The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is the origin of the Nice Guy meme among women. Nothing improves a man's confidence or his (and, in lots of cases, other people's) perception of their own status more than getting a girlfriend. So the classic lonely Nice Guy who is so nice and caring and committed, becomes just another jerk once she starts dating him. Might as well cut out the middle bit.
I'm not saying you have in any negative way, outside of this sudden desire for casual sex outside your relationship. I'm more focused on how the dynamic of increasing confidence and personal value can change the calculus that lead to the formation of the relationship that increased your confidence and personal value. Or, to put it differently, being a jerk maybe isn't always a bad thing.
People who claim they have never had any desire for anyone outside their relationship are fucking liars, or mentally unwell, and that expectation is destructive of other people's relationships. What you're experiencing is fairly to perfectly normal. I'm not sure how to parse all the depression/medication aspects of it, you know your history better than I do.
While I think casual sex is, or at least can be, very fun, I don't endorse your desire to exit this relationship. It does not seem compatible with your realistic desires and values.
What I'd suggest is that you need to learn to see your gf differently. TLP in Sadly Porn has this bit about how men feel jealousy for how other men see/experience their wives. She can be the wanton slut, the sorority girl, the hottie walking down the street just waiting for a zipless fuck, in any other man's imagination; but to you she is quotidian, your sex life constrained by realism, by your long distance relationship, by trying to cram in time around real life. She can be someone else's fantasy, but she must be your reality. Getting outside of yourself and trying to accept that and find a way to be both together is the project.
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