intra-Community: If general aro spaces are set up to be romance free for the romance-repulsed, what do the romance-confused do?

It’s where the quoi in the greyro/quoi really shines through, but I struggle with how I’m supposed to warn for romo [link] or contribute to something like RomoAlert [link]. Granted, some of these questions are community level works in progress, but when romance is a nebulous, ‘red-orange, qamuSHa', 4i’ situation, it can come across like it’s horribly easy to set off romance-repulsion and make fellow aros uncomfortable. [qamuSHa' means “I love you” in Klingon, which is being used as ‘language I assume the reader also does not know’ in the metaphor.]

Intra-Community/Subgroup: So . . . those quoiromantic folks?

It’s one thing to opt out of interacting with specific romance-repulsed users, but if I extend non-interaction to general aro spaces, I wouldn’t really have much of an aro community to interact with. It’s possible that spaces that make room for romance-favorability might be easier to navigate because I won’t be setting of someone’s repulsion on accident, but that doesn’t really solve the larger issue of how to handle quoiromantic interaction within aro spaces. (Not to mention that romance-favorability is sometimes talked about as if it’s a small, confusing, practically mythical section of the aro community, so telling quoiromantic people to just go hang out with the romance-favorable aros doesn’t actually come across as helpful.)

At least on tumblr, there’s a lot of pride merchandise and including quoi in aro-spec lists, so I’m writing from the assumption that quoiros are supposed to be included in the aro community. (See “(What) does the aro community want (with) quoiros?” [link] for a more uncertain take.) I’m not entirely sure where else people who don’t jive with romantic attraction, don’t understand it, and may not be able to differentiate it from other forms of attraction are supposed to go. Maybe quoiros could chill with the idemromantics, some of the nebularomantics, who knows how many others. *shrug* But, like, what will the aro community do?

I’m not saying that quoi/greyro people like myself should take over the limelight and be the focus of general aro resources, but sometimes, there’s a feeling akin to thinking your carpool group will remember you (you have a designated seat in the back and everything) only to realize that they’re rushing to your location because the driver forgot you. I don’t want to become the driver of the carpool just so I’ll get remembered, y’know? Mostly, I don’t want to feel like an afterthought that’s inconveniencing others with last minute accommodations, or something along those lines.

Subgroup: Aros who may experience hypersexuality.

I know I’ve seen acknowledgement (#positivity), but that doesn’t feel the same as actually addressing hypersexuality. Hypersexuality is talked about separately from allo/ace as self-identifiers because it’s not a sexual orientation, so a hypersexual aro may be allosexual, asexual, gray, demi, etc. However, when it comes to how aro community spaces are talked about, discussions of sex and sexuality can get roughly sorted under alloaro, so it’s likely a hypersexual person of any sexual orientation will utilize alloaro resources unless sex related discussions are not designated as happening in solely alloaro spaces.

~ Do aroaces want their own spaces for any discussions of hypersexuality in the aro community? Do they want to utilize ace community spaces? What about aros who aren’t comfortable with and/or don’t use the allo/ace division? I’m honestly not sure, but the impression that any aro who needs a space that allows sexual discussions is an alloaro means the seemingly common reassurance that alloaros aren’t “using” or manipulating sexual partners can fall flat.

Now, I am *not* saying that all hypersexual people, across the board, do in fact use and manipulate people, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how hypersexual aros can be portrayed as an example of a negative stereotype or be misinterpreted as attacking alloaros if they come in with questions or concerns about manipulating people.

~ How do hypersexual aros balance talking about negative symptoms/side effects/episodes, which may for example involve impulsively hooking up, with the need for alloaros to have an environment that’s affirming of such experiences?

~ How do hypersexual aros balance talk of management tactics (celibacy, reducing sexual encounters, etc.) with pushback that a less than welcoming attitude is bringing in sex negativity, or accusations that an ace is trying to take over the conversation?

Hypersexuality doesn’t always manifest as partnered sex, but it’s the most immediate example that I can think of that intersects with common alloaro talking points. Also, I must admit that I’m not 100% sure to what extent flirting and romantic impulsivity are tied to allo-allo expressions of hypersexuality (in which starting a new romantic relationship is tied up together with the sexual impulsivity), or romantic impulsivity is a possible manifestation of hypersexuality that’s not separated out in most resources.

(It’s only been through brief mentions in personal perspectives from others describing their (hypo)mania that I’ve seen some specificity about romantic impulsivity (focusing on flirting), but I’m not aware of any of them being on the aro spectrum. I’m also not sure how separate this may be for others who experience hypersexuality.)

#My writing #aro spectrum

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