I wanted a JOP at a restaurant wiht family (13 people total plus the JOP/celebrant) — costing about $800 all up — but my family wanted a ‘wedding.’

I discovered when I went into management that I loved every aspect of it. I loved it more than the work I was doing before and I am good at it! I love it!

Congratulations on finding that new job so quickly! Takes a big stress off, doesn’t it?

Thank you for this. I could have written the OP’s post myself!

All of it was really rough for me.

Mine came mostly from my Father-in-law,but my whole family uses me as their ‘avatar of body issues.’

Their moms are fine, normal people. :) We’re all just different and have different ways of looking at things. And it’s all ok.

Don’t worry to much about it. most people aren’t thinking about you at all. You might meet people whom you actually like and want to get to know, and you also never have to reveal more about yourself than you feel comfortable. You can even tell people “I’m rather shy/quiet” — bt if you’re present and add value to the…

yes! i can’t find a copy though . . .

You may never.

I’m rather sly.

I think the best way to make new friends as an adult is find group activities around what you like to do.

Yes. it’s the worst. My first roommate situation, I was a sublease. I moved in there because it was 2 other girls, both without boyfriends at the time. I didn’t feel comfortable living with men at the time. Then, both of them got boyfriends who subsequently spent more nights with us than ‘at home’ because they lived…

I’ve been really lucky. I know a lot of cool people, a lot of grown-up men who are real feminists and what not. But, I consider myself lucky and it isn’t easy to meet people.

I think that people are generally quite complex. Like most modern men, he has this overall sense that he sees women as equals, that he believes in things like pro-choice, equal pay for equal work and so on, and so he’s progressive. But down at the nitty gritty of things, he has all of that acculturated misogyny.

Yeah. It’s usually a young woman with a slew of roommates in a large home or flat, and then she brings him into her room, under the guise that they’ll eventually split rent. But because the housing is so transient (in terms of roommates), no one knows whether or not he’s putting in or what.

I would say that it’s probably both. At 23, he was painfully shy and reserved, very religious, and very suppressed/repressed. He didn’t come out of that until he was 30 or so, at which point he wanted to “live his 20s for real” and he still is, basically. He doesn’t want to “grow up” — work for a living even if it’s…

I don’t have an inherent problem with it, to be honest, nor an inherent judgment.

Sometime in the 90s, I had a strange conversation with my mom.

I think they’re recording cases, too, from children who had medical refugee status to come to the US for treatment. When the ban hit, many of those children just failed and died within a week. Children went from sick-but playing with friends/family to the hospital to dead. They just gave up.