this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
922 points (98.5% liked)
Curated Tumblr
4932 readers
338 users here now
For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.
The best transcribed post each week will be pinned and receive a random bitmap of a trophy superimposed with the author's username and a personalized message. Here are some OCR tools to assist you in your endeavors:
-
FOSS Android Recs per u/m_f@discuss.online: 1 , 2
Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's not an experiment to react to someone's fear and trauma with kindness, even if you learned those skills through helping rehabilitate dogs. She's not doing this to try to figure out how he reacts to the stimulus of M&Ms under certain conditions, she's giving him candy when he's stressed because she knows it helps him calm down. That's just being a caring and attentive girlfriend.
Being caring also involves including their consent in the process. Idk, I'd be really upset by my partner knowingly doing this without talking to me about it. But then again I guess it could depend how they react if I found out before they just admit to it. Like if they got defensive and didn't understand why I'm upset. I'm not saying the whole thing is horrible, just hiding it.
Also depends on the person and their values, I guess. If you value someone doing that kind of emotional labor for you without you having to think about it. I'm very much used to doing the emotional labor in relationships.
Damn. I just realized maybe I'm displacing here though cuz I'm a bit jealous they’re using a method that works, whereas I'm single for a plethora of reasons.
That's fair. If you're used to not receiving emotional attention, then suddenly receiving it might be something so novel that you need to give it your blessing before accepting it. The relationships I've been in have generally defaulted for both parties to a sense of "I'm going to do what I think is best for you, so let me know if I'm ever wrong," rather than "Can I do this thing for you? Ok, good. How about this one?" But I've been lucky to have mutually caring relationships.
If this person has gotten used to people not having their best interests in mind, then maybe even their partner's good intentions need to be given consent just to show them that people can have good intentions. I do worry that, by being told what's happening, he'd associate candy with being stressed and get defensive whenever offered candy, but hopefully she's been doing it long enough to at least show him that it's an effective de-stressor coming from a place of love rather than manipulation.
I hope you find someone who cares for you as well. It took me a lot of time and effort to put myself out there before I found my wife, but I'm really glad I did.
Even in your description of an "emotionally attentive" relationship, they have to be aware of what you're doing for them or else how will then tell you that you're wrong? Can it only ever be wrong if the person being acted for detects it, regardless of whether they dislike it?
Hypothetical: "You've been wanting to get stronger, so I've been secretly feeding you HGH. It's what you've wanted so I was doing what I thought best to help you."
All relationships require consent. Trying to reframe "getting consent and confirmation about your partner's wants and boundaries" as some sort of "anxious pestering" or needling is incredibly strange to me. As you get to know them, you don't have to check as often as you come to understand them but they should still be aware of what you're doing.
And do you realize what you're doing here is placing yourself as the standard to debate down at other positions, while presenting your anecdotes as relationship defaults?
It's funny, your hypothetical made me realize that OP's example specifically does involve consent. Your example removed the inherent consent of the situation by making the HGH dosage a secret thing they're doing behind their partner's back.
When my wife has a hard day I'll bake her a batch of her favorite cookies because I know they'll help cheer her up. I don't need to ask consent for that because it's just a thing I'm doing on my own. She always has the option not to eat them when I offer her some if she doesn't want to, and on the rare occasion she turns me down, she knows I'll just bring them to work to share with the office. That's a normal relationship - seeing when your partner needs something from you, and offering it to them - that offering is the point where consent is asked.
Yeah, if I secretly ground up cookies and mixed them into her cereal in the morning in an attempt to force her to eat them, that would be bad. The consent comes at the offering, not at the loving act of choosing to offer it in the first place. This guy is giving consent when he takes the candy, and denying it when he chooses not to take it, just like my wife is giving consent when she takes the cookies, or denying it when she refuses them, which is always a known option.